Zencast, a podcast of Buddhist and meditation discussions

I recently found and have been listening to a great podcast collection of talks on Buddhism and meditation by renowned teachers such as Thich Nhat Hanh. If you’re at all interested in or curious about Buddhism and/or meditation, you should take a peek .. maybe start with Zencast 33. All of the discussions I’ve listened to have been great, in particular those led by Gil Fronsdal.  Gil also makes his discussions available on another website, AudioDharma.org, where you can find dozens of mp3s available.

Brew #13 : Belgian Tripel

Brewed a belgian tripel today! Brew went well overall, I did get a stuck sparge but that didn’t take long to solve.. Here’s the batch details:

Belgian Tripel
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Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Belgian Tripel
Batch: 5.50 gal, Mashed

Characteristics
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Recipe Gravity: 1.074 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 20 IBU
Recipe Color: 6° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.018
Alcohol by Volume: 7.4%
Alcohol by Weight: 5.8%

Ingredients
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Belgian pilsener 10.00 lb, mashed
German vienna 3.00 lb, mashed
Belgian candi sugar 1.25 lb, extract

Kent Golding 1.00 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Kent Golding 0.50 oz, whole, 15 minutes

Irish Moss 1.00 unit, clarifying
Cardamom Seeds 2.00 unit, tsp, crushed
Bitter Orange Peel 0.50 unit, oz

Notes
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Recipe Notes:

Batch Notes:
Stuck sparge required stirring the mash, recirculating, and continue sparging.. The boil went a little bit short, I started the timer just before a full rolling boil was going.
Mashed 4.5ga water with malts for 60min @ 149F, batch sparged 5ga water at 172F for 10min.
Measured Final Gravity: 1.071, right on.

10/7: Racked to secondary, gravity is 1.006. Tastes of banana and alcohol and finishes super-dry, this is going to take some time to settle down I think.. it’s starting to clear, but very very cloudy.

11/1: Last week I treated this with a half packet of gelitan (like a half packet of Knox) in 2 cups of cold water until dissolved. Heat up to pasteurize at 150-170 for several minutes. Cooled it down and mixed it into the secondary. Within 3 days the beer was noticably more clear. I bottled today. I used dry champagne yeast added to the cooled bottling sugar for 20 minutes. I poured the yeast/sugar into the bottling bucket, racked the clear tripel beer over the top and mixed it well. Tripel will carbonate for another 2 or 3 weeks and I’ll check it out. The taste test was pretty nice actually, a bit of heat from the alcohol at first, then the fruity taste with a touch of hoppy floral kicks in and really tasted well rounded for such a high alcohol content, we’ll see how it is carbonated. The final gravity was 1.005..

2/1/2007 : Definitely floral hoppy smell, the taste is light and carbonated.. really dry finish. There is a slightly sour but fruity finish.. interesting beer, I hope it continues to get better over time.

2/18/2007 : I’m really digging this beer! The flavor seems to be mellowing and coming together a bit more..The sourness doesn’t seem as pronounced in this one, I get a hop bitterness at the very end of a fruity citrusy light bodied beer.. its got a dry finish and leaves a great sour then spicy after taste.

Cabo Vacation Day 9

We left for the airport and returned our rental car with no problems. We got to the airport several hours in advance, luckily we did because we likely would not have flown back until Monday or Tuesday if we hadn’t.. little did we realize at the time. We stood in line for an hour or so and got tickets to a flight, either the LA or Seattle, we were to go the terminal and ask the person to put us on a flight but we needed to get there as soon as possible because the flights were leaving. We jogged up the ramps to the terminal and mom talked to them to get seats while I grabbed a bite for us to eat. It was lucky we got seats, mom in first-class and the rest of us in normal-person-class. While in the airport we spoke to a guy who was put on standby with a confirmed seat on a flight leaving Tuesday.. amazing, 48 to 72 hour standby because Alaska Airlines cancelled between 4 or 5 flights.. people were generally not enthused. Right before we took off a passenger ahead of us had some respiratory issues. The captain called for any doctors to help and oxygen was provided for the passenger. I heard it was a diabetic crash but it only delayed us for about 10 minutes. I saw the doctor come back from the first-class area (were the rich and famous sit) to check on his patient in mid-flight and everything was fine. So we touchdown in LA with what we thought was 30 minutes of spare time.. I got some cheese burgers for us all, folks smoked, and we all headed to the terminal. We were wrong, they had already boarded the flight and were waiting for us. I felt like a schmuck carrying on cheeseburgers while everyone was waiting, but frankly, the airlines messed up on our ticket apparently. We got to Seattle and it was smooth sailing from there.. I really like the Seattle airport it is fairly straightforward and the subway is pretty cool. We flew into Eugene on Horizon and got home early in the morning on Monday, it’s taken me a day to recover.. We had a great time and we’re glad to be back and for it to be raining and foggy outside!

Cabo Vacation Day 8

We were scheduled to leave today but our flight was cancelled due to the hurricane passing by. CNN, the resort management, and most guests were expecting the hurricane to hit Cabo directly but with less intensity of the hurricane a week before so some boards were put up on openings and ground floor rooms were sandbagged and the furniture put up on blocks. We were expecting some weather the night before and I kept getting woken by the resort staff working on the resort to put away lawn furniture and such. We got lucky and the hurricane turned away and north into mainland Mexico but our flight and several others were cancelled in the meantime. We stayed another night at a reduced rate and just layed around and read books and slept.. I was stressed and tired, and it felt good to just relax.