Europe Trip - Journey Begins

Europe Trip Posts
Journey Begins (This post)
Vienna Day 1
Vienna Day 2
Vienna Day 3
Paris Day 1
Paris Day 2

Little background, Kasey left for Hong Kong for the Vis Moot (If you don't know what this is google). I was sitting at home for 2 1/2 weeks where I spent the majority of my evenings painting miniature figures and watching Dr. Who. Yes yes I am that much of a geek get over it.

So in addition to my geekfest I hooked my Android mobile up with maps of Vienna and Paris to allow my phone and the GPS in it to show us where we are, how cool is that. I also printed out wiki travel pages about the places we wanted to go see so we would know a bit more about the places that we went to see. This worked out really well, because even travel books normal just give you a short paragraph about the place where a travel wiki page could be 4 pages crammed with factoids for the trivia nerd inside. Go on grow the nerd.

The Leaving
I cleaned up the place printed out information sheets about the three cats for our good friend who looked after the monsters and locked up. Of course it started to rain while dragging my suitcases down the road to the train station but my spirit could not be cooled, I was off on another adventure!

Arriving at the airport I went to stand in line and fill out my paperwork. I was in high spirits. Arriving at the check in lady I chucked my very light bags on the scales and  handed over my passport with a Eric Style Smile (That smile where light glints off your teeth). She gives me a withering look and starts flipping through my passport.

"Where is your visa"

Sorry? Where is my wha? Ohh ohh its all electronic I explain. She proceeds to give me shit for the next few minutes about not having a visa in my passport. I repeat that the Australian Government doesn't issue paper visas any longer it is all EEEEE LLLL EEECCCCC TTTTRRROOOOOONNNNIIIICCCCC. She runs it through the computer (Finally!) and looks at me like I am the idiot and said "Your visa is up to date". No shit Sherlock..... She then continues to issue my boarding passes. I have 3 flights and she hands over two boarding passed and a sticker that has a bard code and some flight crap referring to my bag. Remember the 3 flights, 2 boarding passes and my bag, it comes up later and there will be a test.

So spirit dowsed a bit.

Going through the security I got pulled off to the side to be scanned for bombs and other contraband. At this point I am worried because without my paper passport I am basically a illegal alien! One tick-tack found in my pocket, no paper visa and I am on the first sheep freight boat to India.

Luckily no contraband was found! I sail through to the air lounge

I look through my boarding passes and find that a Quantas flight has been changed to a British Airways flight... Well okay, I don't know anything about them .

After such a great start of getting grief I sit down at the airport pub for a few schooners (beers). Two schooners of beer later and messing around with my phone I find out that none of the WiFi in the airport is free. Why would it be? :) So I had a third schooner to not think about technology or any of that other crap. I am feeling much more optimistic and head off for my gate about 15 minutes to go in boarding.

Coming up to the gate, I ask one of the attendants about my missing boarding pass. I explain I have a Brisbane -> Singapore and my Singapore -> London boarding pass but not my London -> Vienna. The lady, of course, laughs and says "You know British Airways is having strikes right now? hahaha".... I kill you!... She tells me I'll have to "try" to get my boarding pass in Singapore OR London. Greeeeeat.

The flight was 8 hours (No problem!) I sat in a row of four seats and there was two little kids down the row and mom on the end. I gotta tell you, the kids were way better then adults! Adults are big whinny babys, kids have an excuse - they are 4! :) Anyhow, British Airways... Attendants were great, but I got nauseous after the food so I refused further food offered.

Arriving in Singapore, it was back on the beer.

4 hours later we are back on another BA flight for 13 hours. ohh god. 8 hours? No problem! 13 is just rough.. After the 8 hours your thinking "Yeah I rock! now get me off this damn thing" but that 9th hour is sinks in... I am here for another 4 hours. Ohh man. However, by a twist of luck, the seat next to me was free, the cost of this free seat next to me was my entertainment system didn't work. What a ying and yang situation! I could complain and be moved to another seat NEXT to someone where the entertainment screen worked OR I could stay for 13 HOURS with just me and my free seat next to me (I couldn't move to the free seat next to me because then I would be next to someone - spacial reasoning people). I went for the free seat :) They came around with Beef of Chicken and I refused. Just booze please. I splet for about 6 hours and then it was English Breakfast time. No thanks, just morning booze please. Finally arrive in heathrow London.

