Category: Hobbies
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Fun with the Fuji Espree
Last December I bought two Fuji Espree bikes from the mid 1980s. I didn’t need them, but they were a matched set, beautiful, cheap, and in fantastic shape. And the larger bike was my size. I spent some time cleaning them up and installed new cables and new bar tape, but otherwise the bikes were…
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Saturday project—building a hop spider
I’ve been planning to build a hop spider for a while, so on this cool but sunny Saturday afternoon I stopped by the hardware store and picked up what I needed. I’ll be using this on my next brew, although with only 2 ounces of hops in the boil it will hardly be necessary. I…
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Bike rebuild: a 1984/2014 Trek 610/105
In the summer of 2007, not long after I moved to Denver, I bought a used Trek 610 road bike off of Craigslist. A little research showed it was a 1984 model, with a frame of Reynolds 531 steel and a nice set of Shimano 600 (Ultegra) components. It was already 23 years old and…
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Brew day — Centennial Blonde
This is a brew straight off the homebrewtalk forums. It seems to be highly regarded, and is supposed to be a crisp light low-alcohol beer. I hope it’s as good as it sounds. This was a very smooth brew day. I hit all my targets and had no issues through the process. Recipe (60 minute…
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Brew day — ESB 2014
My latest beer is an ESB. It’s a slight modification of the recipe I used in 2012. I increased the recipe size for 5.5 gallons of finished beer, which means nearly 6 gallons in the fermenter. I figure why not, since I’m using slightly larger fermenters. I also simplified the recipe a bit. I removed…
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Colorado pale ale (or is it an IPA?)
My first beer of 2014 is what I call a Colorado style pale ale. To me this is defined by Dale’s Pale Ale from Oskar Blues in Longmont and Colorado Kind Ale from Mountain Sun in Boulder. It’s an amber to red American pale ale that could be considered an IPA. I don’t know what…
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Northern English Brown Ale
I decided that the Old Ale I have aging in the corner needs a bit more time to mature. Instead I will bring home a nice brown ale and the rest of my Farmhouse ale for Christmas instead.. As I learned from my SMaSH English Bitter a simple recipe can make a lovely been when…
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Another Brewing Update
Yes this is another post about beer. I’d apologize but I really enjoy brewing and I like sharing my hobby with others. I have two brewing things to cover today: an update on my SMaSH best bitter and a new batch of old ale I hope will be ready for the Christmas holiday. SMaSH update…
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My SMaSH Best Bitter
I have noticed a recent trend of brewing beer using a very simple set of ingredients. The extreme end of this is what is called SMaSH, Single Malt, Single Hop. These beers really try to explore the individual characteristics of the chosen malt and hop variety. This type of beer restricts what the brewer can…
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Even my APA isn’t simple…
At least, not by simple “number of ingredients”, “different kinds of malts”, “number of hop additions”, or similar measure. I was really trying to keep this one simple, straightforward, and good. The kind of beer you can sit down and have a couple and they aren’t palate busting (like a super hoppy IPA) or drunk…