homebrew

My student, Joshua, asked a couple months ago about home-brewing beer. We brewed a batch of porter (my choice; sometimes you gotta make the big decisions) two weeks ago, and today he came over and we bottled it. Bucking years of tradition, I named the beer before tasting it, based on its fermentation location in the Harry Potter Memorial Cupboard Under the Stairs: Harry Porter. As we were rinsing the last of the bottles, I noticed a bit of Lancelot fluff on one of the bottle necks, so the name is now doubly à propos: Hairy Porter.

And indeed, it looks to be a fairly puts-hair-on-your-chest kind of beer. I love me a porter, I do. In its raw, unfinished, uncarbonated state, it had a good balance of malt and hop; the aroma hops we used (again, my selection), Fuggles, were a tad on the flowery side, but this will moderate. I think it's going to be exemplary.

We also played guitars a bit, and Lauren and I performed a couple songs of ours. After Joshua left, Lauren and I dashed hither and yon through the rainy afternoon, doing the odd bit of shopping (jeans for her, cloth to cover a wall and to make a tablecloth and placemats, fruitless bass shopping and a quick peek at the acoustics at Guitar Center for me, etc.), but mostly looking at the gorgeous clouds and pointing them out to one another. Then the Penguins lost to Carolina, rather miserably it seemed, taking penalty after penalty in the third period. But I'm roasting a chicken we may well call Fröderich, and I'm going to mash potatoes and cook green beans, and there's not a damn thing anybody can do to stop me, because this is America, where we roast chickens with impugnity. Okay, that's getting a little off topic, if not off kilter.

Last night, I gave up and tuned my Takamine 12 to open G major (DGDGBD), and started to write a (so far simple, but not likely to remain so) tune that I now officially have dubbed "Homebrew." If everyone's very very good, I'll post a recording of it soon.

And tomorrow is still only Sunday. Four day weekends are a wonderful idea.