Hotel

I scored with the hotel room - we emailed the hotel to let them know that we had booked for Sunday night but would not be turning up until early Monday morning, but they obviously missed that bit and had us down as 'no shows' and gave our rooms away. That meant that we got free room upgrades - I'm in a 2 bedroom flat that has a normal tariff of over $800 / night. I may or may not keep the room for the whole week - it depends on demand - but I'm enjoying it whist it lasts.

It has a great lounge / dining room with a small kitchen attached

 With a view overlooking the Emirates Towers and Sheikh Zayed Rd

 

 The main bedroom is huge

 Again with a great view from the window

and it even has a second bedroom, just in case I decide to sleepwalk between berths

 Here's hoping that I sleep well tonight and that I get to stay here for the week!

Dubai - first impressions

I was lucky enough to get an aisle row to myself on the flight out so was able to lay down completely, which helped a lot when it came to having a nap. I probably got around 6-7hrs sleep and more importantly it was comfortable sleep. That meant that I didn't need to use the 'nap time' I'd put aside this morning to catch up and instead went for a 'short walk' to get my bearings.

As always my short walks make long promenades. I started off just checking out some street scenes

But then in the distance I saw the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. Doesn't look too far away...

 OK actually it does, but I've put my mind to it now

I was walking down Sheikh Zayed Rd  and because it was only 9am there was a bit of shade from the surrounding buildings, but you could feel how hot it was going to be in full sunshine

I had to hunt around the areas a few streets back in order to find ways to cross some major arterial roads, and it was interesting how quickly the gleaming facades gave way to broken, crumbling pavements

The Dubai Mall sits at the base of the Burj Khalifa and is apparently the biggest shopping mall in the world, holding around 1200 stores. Despite its size it's largely just another overpriced shopping precinct, very similar to what you'd find in KL or on Orchard Rd in Singapore, but there is some impressive sculpture including this huge waterfall 

 and an indoor two-story aquarium

 

I have to admit that my first impressions aren't great. The place seems very soul-less in a way that similar developments in SE Asia don't. I think that's because this whole area has been created from scratch in the last 30 years - before that is was desert - and so the smaller businesses and stalls haven't had a chance to get a toe-hold between the fast food joints and high-end shops. To fight that sterility they resort to novelty, where everything has to be the biggest, largest, tallest or more stand-out in some other way. It's early days though - some of the guys in the office love it here and want to stay, so maybe it will grow on me.

How to be a mountain biker

All too true...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPVRU7jSYkQ

 

Luckily I haven't gone down the clichéd path of dressing like a singlespeeder

Trees!

I've got a week off the bike now. Luckily it was a lovely morning for a quick ride before I fly...

 

Hopdate #2

We have signs of life in one of the pots! Whoot!

 

Bonus tune!

I'm off to Dubai on Sunday (I still have no real idea why, but I'll take it) so this has to be the song of the week....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ9r8LMU9bQ

 

The other option was the Cure's homage to Camus, but that didn't seem to be culturally appropriate...

It's alright Ma (I'm only craying)

Our little Rexy is growing up fast. The other day he tucked himself away for another shell-change, which is always an anxious moment for an owner as you come back and find what looks like a dead crayfish curled up at the side of the tank - legs, pincers, antenna and all

 But who's that peeking out from under the log?

 No pictures please! Damn the crayfish paparazzi!

Happy new-shell-day little buddy.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brNby5IFDnA

Extract brew - with extras

A few months ago I brewed a Stone & Wood clone (named 'Clone & Wood') using tinned, pre-hopped malt extract . The beer was easy to make, crisp, clean, very close in flavour to the original and went down all too easily. Since then I've become embroiled in the world of all-grain and although I enjoy the brewing and the beer, it is a time consuming method.

Because of this I thought I'd try another extract brew this week and get something in my fermenter before I go away. I've based this on a 'Summer Ale' recipe but I'm using Danny's extract techniques, as outlined in the link above. The brewing part was done in an hour or so, it cooled overnight with minimal water and then I spent another 20 minutes or so this morning straining & cleaning. Easy.

