Anthony Rants

How easily putting off a blog update turns from days to weeks to months is always astounding to me. The nice thing about waiting so long to write is that there is always so much to share after a hiatus... that is of course if you still have people reading your blog to share with :)

First things first, the really big news: Anna left for Chicago yesterday to take the BAR today and tomorrow. She has been studying really hard for the past few months and I am sure she is going to do fantastic. I can't tell you how much of a relief it will be when she is finally done studying.

I have lots of little footnotes to share about what has been going on with me but it probably won't all fit into one post, so for this post, I'll share news about beer brewing. I organized this year's competition for the BUZZ club and it was pretty successful. It was the biggest competition we've had to date (239 entries) and it all went very smoothly. I also managed to do very well in the competition itself. I entered 11 different beers and scored 7 ribbons. For the year, that brings my entries to wins ratio to 58% (19 entries, 11 ribbons) and puts me in first place running for the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year competition. There are 6 more competitions to enter though, so it is really still anyone's game. Two friends from the club and I attended this year's National Homebrewers Conference. This year it was held in Cincinnatti and it was an absolute blast. During the day there were interesting lectures about various nerdy beer topics and during the evening, social events bringing brewers from all across the country together. It was the first time I had gone to any sort of beer related conference, and I wasn't sure what to expect, but it far exceeded all of my expectations. Next year's conference is in California, and I am already in negotiations with Anna to attend it :) October is going to mark my two year anniversary brewing... I'm sure that I will have to brew something special for that.

Oh, and in the BUZZ competition this year, Comrade Alofskie's Imperial Stout finally got its well deserved recognition with a first place ribbon in its category.

We've been back from vacation for awhile now, but I've been having trouble getting back into the swing of things at work. In a little less than a month, Anna will be graduating from law school (watch your email for the announcement!), and we are in a little bit of a scramble getting the house picked up. It is amazing how much yard work there is to do after a long winter. Not to mention beer related chores getting all the beers ready for Anna's graduation party. I have finalized the lineup, but will keep it secret for another couple of weeks :-p

A weekend or two ago, my parents (and Nathan too!) were here visiting on their way back to Colorado and we had a really good time. Since they were taking the train back from Chicago, we stayed up there for the weekend visiting Shedd Aquarium and Goose Island Clybourn. Nathan is really growing up fast, you can look through some of my recent pictures for proof.

Anna and I were awakened by something interesting around 4:45 this morning... a loud rumbling noise! At first I thought a tree was falling on our house and then I thought maybe it was the wind... well, it was neither. It turned out to be the earthquake I'm sure everyone (by now) has heard so much about. No damage, but a little unsettling nonetheless. Then, as I am sitting up in the 5th floor in my office at work, an aftershock hits and sends the whole building into a swaying motion, now that was really unsettling. Hopefully that is the end of earthquakes for another couple years.

Little else is going on in Champaign. We recently purchased Rock Band for the Xbox and had a bunch of people over to 'rock' with us. It was a lot of fun, kind of like karaoke, but with controllers :) Hopefully we can expand our band during Anna's graduation party to include some of our out of town guests too. I'll also have to look through my pictures and see if I captured any entertaining moments of Matt and Kate (Matt on the drums and Kate on the mic) rocking out. Stay tuned for those.

