California Common, AKA Steam Beer

WOW its been a long time since I've brewed a batch of beer!

Not really sure how that happened...just a combination of events with higher priority that made brewing not optimal. But we are basically settled in the new house, work on the furnace in the basement is done and brewing can commence.

I ordered two kits a LONG time ago and have been sitting on them waiting until I could find time to brew. At the time I thought I would get around to them much sooner. As such I am a tad worried about the yeast for this batch. It has been sitting dormant in the fridge for months and it didnt really come around when I busted the nutrient packet to wake it back up. Usually after a few hours the packet is swollen quite a bit as the yeast eats and expels gas....this time not so much. Not 100% sure the yeast is even viable at this point, but I went for it anyway. Worst case I will have to swing by Fermentation Station in Meredith and get the same strain or something similar and repitch if the fermentation doesnt kick off.

So yeah this batch is a 'California Common' or sometimes more commonly called a Steam Beer. Funny though, steam doesnt and never has had any thing to do with the brewing of this beer. It was concocted by some dudes in old San Fran who wanted lager but had no means of refrigeration, to hit the lower temps needed for fermentation of lager yeast. So they magically figured out a way to get lager yeast to ferment at more ale like temps and viola, Steam Beer (no steam).

Chill

Crotchville setup is very similar to the Squamy setup.
If it aint broke...

**UPDATE**: The first batch of Crotchville Beer has been bottled. Feels like it has been ages since I had homebrew bottled almost ready to drink hanging out in my basement. If I felt like it I could look back through the manarea archives and tell you exactly how long but I don't feel like it right now (bonus points for whoever does feel like it).

I may have taken an extended hiatus but I am back with a vengeance. I think this batch is going to get great reviews and will probably be up there with my best. I have been so busy lately that this batch has had plenty of time to figure itself out. And once again I have to sing the praises of my high capacity siphon. Saves me so much time. That and my new kitchen's island adds some much needed gravitational assistance.

Look Ma, No Hands!

Racked to my bottling bucket in around 4 minutes and the entire bottling process including clean up only took me 1hr and 19mins. Down from an average of about 2hrs in the past. Data Nerd? Perhaps. But that's EFFICIENT data nerd to you.

1 Part Showing Off, 1 Part Insurance Reasons

So I bought a house recently and some family and friends haven't seen it in all its glory yet and instead of trying to format all the pics and send them around in emails I figured I would just post them all up here in a photo essay of sorts.

So here is our 'Storybook Home' on a fine Spring day:

Thar she blows

Character with a capital 'C'

Quaint

Old Skool

Lots of perennial landscaping (thanks Maureen!)

S.H.E.D (and pooch)

Entrance to Fern Gulley (aka my soon to be permaculture experiment)

not sure what happend to this picture but I like it

So there you have it. Our little slice of awesome.

Bear Brook Blast Off NECS '09 #2

Struggling economy? Sunday's turnout would make you think otherwise. I haven't seen that many people at a NECS race since I started consistently racing the series 3 years ago or so. It was great to see, must have been hundreds of people there.

And man was it nice to only have to drive 30-40mins to the venue. I can get used to that. The start/finish area was already bumping when I arrived. Festival like atmosphere, with everyone suiting up and riding around sizing up the competition. I saw a few familiar faces from the SS class the last few years but also a lot of new faces.

When we finally lined up I would say there were in the area of 20 SS'ers. We set off after all the other Expert fields and things quickly split into 2 groups. A group of 10 or so 'mashers' got off the front within the first 100yds or so and I was leading the second group of 'spinners' maybe 10-20ft behind heading into the singletrack. The mashers slowly disappeared turning those big gears at full bore (not sure how they do it). I kept my position heading into the first technical singletrack climb, but that climb brought me to my limit and as I tried to recover after dumping out onto the first double track I lost a few places. I was probably sitting about 12-13th at this point and would remain there for most of the race.

Me lurking in the background as we caught some of the Expert Women, as you can see I'm really trying to get in her draft for the slingshot. Shake and Bake!

