A few months ago, I packed up the dogs, the mead, and various fish and houseplants for a work move to western Washington. Instead of snow six months a year… well, who am I kidding? There’s some places out here that have snow year-round. But we moved from 8,000 feet to near sea level, so I drive to see snow now instead of living in it.
This area has some choice hiking.
I found a stick!
Some seriously choice hiking. I can get to mountains, beaches, forests with a couple hours of driving. The Pacific Northwest is a friggin fantastic area of the country to live in. Both the dogs think so too.
This is also one of the best areas for berries. I’ve got plans to shift over to some berry meads: blackberries (my house is full of them), huckleberries, salmonberries, raspberries. Apples are everywhere too, and it’s proving easy to barter for them. Some of the brewers and brew shops will rent cider presses, so it might be time to branch out a little.
And now, it’s time to get some mead started. I have an empty 5 gallon from the hibiscus mead, and four more batches that are ready to bottle. It turns out moving, with all the associated shenanigans that go with it, is good for your home brewing. My batch of coffee mead benefited from being left to sit for three months, and so did the blueberry and killer bee honey batches.
My first attempt at a hibiscus mead turned out boozy and very sweet. We murdered the entire gallon at a BBQ in 2015 and had absolutely wonderful time with it.
But for round two, I wanted something less kick-your-ass sweet. The problem with batch 1 was that the sweetness overpowered the hibiscus. So I knocked the honey back from 3lbs per gallon to 2.4 lbs per gallon.
Batch 2 Hibiscus Mead:
12 lbs honey from Cook’s Honey
1 gallon of hibiscus tea
Lalvin EC-1116 yeast
Topped with water to 5.2 gallons
In primary for 3.5 weeks, then glass carboy till today.
I started it Jan 26, 2016 and it’s going into bottles today. It’s on the sweet side, but the hibiscus is there this time. I’m happy with it.
Two bottles are going to our work’s holiday raffle basket and the rest are going in for aging. And drinking, when people come over, of course!
There’s a new batch of peach mead in secondary, thanks to a neighbor and her amazing find of orchard peaches. I mean, what else was I going to do with 15 lbs of peaches?
I’m testing it tomorrow before Thanksgiving dinner and hopefully, it will be ready to bottle in the spring.
Great news. I started a batch of hibiscus mead, based off a recipe I tried last summer. That one turned out a bit too sweet, so I cut back on the honey this time around.
It’s had a nice, fast ferment so far. You can taste the hibiscus. It’s not so overwhelmingly sweet you want to run for the hills.
The hard part is going to be letting it rest in secondary long enough to mellow out and really be drinkable. It will be an exercise in patience!
I was talking to a friend on Skype and got reminded of this job I used to have, working at a pet store.
It was one of those family run pet shops that sold all sorts of animals, most of which were very poor choices for people to actually take home as a pet. Being that I was in college and needed the cash, and had poor ethics about supporting certain aspects of the pet trade, I filled out an application.
The store sold fish, parrots, puppies (those stories about puppy mill dogs? True. 100% true. Don’t buy a dog from a pet store, people), small animals, lizards, snakes, and kittens. We had a few animals that were store pets, either because they couldn’t be sold, they belonged to the owner, or they were too big or nasty for a rational person to want to take home. Like Tokay geckos. I worked in reptiles because I like them, and wound up with the friggin’ Tokay hanging off my hand on more than one occasion.
We had one pet store. A bunch of college aged employees. A manager who was sometimes drunk (that’s another story). The general public. And this fish:
Four feet of DOOM
This, for anyone who’s not familiar with fish, is a Redtail Catfish. They usually show up in the aquarium trade as adorable little six inch long baby fish. If your local pet or fish store is clueless, you’ll be told they don’t get that big and you’ll be fine keeping them in a 20 gallon or whatever you’ve got at home. Just hand over your Visa and we’ll send you on your way.
Well. It just so happens that they do get big.
People fish for those things, and have caught ones that are over 70″ and 150lbs. The one we had at the store wasn’t 150lbs yet, but still clocked in at about four feet. He lived in a display tank and we fed him mice, fish pellets, and the occasional pepperoni slice.
We also had a sign that said ‘Do Not Stick Your Hands Into the Tank.” The fish ate mice by sucking them into his mouth and drowning them. It seems obvious that you’d not want to put your hands into the same tank as a giant catfish. But hey, people did, so we had the signs.
Anyway, we’re at work one evening and we hear someone yelling. ‘IT’S ON MY HAND GET IT OFF HELLLLLLLP.”
Everyone likes a good animal bite story, so off we went. We all suspected what happened, because it wasn’t the first time. Usually we’d just hear a scream and a lot of splashing as whoever it was dodged the catfish, but not this time. We get to the fish section, and sure enough, there’s a guy with his hand in the catfish’s tank and the fish is hanging on for dear life.