Last Saturday was a day of firsts for me. It was the first time I have attended a beer competition in person, the first time I have judged beer at a competition, (Drunk Monk in Aurora, IL), and the first time I have ever been there in person to accept my ribbons :-) The competition was great. It is really a unique experience to get to meet so many people that are as excited and passionate about beer as I am. I judged two categories of beers, in the morning I judged American Amber & American Brown Ales and in the afternoon I judged Old Ale, English Barleywine, and American Barleywine. Since I haven't taken the Beer Judging Certification Program's (BJCP) exam yet, I judged as a 'novice' essentially someone who knows something about beer, but isn't certified to judge it. In both instances, I also judged with some folks who have passed the certification process, so my opinions were tempered / weighted with theirs. And to think I probably wouldn't have attended at all had it not been for the fact that A) I forgot to send my entries to DMC, and if you attend in person, you can walk entries in at the last minute and B) a good friend of mine, Joshi, strongly encouraged me to go for the experience (plus I am the organizer behind our local club's competition this year). I walked in five entries and won ribbons with three of my beers (1st place for an Ordinary Bitter, 2nd place for a Cream Ale, and 3rd place for a Northern English Brown). The results were very respectable considering that DMC is one of the biggest contests in the midwest with some of the best (toughest) judging around as well. Another great part of the competition was the raffle. I spent $15 for raffle tickets and brought home $50 or $60 worth of cool beer stuff (a hat, t-shirts, bar towels, a pint glass, 2 really nice German liter mugs, 3 beer faucet tap handles, and hops. It was a great experience and I only hope I can put on a competition here that is as fun for all involved (It will be quite a challenge because Sam Adam's Longshot regional judging takes place on that same weekend).

This next weekend, Anna and I are going on a much needed vacation for her Spring Break. We are going to spend the first part of the week visiting my family in Colorado, and the latter part of the week at Mount Elbert lodge. We are really looking forward to it. My one beer-related mission for the trip is to bring back some La Folie (oh so good!).

Not much else is going on. Last night I brewed up a 5 gallon batch of Vanilla Porter for Anna's graduation party, it was the only beer she requested for the event. I will likely have 3 or 4 others on tap that day as well (probably a lighter beer [Cream Ale], some sort of fruit beer [Raspberry Cream Ale?], some sort of a hoppy beer [American Amber?] and another malty beer [Scottish or English ale?]). So if you are looking for something to do mid-May, the party is at our house! Come celebrate Anna's graduation from Law School and her entrance into the 'real' world with us!

The weather finally seems to be improving around here. We had a stretch where it was raining or snowing every other day. I am really looking forward to spring, something about that first couple of months of getting out into the yard and cleaning everything up is relaxing (of course that last couple months of cleaning up leaves isn't so fun). This year will also be my first year attempting to grow hops, so we'll see how that goes.

Well, another year has passed. My 26th birthday was really good. Anna made some German chocolate cupcakes with coconut-pecan frosting. I took some of them to work and everyone enjoyed them. Matt took me to a pretty good Chinese + bubble tea place for lunch and Anna took me out for dinner too :-)

Anna and I had a very productive weekend. On Saturday we had a garage sale where we made around $120, but more importantly, we got rid of lots of extraneous stuff that was laying around the house. The stuff that didn't sell (mostly my old clothes and such) was dropped off at Goodwill. Then on Sunday, we went mountain biking at Kickapoo State Park. It was a blast, it is hard to believe that there was such a fun trail hiding less than thirty minutes away. Hopefully we can explore some of the other trails in Illinois before fall and winter really set in.

For the past week, Anna and I were out in Colorado visiting my family. My dad had a brief respite from his deployment in the Middle East and it was really nice to visit with him. We did quite a bit of mountain biking (I'll have to post more about our bikes later), some hiking, some beer tasting, some brewery touring, and lots of visiting. We stayed in a really nice vacation home that my mom rented for the week. It had plenty of beds and bedrooms for us all to sleep in, a spectacular view, and a hot tub to soothe those sore muscles :) I'll be sure and put up some pictures of the view. I had originally planned on cooking three times while we were out there, but my mom had a lot of meals planned and faced with quickly rising expenditures (mountain biking and driving an SUV to Colorado ain't cheap!), we cut our meal plans to just one meal. Anna and I cooked a variation of Rouladen which I think went down pretty well with the crowd (my parents, my sisters, and my grandparents). I love to cook around the house, but cooking for that many people is a little stressful (I've never made twenty rolls of Rouladen before!). We brought a nice Riesling blend and what I consider one of the beers that defines doppelbock: Ayinger Celebrator. I thought even if my dad didn't enjoy the beer he would enjoy the little goat as a good luck charm. Turns out he enjoyed both the beer and the goat :) We tasted lots and lots of beers while we were there; A few were beers that I have never had: Dogfish Head 120, Stone 07.07.07 Vertical Epic, various New Belgium fare, and lots of others I'll have to expound upon in yet another post.