5:45am Now, I don't have a boarding pass for the last leg of my journey. So I track down a British Airways counter and there is a dude sitting behind the counter and I go up and say hello and explain my situation. He rudely tells me that I need Quantas desk not British Airways. Well shit, all he boarding passes say BA, WTF? So I look at the next desk and there is a sign "Qantas Desk opens at 6am". So I hang out in line. I am the only one there by the way... A quantas person shows up behind me and asks what I want, I explain. He says I'll need to wait for the desk to open up. Okay... So I wait... He goes behind the desk and calls me forward. I was just giggling like a little girl inside thinking of Meet the Fockers. So I stroll up dump all my paperwork over the desk and say "I need a boarding pass to Vienna" the guy explains that BA is on strikes "Yes well your Quantas, whatcha got for me?", consulting the highly technical system (A printed bit of paper) he tells me that the flight is two hours delayed and has been shifted to flight QA DickityDoo. I have one of those Dr Who recollections of something in the past... I pull out one of the papers on the desk and look at the sticker that has the bar code of my bag and those weird fight numbers. Ohh that just is perfect! The sticker says all of the flights, including all the changes and delays! So the lady at the very beginning that gave me shit over my non-corporeal visa knew all these flights because she booked my bag through.  

Thats okay. Issue me my damn boarding pass and lets get to some rest. To sum up the rest of my time in heathrow "So far everyone has been rude. so far England sucks" which comes strait from my journal notes. :-D

Its not all negative though! A short 2.5/3 hour flight and we touch down in Vienna! the bags came out in record time and I was off to customs... Err.. I said CUSTOMS... Umm. Ohh hi, I almost missed the guy standing behind a podium with a rubber stamp. BANG I am in the country. There was a big EXIT sign with about 8 security gaurds all talking, smoking, and maybe drinking? Such a great country so far. I was advised to take a taxi from the airport to my hotel. Screw that crap! That's for wusses :) I went down into the train station under the airport and using my fine skills of german was able to find the English button :P Purchasing a ticket to the city I walked to the platform and changed into some warmer clothes. The train took about 5 minutes to arrive and BANG I was off. Arriving at my station I dodged a few pan handlers and whipping out my mobile I turned on the GPS, loaded the Vienna map and traced my route to the hotel. Who's the best, that's right :-)

Kasey met me in the hotel lounge and it was a great welcome :) Up in the room she had a surpise for me. Oohh ha ha. Sushi and Chocolate! Sushi, not very Germanic but still very nice after all that shit food on the plane and fasting!

Stay tuned for the Tales of Vienna! Much more positive and sunny experience then the evil of traveling via British Airways.

Spoils

Well we have just returned from Europe and found that a large painting fell and crashed behind our TV cracking open a home electricity network adapter (Think a big A/C looking adapter with a LAN cable connected into it). When the painting cracked open the device the power terminals were barely touching and caused a fault in the electrical system.

The safety switch in the circuit breaker box tripped and all electrical outlets lost power. Overhead lights or anything on a direct switch still worked.

Our fridges, however, are on outlet power so they lost power... Fast forward to the interesting stuff....

The beer and two meads are now ruined - I checked the temperature before throwing the switch back on and it was 31C!!!!! Damn all my insulation. Optimal temp is 18C.

So I am not going to even waste my time and try and 'hope' they come good over time, they have been sitting at this unacceptable high temperature for little under 2 weeks.

Good side of things, I get to brew again :)

Irish Red - Sneak Peek

Well the Irish Red beer I did as an All Grain brew came out last week. I snappied a photo of the newly created brew and compared with Kilkenny (Like Smithwick's in America)

I grabbed two glasses that are identical and poured a Kilkenny into the one on the left and my newly fermented brew on the right :D

The Irish Red ale is now bottle fermenting to add carbonation so you get head and bubbles. Complete post about this beer once its done with the two months of bottle fermentation.

Grab an Irish Red Ale this weekend and try them!

Honey - Is there a difference?

Following on from my Farmers Market - Potato post I am going to show how honey can be so much more then the common bought honey.

Most honey, especially in heavily developed countries or mass production countries (ie America :P ) produce honey by feeding bees on sugar water! (Here is your corn sugar at work again). It produces a sub-lime honey that is put into all sorts of things. This is done because the bees can be contained and feed in a systematic way to produce a consistent product. This is also leading to problems with diseases in bees etc (You mean intense farming is bad?)

Anyhow! I am an up and coming brewer of drinks that make people happy and invite discussions on such topics as this and help to add to the population through unintended sexual relations.

One of those drinks is Mead. Honey, water, yeast, and some acid. Easy right? Sounds boring. I mean... Beer has tons of varieties! Pale Ale, Wheat Beer, Porters, Red Ales, and so on! Mead is just honey, can't be much in the way of things to do there? Sure you can add crap to the honey but its all based on Honey.

Well sorry to say but Honey can be so varied it surprises me still. The smell and the flavor are completely different based on what the bees have been collecting from.

Each of these honey's is collected from hives working on different kind of environments. Macadamia trees, Garden Flowers, Bush Honey (Rain forest trees), etc. And as I said before each of these is so different from the next it is quite amazing.

