Comic Splat - Week 44

Winter Soldier #12
Real Soldier returns
Fight bad guys on their own turf
First stop Daredevil?

Blake Northcott - Relapse (The Vs. Reality Series)

An ebook series discovered through the wonder that is Twitter.  Nice little series.  Nothing flashing, nothing deep. Just solid storytelling with some good characters.  I call it a Saturday afternoon matinee type story, popcorn and all.  It will be interesting to see how it ends!  Ebooks can succeed now if only I could surf that tail...

Comic Splat - Week 43

Avengers #32
Someone's still alive
Who the heck is Lord Gouzar?
Inner Space toubles

The Amazing Spider-Man #696
Parker still captured
Modell needs to save the day?
Two hobgoblins?

Captain America #19
Brubaker's last one
Fantastic run, one of best
Captain moving on

John Scalzi - Old Man's War

This will probaby be my favorite book of the year although will have to wait and see.  Written with the DNA of Heinlein with some Ender's Game thrown into it this is what to me defines the genre.  A great set up that leads to even more crazyness.  Throw in the Ghost Brigade and wow what a great concept.  It will be interesting to see how the books down the line continue to carry the concept.

Stephen Chbosky - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Again another marketing coup because the only reason I read this was because I saw the movie trailer.  The book is a coming of age story.  The story is written in a letter format to some one unknown (probably just us the reader).  Story is one that has been told for every generation.  This one for generation of the 90s and of course has its ups and downs.  The downs being very shocking especially at the end.  The book did have one great character and that is Sam who the letter writer falls for.  Every coming of age tale needs a "Sam".  Good book tough to swallow the ending...

Comic Splat - Week 42

New Avengers #31
It's not what it seems
Luke Cage decides to retire?
The end of the "New"

Cheryl Strayed - Wild

Oh this book wanted to be so much more to me that it was...I love tales of man (in this case woman) against nature struggling with both inner and outer demons to reach some apex of life.  In this case a grand tale of a woman putting some difficult times behind her and hitting the trail to find herself.  The set up is everything I would hope for but what happens when you don't like the main character?  Her struggles are heart felt but the woman she is is not very likeable and that is the challenge in saying whether I truly liked this book or just thought it was a whiners tale. 

I respected her journey.  Didn't respect her.  

Great American Beer Fest

A journey back to the GABF.  Haven't been to the fest in about 19 years.  Being a brewer I decided I needed to taste the competition.  Was truly blown away by the magnitude of beers being poured for our delight.  Favorite moment was getting my picture with president of New Belgium brewery.  

My Favorites from the Fest:

Whoop Pass IPA
Black Butte XXIII
Good Chit Pilsner
Citrum IPA
Cone Lick'r
Sah'Tea
Green Monstah Strong Ale

Haiku #8 - Princess Peach

Haiku #8 was my first try at a fruit beer and I used neighbors peaches.  Also used Colorado grain so this is a somewhat local beer.  Loosely based on a peach recipe on BeerTools.com.  One gallon batch. 

1) 1.8 lbs Colorado 2 Row
2) 0.2 lbs Honey Malt
3) 0.2 oz Cluster Pellet Hops (7.7% AA)

4) 0.2 oz Mt. Hood Pellet Hops (4.1% AA)
5) 0.8 lbs Peaches (15 minutes boil)

5) White Labs WLP320 American Hefeweizen (Liquid)

Used Starsan sanitizer.

The Mash

Heated 0.5 gal of water to 160-170 deg F.  Added grain (placed grain a mesh bag).  Cooked for 60 minutes.  

The Sparge

Removed the grain mesh bag and allowed to drip dry.  Rinsed with a gallon of heated water.  Than ran the wort back through the mesh bag.

The Boil

Heated the wort until it began to boil at approximately 210 deg F.  Boil lasted 60 minutes with 0.2 oz of cluster (bittering) hops at 0 min (into boil) then added 0.1 oz of Mt. Hood hops (aroma) at 30 min and e5 minutes.  Hops placed in a hop mesh bag for duration of boil.  Added a slurry (food processed) of peaches (~ 0.8 lbs or about 10-12 that were pitted and pealed).

The Fermentation

After boil, removed from heat, cooled wort to approximately 50 degrees.  Allowed peach to settle but some peach material were floating.  Difficult to filter into fermentor.  Added the yeast.  Yeast activated in about 12 hours.

The yeast began fermentation.  Allowed to sit for 1 week.  After one week, transferred to a second glass carboy for secondary fermentation.

The Bottling

Used dextrose and dissolved this in 1/4 cup of water, siphoned the beer into into 8 regular bottles.  Allowed to sit for another 2 weeks.

The Tasting

Opened and tried on 10/11/12 (!). Good carbonation. Fluffy head, bit sticky (left residue on side of glass).  Can smell the peaches and a slight hint in the flavor.  Certainly not overpowering.  Good first try. 

Just a hint of peach

Nice smooth, blondish, with curly head

Fit for a Princess

Comic Splat - Week 41

Captain America #18
Capt fights to the core
An all too familiar world
Wish he existed!

Uncanny Avengers #1
First Marvel's reboot
From the ashes of Phoenix
Havok' halo back!

Avengers #31
Who's the mask woman?
Uses her Avengers card
Lost in inner space...

David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Where to begin on this one?  I really liked this book.  It was well done, it was also a challenging read because of the setup.  The books starts with characters on a boat sailing back to San Francisco, then jumps to a composer in Belgium, then to a woman journalist in California, then to a British gentleman, then to a future clone, and then finally to remnants of humans.  Once this apex is reached it then goes in reverse order back through the characters with the book finally ending with the original characters who finally reach San Francisco.  Each story is linked to the previous story because the composer reads the diary of the person going to San Francisco, and the letters of the composer goes to a scientist, who then shows up with journalist in California, and then the journalist story is picked up by the Brit, who's story becomes a movie which the clone sees, and then finally the clone becomes a symbol to the human remnants. To some I imagine the convience of these links crossing across the stories become a bit silly but it becomes clearer that all these characters across these stories have all played a similar role.  To me the following quote from the book gives the ahhh moment:

 

"I watched clouds awobbly form the floor o' that kayak.  Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul.  Who can say wher the cloud's blowed frmo or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds."

 

And that in a nutshell is the book.  Fascinating book, one that I gave a lot of thought to which is often rare.  

Comic Splat - Week 40

AvsX #12
It's all down to this
Cyclops versus Everyone
In the end, he's right...

The Amazing Spider-Man #695
Spider sense tingling
Jammers go in overdrive
And Pete gets kidnapped