Saturday, January 31, 2009

A Manly Day

Monica's off to Pennsylvania to join her mother for a day of shopping at the Grove City Factory Shops, so I have the place to myself today. Just me and the dogs. So I decided it was going to be a manly day. After we get back from China I probably won't have too many of those.


My big project for the day: brewing. First I transferred my British ale (a clone of Spitfire Premium, which is hard to come by here in the States) to the keg. After a few weeks of CO2 it'll be drinkable. Then I started a new batch. This one's a lager; a clone of Tsingtao, which I'm brewing in honor of our little girl, of course. It should be ready by early spring, so we can serve it when we throw a party for Stanzi's Baptism.


Funny thing about Tsingtao, though--it has a Chinese name, and it's brewed in China, but there really isn't anything Chinese about it. The Tsingtao Brewery was founded in 1903, not by Chinese but by Germans. That part of China had actually been under German rule since 1900 (as it would be until 1914, when the Japanese chased them out in the early months of World War I). As a result, the beer that's brewed there is basically German lager. Of course, I love German lager, so that's just fine with me.

So life is good. And manly. The house is filled with the scent of hops and malted barley, and the sounds of Maroon 5 are coming from my iPod (okay, I guess Maroon 5's music isn't particularly manly, but I like it anyway). In a little while I'm going to work out, then this evening I'm joining a couple of my department colleagues for drinks and cigars down at City News in Mansfield. I think I'm in the mood for an Ashton tonight. Or maybe an H. Uppmann. Decisions, decisions....

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