this is how we bottle it

Our homebrew finished its fermentation process earlier this week! It was really close to being ready to drink--all we had to do was bottle it. Bottling is actually a lot more difficult of a process than it seems. Everything that may touch the beer at one point has to be cleaned and sanitized: the tubes used for syphoning the beer from the fermentation vessel, the bottles, and even the caps.

The beer also needed a little bit of priming sugar. The yeast in the beer eats the extra sugar and farts out CO2 in the bottles, and that's what gives the beer its carbonation. After priming, we filled the bottles one by one and used a capper to cap (duh) the bottles. They have to sit for another couple weeks, then the beer will be nice and full of yeast farts, so it'll be ready to drink.

Nell and Molly helped us with the bottling process. The capper is the red thing on the left, and our fermentation vessel is a big plastic bucket.

stay away from this road

My street in Atlanta must be one of the only unpaved streets in the city, and all the rain in the past six months have carved a canyon right through the middle of the road. That might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but it's finally gotten to the point where one of my roommates who drives a lowered Mercedes has no way of getting past that part of the road. Lately we've been hanging out on the porch and watching drivers slam on the brakes when they see the canyon, and some of them actually put it in reverse and find a different way to get to where they want to go.

We've called the city of Atlanta and they have been really unresponsive. One day someone's car is actually going to fall into the canyon, then the city will have to do something about it. Here are some pictures

Yep. Dan is ankle deep in the canyon.

our newest park

Atlanta is a city that has always been lacking in greenspace..it's consistently ranked as one of the worst cities in the country in terms of greenspace per person. But all of that is changing now, thanks to the Atlanta Beltline! Everyone in the city nowadays is talking about the Beltline, which started as a GT city planning student's thesis in 1999. It's finally turning into a kind of space that the city has never seen before--a ring of trails and open space around the city that can be accessed by anyone.

One thing most people don't realize about the Beltline is that the plan also calls for parks to be built near the trail. Historic Fourth Ward park is the newest beltline park to be created, and it just opened to the public at the end of February! I biked over there the first week that it opened to check it out. The most striking part is the pond that is the centerpiece of the park. Atlanta has a combined stormwater/sewage system, and it was having problems with overflow in that area during large storms. Now that the park has been created, water will drain into the pond instead of overflowing the sewers and covering the streets of Atlanta with poop.

this is how we brew it

Earlier this week we realized that we were running out of our previous supply of homebrews, so Thursday became the designated brewing day for us. It ended up being a pretty long process because Grey and I couldn't decide what type of beer we wanted to make. After brewing IPAs, pale ales, and red ales in the past, we wanted something a little different to go along with the warm weather we've been having in Atlanta lately.

We went over to Hop City and picked up a few different Belgian strong ales to try, then the guys there found us a recipe and sold us all the supplies we needed. We got dry malt, bittering and flavoring hops, malt extract, candy sugar, yeast, and irish moss, which is basically dried up seaweed that binds to the proteins in the beer to help clarify it.

It should end up tasting pretty similar to a Chimay Red. Here's the description from Chimay's website:

"Topped with a creamy head, it gives off a light, fruity apricot aroma produced by the fermentation. The taste perceived in the mouth is a balance confirming the fruity nuances noticed in the fragrance.

Its taste, which imparts a silky sensation to the tongue, is made refreshing by a light touch of bitterness. To the palate, the taster perceives a pleasant astringency which complements the flavour qualities of this beer very harmoniously."

So in normal person speak, the beer is going to be kind of sweet without a whole lot of bitterness, and should have a pretty high alcohol content (over 7%).

The sampler beers: Rochefort 8, Westmalle Dubbel, and Ommegang Abbey Ale - I'm convinced that Rochefort is the greatest beer in the world. TRY IT!

All of the supplies except for the dry malt

Grey and his brew pot - it's not small.

Here are some of my favorites from the new roll of film. I've been taking the film to Esix Labs, which apparently is the only place in the city of Atlanta that still processes black and white film. It is pretty expensive to get film processed there, but so far I've been really impressed at the quality of the prints. Here are some of my favorites.

This was taken at the mosque on 14th street.

Just a few of Prem's guitars: bass, electric, and acoustic.

Courtney and Helen playing in Piedmont Park

I like this because Neerav was wearing his Monster Jam clothes and just looks like a farmer in this picture

Prem and I used a tripod for this one. I set the aperture to a fairly small setting (f/19) and set a really slow shutter speed (30 seconds) to get the streaks of lights going down the highway. This shot was taken from the top of the Management parking deck in Tech Square.

On-campus photography

I got in touch with Prem yesterday to take advantage of the beautiful weather (70 degrees in February!) and take some pictures outside. I finished up my second roll of film, which was ISO 125 and black & white. By the time we got outside at about 5:30, it was a little too dark to just freehand shoot, so I was lucky that Prem brought his tripod.

We ended up finding some really great places to shoot on campus. Two of my favorites were up on top of the Van Leer building and the top of the parking deck in Tech Square. We ended up spending two hours walking around and looking for good locations, and I got a total 7 pictures. It seems like a pretty crappy return on such a long time investment, but I like how using a film camera makes you really think about your compositions before you shoot. Also it was nice that Prem has basically the same camera except digital, so he could test out the settings beforehand to make sure the pictures would come out alright!

The film is getting processed right now, and pictures should be up sometime this week.

Photo by Prem Midha

Bluegrass and Comedy Fiesta!

Yesterday we got a chance to play at one of the great bluegrass venues in Atlanta: Red Light Cafe. The event was called "The very first semi-centennial bluegrass and comedy fiesta," and I must admit, it was quite a fiesta. It started off with The Rusty Boys (my band) playing an hour long set, then two stand-up comedians performed for a while, and it finished off with an energetic performance by Seven Handle Circus.

Our set went over pretty well for the most part with a nice mix of covers and originals. We just finished writing a new original a few days ago, so that makes it a grand total of three! The covers included songs by Mumford & Sons, the Avett Brothers, Ne-Yo, Katy Perry (don't judge), Cee-lo Green, and Zack Brown Band.

Hopefully we'll be playing with Seven Handle Circus again in the future. They're all great musicians and really know how to entertain a crowd!