So the recipe is -

Take 1 can Coopers Cerveza & 1 can Coopers wheat malt and stand in hot water for 5 minutes or so. Open the tins and pour into a largeish pot (at least 8l).
Add 2 litres of boiling water & 1/2 kg raw sugar, stir well and bring to the boil.
Throw in 50g fuggles hops - I wrapped mine in cheesecloth to make a 'hop bag' but I won't do that next time, mainly because if the hops don't circulate in the pot they don't get utilised properly.
Boil for 20 minutes or so.
Throw in 20g dried sweet orange peel, 2 tbsp. crushed coriander seeds, 25g of chopped ginger and 25g East Kent Goldings (I added these in a hop bag at first but they didn't seem to be having much effect so I opened the bag up and mixed them in).
Boil for another 10 minutes or so.
Put a lid on the pan and leave the whole lot in a sink surrounded by cold water overnight.
Tip into the fermenter through a clean sieve and top up to desired volume with filtered water.
Add yeast (although I pitched mine onto the yeast trub from a previous brew), keep cool and ferment.

And that's the brew day. After the initial ferment dies down I'll throw in a hop bag with 50g of Galaxy to dry hop it and give that fresh grapefruit aroma, and then it's business as usual.

My fermenters are now maxed out - 24l of Jaggery IPA ageing in secondaries, 1 demijohn of strawberry cider and 23l of Summer Ale. I think it's going to be a good summer...

 

The sunflower thief

When we moved into the new place the garden was a bit of a mess - it had been 'tidied' by pruning anything green down to a 1" stump, so the borders were a mix of weeds & vestigial plant life. It may only be a rental but we've never owned a garden before so it is also a bit of an experiment as to what we want when we get a place of our own. Liz has put the hard yards in on tidying everything up and now it's looking pretty good. We also planted a few sunflower seeds which have grown at surprisingly different speeds and which have bought a bit of colour to the borders.

We soon noticed that the sunflowers were looking a little ravaged. We thought at first that it was due to the lack of rains but yesterday I found the true reason.....El Leecho, a pale-faced Rosella that drops by for a daily snack

 It sways alarmingly under his weight but he doesn't seem to worry about it

and pulls off gymnastic moves to reach his booty

You can't deny it Leechie, we have you red-beaked

 That little bugger had better not develop a taste for hops...

Hopdate # 1

Nothing so far...

I think I buried the rhizomes too deeply. I've loosened the soil and gently dug down to find the rhizomes. One was loose and the other two felt like they had taken root but weren't growing up much. They were under a few inches of potting mix so I've loosened the soil up and rearranged it so the rhizomes are only an inch underground and I've given them another plant-start laden watering. Hopefully they'll still have internal oomph to break free...more news as it's made, hopefully more exciting next time!  

Push the tempo

For some reason I ended up not riding a mountain bike for over 6 months this year, and cunningly timed my reintroduction to dirt to match the rising Spring temperatures. It's been a struggle to get my mojo back but I've also tried to use the time to re-assess my basic skills like cornering, using sites like this as a guide. I've simultaneously been seeing a physiotherapist to sort out my long-standing back issues, and between the two I think I'm starting to see results. I can ride for longer and more regularly without back pain, and when I am riding I feel more involved with the ride instead of just sitting on top of the bike watching the trail roll by underneath me. Don't get me wrong - I'm still talking 18km dirt rides and granny-braking twitches around corners - but it's slowly feeling better.

