Sunset/Sunrise

Is this a sunrise on a new start or a sunset on the season? In a way it's both for me.

This will more than likely be a lost season with the Canes. No one can possibly come up with all the right reasons for how and why the Carolina Hurricanes have performed so poorly since the start of the season. Nothing can go right for this team, when the sky was the limit at the end of last season and the beginning of this season. Records have been broken this season, but none of them good. The only bright side to this season, will be the 1st round (possibly the 1st overall!) pick in the upcoming entry draft this summer. If only this season had been last...

And here's my beautiful sunrise! My assistant brewer in the making is a Girl! The mini-Caniac gear has already been looked at and appropriated for. The only problem is that she's not due until the middle of April. Well after the Canes' season will be done. So she won't be able to really fit into the really small stuff. We'll have to wait to get some bigger stuff once next season begins.

No matter how this season ends, at least I know that I'll have the prettiest mini-Caniac in the stands next season!

Sorry for the Delay

It's been a while since I've been able to write up a new post on the ol blog. Part of that has been due to the fact that my computer at home has crashed and I have to share SWMBO's laptop. It also hasn't happened just due to being very busy at work, home and everything in between.

But the main reason for the lapse in posting is due to the fact that I've got a new assistant brewer growing inside SWMBO's belly! In just six short months I'll have the great responsibility of showing the next generation how to take pictures, how to properly berate the 'Canes (and they've deserved it lately), and how to brew awesome beer (but not partake until legally of age!). Just getting prepared for it's arrival has kept me from posting on here as regularly.

Without SWMBO's help drinking my beer, my pipeline is a lot longer, therefor, I can't brew as often either.

Thankfully, she can still go with me to the Canes games and do some hefty cheering. Although, lately, there hasn't been much to really cheer for. As of right now, the Canes are 2-4-2 and the only wins have come in the Shootout against Tampa, and against a Florida team who had just gotten back from playing in Europe. We even gave the Islanders their first win of the season just last night.

If there is a picture that can sum up how the Canes are taking this season, it's this one right here:

On the beer front, the IPA has finished fermenting and gone through the secondary, been dry hopped with and ounce of Cascade and Centennial each. It's even already been bottled; last weekend! I did get a chance to sample a bit that wouldn't fit into the last bottle, and it was pure hoppy goodness. I'm excited for two weeks from now.

It's Almost Here!

Well, lookie there! It's no longer the Offseason. It is now officially the PRE-Season. And it couldn't have come fast enough.

Canes fans have very good reason to be excited about the upcoming season. In the '08-'09 season, we sat through half of a mediocre season and watched as a coaching change mid-way through the season turned the team into a dominant force that carried into the Eastern Conference Finals.

With the summer came a few changes, mainly filling the glaring hole exposed in the playoffs of team toughness. The Canes were pushed around quite a bit in the playoffs by bigger teams, but still managed to find a way to win the series.

Tomorrow night the Canes take on the Nashville Predators in a Pre-Season exhibition game. Finally, hockey is back, just as the weather starts to cool back down from scorching to warm. Unfortunately, I'll be away up to the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts for a conference this weekend and will miss the first chance to see the Canes in action. The jitters will be unbearable.

This past weekend, I bottled the Milk Chocolate Stout (Porter). It shall be known from henceforth as the Milk Chocolate Porter. It is simply to light to be called a Stout, and will more than likely have a roasted character that is closer to a Brown Porter style, rather than a Stout(which means less roasty). Overall, I'm pretty disappointed in how this has turned out. I haven't tasted it yet, but the coloring of the beer makes me wonder if there is a way I can improve my technique.

Since the coloring and most of the flavors come from my steeping grains, this is the area I will focus on. I am beginning to think that my grain bags may be too big to allow proper "steeping." I normally put about a pound in each bag, and they get pretty big and round. This may prevent the grains deep on the inside of the bag from getting their sugars rinsed by the water. So they may not be contributing to the wort at all. The next beer that I brew that requires a large amount of steeping grains, I will probably put less grains in each bag. If it means I use 10 bags, so be it.

I want my beers to come out the way I expect them to.

Welp...

So the Canes didn't put up much of a fight against Pittsburgh. They were swept. Ouch. Apparently, I was wrong on all of my reasons for why they would win in the 3rd round. Mainly on reason 2. I was absolutely dead wrong on our defense.

Apparently, our defense just did not feel like playing. Either that, or they were so beat up from playing 14 previous games against bigger teams that they were just beat up physically and couldn't compete.

