beer #1 - ipathermia

Our very intricate garage brew setup.

Disclaimer: this post is going to have absolutely zero to do with fitness or health or food of any kind. In fact it is going to be 100% about brewing beer, because that is another thing that I do, on occasion. Carry on!

So this is not actually my first brewed beer. Prior to this I assisted a good handful of times on beers brewed by a group of my buddies, but decided recently to take the last big leap - this is my first beer brewed completely with my own ingredients, in my own garage, and without anybody reading me off what to do. And I can't bottle it for another week, so I'm mostly just praying it doesn't turn out like crap.

We wanted to go easy on this "first" one - I'm really hoping to get into all-grain brewing eventually, but right now I'm buying extract kits and modifying them with a little personal touch each time. For this particular brew, we used a Brewer's Best India Pale Ale kit, but planned to modify it by dry-hopping with the last of the Cascade hops I grow out of my backyard (another topic for another post, another time) - just to add a little extra bitter fun ;) (Another reason for the extract kit - it's COLD out there and my little propane burner doesn't make 4 hours of garage brewing feel any better!)

The brew went pretty smoothly (we took the 2 hour sanitizing & boiling opportunity to eat 5 lbs of peanuts and drink other beer) until we got to the very end - we're planning in building our own wort chiller but haven't had luck finding 25+ feet of soft copper coil yet, so we decided to do it the old fashioned way - use those giant snowbanks!

My neighbors must think I'm insane.

Note also the upside-down Christmas tree on my balcony - don't worry guys, I got this.

This is bound to work, right?

We knew it wasn't going to be a 20 minute quick chill, but it ended up taking over an hour!! Thanks to the cold, though, we were inspired (and frostbitten) & able to christen our soon-to-be beer - IPAthermia! Luckily when it finally got down to around 80 degrees, we measured the OG at 1.060, right around where it should be, sealed it all up, and left for dinner at a bar we heard had 2014 Hopslam on tap (they did, and it's great!).

I started to get a bit nervous when it took over 72 hours to start fermenting, but it did, at last, and by the time I got home from Ottawa it had stopped bubbling, I measured an FG of 1.015 (which puts our estimated ABV at 5.9%) we were ready to rack to secondary and add the hops!!

Goodbye, last of the 2013 Cacade Hop Harvest!

I read the best at to dry-hop with whole cone hops is to add then all to the carboy first and pour the beer over then, so that's exactly what we did....not looking forward to somehow getting all those hops out of the carboy when the bottling is over.

We pulled a tiny sample (which we should have done sooner because I'm pretty sure it was 50% trub) and holy bitter!!! Things bode well :)  It's insane how much darker the lupulin from the whole hops has made the beer, but it's looking (and smelling) good, so we're hoping in a week we'll be able to sample, bottle, and continue the waiting game....

BATCH #1: IPATHERMIA

Kit: Brewer's Best IPA modified by adding Cascade whole cone hops prior to secondary fermenting. 

OG: 1.060

FG: 1.015

Approximate ABV: 5.9%

Stay tuned for bottling & sampling!!

2014 race schedule

I hate running, but ALL I POST ABOUT is running!  I think I might be exaggerating just a tiny bit when I say I hate running.  It also seems crazy to be planning to do things as far off as October (7 months away!), but it's so much fun to have a full schedule to look forward to & get excited about!

Of course things could always change, but as for right now I'm looking at...

• February 15; Cupid's Undie Run.
• April 6; The Cocoa Classic.
• June 21; The Color Run.
• June 29; Spartan Race (In Ottawa!!)
• May 2; Hightail to Ale (Thirsty 3 Series Race #1).
• August 16; Running Between the Vines (Thirsty 3 Series Race #2).
• October 5; Scrumpy Skedaddle (Thirsty 3 Series Race #3).

Also hoping to do the Mustache Dache again - but 2014 dates haven't been announced yet - as well as Warrior Dash...bringing my total to at least 9, which is 2 more than I did this year. Not only that, but I think I have a nice blend of serious, timed races, and just-for-fun silly themed races.  Ready, set, race!

Question of the Day: What races are you planning on running this year?

ottawa 2014 (aka doing all of my favorite things, but in canada!)

Ladies & gentlemen, I have, at last, a shiny brand new MacBook (my first mac!) to replace my poor old Sony, which is definitely in the twilight of its lifetime (I'm pretty sure you can hear the death rattle when it kicks on, these days).  Part of my bargain with myself when I handed over the paltry $2000 sum was that I would get back to all of the things I used to use my old beloved computer for - namely blogging.

Scarf Head & Pouty Helmet Face on the Canal.

Last weekend I took a little mini-vacation out to Ottawa to visit my friend Deiss & her husband, skate on the Rideau Canal, eat lots and lots of pancakes (and drink lots of beer), and also get in a little bridge run (she's much more of a runner than I am, so she was an amazing running buddy!).  Admittedly I've been a little bit lax with my fitness over the holidays, so it was awesome to have a vacation so full of activity (I like to think it did at least a LITTLE bit to balance out all the beer we drank and pancakes we ate).

