I also took over my first home brew gluten-free beer to share with the troops. I think the agave pancake syrup I used has definitely given the beer a cidery taste but mixed with the general sweetness of syrup. Unfortunately the cider taste only enhances the slight tartness I get from using the sorghum malt, but then maybe it just helps meld the flavour profile towards it. Still, I am hoping to mask the sorghum a bit with my next attempt, so will see if blackstrap molasses does any better. Now Pete has a 'man cave', I will be spreading my homebrew message and getting him and Anna to start making their own gluten free beers, and hopefully getting them tasting better than what they can generally get out in the beer market.
While on the theme of moving, I had the pleasure on Friday night to see a man I have great respect for play his last game of rugby union in Australia. Stirling Mortlock has been an amazing personality for Australian rugby over my adult appreciation of the game. While I would have liked to have had a good beer to 'cheers' Stirling with, the only beers available are mid strength mainstream brews. I don't want to turn this into another 'beating-my-head-against-a-wall' rant over beers at sporting events, but will say Stirling had it right in this photo below just sticking to water at this venue (an endorsement for the thing that makes up around 97% of beer). I will say though it took me the whole game to actually finish the beer, and lucky the weather was cold so the beer didn't warm up enough so I could taste it over that time. At least my attention was on the game and not the beer, even if the game wasn't much more enjoyable to watch. Anyway, after the game, Joel and I hit the GB for a better beer (White Rabbit Dark Ale) to cheers Stirlo and the other boys retiring from the game, and congratulate Joel on getting through the semester of uni. Luckily also I'd had a Goat Hip Hip Horray IPA and a very coriander tasting Red Saision that was going through the hop infuser at the bar before the game.
I guess for myself I look at both these stories and am reminded that the physically orientated life I have lead for most of my life is only sustainable for a certain amount of time, and that is even if I don't seriously injure myself (touch wood). While I am not working as physically hard as I have when I was younger, I am still very conscious that at 31 my body is deteriorating. One day I may even get to the point where I won't be able to, or enjoy, drinking beer. A sad thought I know, but that is the potential we all have to deal with in life, whatever it is we enjoy doing. I guess being in the depths of winter doesn't help this thinking much, but have been making the most of the small moments where the sun does appear behind the clouds, streams light through the trees I walk past to warm me and think of Tahiti 80's 'Silently Walking'. I don't know if enjoying the simple/small things in life (I have actually just put a potato bake in the oven) makes it harder to make a change away from this physical orientation, or that having that orientation has brought me to question beer and want me to explore the wide world it presents, and take that questioning to life itself. Maybe just having found beer as an interest means I am turing more to my own mind in the natural progression we all have as we get older. I guess I am even lucky just to be able to think this way.
So, as you can see, a restful, simple day awaits me. Hopefully there will be a couple beers in there as this contemplation continues, but hopefully for you I won't be dumping anymore of this sort of thing if I write them up here. I see I may have let beer infiltrate my thinking too much, or just see beer can reflect any mood I have.
Beefy
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