No matter what the excuse is, Pittsburgh dominated us in just about every aspect. Their defense was better than ours, their offense made our team, and goalie, look like swiss cheese, and we vastly improved Fleury's stats going into the Stanley Cup Finals.

All in all, it was an absolutely great run up until the Eastern Conference Finals. Honestly, I would never have believed it that the Canes would have made it to the Eastern Conference Finals, let alone the playoffs, if you had told me back in February of this year. There was just no way we were playing well enough. But after a great March, and April, we turned into a team that really believed in itself and took it to other great teams.

However, now that the offseason is upon us, the questions can start coming. Who will we try to resign, who do we not want, who will we try to go after? I'll try to come up with my answers to those this weekend, after I have a bit more time to digest this post-season.

Round 3! Pens and Canes

Well, surprise, surprise! The Canes are still the predicted losers of yet another round of playoff hockey!

I, myself will call shenanigans on them all. And of course I would, I'm a Canes fan. But here are my points.

1. Our forwards solved Martin Brodeur of the 3rd seeded Devils, and the probable 2009 Vezina-winner Tim Thomas. Do you really think that Fleury is the same calibre of goaltender as Marty or Timmy? Fleury is 8-5 with a 2.72 GAA and .901 SV% in the post-season. Those numbers are NOT good enough. At the same time, Cam Ward has a 2.22 GAA and .927 SV% along with 2 shutouts this post-season. Goaltenders win playoff series. Who have the Pens faced? Biron? Varlamov?
   
2. Our "no-name," "bucket list," "non-scoring" Defense has somehow managed to hem in both #3 New Jersey and the number 1 seeded, 2nd-in-the-League-by-1-point-in-the-regular-season Boston Bruins. But somehow, Crosby and Malkin are going to score 7 goals each on them.
   
3. Look at the competition. Pittsburgh has had to play Philadelphia and Washington. Against Philly, they played against a crumbling team in front of a very shaky goaltender (yes, I know I picked Philly to go to the Finals. That was based on gut-feelings, not facts). They then played against the Washington Capitals, who they only had to keep up in score with. The Caps really had no defense(similar to the Pens), and their rookie goaltender turned out to be fluky. It was a matchup to see who could score 4 or 5 goals the fastest. The Canes on the other hand had to best arguably the greatest goaltender there's ever been along with a New Jersey team that is historically defensively-minded(although not as much so recently). The Canes then had to further beat the heavily favored Boston Bruins, the team that everyone had basically handed the Cup to already. Boston was supposedly the perfect team. They had scoring, they had massive shut-down D-men, they had a Vezina Candidate in goal. Yet, the Canes prevailed.
   
4. Lastly, the Hockey Gods are on our side. Yes, the Hockey Gods. The Hockey Gods are fair, they are balanced, they look down upon meddling Refferee's and officials. They do not turn a blind eye to fans who turn their zealotry into putrid vile toward others. They smite those who are not believers of truth, balance, and fairness.
   
   FACT: The Buffalo Sabres have never won the Stanley Cup.
   HOCKEY GOD INTERVENTION: Sabres fans are loud, obtuse, and remind one of the hooligans in England. The Hockey Gods have Smote them.
   
   FACT: The 2002 Stanley Cup Finals were determined by the Refs and NHL Officials, rewarding Detroit with the Stanley Cup.
   HOCKEY GOD INTERVENTION: In 2006 the Edmonton Oilers eliminated the Red Wing in round 1. Then, the team with less Stanley Cups, won the Cup that year (balance).
   
   FACT: The NHL did everything in its power to keep Carolina out of the 3rd round. The refs swallowed their whistles while looking at Chara and Ward abuse our forwards, disallowed a (ultimately meaningless) goal, and called phantom penalties on the regular season's least penalized team.
   HOCKEY GOD INTERVENTION: They influenced Colin Cambell's decision not to suspend Scott Walker for having Aaron Ward's face lose a game of chicken to Scotty's fist. Then, gave the series winning, OT goal to said Scotty.
   
   FACT: Brooks Orpik (Orprick?) viciously broke Erik Cole's cervical (that's neck folks) vertebrae (yes, that's spine folks) on March 4th, 2006. He was about 1 Newton of force close to killing, or permanently paralyzing Erik Cole. He was given a 3-day suspension. Not once did he call Erik Cole to apologize. Not once did he send flowers to Erik while he was in the hospital. Not once has he spoken to the man whom he almost killed, while playing on the same ice.
   HOCKEY GOD INTERVENTION: None.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Yet.
   

Playing Catchup

That's what the Bruins said.

