Monsoon

It's monsoon time in Arizona. We turn on the news while eating supper and watch the radar. Then, the wind starts blowing and soon it rains. Here's a really cool storm that rolled in.

It's Raining!

Marcia got home before me today. I called her when I left work and she told me to hurry since it was going to start raining soon. I made it home dry and tooks some pictures of the clouds rolling in.





Then it poured.



The rain only lasted for 15-20 minutes. But the destruction was done. Look what it did to the street in front of our house. Puddled water.



Then, I walked out to get the mail and found some more destruction. Oh the horror. It will take them years to rebuild.

Bottling Beer

It's bottling day. The beer was actually ready for bottling last Wednesday, but I have been busy and today was the first chance to get it done. I started out by sanitizing the bottles I had already cleaned. This was actually the most time consuming task since I rinsed each one with sanitizer and brushed them out.

After that, I moved my fermenting bucket to the kitchen countertop. I placed my bottling bucket on the floor and started the siphon to transfer the beer. At this time, I had also added my priming sugar. During this process, you siphon everything out, but leave the bottom inch or so with all the sediment that has settled. This gives you all the clear beer off the top. Here I am watching the siphon about half way through. Boy does it smell good.



From this angle, you can look down and see the fermenting bucket draining into the bottling bucket. There is a ring around the top from the fermenting process.



Here is the bottling bucket after the transfer is done. I managed to get about 4.5 gallons. I probably could have got a little more, but didn't want to risk sucking up some of the crud from the fermenter. I'd rather waste a little beer than get too much sediment in all of the bottles.



Here is the sediment (crud) that was left over that I've been referring to. It mostly consists of the yeast, but also has some other hops and barley particles that got into the first transfer after the boil.



And the bottle filling begins. I had my empty bottles behind the bucket by the sink. I would fill a bottle and put them on the counter in the left of the picture. You can see I've already completed a few of them. Marcia helped me as I filled the bottles, she would place a cap on the top.



After I got all the bottles filled, I began capping them. I do this with a hand tool that puts a crimp on.



Here's the first fully complete bottle. It's capped and ready for 2 more weeks of rest before drinking time.



I managed to fill 42 bottles. That's 7 six packs of beer. During the process, I poured some into a glass for sampling. At this point, the beer is still flat, but you can get an idea whether the batch is going to be good or not. Great news, it tasted pretty darn good. It should get even better with two more weeks of aging in the bottles.

Bulldog Canyon

Next weekend is the night run through Bulldog Canyon with the Phoenix 4x4 group. Never having been through that area and with it on the upper end of difficulty for trails we like to run, we decided we wanted to try it during the daylight before going with a big group after dark.

Marcia's parents went along with us. We ate lunch first and as we were pulling out of the parking lot, we noticed our Jeep was turning over 50,000 miles. Here's the proof.



We took US60 east to Ellsworth road and then went north. This goes past the Usery Mountain Park. About a mile north of the park entrance is the locked gate to the Bulldog Canyon OHV area. To enter here, you have to get a permit from the Tonto National Forest first. It's free; you just have to go there in person and get it first.

The road is fairly easy at first, but a few miles in, we turned to the south to go through Bulldog Canyon. From here, the trail is more difficult with quite a few obstacles.

Here is the first climb we came to that was a little bit of a challenge.



Dave went down and came back up a more difficult path the 2nd time.



Here we are at the top of the hill with the gorgeous views in the background.



Dave and Kathy climb another steep, rutted hill.



A few more miles in, we came to quite a few hills that were covered in 6"-8" boulders. Marcia got out and walked up ahead of me following her in the Jeep.











Looking east at the Superstition Mountains.



The narrow trail meandering through the desert.



On the way home, the monsoon rains were blowing in. Here are 2 photos from the 101 looking towards the McDowell Mountains getting some showers and lightning.

Misc. Happenings

Here's a post of a bunch of random stuff from the last couple weeks.

I bought a new air compressor. It's a 21 gallon upright unit with a self-retracting real that I mounted on the wall above it. Everything is setup in the picture below, except I hadn't installed the hose connecting the compressor to the reel yet. With the 50 foot hose, I can reach clear out to the end of the driveway.



Marcia refurbished the living room couch. She bought a new slip cover and installed that. She also sewed some new pillows for the back. Looks like brand new now.



Archie gets hot and has been shedding a lot lately. Marcia brushed him out and he really likes it.



The wind picked up the other night and blew over the cactus in the back yard. It had been growing too much for it's own good anyway. The thing was too top heavy and fell right over.



I've been working on redoing the irrigation system in the back yard. Here's some trenches I dug to install the water lines.





When we were in Iowa, I welded a little cat for the yard. Marcia thinks it looks like a dog. It's in the ground by our pool now whatever it is.



We were awakened one morning by the rain. It poured for about an hour until the sun came up.

4th of July - Brewing Beer

Relax, sit back, enjoy a homebrew.

Brett's been brewing his own beer for over a year now and is turning out some pretty good stuff. It sounded really fun, so I decided to give it a try. Earlier this year I started saving bottles that I would need. It took me quite a few months, but I'm up to 85 in the picture below. Each 5 gallon bach only needs approx. 50 bottles, so I'm ahead of the game. First, I had to clean all of them and get the labels removed.

My army of bottles:



Next, I went to the homebrew store with Brett and purchased a brewing kit. It comes with the buckets, capper, and other tools you need to brew beer. I also got the ingredients to make a Fat Tire clone. The recipe I'm doing is part grain, part extract. The Sunday before, I went down and helped Brett brew up a full grain batch. This helped me see what needs to be done for when I had to do it.

I started off by heating up a pot of water and soaking the grain. You have to get it to a certain temperature and keep it steady for some time. The grain goes into a mesh bag and you soak and dip it like a huge tea bag.





It isn't easy sitting over a pot of boiling water for 2 hours when the temperature is triple digits. Yeah, it's 112* outside!!!





After I soak the grain to get all of the sugars out of it, then you add the rest of the extract. This is basically a big tub of syrup. Mix it into the water and then boil the whole pot for an hour adding the hops along the way. In the next picture, you can see my mash as it is really close to breaking into a boil.



Here's a picture of what it looks like once it's been boiling for a little bit and I've added the first portion of hops.



Once it has boiled for an hour and all the ingredients are added, I had remove it from heat and cool to under 80* as quick as possible. I didn't take any pictures from here out since it is critical to keep everything sanitized and I had to move fairly quick. Once cooled, I had to siphon it into my fermenting bucket. I added the rest of the water I needed to my fermenter to give me 5 gallons and mixed it up. I then pitched the yeast which will react with all the sugers from the mash and convert it into alcohol. Here is a picture of my fermenter with the air lock on top.



It has to sit in there for 2 weeks and then be siphoned off into bottles. Another 2 weeks in the bottles and then it should finally be ready to drink.