BOTTLING: "Poseur" Wheat-Date Ale

I don't have a lot of pictures this time.  Bottling this much beer solo, I find myself without enough hands to go around as it is, so I didn't really have an opportunity to take any until I was done.

The beer cleared up a lot in secondary.  It's still a little cloudy, I can't easily read text through a glass of it unless it's fairly large, but it's about as clear as my buckwheat beer was now, and actually more or less the same colour.  It'll be less carbonated - I meant to add a little more priming sugar but I forgot to measure it out - but hopefully because of the wheat the head will be comparable.  I'm not sure what the actual percentage of wheat is in the grain bill for the Brewhouse American Wheat kit, though.

The flavour's evolved a lot in the last two weeks.  The banana esters seem to have mellowed, although that may just be because the flavours from the oak have really covered it up.  The oak was certainly effective, lending all the flavours for which it is known (including, unmistakably, the leather). It's a bit of an odd duck, not to any particular style, but I like it.



Anyway, I've got two Tap-a-Draft bottles and about 21 bottles (mostly 12oz, but a few larger ones) in the closet now, carbing away.  The temperature is good, so if it doesn't cool off dramatically in the next two weeks it should be ready to drink in time for me to take some to the first Homebrewer's Guild meeting in September.

(The full label will be revealed after I've got around to printing them up and attaching them.)

The Man We All Should Try To Be

There are many qualities I admire in people, and many (many, many, more) that I find irritating or even despicable.  It's impossible to divide the whole world neatly into two groups, one good and one bad, and still be in contact with reality.

If I were to create such a division myself, though, it would be this: Do you like answers, or hate questions?

People who like answers love questions, because asking them is how you find the answers you wanted, and one of the great things about answers is that they lead to even more questions.  It's pinball - your reward for playing well is that you get to play again, even harder.  It makes you willing, sometimes even eager, to admit you were wrong about something, because you want to be right.  It requires you to accept logic, to build ever better approximations of the world as it really is.  Wanting answers and going looking for them is what makes a skeptic, a scientist, a rebel, a gifted kid, a great artist or a friend of mine.

People who hate questions only have, want, or need one answer.  They may phrase it many ways, saying, "God did it," "The Furher commands," "Because I said so," or, "Shut up." They all mean the same thing: Stop asking questions.  It's chess - your reward for playing well is that you win, and the game is over, and you don't have to play anymore.  It makes you unwilling to ever admit you were wrong, because you always want to be right.  It requires you to bury your head in rhetoric, to build ever more elaborate illusions about what the world must be like.  Hating questions and seeking to stop others from asking them makes a denier, a zealot, a despot, a fool, a bigot, a follower, a pretentious artiste, and above all a crushing bore.

I have enjoyed a game of chess now and then, but I'd much rather play pinball.  Wouldn't you?

Nelle Harper Lee

Also the man we all should try to be.

Unbelievable...

I just broke my new hydrometer.  There has to be a way to make these things stronger...

Maybe I'll just break down and spring for a refractometer this time; I've been meaning to get one eventually anyway.  Long tubes of thin glass that have to be balanced precariously in my dish drainer may just be a bad idea, you know?

RACKING: Wheat Date Ale

Featuring: The Return of Pictures!  I have the pictures for the last couple of beer posts as well, I just haven't had time to rewrite them recently.

Geoffrey K. Pullum

He is the man we all should try to be.