Taking another step in the world of brewing

Is it bad that I have already finished the Cornelius keg of beer that I brewed?  Well, it was my first ever keg of beer, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise.  :)

This step into kegging has brought me to the next step in my home brewing.  I started with extract brewing, in which you steep some grains for a bit, add some malt extract, boil, add hops and then you are on to your fermentation.  I did this for a number of brews, all using pre-made kits from the home brewing store.

From there, I stepped in to all grain brewing.  This is a bit more labor intensive where instead of using malt extracts, you take the grains and and you mash them yourself before you start the boil, adding the hops and then starting the fermentation.  I did a couple of brews using this method and then Tammy got me the kegerator.

I was so excited to give the kegerator a try, I took a step back and did a simple extract brew to fill that kegerator up.  :)  The flavor of this first kegged brew has got me thinking of moving towards my own recipes.  Instead of starting from scratch with a recipe, I am using my very first brew (San Diego IPA) as a baseline.  Doing some research of different IPA recipes, I have come to a conclusion of what hops and hop schedule I was going to follow for this brew.

I didn't stop there.  I figured I wasn't taking this to the next level appropriately, so I am also using BrewSmith2 to enter my ingredients and get a good estimation of the IBU's and expected gravity readings.  Plus, using this program I am able to save my recipes and tweak them as I see fit depending on how the brew comes out.  I'm looking forward to finding my ideal brew recipes.  Of course, I'm starting with the IPA, then I will be branching out, narrowing down my recipes to my liking.  Covert these steps to an all grain and I'm well on my way to getting Mellow Octopus on the map of the best craft brews in the industry :)

Hanging up the indoor shoes...

I've been a big fan of volleyball for quite a while.  Not only watching, but playing.  I started playing back in Santa Clara on the sand courts they have at the Intel campus out there.  I always stuck to beach volleyball until I moved out to Arizona.  Here, I picked up the indoor game.  Much faster pace and even though there are so many more people on the court, with the right teammates and communication everything moves like a complex dance.

That is not the point of this post though.  Over the last season of indoor volleyball, my knees (or more specifically my left knee) started bothering me more than usual.  During a season, I play for 2 teams.  One for the City of Gilbert, the other for the City of Chandler.  We play in some semi-competitive leagues so there is quite a bit of activity going on.  During one of the final games of the season I started feeling quite a sharp pain in my knee.  It hurt to the point that I couldn't jump.  Not exactly a great feeling to have.  But, spending some time off of it proved to be good and it is feeling pretty good.

After that episode, I decided it was time to stop playing indoor.  I don't have problems playing on the sand with my knee because of the less impact it has.  Maybe I will pick up the game again in the future, but for now I am going to stick with sand and just sub for indoor when the team needs me...

sad panda.