This was the first time in my experience racing SS bikes that I wish I had a bigger gear. I have never gotten into messing with my ratio based on a race course, I have always just run the 32-20. Usually that would work for me and my fitness would be the limiting factor before I would feel like a bigger gear would have been necesary. But I guess I am happy to say that I think I could have done much better at this race if I had been running a bigger gear maybe 32-18 or so. There were just one too many stretches of flat double track where I was spinning at 130rpm wanting to go faster but not having the gear to do so. All told I probably lost 5-10 mins on some of my competitors because they could get a few mph more on those sections and there weren't enough climbs where I could make up the difference.

Even though I was running my baby gear I still rode as hard as I could and I felt like I managed my nutrition well and I did catch up to a few of the SS'ers who passed me early on. I caught the first on a longer descent, he overcooked a turn and I stopped using my brakes to try and gain as much gap as I could (this was scary and pretty damn fun). I was starting to run into some traffic at this point as well. I never used to have to deal with traffic while racing, but as my fitness improves and I am in the thick of things I am going to have to get better at dealing with passing at speed.

After the final lap point there was a longish haul back to the finish. I got into a pace line of faster sport riders and just hit the gas and gave it everything I had, trying to keep the guy I passed at bay and I was pretty sure there was another SS'er not too far up ahead. I was digging really deep at this point, quads were starting to cramp, I thought the finish was a bit closer than what it ended up being. Unfortunately at my level of exertion all the blood was going to my legs and none was getting to my brain and I totally flew right past a hard left hander into the woods for the last little section of singletrack. I had to lock up the brakes, turn around and get back going. Just as I jumped into the woods after missing the turn I saw that other SS racer about 20-30ft up ahead...if I had made that turn I would no doubt have caught him with my momentum and probably been able to hold him off to the finish. But I had lost that momentum and with my legs on the border of cramping I couldn't close the gap and he ended up finishing 10secs ahead of me.

Finished the 24 mile course just under 2.5 hrs and results were prelim but it looks like I ended up with 12th out of 20 or so starters. No series points but I was pleased with my race, it actually felt like racing instead of a solid DFL 20 mins behind the rest of the SS'ers. I loved the course, even though it had a lot of double track hauls, the singletrack was in great shape and some of the descents were perfect...technical but fast. I'll post up official results once I get them...and here they are:

SINGLE SPEED MEN         SSM
1  158 GREG BURBIDGE        2:06:18 200
2  155 GEORGE LAPIERRE      2:07:39 190
3  167 RYAN LITTLEFIELD     2:11:02 178
4  151 WILL CRISSMAN        2:13:17 164
5  164 NOLAN WATTS          2:15:50 148
6  159 COLLIN GALLOWAY      2:15:53 130
7  157 BRAD BEVERIDGE       2:19:53 110
8  165 SCOTT ROSENTHAL      2:19:54  88
9  166 CHRIS GENDRON        2:25:11  64
10  163 DAVE HARKLESS        2:26:13  38
11  168 ERIC MASSA           2:27:06   0
12  152 KEVIN ORLOWSKI       2:27:16   0
13  160 GRAHAM DINMOCK       2:27:48   0
14  156 ALAN FOREY           2:34:34   0
15  150 MATTEO MOLLER        2:39:32   0
16  153 PETER TAMPOSI        2:43:30   0
17  154 DAVID SHEDD          2:54:58   0
18  169 PAIGE ROWNTREE       3:07:16   0

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8347816

Tour de Chemungville Stage 2

There is always an 'X' factor when going on touring/adventure rides, especially here in Chemungville. You pick a route based on a map but sometimes you arent really sure what kind of terrain you are going to run into if you are exploring new areas. There are a lot of metrics you could use to gauge how sweet a touring ride is...elevation gain, the views, remoteness but I think I have come up with my preferred metric after this ride.

An adventure/touring ride is good IF: at some point during the ride you are genuinely concerned that a backwoods individual could be hunting you as game.

Yeah this ride was that sweet AND I got chased by 6 dogs all told.

Epic Farms and Lake Views...We got 'em.



