wilbur.us

It took 8 months, but we have a result. 

Hooray for Minnesota!

minnesotaindependent.com/38181/coleman-concedes-us-senate-contest

Even better news, Gov Pawlenty agrees!

minnesotaindependent.com/38185/pawlenty-says-he-will-sign-certificate

Friday night was a big hit!  We broke 4 beer glasses - at least, and finished off one 5 gallon keg of Brownie Brown Ale.  There are just a few glasses of the Spring Pale Ale, and about a half gallon of Saison remains.  That means we drank about 6 cases of beer here on Friday. 

Here's a photo of me and Chandra and the birthday sheet of bars.  I don't know what kind of bars, I did not get in line in time! 

Thanks to everyone who came by and made this such a great night.

Happy birthday to me!

This is the third beer in the Summer of the Single American 1056 yeast pack.  I racked this beer over the yeast cake from the Spring APA. 

There are some obvious advantages to this - like an instantaneous fermentation, and a massive starter for your batch of beer.  The downside is that you pass a lot of trub from batch to batch.  AND if you get bugs, you will have them 6-fold on the next batch. 

Yesterday night I got down to the Mississippi river gorge in Minneapolis on an evening geocahing mission.  It was like winter in June with 70 degrees!  The big river cottonwoods were loosing their cotton and it was collecting in the quiet of the gorge.  I don't think I have ever seen it this thick before, usually it blows away. 

Hey everyone, BIG news today!  Sources are confirming the 5,000th death in the Wars of Iraq and Afganistan!  We have quite a ways to go before this is really serious, but we are surely on our way. 

Voters for Peace Announces 5,000 US Deaths!

Here's the garden update for today.  Dry Dry Dry.  Seems that the eggplant were just too small to take the transplant.  Since we have not gotten any rainfall since we planted, the garden needs daily watering.  Hopefully the Spring rains come soon. 

Here's the daily farm report from Gary:

Just a quick note about an article on Bike and Car sales in the US.  While both are suffering compared to 2008, bike sales outnumber car sales in the first quarter of 2009. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't look at numbers like this and hope for more consumption by car or bike purchases.  I do hope this is a shift of proportions that will continue as people ride bicycles rather than cars. 

http://www.energyboom.com/us-bike-sales-higher-car-sales-2009

In the last week I have found out about two new national bike trails in the US.  This is big news for us, and these kind of endeavors span multiple states and require a lot of collaboration. 

Both of these trails remind me of the Sverigeleden - a bike trail through Sweden.  In 1994, my brother Martin and I followed parts of this route on a bike trip through Sweden.  There were also other regional bike trails in Sweden, all well marked with signs. Maybe we are just 15 years behind Scandinavia?

This is batch 2 in the Summer of the Single American 1056 Yeast Packet. 

I bought all the ingredients for a brown ale with the intention of using the sap from my tapped maple as a replacement for the water in the beer.  Instead of doing an all-grain bactch, I used an extract recipe and bought another set of ingredients.  This left me with a brown ale to make.  The only catch is that this recipe is for an ENGLISH brown ale rather than an AMERICAN brown ale.  So this beer suffers from a split personality - a mix of english hops and malt and a crisp american ale yeast profile. 

Another midnight caching run and a few more photos of the river at night.