Goodbye Neighbor

On the weekend we sent off our Neigbor Will, with a couple of nights of drinks and firepits. He is off to the place he calls his sanctuary, Australia. We bid him good luck, in the couple of months we have known him we have had a lot of fun, drank a lot of beers, listen to a lot of music and played in his basement sound studio many a time. Lee farewelled him by beating him several times at pool on Friday night, something he was none to pleased about ;). Saturday night a fire pit turned almost into a forest fire :). It is always a little tricky to say goodbye to people who become good friends, but we totally understand having packed up and moved a few times ourselves, life must go on! At the same time Chris and I made up a Belgium Beer Trapisste clone, which we are hoping will be pretty delicious. Over drinks on Friday night we thought about coming up with a Dunkel recipe. I used a nice little Android app BrewR to formulate the recipe. The app is brilliant, it calculates the bitternes, ABV and color for you once you punch in the desired ingrediants. I ordered the grains on Sunday and to my surprise The Vinyard SW was open and I was able to pick up the goods today! The plan is to make the Dunkel on Saturday. It will be our first all grain brew. I also picked up a copy of Designing Great Beers to assist me with designing the next few batches. The book is extremely detailed and I find it very interesting. If you want to know everything about the brewing process, this is the book you need. The final round of the Aussie rules season played out on the weekend, I managed to turn my form around against Dave in Dream Team and take out the minor premiership :). The roos won the last game of the season against Richmond to take out 9th spot. While finals would have been great, the team is young and not ready. Had we made the finals it would have meant a fast and painful early exit. Next year... I actually see hope in this team unlike several years ago, we now have a good batch of young kids starting to hit their straps. Which brings us to the business end of the season. The finals start next weekend and I am planning on watching all the games I can! I love watching how the pressure affects different players. Some shine and others turn to water, but the one thing that is always gaurenteed is that it is the best footy that comes out at finals time. Not sure who I want to win, at this stage ANYONE BUT COLLINGWOOD. Tonight I start helping out with the "little dragons" at Karate. It is the ankle bighter class. It should be fun, I will do 2 classes (Tues and Thurs) this week then scale back to once a week from next week on. Should be a very interesting experience.