After Saturdays pump track session I was keen to get back out on the trails and see if anything from the jump park translated to the dirt. I'd ridden around 40km on Wednesday night to sample beer & compare beards so my legs were a bit tired on Thursday morning, but I left work early and headed out anyway. It was a little disappointing because I didn't seem to have any 'flow' and things felt stilted. After a bit I stopped worrying about it and just rolled around , pulling over to let other riders pass whenever I saw them (Note to the trainers out there - a thank you would be nice when someone does this!). As the saying goes, a bad day on dirt is still a good day. But surprisingly when I got back to the car it turned out that I'd ridden around half of the sections significantly quicker than I ever have before (based on the readings of a GPS plotter that I started using a few months ago and which will remain nameless). Of course speed isn't everything and a GPS plotter may capture the miles but not the smiles, but it's interesting to view my progress objectively. It's a long, slow and highly enjoyable process...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGpkNPbSa2Q

 

Old guys jump day

One of the guys we occasionally ride with is selling his jump bike, which caused some reminiscing of 'back in the day' when we used to go out to jump parks and BMX tracks to make fools of ourselves in front of the local youth. That lead to a visit to the Blue Nurses jump park in Ashgrove for one last session - there's a pump track there as well, so it's a good mixed-ability venue and you don't even need to get your wheels off the ground.

We got there at around 9 in the morning on a humid, overcast day and for a while we had the park to ourselves

 There are a few different lines to hit - the big tabletop proved to be a draw for safely re-educating the body & mind and the pump track was hard work but fun

 The push up is an integral part of any jump session

 As is plenty of sitting around 'checking out the lines'

 However it didn't take long to figure out that the big line was a bit beyond us

 with a large margin for error if it went wrong

I was on my trail bike with XC race forks and a lightweight 16 spoke front wheel so had decided to keep my wheels on the ground and work on my cornering instead. That didn't last, although the forks started creaking alarmingly near the end (the next few pics from Fly)

Gordy brought some trail-riding style to the party

There's a middle trio of jumps at the park that are all rollable and that most of us had jumped before, but which we'd been avoiding talking about or even looking at for most of the day. After a 6 year old rolled wobblingly but successfully over them on a pink bike with a basket (seriously!) we gave her a huge round of applause and, after she'd left, decided it was time to give it a go. I wasn't happy with the sounds my forks were making so borrowed a bike

and after a few trial rolls both Dave & I managed to get some air - it's a lot more intimidating on the shorter jumps than a big tabletop because if you get it wrong you have much further to fall and another jump to run into the front of shortly afterwards.

No photos of me on them, so you'll need to take my word for it!

I thought we'd spend an hour or so there, most of which would be spent lurking in the shade talking. But after more than a couple of hours of rolling around fairly constantly my head was throbbing from the sun and my body was aching, so despite wanting more I called it a day before the injury-inviting declaration of 'one last run'.

I think that jump bike may no longer be for sale...

Bad Mother....

Late last year we were playing around with making sourdough, using a starter that a friend gave us. We tried a few different recipes (the Alaskan sourdough pancakes were awesome) but after a while I decided that it was too much like hard work just to get a couple of loaves of bread and my time was better spent making beers & ciders. We put the sourdough 'mother' in the back of the fridge and promptly forgot about it for 6 months or so.

We found it during the move and it was looking pretty bad - it had a rancid, overly-sour smell and separated out into an evil dark fluid sitting on top of an off-white cake of flour. We almost threw it out but because of various dietary fun we're having at the minute decided to see if we could rejuvenate it. A few months on and our mother is healthy & productive again.

Which brings me on to the tune of the week (which to be honest is a reasonable tune with a great video). Graphic language and very violent imagery warning - do not watch this in the same room as anyone with a delicate disposition! Don't be mislead by the picture below, there's a lot more blood than boobs...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Rgox84KE7iY

Dinner in a pumpkin

Shortly after we got our kettle Weber we invested in 'The Complete Australian Barbecue Kettle Cookbook', a classic guide to using the barbecue that was first published in the mid-80's and which is still in circulation 25 years and 26 printings later. It's a useful guide but some of the recipes are a little dated, in a wonderful kind of way.

Something that caught my eye early on was 'Dinner in a pumpkin', where you hollow out a pumpkin and use that as both the cooking pot & the bowl. There are breadcrumbs, lentils, onion, chickpeas, beans, tomatoes, brisket, chilli & a few spices stuffed into that 1 dollar pumpkin (got to love the markets...)

