Beer, brewing, and a gear review

To absolutely no one's surprise, I've been drinking. And riding my bike despite sub zero wind chills, and brewing some beer too boot. I've been working through the last little bit of my previous home brewing efforts, the Surly beer I brought back from the Twin Cities, and odds and some of my standard "hey that's a good price on something I like" type beers. Something new was Magic Hat #9 Not Quite Pale Ale.


# 9 is roughly a regular pale ale crossed with a french farm ale. Very roughly. There's a bit of hop and citrus in there but it's a smooth inviting kinda thing, that is very mild and quite good. The flavor is hard to pin down, but interesting and pretty good. I could see drinking tons of this beer on hot summer days.

In my home brewing exploits, I've recently bottled a coffee stout, and I'm preparing to add bourbon soaked oak cubes to a porter to simulate bourbon barrel aging. Check it out:

Toasted oak cubes in some Gladware.

Eagle Rare Bourbon. Why cheap out? Plus, now I have most of a fancy bottle of bourbon.

Cubes soaking in booze.

In a couple days I'm going to dump the whole works into my carboy full of beer, then leave it for a couple weeks, then bottle. From the smell of the porter when I racked it to secondary, this thing should be great. *crosses fingers*

One last thing to write about, and that is my continuing commutes. As I wrote earlier, my gloves had become worn enough that they weren't as warm as I needed. I have found one helluva solution.

Bar Mitts

These things are great. They're like wearing a heavy pair of mittens over your heavy gloves/mittens. I've been able to use these with a light glove when the temps are in the 20s and the wind chill isn't too bad. Below that I've been wearing the Loius Garneau Typhoon lobster style mitten.

Warm, really really warm. Almost as warm as a heavy mitten but with almost the dexterity of a glove. These puppies would be plenty without the bars mitts down into the teens, but with the bars mitts, I've had no problems even when the windchill has been well below zero. I think the record this winter has been set at a -11F windchill, which was, of course, a headwind. The little reflective piping on the glove works great (as you can see) it sadly doesn't look that glowy in normal light, with the flash hitting it though it kinda looks like my hand belongs in the new Tron movie. My only complain with the glove is that the cuff isn't especially long. It's hard to get a jacket sleeve to tuck under it, and pushing it into a sleeve can be a trick too. The shorter liner + longer shell that my old Specialized gloves had was the right solution to the problem. With the bars mitts it is far from a big deal, but solo it could be.