Birdwatch 2012: baby robins

For the past 3 years, we have had various birds nest, lay eggs, and raise chicks in a large shrub right outside our window.  For the first time this year we captured some awesome pictures and a few choice videos...

   One thing that has fascinated me was noticing how both the male and female robin work together to care for, feed, lookout and protect the babies, 24/7 the entire time they were in that nest.  They would sit in the tallest tree in my yard and make the noisiest racket whenever any other birds were about (especially crows, they hate the crows!)  We would watch for them digging the yard for bugs and worms, and then come right up to our window and feed the babies.

 Love this shot, caught one little guy looking right back in the window at us!  The window was open with just a screen between us and them, it must have been weird for these birds sitting there listening to our TV, cooking and family conversations!

In less than 3 weeks these little guys hatched from tiny blue eggs, grew up, and all flew away.

Now, a few weeks later, I saw a robin stop by and check in on the nest, and I honestly could not tell if it was one of the babies grown up, or one of the parents.  It was a nice reminder to make this blog post...

Brewday!

Thanks to my friends Joe and Travis, they inspired me to fire up my homebrew gear and brew some beer!

We met up last Saturday morning and headed down to the Cellar Homebrew shop over on 145th and Greenwood. If you homebrew in Seattle, those guys are awesome. You just go in, select a recipe from the box, and then grab all of the stuff in bulk right there. Also they are very helpful with hops and yeast substitution suggestions, and they even installed a high-temp weldless spigot and valve in my keggle for $30!

Joe and Travis picked a nut brown recipe, and I stuck with my old standard: Yard Sale pale ale, an american pale ale with honey, orange peel, and lots of extra hops thrown in (in my own ghetto version of 'continuous hopping'.)

At this point, we had steeped our grains, and were adding the malt extract, honey (or brown sugar for the nut brown) and boiling hops.





Pouring in the malt is always fun... ooey gooey.





The propane tank kept freezing up, which would cause the flame to almost go out. we found that we had to keep the tank up next to the burner to avoid this... note all of the ice on the tank in the lower right.





Here we are cooling the wort after the boil was done. you run hose water through copper tubing that is submerged in the hot wort; I capture the first bucket of (hot) water that comes out and use it during the cleanup!




Here we are racking the nut brown...




and finally racking the pale ale...




After we pitched our yeast, I placed the carboys next to my furnace vent and got them to a nice steady 70 degrees... Now that is 10 gallons of happily fermenting beer!