After a couple of hours in the kettle it looks like this - unfortunately the outer skin of the pumpkin had split at this point so it started to collapse  

and the transfer to the plate proved less than elegant

despite my best attempts to pretty it up

Despite the serving difficulties it still tasted good. Not great and a little bland to the modern palate, but I have rice & chilli-laden plans for the next one.

There are any number of exciting recipes in the book that I'm keen to explore, particularly because half of them involve pork products. I'm particularly looking forward to the 'banana wrapped in bacon'... 

Adventures in all-grain no 3

After my last all grain session I took away a few ideas on how to improve the process that I was keen to try out. The first was to set up the mill outside, to limit the clean-up process

This worked well, although grinding 4 1/2kg of barley in the middle of the day was hard, hot work. Next time I'll do it the evening before!

I also ground the barley to a much finer level this time, which should enhance the yield of sugars that I can extract out of it with my 'brew in a bag' style method.  

I hit my first hurdle after bringing the water to temperature  - when I poured the grain into the stock pot / brew kettle it didn't slide into the water in the way that it usually does - the finer grind meant that it sat on top of the water and formed little clumped islands. I needed a lot more and more vigorous stirring to break the lumps up and get the grain into the pot, and that lead to a bit of messy overflow. Next time I'll take more water out of the pot, and add it in afterwards.

Apart from that the mash, sparge & boil went as normal. I used 4 1/2kg of Marris Otter and 1kg of wheat with a 90 minute mash and then dunk sparged twice, as before. This will be an IPA so I used 80g of Fuggles at the start of the boil and 120g of East Kent Goldings with 5 minutes to go, and I added in a kilo of jaggery with 30 minutes to go. Jaggery is a Sri Lankan palm sugar with a rich caramel flavour, and to enhance the maple notes I also used a couple of teaspoons of fenugreek seeds. The use of 'adjuncts' like sugars & herbs to change the flavour profile and to boost the sugars is a little contentious in  brewing, but as you may have guessed I don't really care about the Reinheitsgebot.

After the boil was done I let the beer cool in a waterbath in the laundry sink overnight. Then I transferred it to the fermenter - normally I scoop the wort out of the pot by hand and pour it through a sieve to catch the hop pellets, but this time I tried re-using the brew bag in the fermenter as a kind of filter. It was a lot quicker to pour the wort directly in, but then I needed to hoist the bag out and let it drain off. So the overall time saving turned out to be minimal.

Admittedly that may be due to the ridiculous amount of hops I'm using! 

The other mistake I made was not boiling all of my sparged wort the day before. Remember I'm dunking my 'used' bag of grain into water in order to extract the most sugars out of it, and then using that slightly sugary water to add to my fermenter to minimise the dilution of the beer. That sparge water needs to be bought to the boil to sterilise it before it's added to the beer, and then cooled back down to room temperature again. I'd used up all my big pots on the main boil so had to do this the following day, which added a lot to the 'faff factor' and tied up the laundry sink for another half a day - I think next time I'll invest in a 25l 'beer cube' (essentially a large plastic container) and use that to hold both the hot main wort and the sparge water overnight. That'll save on water and will also free up a pot.

The other problem I have is the heat - we're in the middle of a Spring heatwave at the minute and the temperature of the laundry is reaching 30 degrees during the day. This is too high for the yeast I'm using so I'm resorting to iced waterbaths and evaporative cooling by soaking an old hoody in water. That hoody kept me warm on any number of camping trips - it's huge so fits over anything else I'm wearing - and it's funny to think of it keeping beer cool now. Not sure how effective it is, I may need to switch to Saisons early this year.

Speaking of recycling, the warmed water goes on the garden and the used grains &b hops go in the compost bin

Hmm - grain, hops and a collection of miscellaneous vegetable matter. I could chuck some yeast in and make a beer out of that....