So next time you are looking at honey in the supermarket have a closer look - it should say what kind of flower the honey primarily comes from. If it does not, corn sugar honey - YAWN.

Farmers Market - Potatoes

This might offend some people but this is my experience and if you are offended you should be looking to your own surroundings and asking why are things how they are?

It wasn't until I came to Australia that I found what a massive difference there is from the super market food to the farmers market and what kind of quality and variety there is different out there!

Solid example: We have a "Potato Man" who we go to, to buy potatoes! But they are all the same right? Right? WRONG. Potatoes are so much more then the common white varieties sold in supper markets and vary in color, texture, and flavor.

 Dutch Cream: Yellow flesh, one of the best potatoes ever!

Kipfler potatoes: Hard and waxy these long potatoes work great for long cooking and taste great! Great for things like salads

Pink Eye:

Royal Blue:

Kind Edward: (His favorite potato and one of my favorites!)

Nicola:

All of these are available at one area and range from $4.99 to $2.99 per kg that equates to $2.26 to $1.35 per pound.

These all taste and have different properties and are all useful in different ways! Once you have a dutch cream and a kind Edward side by side you'll never be wanting anything other then to have bags and bags of all these varieties instead of the common watery chat potatoes.

Trust me, give it a go!

Wheat Beer - Kit style

Well its the weekend so time to brew up a storm!

I was going to do an all grain wheat beer brew (and still plan to) but I have run out of time, so I went down and grabbed the following


WB-06 Wheat Yeast
Imported Bavarian Wheat (Brew Craft)
Wheat Malt Extract (Coopers)
Hop Bag - Hallertau

This will sit in the brewing fridge for 3+ weeks which is longer then I normally let things go but I have been reading some interesting things about letting the first fermentation go for longer.

After this Kit Wheat I plan on doing an all grain wheat with 90% wheat where this style here is only 50% wheat.

If your reading this via reader then you won't see the side panel on the blog so since I am out of interesting shit to say I'll spew out the sideboard here.

Currently Drinking:
Store bought :(

Currently Aging:
Sparkling mead (18%) (April 12th)
Indian Pale Ale (Kit with added grains) (April 28th)
Irish Red Ale (all grain) (June 12th)

Currently Brewing:
Wheat Beer (kit) (April 17th)
Mead (10%) (May 1st done)
Braggot Mead (15%) (May 18th done)

Next to Brew:
Wheat Beer (All Grain)

Braggot Mead

Greetings all! The wife has the camera with her so no photos on this post.

Last week I started planning a Braggot Mead which is malt and honey, so think beer and honey with wine yeast.

So on with the recipe first!

500g Bush Honey
500g Rose Garden Honey
800g Pale Malt Grain
200g Light Crystal Grain
8 Cloves
2 Tea Bags
6 Liters filtered water
1 Demijohn
2 Pots
1 tea spoon Wine yeast
1 tea spoon Yeast Nutrient

So! I thought, I have all this left over grain and all this left over honey why not do a Braggot! It sounds cool Braggot. Go ahead give it a roll off the tong. BraaaaGOT!

So! I diverted from the normal school of thought that you boil the honey! Most mead recipes seem to come from beer makers and the boil is essential for killing off all bacteria and the work it does with the proteins. However! Like my other posts about mead I prescribe to the 68 degrees for 22 minutes for the honey to kill of the organisms that live in honey, but this deviates from beer making; So I combined the procedures into one limbo dance of justice and peace.

1. Poor your 5L of water into the first pot and bring to 75C.

2. Dump your grains in - I use a Brew Bag (google it)

3. Check the temp is about 65, insulate the pot if you can with towles etc. Check ever 15 minutes until 90 minutes have passed.

4. Heat the remaining 1L of water in the 2nd pot and sparge with the last 1L of water (Poor the water over the grains)into the first pot.

5. Bring to a rolling boil

6. Add cloves

7. 60 minutes later remove from heat and measure the temperature carefully! When it reaches 68C add the honey

8. Insulate and check every 3-5 minutes for 22 minutes.

9. While you are checking the Braggot wort - make up a tea cup of yeast, yeast nutrient and filtered water and let warm near pot. This gets the yeast party started early!

10. After 22 minutes aerate the wort. I don't own a aerator yet so I did the trick of pouring the wort between the two pots back and forth over and over and over and over till my arms fell off.

11. Add to demijohn and cool the wort down to 24-25C

12. Add your yeast party and top with an air lock!

13. Mark your calendar for 8 weeks, put it in the brew fridge and forget about it

This mead should be a spicy and full body wine. It might not fit the Australian climate but until it's brewed and aged we will never know!