Friday morning we went for a 15.6k skate up and down the entire length of the canal (the full distance you can skate when the entire thing is open is 7.8k) - it was the absolute most perfect day, and it didn't even feel like we were working out!  It snowed the entire time (hence my super attractive head scarf, meant to keep the snow from melting all over my hair, as I am a big vain jerk sometimes), which made it even prettier.  We ended up going back on Sunday as well, for a quick 5k skating jaunt.  The coolest part of it was seeing people skating by with backpacks & briefcases, using the canal as a means to get to school and work - I would LOVE to be able to skate to work every morning!! Mega jealous. Having Deiss as a tour guide was awesome too - she taught me all about the history and the maintenance of the canal & was able to point out all the coolest attractions.  Ever since coming home I've been absolutely craving putting my skates back on, even just at an indoor rink.  Skating that much worked up a huge appetite, so we headed out to the Pancake Shack, which is my new very favorite thing - a food truck that cooks up amazing breakfast sandwiches between two buttermilk pancakes.  I highly recommend Babe the Blue Ox & The Campfire, for any Ottawa locals who may have found their way here!  Shout out to my Pancake Shack buddies, from your biggest Detroit fan :)

Heading into Downtown Ottawa, about 2.4k up the canal from here. An absolute perfect day for skating!

Ottawa did not come without beer, either - after breakfast, Deiss and Pav took me across the water to the Quebec side to hit up Brasseur du Temps (where I tried every high gravity beer they had - go figure - and especially and surprisingly loved Grande Riviere, a Belgian style cranberry blonde), and then back to Ontario to Beyond the Pale, where literally EVERY beer was a new delicious sort of hop explosion in my mouth.  It was also really cool to see a smaller, newer brewery's setup (I got to walk through the back and take a little tour of the operations) - with any luck, someday I'll have one of my own!!  After all that beer we went back to the homestead where Pav cooked us the best Indian meal I've ever eaten in my life (you had me at oysters & horseradish, but that fish curry, though...), and we all stuffed ourselves full of more beer and more food that I thought could actually fit in me, and then went to bed early to prepare for our Saturday adventure!

Beautiful view from the bridge on our Sunday run!

Deiss is a big runner (much more so than I am!), and one of the reasons I think I'm so disinclined to become a true "runner" myself is because I get bored with it.  Maybe I just haven't found my inner running zen yet, but one of the reasons I was so excited about this trip is because I knew I'd get to go running with a runner buddy!  Not only that, but she had a beautiful route planned out for us - an early morning ~4k bridge run!  Part of me thinks I would love running a whole lot more if I had beautiful scenery like this to keep me going - Michigan is beautiful, no doubt, but where I live is so suburban any route you could run is basically trees...cars...more trees...

We clocked in at about 34 minutes for those 4k, but we stopped to take pictures on the bridge, again at the end of it, and again at the giant spider statue on the way back, so I think our average pace was pretty much in line with my usual 5ks!

Neither of us look our finest, but we're both thrilled at our morning run opportunity!

After the run I felt great - we came home to shower and then headed out to take in an Ottawa Senators game (the home team lost, as per usual, and I neglected to proclaim MINE ALL MINE in front of their giant Daniel Alfredsson tribute on the concourse...but we did get free Hockey Day in Canada hats, so all was not lost!  The evening took us to Brothers Beer Bistro, which was just incredible - from the beer flight, to the charcuterie & carpaccio appetizers, to the duck & octopus entree, to the peanut butter chocolate dessert, some of the absolute best prepared food & service I've ever experienced.

WILL RUN FOR PANCAKES!

Overall the whole trip went off without one single hitch - Pav had made us a perfect weekend agenda and everything could not have been smoother.  I hadn't seen Deiss in over 6 years, so it was SO awesome to catch up and see how much we'd both changed (and how oddly - but awesomely - similar we'd become!!).  I couldn't have asked for a better 4 days & I want to thank my wonderful hosts again for having me and treating me to all kinds of amazing things.  Your hospitality was absolutely incredible.

We of course also made plans to meet up again soon - namely in June, to run Spartan Race together in Ottawa, hit up some Montreal breweries (DIEU DU CIEL!!!!!!!), and enjoy some awesome Canada Day home cooking on their Tandoor grill.  (And, of course..........more pancakes.)

Now of course I'm back home & realizing how the results of all of my extravagant indulgences the past few weeks...it's back to fruits & veggies & the gym for this girl.  Time to give all those pancakes & beer a rest!

Up next.....my current batch of beer, & a tentative 2014 race schedule!

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What are your go-to vacation indulgences?  Do you try to balance them out by squeezing in some travel fitness, or do you consider a vacation a free pass to indulge?