Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' ...

How it gets away on you, huh?! This is a bit of a catch-up for me. I meant to blog this a couple of weeks ago and just never did. But, better late than never, I guess.

I recently checked on my fermentations and they all moved along a step toward being finished.

My first mead, brewed to the simplest of recipes from Storm The Castle.com (This guy does all kinds of creative things including mead-making), has finally finished and 'dropped bright' (become clear). It looks really good! Still has a strong 'high alcohol' taste to it, but has mellowed a lot from when I did the first racking. I also hit it with a Campden tablet to permanently stop the fermentation.Now it just needs to age. I don't think I will be touching iot again until next summer at the earliest. It was just a really small batch, starting out at 2.25 litres, and has ended up at about 1.5 after fermentation and 2 rackings. I'll get 2 full 750 ml bottles from it. Haven't decided if I want to do anything special with it in the bottle yet or not. I thought it might be nice to add some of our passionfruit before we have to leave it behind.

Oh yeah! We will soon be leaving the warm beaches of the Hibiscus Coast and returning to Hamilton. Well, I'll be returning, the rest of the family will be living there for the first time. I'll be starting a new job there on the the 22nd of March, and we will all be moving on the weekend of the 10th - 11th of April.
We decided it would be best to let the girls finish out the school term and it gives me 2 weeks down there to try and find somewhere for us to live during my down-time. I'll be staying with my folks and driving back here on the Fridays to spend the weekend packing and getting some time with my family. We've booked the moving truck already so if we haven't found a house by the time we move it will all be going into storage.

My second fermentation is another mead, made to a basic formulation that I worked out using the GotMead.com mead calculator. I got the honey for this one from a local apiary on East Coast Road. This batch is quite a bit bigger than the first one at about 4.5 litres. I also used the yeast nutrients and acid blend to get things going, instead of peel or anything else. I also left this one a lot longer in the primary. It has come out quite a bit smoother than the first one, but I think I had the temperatures too warm on both batches so far. This second one is now out in the garage as I'm hoping the cooler temp out there will help it mellow. I'm definitely going to do a few different things with flavouring this batch as it will get me 6 bottle of finished mead.

The third thing I have brewing is one for my wife. Christi loves all the fresh fruit we get here, and while we were in Hamilton for January we picked our own blueberries. It has become a tradition with us now, as we have done it every summer for several years. We plan to keep it up every year for as long as we can too. Some of the bluberries were eaten fresh, but the majority were frozen. Christi uses them in baking muffins and a couple of other things as well as just for eating.
We have watched all of the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall River Cottage series on TV and we want to make some gorse wine like he made for his summer party. I mentioned to Christi that we could make a blueberry wine as well so she had me look into it further. I found  a lot of good information on all sorts of fruit wines, both online and at the local library. I got some 20-odd recipes together for blueberry wine and just sort of winged it from there, using a combination of 2 recipes. It has made about 4.5 litres of wine and I just racked it off the primary sediment a couple of weeks ago. It has already started to clear really well and smells good. It doesn't taste of much at the moment but I'm hoping the flavour will develope over the next few weeks. It will need a second racking in 5-6 weeks time. Then maybe 2 more months and another racking, 2 more months and then bottling. It's recommended to leave it to mature in the bottle for at least 6 months, so we won't be trying it any time soon.

I'm really wantig to try my hand at brewing beer, but I am very limited in both time and money at the moment, so it will have to wait for after the move and settling in. I have few bits of equipment gathered, but have mostly I've just been reading the hell out of the subject! No such thing as 'too much information'.

I'll try to get more posts in about the move before it happens, and keep updating after we settle in. I may even get recipes for the mead posted too.

Not Dumb Enough

A little while ago I applied for a job with a dairy company in the Waikato. It was going to be a little bit away from where we really wanted to be but close enough to Hamilton that we would be able to see my folks a lot more and also a lot nearer our friends down there. Last week I had a phone-call from the recruitment company that was handling the applications wanting to set up a time for a phone interview. That was on Thursday. I thought the interview went pretty well.

I got a call Friday to say that they would like to do a face-to-face interview at the company. Excellent. I went down and met the recruiter, who gave me aptitude tests (at which I scored 99% - the pencil broke and I had to swap it in the speed recognition section. couldn't answer the last question). Then I interviewed with two supervisors from the company. I talked to them for over an hour. I thought it went really well. They were nice guys and seemed to respond well to what I was telling them. I felt really positive after the interview and had a good drive home.

That afternoon I had a dental appointment. Two fillings and two extractions. This was not the best time to find out that my teeth have particularly long roots, or that there was an abcess on one tooth that was preventing them from getting anesthetic to the bottom of the root. The dentist had to hold my jaw firmly to get it out, because I couldn't hold my mouth open against the strain of him pulling the tooth. It took almsot 5 hours for the bleeding to stop and the pain-killers I were only enough for the first 4 hours or so, then I was on the lower strength ones and they didn't really cut it. I didn't get a whole load of sleep. I took the day of to try and recover and Christi got me some better pain-killers that actually worked.

