Anthony Rants

Well, I have some news from the land of Lincoln. In late February, we visited our bank and got pre-approved for a mortgage, since then we had been house hunting. We saw lots of places and finally we found a place a week or so ago. You can see it here :) The inspection for our house is this Tuesday, hopefully there aren't any big surprises there. Our closing date is June 15th, so it looks like we will have a busy summer of home improvement projects.

My latest hobby, home brewing, whose effort is tentatively called the Benjamin Brewing Company is rolling right along. I have progressed to brewing entirely with grain. Home brewing is usually done either with malt extract, a syrup of what is essentially preprocessed grains OR raw grain. Brewing with raw grain is really fun, I'll have a post later this week going through most of a typical brew day, maybe a sort of home brew in as little as 27 simple steps (ala Matt). I recently entered a home brew contest not really expecting much except honest feedback from accredited judges. The beer I entered is something I suppose can be relatively challenging to brew well. It is known as Scottish Light Ale, and mine is known as BBC 60 Shilling Ale. Well, as it turns out, I got 2nd place in my category of nine entries (Control+F, search for Anthony, they spelled Shilling wrong :p). It is really exciting considering this is the first contest I have entered, and I can't wait to get my ribbon and score sheets back. The next contest I will be entering is a local one (the 13th Annual Boneyard Brew-Off). I will be entering at least three beers into that contest and I hope to do even better :-) My brewing hobby has also given me an excuse to spend even more of my free time in Photoshop (and more recently Illustrator). I leave you with my latest beer label.