Bored

Man, I'm bored out of my tree. I need to get back to Calgary soon. I get to fly back this weekend for a wedding, which is nice but I'm only in town for about 2 days total and can't get a whole lot done. But maybe on the long weekend if the roads aren't too bad I can get out of here to at least Edmonton.

But, of course, having nothing to do does allow for "self improvement" by learning things. When I came up to Fort St. John I figured I'd be reading lots of books and learning all kinds of things that I always wanted to. Ha! Full cable TV came with my apartment, so that took up a lot of time. But I'm bored of TV now, but there is still the computer. Which isn't all that bad right now since I am using it for beer research (recipes, hop styles, malt prices, etc). But, I have been reading my "Designing Great Beers" book by Ray Daniels, which is quite informative. So I guess I am learning something.

Anyway, I'm just using this downtime to research the first few beers I want to brew when I get home. Ingredients are a must. Paddock Wood supplies in Saskatoon seems like a good supplier for me. Plus a friend of mine might be able to pick the stuff up and bring it to me, saving shipping costs maybe. I figure what I want to work on is (1) a simple english pale/bitter that can be used as a "standard reference" beer, (2) a Fuller's London Pride clone, (3) a strong dark belgian ale (only 1/2 a batch since these are apparently hard to make at home!), (4) something else... maybe an IPA or munich mild dark. Although with it being winter it would be a good time to be brewing lagers (easy to keep cold). So maybe a German wheat lager.

Cheers.