Wow, so the Canes find themselves up 2-1 in their series with the "juggernaut" Boston Bruins. They have done so simply by playing their game and keeping their feet on the gas. They've even kept Boston from throwing them off of their game by matching Boston's physicality.

One would have expected Boston to have come out with guns blazing last night, especially after being shutout at home 3 days earlier. This was not really the case as the Canes were able to effectively cut out the neutral zone.

I'm really looking forward to Friday's game 4. This will be the true test of this series. Will Boston continue to fold or will they roar back and make this a best of 3 series. Can the Cardiac Canes keep up the speed with which they're using to best Boston? Around 7:30 on Friday, we'll begin to find out.


Picture time! I've got plenty from the trips, plus some really cool eye candy. First off, the Desert pics.

The water in Lake Mead is looking pretty low at the Hoover Dam.

Constructing the new suspension bridge over the canyon at the Hoover Dam.

A little birdy decided to check us out eating breakfast.

The Vegas Strip shortly after takeoff.

The Grand Canyon, from 20,000 feet.

Now, for some Beach Pics.

Now, for the really cool pictures:

I've discovered HDR, or High Dynamic Range Photography and Tone mapping. It produces some really cool pictures. It basically takes several pictures of the same scene that are of different exposure levels and blends them together. The above picture is what happens when you merge and tone map the following three pictures together.

Here's a few more HDR images from the desert and the beach.

Hockey and Brew

For now, I'm way too excited and nervous to post much on the Canes as they play against New Jersey in the first round. One minute they look great, the next they give the game away. It's too stressing to write about.

Brewing beer however, is not! You can't possibly stress too much about a process that takes weeks, can you? Well yeah, you definitely can, but thankfully I'm not right now. As of yesterday, The Schitz! Barleywine has reached it's Final Gravity of 1.022, and will just sit in the Primary for another week to clean up a bit. It may even drop another thousandth of a point of two. Then it's off to the Secondary for about 6 weeks. That all means that I will have an empty primary in a week. Well now I can't have that!

Jennifer's Cherry Wheat to the rescue! My wife (SWMBO) loves Sam Adams' Cherry Wheat, so I'm going to try to the best of my ability, plus some creative leeway, to clone it for her. This would normally fall under the American Wheat style of beer, but since it will have cherries in it, it's technically a fruit beer.

The recipe is as follows.

• 3.3 lbs of Wheat Liquid Malt Extract
• 3.3 lbs of Extra Pale Dry Malt Extract
• 3 lbs of pureed cherries
• .5 oz. Centennial hops at 60 min
• .25 oz Centennial at 20 min
• .25 oz. Centennial at 7 min
• 1 package of Wyeast 1010 American Wheat Yeast.

Calculating the Starting Gravity, as well as the final Alcohol content will be hard because of the added sugars from the cherries. The color would normally be very light, but with the addition of cherries, it may add some red, along with some darkening to the beer. Plus, as an added bonus, SWMBO will be out of town this weekend, so she won't even have to smell the brew as it's cooked. Yay for her!

Buffablow vs. Canes 4-8-09

Ah, it's nice to be sitting pretty as the slugs cling on for dear life with their 2.1% chance of making the playoffs. It truly is a thing of beauty that we may eliminate them tonight, assuming NY doesn't beat Philly first.

What will also be nice about tonight's game is that the team we play against will at least have something to play for. Unlike Tuesday's joke of a game against the Islanders the Slugs will at least have some fire. Tonight should be much closer of a match than the Islanders game.

Not much of a preview for today, but here's some pics of Buffalo that helps further explain why it sucks.

What is this freakin Communist Russia?

Good Luck Canes. Take away any hopes of Playoffs the Slug fans have. Give them one more season in which to whine about.

Ottawa vs. Canes 3-25

Look out! Who are these two teams playing in Raleigh tonight? Just two of the hottest teams in the NHL right now.

Malts:

The Canes find themselves as the 5 seed in the Eastern Conference with 87 points. What a difference a week can make. For most of this season the Canes have looked like a bubble team. No one was sure if they would even make the playoffs, if they did, an eighth seed at best. But, March happened. The Canes are 7-1-2 in their last 10 and have won 8 straight at home. March Madness indeed.

Meanwhile, the Senators have had an off year until lately. They're still very far out of the playoff race, but are making a great push here, as of late. They've won 5 straight, and are 9-1-0 in the past ten. They'll pretty much have to match that record again in order to make the playoffs.

Hops:

Crap, who isn't hot for these two teams?