When we returned from Colorado, I had a nice surprise waiting for me (ok I admit, I looked at the results online and it wasn't so much of a surprise :p), two second place ribbons and a first place plaque from the Dayton Beerfest. I nearly swept the Belgian Ale category taking first with my Belgian Pale Ale and second place with my Saison. I won with relatively low scores though, so it may have just been a weak category ;) But hey, a win is a win. The other ribbon was a second place with my American Wheat. Winning these awards was a nice feeling of accomplishment and continues my streak of at least placing in every competition I've entered, but it also reminded me of my current lack of brewing. I hope in the next few weeks to really start closing in on finishing my new brewery, but first I have to close in on unpacking! Anna and I are both in agreement to really make a concerted effort to get everything unpacked in the next few days... we'll see how that goes.

Matt and Kate have been teasing us lately on all of the "fun" things we get to do, from painting to crawling around in blown insulation to run wires. When I was younger and I had to help my parents with such tasks, I think I looked at them the same way Matt and Kate look at them... but now that I am doing these tasks for Anna and I, there is something more to it. Maybe it is just the novelty of being able to change anything we want or maybe it is the gratification of feeling like you got something accomplished... whatever it is, I hope it doesn't wear off anytime soon because we have lots more things to do! :)

Today we're going to continue painting and I'm going to mow over there for the first time... and in another first, I'm going to carry my camera along so maybe I'll come back tonight with some pictures to share.

Well, for those of you who didn't know, on June 15th we closed on our very first house. The closing went well, so well in fact that because of some credits and such, the sellers ended up cutting us a check to close the deal. Immediately after we got done signing all the papers, we picked up a bottle of Two Brothers Opus 10 and went over to the house to celebrate. Later that afternoon, Anna's dad arrived from Missouri to give us a hand with the most immediate task of repainting the rooms. If you remember the house from the pictures we had up, many of the rooms were painted for children and while Anna and I are quite young at heart, we were looking for something with a bit more sophistication in the area of decor. Anna's dad brought a power roller and lots of motivation, so much so that we got all of the rooms primed and even painted the ceiling in the family room (it was looking a little dingy)... but that wasn't all, we also did first coats of color in two of the rooms. Overall I think we painted the equivalent of eight rooms that day and after some burgers and beers at Murphy's I think we all slept very well.

But alas, Anna's dad had to get back to fighting crime in Jefferson City, and we had to get back to our day jobs. We really appreciated all of his support and hard work though, it made for a really smooth start. Since then we've continued the painting, rewired the outlets in the bedroom we chose to be our office (they weren't grounded), and installed crown molding in the master bedroom. We still have quite a few doors and trim to paint, but we hope to finish that up this weekend.

One thing that we immediately noticed at the new house is the temperature. It is so much cooler than the house we live in now and we aren't even running the air over there. We think it may have something to do with the mature trees or maybe all the insulation in the house or maybe even the gable fan in the attic... whatever it is, it is really pleasant. Hopefully the trend continues and it is warmer in the winter as well. Speaking of mature trees, the previous owners left us a little note explaining quirks of the neighboorhood and of the house and one of the things they told us to get prepared for was the unreal onslaught of leaves in the fall... I don't remember the exact number of bags they said it took to collect them all, but it was immense... anyone want to barter raking for beer in the fall? ;)

In other news... Anna now has her very own blog, http://www.annaraves.com, in the coming weeks I hope to get her setup with some sort of a unique theme based on her guidance; during the same period I hope to fix anthonyandanna.com (I accidentally overwrote the only copy of the site's index that I had). Oh well, I needed some impetus to update it anyways I suppose.