31% Trapped Trappist

I recently began exploring Trappist beers and in a previous post I mentioned that I home brewed a clone of Orval with my own recipe. I am determined to try at least one beer from each of the 7 Authentic Trappist breweries. It worked out nicely that I received some Trappist beers for Christmas. Here is the tally of how many I have tried of each brand(B=Belgium, NL=Netherlands).

• 3/3 - Chimay (B)
• 1/1 - Orval (B)
  
• 1/3 - Rochefort (B)
  
• 1/2 - Westmalle (B)
• 0/4 - Achel (B)
  
• 0/6 - La Trappe (NL)
  
• 0/3 - Westvleteren (B)
  

Unless I am wrong, and I am never wrong,¹ I am at less than 32% of optimum. This is too low but I have hope for the future. Some of these can only be obtained directly from the Abbey breweries which will necessitate a Belgian adventure. Check out the International Trappist Association for information on these beers (and other Trappist products). There are even tasting guides for some of them.

PSA: The monks at Westvleteren (pictured above) have made it clear that their beer should only be purchased directly from them but some unscrupulous beer profiteers send incognito buyers to the Abbey and resell at a huge profit. The Abbey doesn't have the resources to control its distribution so don't add to the problem. Do not buy gray market beer. If you do the Flying Spaghetti Monster will curse you with a barley allergy giving you hives and terrible diarrhea.<sup>2

1</sup> I am wrong most of the time.
² If this happens I can recommend a good allergist in the Seattle area.

Followup: Grand Rip Railroad

Well the grand digital migration is nearly done. There are only a few CDs in odd places that need to be converted. I didn't have any problems converting with one exception. Tool's first full length album Undertow. If an indie movie were made of my life at least one song on this album would have to be featured as part of my coming of age music.

This album is so badass that I couldn't rip a single song without manual intervention. Some songs crashed the ripper while others confounded the MP3 encoder. I guess that even software 16 years younger than Undertow can't handle the hardcore-ness that is Tool.

Grand Rip Railroad

Recently, our Director here at French-Harrison Consolidated Living Corporation (my wife) went to our Deputy Director of Research and Development(me) with a new initiative: reduce the numerous, unsightly and hard to access compact music discs scattered about our headquarters (our house). The Deputy Director suggested we digitize all this hard media into a more accessible form such as MP3. That is when the Deputy Director of Information Technology(me again) was called in and tasked with sifting through and converting hundreds of songs to MP3s and then organizing them on the networked media server.

Making this even more painful was the fact that a major portion had already been converted in an shamefully ad hoc manner; some were in OGG, some in MP4, many in MP3 format with depressingly low bit rates. All these had to be reconverted to the new standard. To speed things up 3 optical drives were requisitioned and installed in a machine for parallel conversion. Despite 3 conversion pipelines this turned into major time commitment.

I love technology, but not as much as you(music), you see... But I STILL love technology... Always and forever.

Frosty Brew

On Sunday my Johnny Brother and I got together in the snow and brewed 2 batches of beer. For non-brewers out there this entailed standing over large boiling pots in freezing weather for around 7 hours. The end result is around 12 gallons of quietly fermenting beer in my basement.

Johnny brewed a big batch of Brown Porter and split it into 3 parts. The large part was left as is and the other two are one gallon experimental batches; one with coffee and one with bitter chocolate.

I am on a quest to brew a Belgian Ale similar to the Trappist Beer, Orval. I have only just discovered this beer and it is now one of my favorites. I created this recipe myself so we will see if I can come close in my godless frozen backyard brewery.

Fun fact, authentic Trappist Beers must be brewed under the supervision of Trappist monks. These are men who have given up everything to ponder the big questions while perfecting some of the best beers in the world. Worldwide, there are only 7 of these breweries and 6 are in Belgium. Isn't Belgium lucky?

Vampire Baseball

I went to see Twilight the other day and I admit that I enjoyed it even though I haven't read the book. I do read the much anticipated and insightful Twilight Discussion Hour blog. I would like to add a thought about these Twilight vampires that has been bothering me. The vampires are super-human with speed, strength, mind reading and peeping-tom (peeping-Edward?) abilities. I know these vampires were once human but I just can't get passed the fact that the girl vampire throws... well... like a girl (flame shield activate!).

Jolly Ol' Saint Nic(otine)

You sat right behind me. I had no reason to notice you but then your unwholesome stale cigarette stench invaded my nose. I glanced back to determine the origin of this suffocating odor. I expected to see a homeless man or stoner but instead I find a man of some years with a beret and a Santa Claus beard. Sort of an unwashed, chain smoking version of the Santa from Miracle on 49th Street. You seemed well dressed for someone with an obvious aversion to washing machines.

I usually don't mind cigarettes; I spend a lot of time at filthy bars moshing to live heavy metal and I have a bit of a secondhand addiction. But this was a whole new level.

As the bus pulled up to each stop and the circulation of air diminished I held my breath and hoped for a quick pull-away to bring back the fresh air. I don't know if there is a term for echolocation using smell but I discovered I can do it if the smell is strong enough. I got off a stop early to escape and I suspect others did, too.

I think my sense of smell and taste have been diminished by the whole experience.