Carolina: Cam Ward has been playing phenomenally lately. He's been playing Brodeur-esque minutes, and putting up pretty decent numbers lately. There's been many less "Ward Shutouts" lately (1 softy a game). Staal has 16 points in the last 10 games, Brindy even has 6 points in 4 games, and even the defense is chipping in.

Ottawa: Still just about everyone. Alfredsson has 7 in the past 4 games, Spezza with 9 in the past 6, and defenseman Brendan Bell has 6 in the last 4 games.

Trub:

Carolina: Eh, I guess Scott Walker since he can't seem to get over his concussion symptoms. He's only been able to play 1 game in the past 2 months or so.

Ottawa: Chris Kelly hasn't put up a point in 6 games. Like I've said before, we're good a breaking bad streaks.


So with all of this, something's gotta give. Will it be Carolina's 4 game winning streak? How about the Sens' 5 game winning streak? Or perhaps the Canes' 8 game home-winning streak? We find out tonight.

I haven't really been able to watch the Canes lately due to the Toronto trip (pics to come!) but based on my gut feeling, I'll go with a Canes win 4-1 to keep on rolling.

Hurricanes Season Ticket Holder Party

So earlier this evening the Hurricanes hosted their exclusive Season Ticket Holder Party. All the STH's got to have a free meal, me a few of the Canes and tour their locker room and "behind the scenes" areas. We actually almost forgot to go to it this evening, but thankfully remembered in time (just in time as it turned out later).

Most of our time was spent waiting in line to get autographs. The team had set up 6 different tables around the RBC center with 4 players/coaches at each table. The schedule only allowed for an hour and a half of time allocated for autographs from the players, and with all the STH's attending, waiting to get those autographs took about 45 minutes per table. Our first table we went to had Assistant Coach Kevin McCarthy, Michael Leighton, Joe Corvo, and Eric Staal. Here's some pics from that table.

Notice out of all of those, who looks like they are most used to being in the spotlight, in the fish-eye lens, and getting the publicity. Someone's been groomed for the public eye.

Next up we waited in line for Jussi Jokinen, Joni Pitkenin, Chad LaRose(The Chuck Norris of Hockey), and Ray Whitney. We were actually the next to last people to get to see those guys. They closed the doors right after us (see the timing part above). The people behind us were pissed. Here's some pics from that table.

The Locker Room tour was much quicker but offered a lot for the camera. Here's some shots.

Busy, Busy, Weekend!

So I really need to update the blog more often. Far too much happened over this past weekend and week for me to have not put up a blog update. We'll start with the Canes.


All last week and this past weekend the Canes were on a Western conference road trip. They visited Vancouver, San Jose, and Phoenix. All of which had very late puck drops. I missed the first two and was slightly disappointed we lost to Vancouver (we are streak breaking team! The Canucks had lost 8 straight.) and was amazed that we beat the Sharks in a Shootout. Would have loved to have stayed up till 12:30 to watch that one. We then went on to man-handle the Coyotes. 7-2. Destroyed a crappy team. Hooray! At least we got 4 points out of 6 on a road trip where we easily could have only gotten 1 or 2.


Next up, the brew's news!


The Porter has come of age. It's at the point now where it is perfectly carbonated. The flavors have come together and it tastes great. No more flatness. I have read that 3 weeks is the magic number for letting your beers carb. The Porter came in at 19 days. Now, it'll only get better with time. Now, just another week and a half or so for the Amber and it'll be good to drink too.


I also got to brew my next beer on Saturday! A nice Irish Red. Unfortunately I didn't have the foresight to brew this about 3 weeks ago in order for it to be ready for St. Patty's day. Here's the ingredients.

• 6.6 lbs of Light Malt Extract.
• 1 lbs of Crystal 80L Malt.
• 1 oz. Perle hops.
• 1oz. Mt. Hood Hops.
• 1 packet of Wyeast London Ale Yeast.

Here's a picture of the Wort right after I had steeped the 80L malt. It's nice and red, just the color I'm hoping the final product will be.

Along the brew lines, we went and took a tour of the new Brewery in Raleigh, Lonerider Beers. It's a real small micro-brewery that just opened shop a month ago. They've got some good brews on tap already, a Hefeweizen and a real robust Porter. I'm not big on Hefe's or wheat beers, they're too sweet for me, but the Porter was very good. It's very strong and robust, almost a Stout in color and flavor. Definitely go a check them out if you have the chance. Here's a few pictures that the SWMBO took of the brewery.

And finally, Boone, our dog, and I went hiking out at Umstead Park on Sunday. It was overly warm so I decided to get rid of the dog's extra energy and take him for a 3 or so mile hike. Here's some pics from the day.