We stood around and watched until the manager showed up to deal with things. None of us wanted to stick our hands in the tank at that point. Good boy, catfish. The customer wasn’t hurt, but I bet he never did it again.
Still, a word of advice: don’t buy a Redtail Catfish unless you have the Taj Mahal of aquariums and don’t mind a fish that thinks your hand might be dinner.
That time of the year when, where I live, we have less than 9 hours of daylight. I actually don’t mind, although it’s harder to fit in snowshoeing with the puppy when I’m at work for most of it.
There’s something pretty darn nice about having more night than day. It makes curling up with the dogs and a good book (or a movie) even better. More time for walking at night, checking out stars… and the bears are all snoozing too.
I’ve got plans to get together with people, eat food, drink mulled wine, and have a good time. A combination solstice, Christmas, holiday, festivus thing. I wish some of the mead would have been ready, but the one batch of cyser I’d been counting on flopped big time. I have a bottle of not-my-mead that I’ll probably bring instead. Perhaps I’ll crack a bottle of the terrible buckwheat and see how that tastes mulled.
And I’ll make darn sure to put aside some of what’s brewing for next year’s solstice.
Bonus post because today’s the day they traveled to in Back to the Future.
Holy shit it’s really October 21, 2015 right now, you guys.
It’s very fucking strange to look at 2015 now, vs. when I first saw the movie.
Same deal with these two. It’s an experience watching a movie when you’re a kid and then living long enough to hit the year that it was supposed to take place. I was a kid when Back to the Future and Escape from New York were released. Now I realize we still don’t have flying cars and NYC/LA (thankfully) haven’t been walled off into prisons.
Call me SnakeKeep calling me Snake.
I still want a flying car, damnit. And I still like Kurt Russel.
Six weeks of unpaid furlough is one of the deals that came with my job. It’s not terrible, because other than the not getting paid part, I can pretty much use the time to do whatever I want. I do split the time up so I don’t have all six weeks at once. It’s a nice break after what happens here in the summer, too.
The other downside is having all that work waiting for me when I get back.
Screw it, I’m on (unpaid) vacation. Not thinking about work for 4 weeks, damnit. Booze and being lazy.
Here, have a random picture of yellow flowers.
Another bonus to furloughs? Road trips. Griffin and I did around 5300 miles in 2014, before he retired. We hit 17 states, both coasts, a bunch of National Parks, and got to hang with some cool people. I also had to replace two windshields on the Jeep, but hey. Thank you State Farm? Yes. Thank you, State Farm.
2015 was occupied with a new puppy. This fall, I’m flying back east to visit family instead of driving because Griffin isn’t able to travel in my Jeep. Old dogs don’t mix well with narrow spaces in cars. I’m kicking around the idea of getting a beater van in the spring to head out to Olympic National Park and Highway 101.
Oregon rules
That’s one of the reasons why. Also, Oregon’s beaches are 100% public access. None of that bullshit with the private beaches… you can go anywhere. And you can drink on the beach. There’s just no way this could go wrong. I’d throw a futon mattress in the van, for Griffin to stretch out on, and hook Viking’s crate up too. He’s a jerk, because 9 month old puppies tend to be jerks, and would probably see how car seats tasted if I left him loose.
If I can have Griffin be comfortable in the car, then another trip out to the coast might be possible. It’s not as far as driving back east. He wouldn’t have to jump into a van the way he would into the Jeep. Still, he calls the shots. If he can handle it and wants to go, then we’ll do it. His unofficial birthday is April 14th and he’ll be 11+ at that point. The 14th was his shelter intake date and 11 is his estimated age. Old man dog gets to choose, though. He loved the beach, as long as his feet didn’t get too close to the ocean. I’d like to do one more trip for him to enjoy, if he’s up to it.
Shit I’m doing on furlough, other than crashing on my sister’s couch for a week-
I’m putting in 5 gallons of mead today and another 5 when I find more honey that I like. Also doing a 1-2 gallon repeat batch of hibiscus mead and aging it. We liked it this summer and it was drinkable after 8 weeks. A bit on the sweet side and could probably use some aging, so I’m going to experiment. Oh, and possibly have 1-2 gallons of mead to take on a road trip in the spring.
Doctors. Shopping for winter. Errands. All that jazz. Since our roads close in about a month and my only way out during the winter is one of these:
Drive it like you stole it. (Kidding) (Honest)
Assuming we get snow. There would usually be snow on the ground by now, but a combo of climate change and a second El Nino year means we’re getting punched in the junk twice this year. I kid you not, I live at 8,000 feet and it’s 55 degrees out today. At the end of October.
WTF is this? I like winter.
Anyway, time to go get started on 5 gallons of mead. It should be ready to go by June.
rumhounds 