Month: June 2011

Chicken and Ribfest starts this week on Sparks Street. Fantastic! I have two excursions planned…more than two is just obscene!

Last week we found out that Paul McCartney was going to show up in Montreal again this summer on July 26!  Fantastic news for two people who tried valiantly to obtain tickets!

Unfortunately, when the presale announcement came out, I was at a work BBQ helping out for four hours and missed the announcement.  There dashed my chances at some decent seats, or seats at all.

But I tried, and tried and tried and the pop rock Gods smiled upon me and I managed to scoop up a pair of tickets in the 100L bowl of the Bell Center!  I couldn’t pass it up.

The funny part of this of this story is that it’s the most I’ve ever spent on a concert…two tickets cost $550.  I didn’t even pay that for two tickets to the entire Ottawa Bluesfest!

I thought “Is Vero going to kill me?”  My gut said no but my head said yes.  Last year we tried so hard for tickets that if someone showed up with a pair of tickets for $500, we probably would have bought them.

In the end, Vero laughed at the insanity which was us paying that much for Macca tickets (or any concert for that matter) but we realized that these types of concerts aren’t going to last forever and sometimes it’s worth it to treat yourself to three hours of Beatles music!

After checking out Beau’s Beaver River IPA and realized it was a tasty treat, I decided to buy an IPA for my next batch.  I stumbled upon a Cooper’s Select Australian IPA which I had not seen before.  Defalco’s let me know that it was super popular and I was lucky to find it on the shelf!

I also picked up a Coopers Draught as Mike and Andre has made a batch and I thought it was quite tasty.

I am now a brewing machine after four+ batches under my belt.  I zipped through the process fairly easily.

This time around, we didn’t boil the wort for 45 minutes.  Defalco’s let Mike know that we may have been inadvertently boiling off the sugar which is used to create the alcohol.  So I brought the water to a boil, dumped the malt in and turned off the burner.

Interestingly enough, once I added the wort into the carboy, the temperature wasn’t registering!  What the heck?!  It must have been TOO cold.  How is that even possible with boiling wort?  I consulted with Mike and he thought maybe boiling it again would do the trick.  I boiled a gallon of the stuff again and no luck.  Vero then suggested I do the craziest thing ever…put the carboy of beer in the hot tub!  Mike and Vero had a good laugh at the carboy sitting in the hot tub.  Too bad we forgot to get a picture.

In the end, the temperature never moved and Mike realized that the problem wasn’t that the temperature was too cold, it was too hot!  This ended up being the case as we noticed the temperature dropping after putting it in the basement and in the deep freeze.  Case in point, making beer in the summer is definitely different than in the winter!

The worst part of making beer is the cool-down period.  We had two batches of wort ready to go around 7PM.  It wasn’t until 7AM the next day that the temperature had dropped to a good temperature to pitch the yeast!  Incroyable!  At least I know that now and I won’t wait around for it.

I’m quite excited for these two batches.  Next week I will most likely do a third batch as the summer is upon us and more and more people visit wanting to try and homebrew.  I think I have enough glass bottles to make 2 batches and will have to resort to the plastic bottles for the third.