Ah, the good life

Back to what this is all about, the Detroit Adventure!

So in real need of doing something I wanted to do, I brewed some beer the other day.

This is the bottle tree. It's how you was and sanitize bottles. Oh the joy. Well you have to put it someplace. To be honest this is the second brew day. So I'm bottling the first batch and brewing the second (actually two batches, or really a split batched, that is called a Parti-Gyle).

The carboy in the back with the fermentation-lock is the first batch waiting to be bottled.

So while bottles are being washed the brew pot is going.

I actually didn't document a lot. What is happening is I'm heating water in the metal pot to put in the plastic cooler with a bunch of crushed malt. That does it's thing for an hour or so and then you drain the water out of the cooler and boil that to get what you will ferment. So technically in this photo you see the HLT (Hot Liquor Tank - for some reason water is "liquor" in beer parlance) and the Mash Tun (where the grains soak "Mash") which in my case is also the Lauter Tun (the place you wash the sugars out of the mashed grain). Mashing is really a complex enzymatic process, but for the brewer it's basically just soaking the malt at the right temperature for the right amount of time. The grain does the rest on it's own.

And the bottled first batch. In a couple of days...

So a couple of days later we had rain. Midwest (east?) rain.

This went on for quite awhile and was accompanied by lots O' thunder and lightening.

Out in the hood Monty discovered CHICKENS. Almost as much fun as Squirrels.

And of course there is the Market...

The goodies

Peaches and plums. They ended up with the older plums in a brew made later...

OOOO peppers. They still don't have either the sweet red peppers or the little cheery peppers, but say they should be coming soon. And Carrots for le dog.

I broke down and got some bread. Can't really make any till the kitchen get semi put together. grrr
Oh and some sweets because, well. In the back are some pickled peppers I made up the other day. I need to get a better brine, but still OK.

Strawberries. I got there late and people were working to move stuff, these were $1.50

I though I would try to make some pickles.




And on my way out there was a vendor selling off their hanging pots for $2 a pop so I though I would spruce up the deck a bit.

And if you remember those flats of peppers and herbs...

Basin and Cilantro and a pepper.

Tomatoes and peppers and Rosemary. You cant see it but there is mint also in the two big pots.

The only fatalities I had were the dill. It croaked early and stayed that way so there you go.

The flowers in the front, have been hit heavily by squirrels. I guess they buried stuff around there because they dug up most of the flowers in a week or so. We will have to try something else next time.

As a final shot.

Monty has discovered he likes corn on the cob.

So long from the Big D

Cheers
SK