This is the end of Steele Hill Rd. on the Meredith side, one of the many 'not roads'. Looks semi ok from here but it gets much more hilarious just out of view

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8337192

I used some roads from Stage 1 but this time around I went more North of the house as opposed to swinging South. I got the same mix of terrain as last time: pavement, dirt, and super off road. Big hills seem to be unavoidable around here, which I guess is a good thing. Although a leisurely ride doesnt really exist in the immediate area.

Like I mentioned earlier I was chased by a pretty funny number of dogs today. A lot of the roads around here are basically really long driveways so most people let their dogs roam and most of the dogs arent used to cyclist traffic I would assume. I never really felt in danger, most of the poochs were just doing what my pooch would have done. They all just barked and ran along side me for awhile probably just making sure I didn't come any closer to the house...but just in case I had my sprint ready to go just in case I had to reenact that scene from American Flyers with Eddie the crazy pitbull.

My brush with Deliverence came on Arbitus Hill Rd. towards the end of the ride. I was trying to get to Rt. 104 so I could get over Wickwas Lake to Meredith Center Rd. and back around to the house. I had a feeling this road was going to be sketch from the map and my hunch proved correct. Basically Arbitus Hill Rd eventually turns into someones driveway, quite literally too, I turned the corner to find two trucks parked in the middle of the road and a little farm/homestead. I had to ride around the cars, through the side yard of the house and duck under a slightly downed tree to get onto what could best be described as a forgotten cart path. Based on the trucks / house I was a little worried that someone would be grabbing their gun and coming after me so I kept the gas on as much as I could through the woods. The path eventually dumped out right into someone elses yard / driveway on the other side.

The legs felt pretty good and I am really excited for the race tomorrow. I will be trying some new set ups and feeling pretty confident that I should continue with my improvement from the end of last season.

Newport to Brewery Ride

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8235331

Original plan for today was to try our hand in the Sunapee Road Race, but registration filled up and we decided to come up with a plan B. We decided to meet close to the race instead in Newport and ride out to the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor, VT and back. Racing would have been interesting and a good challenge/training for early season but I am really glad we did this ride instead.

hurry up Shaun

50 miles round trip, the first 25 flew by. Starting out of Newport we had a small climb of a mile or so and then a sweet descent into Claremont. We cruised up the Connecticut River Valley, the last time I was on these roads was during the last 10-15 miles of the 147 mile Harpoon B2B last year. I didn't really get a chance to enjoy the scenery that time around, I was focusing more on not dying. Road isn't in the best shape but it is classic New Englad scenery. I think the CRV (yeah I just did that) is underated as far as sweet places go. Thats a big river and there are some big hills hidden in there as well.

thats Ascutney back there

We made it to the brewery in just over an hour averaging 20mph for the first 25 miles. We timed it perfectly, rolled into the brewery around 11:30 and got our food/beer before the crowds rolled in. They had done some nice renovations to the brewery since the last time I was there, its pretty pimped out now.

yeah beer!

I got myself a sample tray of beer with 5 5oz samples of Harpoon's finest (except the Raspberry Wheat...dial that Raspberry back Harpoon and it might be good. Until then its a wine cooler in my opinion) and a Bratwurst with Saurkraut. Very high performance eats.

1 down 4 to go

the grease helps to lube your joints

After letting the food/beer settle we hit the road back to Newport. The ride back was not quite as speedy however. The full stomach wasn't much of an issue surprisingly, we had more problems with the diesel headwind coming in from the southeast. I believe there is some weather coming in tonight and this must have been the leading edge of that front because it was 10-15mph sustained for the whole way back. Not fun. We also had to contend with a few hills towards the end of the 50 miles that really wore on us after all those headwinds.

I tried some over the shoulder pics and had a very low success rate. If you can call me looking like a slightly more retarded version of that guy from the movie Powder a success. My other attempts got me a picture of my other hand (no idea how I did that) and a picture of a truck going by in a blur.

born from lightning

I felt pretty good over the course of the ride, I definitely felt my high end power tail off towards the end of the ride but I still had some gas left when we finished. I tried a little mini hill sprint on one of the last climbs and it felt good even with the distance but it didn't last all that long before I shut it down. I think I have gotten some real quality efforts in this early season, I'm looking forward to when I peak this summer to see how much I've improved from last year.