Amber Ale In

Last Sunday I brewed up an Amber Ale beer. Unlike the previous Brewer's Best kits that I had used, this was a very generic Amber. So I cooked it up as usual, making good progress on the time. The only real change up compared with previous batches was that at the end, I first reactivated brewer's yeast in a half of cup of water, let it stand for about 10 minutes, then added it to the wort. Stirred and then capped it off.

I got really concerned a couple of days later when I noticed that the water-stopper was not bubbling. At all. No bubbles to me translates as to no CO2 gas, means no fermenting beer. Did I brew it too fast? Was the yeast DOA? What was going on? I emailed friends and family and got some good advice, like stir it up and get them microbes moving.

I popped open the lid the next day, and immediately noticed that the smell of alcohol was there, so something was definitely going on, just not sure what. I mixed it up a bit while I was at it. By Saturday, I cracked it open again to catch a whiff, which nearly knocked me on my ass it was so strong. Gave it one more day for good measure, and bottled it all up last night.

The color was distinctly lighter my last batch, almost like the color in the picture above, despite it being an Amber Ale. I did use a bit more water than usual this time - around 5.25 gallons - so it is a bit more watered down. Unfortunately, while cleaning up after the initial brewing, I dropped and shattered the hydrometer, so there was no way to get a good reading this time. I'm just guessing it's going to land at the 4.0 to 4.2 % alcohol range.

Anyway, I swigged a bit of the leftover after bottling, and as raw as it still is it's got a nice bing to it. Excited to see how this translates 3 weeks from now!

NIN | JA

And... I'm back. It's been a minute, I'm alive and well, just busy busy where the blog's priority gets set to low.

Next topic of discussion before it's too late: the NIN | JA show @ Nikon Jones Beach Theater.

Took a trip last Sunday via two Long Island RR commuter trains out to Jones Beach area, which is about 20 miles or so from my place, but takes a bit to get to. Kind of like the old days when we would drive across town to get to Grandma's. As the crow flies, not so far! But as the wheels roll, strap in for the ride. At our exiting station, I ran into one of my coworkers, who upon hearing about the show on Friday told his wife, who happened to be a huge NIN fan, so they came. Took a 10 minute bus ride from there to the amphitheater, which is this huge cement outdoor venue right on the water. As its now Nikon's place, Ashton Kutcher is all over the place as well, yowzers.

Anyway, was totally psyched about the show going in, knowing that this is said to be the end of NIN for awhile (5-8 years is my guess), and Janes Addiction is Janes Addiction, knew they were going to be good. Gotta love those shows.

And why not kick it all off with who else than Tom Morello and the Street Sweeper Social Club, "they're not a band, they're a social club. Street Sweeper Social Club." (as vocalist Boots Riley pointed out after nearly everysong). Their songs were solid; I guess I didn't realize that they've been together for some time now. The better half of their set had Tom producing some sweet licks, some very Rage-esque, and entertaining all around.

NIN kicked off their set with a slightly altered, more explosive version of The Fragile's Somewhat Damaged and kept it going from there. The setlist was heavy in older material, in particular 6 tracks from The Downward Spiral, with no new material until the 15th song, Survivalism! (With one song each from the most recent 3 albums; no Ghost tracks here.) Simply put, they rocked it from beginning to end.

Full set list here: http://reflectinginthechrome.com/20090607.php

Compared with previous sets, the visual were surprisingly sparse, with nothing more than some overhead yellowish lights, wall strobes with white / red lights, and a smoke machine that was off the hook. Almost too simple: they could have done a bit more with the overhead lights. But the tradeoff was that the focus was on the music and its performance. For the most part things came across great, but it became apparent that beefy uncle Trent just can't hit some of the high notes he used to, not without sounding entirely constipated anyway. Hurt as a closer, while almost cliche in a sense, was more powerful than I can ever describe and was a perfect ending to see these guys off.

Janes Addiction: Simply fucking amazing set. Everything I had heard up til then regarding the band's reunion sounded too good to be true, but really, they were spot on, tight as ever, and put on one hell of a show. Perry Ferrel floated around the set like some kind of impish drunkard, sipping on his bottle of wine the whole time, givin' respect to the crowd. Solid rhythm section set a perfect backbone for Dave Navarro to create a lead guitar solar system of heavy gravity proportions. (did i just write that? ha!) Visually, the band had a better back drop, with prettier colors and black and white naked ladies, and also used a partial drop down video screen, which took a pretty good beating because...

... it was cold and windy as hell down there. I made a critical error in that it was 80+ degrees when I left our house in shorts and t-shirt and of course didn't think it would be so bad. Yeah right! It was 55 degrees with the wind gushing off the cold water, and on top of that, started to drizzle at bits. Fuck me, that was brutal. Never doing that again.

My other complaint: the venue is dry. Outside of the VIP section or performances, there was no drinking what-so-ever at the location. Seriously? We found out after the fact that you can drink on the LIRR... just bring it on and chug away. Will definitely keep that in mind for next time.

Anyway, awesome awesome show, and worth the trip.