Weekend Wrap-Up

First things first - Go JETS!  Nice game ;)

Now that that is out of the way.  Just got the latest (and probably my last) print copy of Kobold Quarterly delivered on Saturday.  My last print copy because I scored a deal on the PDF only sub, and truth be told, I'm short on storage space and it reads extremely well on the Kindle.  It's a great magazine that covers 3.5, 4e and Pathfinder.  Much of it is more fluff then crunch, so finding material  to crib for older systems is fairly easy.  If you liked the old Dragon Magazine when it was in print, thisis the magazine for you.

On the beer front, I just started 2 gallons of Whispering Wheat Weizenbier fermenting in the Mr. Beer keg.  Should be ready to bottle and carb in about 2 weeks.  The earlier beer still has a week of carbing left to go.  Then I have some blueberry and blackberry beers lined up for February.  Yum ;)

Brewing Apprentice 101

So, over the weekend I bottled my beer.  The Red Ale will need to be filtered as it appears some hops and dead yeast made it to the bottles.  No biggie, its all good ;)  The Oktoberfest looks nice and clear.  Both seem to be carbing well, as the plastic bottles are firming up nicely.  It will all be ready in plenty of time for the Super Bowl... heh

A side note to yesterday's review.  The PDF is not very Kindle DX friendly.  The DX seems to have issues with PDFs that have multiple layers on the page... it tries to view each layer as a separate page.  I could go into the PDF with some editing software and take out the offending layers, but it looks damn fine using Adobe Reader.  Sumatra has some minor issues, but I've been finding the Sumatra has issues with just about all but the most basically laid out PDFs.  Minor quibble, and it probably only effects me :)

White Hair? Just Hints of Grey ;)

White Haired Man Games has been kind enough to forward me review copies of their latest products for use in Fantasy Grounds 2 (or without, as the accompanying PDFs are probably worth the value on their own). Its going to take me a few week to get thru their review material and I have a few other products from other publishers I want to touch on. Janauary is going to be a very busy month it seems.

Totally off topic, but I think this Friday will be Beer Bottling Day at Tenkar's Tavern. Then at least two more weeks to carbonate and at least one more week of conditioning in the refrigerator. So at least 3 1/2 weeks before a true sample can be tasted.

In the meantime, thanks to my Brother-in-law Chris for the 1 liter and 1/2 liter bier steins he brought back from Oktoberfest in Germany for me. Dude, you rock!

Brewmaster 101 - or Why I Would Never Drink What my PCs Do

My plan was to post about some of the really nice PDFs I picked up last week. It was going to be "The Anti-Rant". Somehow I never got around to transferring them to my Kindle DX, and my son is currently glued to my PC playing the Star Wars Online Beta. Lets just say if it plays half as well as it looks I'll be sold. In any case, no PDFs to review (working off my netbook at the moment)

I still need to bottle my beer as it has been 15 days since it started fermenting. Looks like tomorrow nite will be the nite to do so. I have some 1/2 gallon and quart bottles waiting to be used. It has been a busy but fun four day weekend, and I just don't have the energy to bottle tonight.

So, what am I doing at the moment? I'm flipping thru a X-mass gift my brother-in-law got me - The Alaskan Bootlegger's Bible by Leon W. Kania. Holy crap. If you have any desire to brew anything at any point in your life, pick this book up. If you want to know how booze was made back in the days before mass production and pasteurization, this is your bible.

One recipe included is for Corn Whiskey. It call for 10 lbs of corn to be aced in a feed sack and buried in the warm moist center of a manure pile for about a week and a half... you are basically waiting for the kernels to sprout. Now, imagine being told that the Whiskey you were drinking had its start in the center of a pile of cow crap?

There is alot of information on stills, distilling, brewing, and real life characters that that were involved in bootlegging. My favorite so far? The retired Catholic Priest that made milk wine, much to the authorities frustration. I'm finding hooks and props that I can drop into my next campaign no matter the genre.

I'm tempted to try my hand at wine now. I can legally brew 100 gallons of beer and wine yearly for my personal use. Heh. Nice thought.

Oh, if you want to try your hand and brewing beer, run-don't walk, to your nearest Bed, Bath and Beyond. They have the Mr. Beer starter kit for $29.99 less half - so for 15 bucks (less 20% if you have a coupon)and some empty soda bottles you can try your hand at brewing some pale ale. If you get luck they may have a 3 pack of refills for about the same reduced price. Try it if you have the time. Its fun, it's fairly cheap, and tastes better then most of what the big breweries put out these days.