You might have noticed a couple of beer recipes being posted lately! Among the changes made during recent upgrades to my server, I've created a pretty simple way to store beer recipes for all the batches I brew.  While I've been brewing for about 16 years now, I don't think I'll post all the recipes from all the way back.

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Hi Everyone!

You may have noticed a few things are looking different on the site - indeed its true! As I mentioned in a post about a year ago, I was eventually going to upgrade my server in many ways. Its been happening slowly, and finally the visible changes are underway. I've upgraded the server itself to the latest OS and gotten all the services working decently, and just recently I took the plunge and upgraded Drupal, the software that runs the whole site, to the latest release. 

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Beer Name: Shakey Visions
Notes:

Started boil at 24qts (6 gals) for better hop utilization. Should do this more often, but requires boil-over diligence.

This was going to be a Kölsch, but  the wyeast kolsch yeast was kinda old - pkg'd in july 08. In fact, it was dead - transforming this beer into a belgian golden by adding 1 lb boiled candi sugar (in a 1/2c water) and pitching Wyeast Belgian Strong Ale yeast #1388. This raises the OG from 1.046 to about 1.055

Beer Name: Lights Out
Notes:

Very dark at brew time, nice molasses overtones, but just a hint.

Beer Name: Rufous
Notes:

very deep red color (hence the name)
Peppery hops, not as floral as the others

Beer Name: Devil Dog
Notes:

3 weeks in primary, and still very cloudy, and fermenting slowly. But, so tasty at racking - very fruity, with some tartness, and a hint of hop bitterness. Spicey tones. MMMmmm

After three fun but too-short days in Adelaide, it was off to Brisbane to meet up with my friend Oliver.

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After a couple of very fun weeks with the family in Belgrave, I headed off to Adelaide to visit my friends Aurelia and Brian, and their 18mo old son Orlando. I used to work with Aurelia at Reed, but a couple years after I moved to the Bay Area, they moved back to Aurelia's home town of Brighton (or as Brian calls it, Bri-Town :-) ) a beach suburb just south of Adelaide.

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I've had all the photos from my trip to Australia posted for a while, but of course the holidays have been upon us and I suck at keeping this thing up to date - so I'm finally announcing it.  You'll find them at http://notlost.org/gallery/v/chris/travels/Oz08/ where there's one album for each city I visited.

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The Healesville Sanctuary is a branch of the Melbourne Zoo, out in the hills to the east. There one can find plenty of Australian fauna and flora without having to head out into the bush to find it. We headed up there on Sunday of my first weekend in Belgrave, a week after I'd arrived in Australia. I've got a decent selection of photos from there in the gallery, so have a look. The highlight of that day would have to have been one of the snakes that we saw.

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