So, I felt better today and went to work as normal. I got a call at around 10:30 from the lady at the recruitment company. I 'did really well', 'aced the aptitude test', 'made a really strong impression' on the interviewers BUT I'm 'obviously a very smart guy' and they think I will 'not be challenged enough by this role' and 'get bored too quickly'. They also had concerns about my ability to fit into the team.

If you show initiative and leadership then you're not a team player. If you spend all your time working in the team you don't have enough leadership potential. And telling me I'm too smart for the job?? What the hell!! How do they expect to be able to promote from within the com[pany if everyone they employ is selected for a good fit at the most basic job in the place?? Sometimes I really dont understand what the hell they think they want from a worker.

So anyway I'm back to looking at job ads again. I'll just have to sell myself as the right kind of mediocre next time, I guess.

Mixed Bag

Time sure has a way of getting away from you, doesn't it? I was going to post last weekend but just ran out of time to get things done. The reason for posting was that I began another brewing experiment. 'Another?' I hear you ask. Let's start at the begining . . .

In November last year I began reading about mead-making. I found several websites about it and also got books out of the library. Seems like it is a fairly simple process and I thought it would be fun. I could also get the necessary equipment for virtually nothing. I needed a bucket with a tight-fitting lid, an airlock, some honey, a little bit of citric and tartaric acid, an orange, some yeast and some time. I found the recipe and method I wanted to try. I use a 2 litre bottle of filtered water to provide both the water and the container for my mead and went to work. It fermented very slowly, but did do what it was supposed to, slowly inflating the balloon on top each time I squeezed the gas out.

After about 5 weeks I siphoned the very cloudy mead off all the organic matter and yeast in the bottle, and got enough to fill a 1.5 litre soda bottle, with a little bit left over. Tempted as I was I didn't try it at this point, but just tossed the excess out. I put the bottle back in the airing cupboard and waited to see what would happen. It slowly began to clear. It got to about Christmas time and things got very busy, we got sick and had a holiday (see previous posts). When I got around to checking on the mead again and miraculous change had occurred. It was really clear and golden coloured with a thin layer of yeast at the bottom of the bottle. There were soem little particles floating on top of the liquid, which caused me a little concern, but otherwise it all seemed to be going as it should.

I waited a little longer and then racked it off again into a fresh bottle. I wanted to allow a little more head space in the bottle, so I took a little of the mead into a small glass for sampling. The bottle got a Campden tablet to stop the fermentation, as when I tried it I found it to be about the level of sweetness that I wanted, even though the alcohol flavour was really rough! I will let it age for about a year before doing anything else with it. I will probably bottle it into sparkling wine bottles with stoppers at that point and let it age for maybe another year. We'll see how it goes.

While this was going on I started a second batch of mead. This one was a bit larger, being about 4.5 litres when finished (so, roughly six 750ml bottles). I'm thinking about adding some kind of flavouring to it once I get it off the primary fermenting trub. Maybe I'll do 3 different infusions in 1.5 litre soda bottles. If my passionfruit ever ripen I'd be very tempted to try that.

So anyway, while I was looking into mead-making I started to read about home-made wine and beer. The beer brewing seems like a lot of fun to me and you don't have to wait anywhere near as long for the product of your labours as you do with mead and wine. But, Christi doesn't like beer at all, and we have seen some wine-making on TV that really piqued our interest. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall from River Cottage fame made a gorse-flower wine in his latest series. And there were two things about that that we liked. Firstly, there is heaps of gorse around here, and secondly, he described the flavour and aroma as 'slightly coconutty', which really appealled to Christi.

So we looked at what it would cost to get the necessary bits and pieces together. The problem would be getting the fermenters. Big food-grade buckets with tight-fitting lids. Then I had a thought. Bakeries get their fruit pulp and fillings in those buckets, and then throw them out. I have managed to get two 10 litre, two 15 litre and one each  5 litre and 20 litre buckets, for nothing. The airlocks are cheap and the sanitiser, yeast nutrient, acid mix, yeast, Campden tablets and all the rest aren't expensive either. The only problem is that the gorse isn't flowering! Damn inconciderate if you ask me.

But, while we were away over the New Year period we picked some berry fruit. Blueberries and strawberries. We didn't get much of either one, but we had enough bluberries left over from the other foody things we made with them to allow us to make some wine. So last weekend I m started a blueberry wine. It has finished primary fermentation and today I plan to filter off the fruit and rack the wine into another bucket for secondary fermentation. Three weeks there and I will rack it again. Three months after that I'll bottle it, and then we only have to wait for about 9-12 months before we can drink it.

I haven't got any of the bottling things I will need for the mead or wine, but the bottles at least won't be an issue. Recycling day is great around here. I pass literally hundreds of bottles on my way to work each week. I've already started to collect beer bottles for when I finally get around to brewing. There is a bit more equipment and cost involved in getting that going so it will be a little while before I can start with the brewing. Plenty of time to read up about the hows and whys. I have found a great many sources of information online, including a lot of videos and articles on how to brew and heaps of recipes as well. One I particularly like is BasicBrewing.com. There is a podcast about some brewing-related subject or another virtually every, and the guys doing the podcasts are just average everyday guys who like to brew. Their style is a little bit geeky and very relaxed, but the biggest thing about it is that they obviously love brewing and they have a lot of fun doing the podcasts. They also have videocasts at irregular but frequent intervals. I highly recommend them to anyone looking at home-brewing or already in the hobby.

