Stonkin' stout

As I said yesterday, I'm going to be away for 5 weeks or so. This meant that there was the possibility of a fermentor standing idle whilst I'm away, a chronic waste of brewing time if ever there was one. But what could I brew that would make the most of the solitude and the silence? I decided it was time to tackle an Imperial Stout.

Imperial Stouts were originally brewed for the Russian market in the 18th Century. The route from the UK to the Baltic States travelled through arctic conditions and so the beer had to be heavily alcoholic to prevent it freezing. And of course high alcohol means strong flavours to match. My version is a bit of a mish-mash of recipes (more of a Colonial Stout?) but will hopefully stay true to the ideas of the original:-

In the mash tun (mashed for an hour at 66 degrees)
1kg amber malt
1/2 kg roast barley
1/2 kg black malt
1/2 kg chocolate malt
400g brown malt
250g oats

In the boil
1kg pale malt extract
1kg malt extract
1kg wheat malt extract
About 3/4 kg malt extract added slowly throughout the boil

Dissolved in water & added to the fermentor after the original boil (couldn't fit all the fermentables in!)

1/4 kg malt extract (ie the rest of the bag)
1kg pale malt extract
500g brown sugar
850g treacle

Hop schedule
25g Northern Brewer, 20g Galaxy, 25g Fuggles - 60 mins
25g Fuggles, 5g Galaxy - 30 mins
25g Galaxy - 1 min

Extras
1/2 l cold-pressed coffee, 28g liquorice root - 5 mins

Yeast
2 packs Safale S-04 (English ale)

This gave 26litres of a dark black liquid with an original gravity of 1.125. If this ferments out fully the beer will be approximately 15%  by volume, however the odds are the yeast will give up at some point and I'll get a final gravity of 1.030 or so, giving a brew of around 11%. If the gravity is higher than that by the time that I'm back then I'll chuck in some champagne yeast.

It's a lot of ingredients -

(Note the liver-healthy drink - but why is it that lemon floats but lime sinks?)

The dark malts meant that it looked more like I was emptying my sump than brewing beer, and it got everywhere. Very noticeable too.

Hmm - roasty. Yes that's a beer in my hand. It's been scientifically proven that brewing beer without a homebrew close to hand produces an inferior batch*. Fortunately I had some bottles of my 'low strength' Saison Du Noir to get me through - it's almost like it was meant to be.

All I need to do now is wait. Hopefully the yeast will slowly nibble its way through the sugars whilst I'm away, then I'll leave it in secondaries for a couple of weeks to finish off and once it's bottled it will get left at the bottom of the pile to mature for 6 months or so.  

* M Shaw vs Naysayers, 'LifeAtTheBluntEnd', May 2012

My GGT can GGF

GGT (or Gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase) is an enzyme found mainly in the liver. Normally there is a low concentration found in your blood, but the levels can increase if your liver is damaged as the enzyme 'leaks out' of holes in the liver. A 'safe' concentration is between 20 & 75 U/ml, and for the last couple of years my bood tests have returned values of around 48-50 U/ml, much to the disgust and disbelief of people who know me.

After my first post-viral blood test I had a GGT reading of 150 U/ml - high enough to be of concern. But I felt on the mend and we assumed that my second blood test would be a double-check to make sure everything was returning to normal. Sadly no. My GGT had increased to 220 U/ml. 

This could be due to damage to my liver from a virus, from excessive alcohol, from drugs (both recreational & pharmaceutical) or from a 'fatty liver'. None of these are good, although given recent history the most obvious cause is the virus. GGT is also apparently highly sensitive to alcohol and I had had a couple of beers the day before the test, so there may just be a false reading from that. I certainly hope so because I'm off to Malaysia for 5 weeks next weekend.....

