We had a nice Thanksgiving here in Champaign. Anna's mom came to visit and I was responsible for making the meal. The meal wasn't as good as last year's. I think this was mainly due to lack of planning on my part. We had turkey, stuffing, scalloped corn, mashed sweet potatoes, squash soup, rolls, and tart cranberry dipping sauce (for the second year). For dessert we had a semi-homemade apple pie (pre-made crust, filling from scratch). We also had four varieties of wine: a nice Viognier (vee-own-YAY), a Beaujolais, a Pinot Noir from Napa (Thanksgiving is an American construct after all!), and a Riesling. The company and the wine, in my opinion, more than made up for my culinary inadequacies.
My first beer was fully carbonated a few days ago, and I've been enjoying having my own home-brewed beer on tap. Its a pretty nice beer, although I consider it to be more like an American Pale Ale than an American Amber Ale, and in fact, its IBU measurement (International Bittering Units) really leans more towards the Pale style rather than the Amber style. That in itself is a little unfortunate since Anna isn't really a Pale Ale fan, hopefully the upcoming, and yet to be named Brown Ale has broader appeal :)
IBU = high nerdery
Doesn't Internation Bittering Units suggest small groups of people that wander around making people bitter about the choices they have made? Why not Bitterness Units? Must be British.
Hmm, I'm not really sure of its origin, Wikipedia says very little:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bitterness_Units_scale
and John Palmer says even less:
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter5-4.html
If they're British, do they get gay ass invisible units?