Brews you can use

Well, it was heading up to 40 °F today, nice and warm. I dressed like it was summer, except with a long-sleeved shirt. And drove in to work. If anyone thought I might be crazy for biking in at -10 °F, riding the car at 30-ish should remove all doubt.

Somehow, biking just didn’t seem worthwhile. The ice-cold commute at least gets your daily “Damn, that was stupid!” moment out of the way early in the day. Pleasant weather? Working bike? Where’s the adventure in that?

I’ve once again disassembled the Schwinn. This time, to pay some attention to the two (four?) bearings I missed earlier, in the hubs. The axles weren’t spinning that smoothly, either. The rear hub grease had assumed the consistency of rubber cement, and the front had turned sandy and gray from worn metal. It needs new cones.

Once that’s done, I’ll finally know for sure whether it’s the bike or the rider who’s out of shape. I think I know the answer…

…

And as for that other hobby, this hop shortage can end any time now. I’m plotting my next brew: my brewery is set up to use leaf hops, and I can only find a couple varieties of those for sale anymore. Even my backup hop sources are completely out. If I retool my brewery for pellet hops (which gets interesting, since I need to keep too much of the pellet gunk from going through the chiller) I could get a few more varieties.

I almost never did the American ale styles. Now the hops available will essentially force me into that for the next few years of brewing.

This will be tough….

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Bike, Brewing.