Start As You Mean To Continue

Well it's 2010 and every idiot and their brother is talking about it being the start of a new decade. So much for the power of a public school education. Last time I checked there were ten year in a decade, not nine. Same thing happened with the millenium, but that was all confused by the whole y2k microsoft/computer calendar issue. Anyway, welcome to the Last Year of the decade. Hope it's started well for you.
We went away for about a week to spend time with my folks and visit with friends in the Waikato. It was nice to get away, even if it was very tight with the finances and the accommodations. We are back home now and really feeling the need to make a move. This house is very small and with three kids now it feels even more tightly packed than it was before. Add to that the fact that Christi and I both want to be able to do things for which we have NO room here, and we want to be closer to our friends to the South, we are seriously considering moving in that direction. Trouble is I need to find a job first or we simply will be living off government help and unable to do much of anything.

So. The job situation is in a bit of a state of flux at the moment too. I have applied for the supervisor's position at my present company, but there have been 40 other applications as well, and while I get on well with the owner and have proven myself to be capable and able to learn and adapt to new situations, I think my chances of getting the job are slim to none. Even though I actually do 90% of the job now when the current supervisor is away. The primary reason is that I only have 3 months experience in the Liquor Department and I know the boss is looking for more than that in the replacement. Tomorrow I will be asking what is happeneing. The reason I need to know tomorrow is that I have been offered another job. I applied for it on Friday, just on the off chance that it would be possible. It is with a local liquor shop, so no more travelling to the North Shore to work. The shop doesn't open till 10 am so I would be able to do school runs in the morning, meaning that Christi won't have to pack up the baby to go to school, waking him up and breaking his sleep patterns. The hours are flexible, but there will be both weekend and late night work. The Manager has already said I will get extra training and a pay increase with the completion of that training. I will soon be earning a little more than I am now, but will also basically be trained up to manage the whole store when the manager isn't there. Add to that the fact that it is owned by a large corporation with opportunities to move to other areas and positions within the company and it starts to look very attractive indeed.

Tomorrow I will hopefully know what is happening, but at least I am moving forward either way it goes.

So This Is Christmas

Twas the week-end before Christmas and all through the house you could hear the 7 year old throwing up. What a great time to be sick. The start of the summer holidays, almost Christmas and she's puking her little guts out every 20 minutes. By Sunday afternoon at least that had stopped but she was completely wrung out and really feeling bad. It took her a few days to recover by which time, you guessed it, the 5 year old was throwing up. Every 20 minutes. She had been to a birthday party with some 30 other kids the day before, so I'm guessing some of them didn't have a super time either.

          My folks were supposed to be coming to see us Christmas Eve to see the kids and swap presents and have an early Christmas dinner, but with the Christi being sniffly and the girls vomiting, we had to call it off. My folks are not in the best of health and any chance of them getting a bad bug in their system has to be minimised. If they get sick they end up in hospital and I didn't want to be the cause of that. So Mum and Dad met me at work and we swapped there. Merry Christmas.

          Come Christmas morning the 7 year-old was pretty chipper, but the 5 year-old just lay around not really enjoying life much. By 10am I was starting to get achy and feeling queasy and Christi wasn't feeling much better. I didn't throw up but I had a good fever going. Christi puked, but not as bad as the girls, and then had the runs. That night was pretty damn uncomfortable. I just couldn't get the fever down. It wasn't dangerously high, but I was achy and hot-feeling. It's been 2 days now and it still isn't under control. I have to go back to work tomorrow and I'm really not feeling it. At least it shouldn't be that busy. It's still a holiday here.

          The only one to come through this whole episode unscathed(we think) is the baby. He had a mild temperature for about a day and that was it. Didn't seem to affect him any, really. Wish I could say the same for me.

Any way. Merry Christmas Everyone!

First and Foremost

Okay, I have an admission to make. This isn't my first attempt at a blog. I have started another before but I never managed to keep up with it. I have a little more time online now that I am working slightly more sociable hours and I would like to sort of keep a record of what happens in my life, without the need for a whole load of paper or a book or whatever.

So for all those (ha, ha) who don't know who I am:

My name is Hugh and I was born and live in New Zealand. I am married to Christi from Illinois, USA and we have 3 kids(2 Girls and 1 Boy) together. We live near Auckland, New Zealand, about 100 metres from a beach(yes, it is very nice).
I am currently working for a food wholesaler in the liquor department. I have been with this company for almost 4 years, mostly part-time. Up until August this year(2009) my main job was being a printer with a company in Central Auckland.
I hope to be able to do at least weekly updates to this blog, but my minimum self-requirement is monthly. We'll see how it goes.