The good news is that I'm feeling better pretty much every day. As a friend of mine said about viral illness, 'all of your energy goes into the working week' so for the last week when I get home all I've wanted to do is vegetate or sleep. But I've managed to get out for a couple of rides this weekend. I have no 'top end' fitness - I can pedal happily along on the flat but any hill, headwind or increase in speed leaves me immediately feeling exhausted - so the plan is to try to gently exercise every day but to take it easy. Hopefully in KL I can keep that routine up - who knows, maybe I'll even find a safe route for a regular barefoot run?

Freedom

Today was a beautiful day so I braved a ride into the city. Haven't been doing much, just sitting around watching the world go past and feeling a little bit seedy. Feels so nice to be out of the flat though...the first time I've been out for a fortnight other than to go to the doctors.

Health update

After a couple of rounds of tests the doc has been unable to find exactly what was up with me. However the good news is that I don’t have dengue, malaria, any variety of flu, glandular fever, hepatitis of any letter, giardia, internal parasites, flukes, worms or a variety of other Asian exotica. The odds are I picked up a viral infection of some kind which knocked me about pretty badly, but there are thousands of viruses out there and as I seem to be on the mend the doc doesn’t see the point in trying to figure out exactly what it was. I just have one more blood test to go, which I’ll give next week to make sure my various out-of-control liver readings have reduced back to normal.
I’m still not 100% - I get tired quickly and apparently turn a slightly greenish colour if I overdo it - but it's good to start to feel normal again. I have a very lazy weekend planned, but I will slowly start to increase my exercise and get back out there again! My only worry is my feet - one of the symptoms was shedding skin and my feet have completely peeled a couple of times in the last week, so all my carefully built-up barefoot running callouses have been relocated to the bottom of the couch.....

An unexpected souvenir

Looks like I picked up an unexpected extra when I was in Thailand. On Tuesday I started to develop a bad headache and muscle aches, and by Wednesday the symptoms had developed to include a really prickly skin, a peeling rash over my upper body, constant nausea and backache. And incredible fatigue as well.

I went to the doctors on Thursday and after sighing about my lack of travel jabs he reckoned it was probably just a bad flu, but decided to get some tests done to check for anything more exotic (Tonsai is notorious for dengue fever). That involved a throat swab, a nasal swab, a blood sample & a stool sample and lead to me passing out and then throwing up. Yeah, I've had better weeks.

I get the test results on Tuesday so all I've been doing since then is sleeping - sometimes up to 18 hours a day! I've also lost about 5kg and over an inch off my waistline as I've hardly been eating. Things are on the up now, I'm still sore and can't eat much but I'm starting to feel a bit more like myself again.

Longer term prognosis depends on the test results - more news as it's made......

Being that guy

My knee was playing up when I was in Thailand, especially after spending a day climbing in & out of boats, and so climbing wasn't an option. In fact at the end of some days it was pretty sore after just walking around. I took my Vibram Five-fingers with me in the hope that I'd at least be able to fit a run or two in but sadly that wasn't to be.

I did get to walk around in my Five fingers a lot though. I tried to alternate them with my regular shoes - my knee would hurt a little less but my calves would get stiffer. They didn't seem massively out of place in Tonsai

although they are a pain to wear at the beach - putting them on once you have sand on your feet can be time-consuming and a little raspy.

They got a few more looks & comments in Patong

I'm starting to find them really comfortable - wonder if I can wear them in the office? Maybe only with a dark suit.

After a very lazy long weekend at home I've just done my first run in a month and comfortably managed a barefoot km, so I think the constant walking around hasn't set me back much. Sadly I'm only around for a week before flying to KL for a week on business and I won't get the chance for many more runs in the next fortnight. That 5k fun run will have to wait....

Ice cream sandwich

Geek alert!
Just put 'ice cream sandwich' on my HP Touchpad. The tablet was designed to run with 'web OS' but it was a flakey operating system that was starting to irritate me. So let's see if this is any better.....

Hmm - first hurdle. The text above was written and initially posted via the tablet but it wouldn't let me link to a Picassa photo. So I took the pic on my phone & uploaded it, wrote the text & posted it on the tablet and then logged in on the PC to append the picture. Seamless.