ben.parmeter

I know, I’m a giant slacker, I’ve been in Japan for a week and I haven’t uploaded any posts or photos or anything. Sorry internet… here’s a little something.

Just twelve hours on a plane is all it takes for me to get to one of the most amazing cities in the world. This is my second trip to Japan and I have to say it is just an incredible place. Everyone here is so polite, serious and happy all at the same time. At least that is what it appears from the outside. Tokyo is squeaky clean. The city is immaculate, safe, and awe inspiring. I have no problem walking the streets late at night - and feel 100% safe at all times. It’s an odd feeling for me, coming from the US where in a big city like this you would need to be careful which streets you strayed to at night, lest you be robbed, raped or killed. But here, in Tokyo, there is a sense of complete safety. Perhaps I am being naïve, but thus far everyone I have talked to feels the same way.

Being basically stuck in the center of Tokyo, next to the Imperial Palace, we really see nothing but prosperity. With everything that we hear the states about the struggling economy in Japan we see no evidence of this at all in this bustling metropolis. Expensive cars, business men in suits, super high-end brands everywhere. Today we traveled outside of Tokyo proper and into the suburbs to visit a customer outside the city. From the windows of the train, I can see seedy underbelly that most travelers do not get to see. I saw people living in makeshift houses made out of blue tarps and scraps of wood and metal. It’s not rampant, just occasional and very noticeable. It’s evident that the economy actually has impacted this country. I’ve got to hand it to the people of Japan - they hide it well.

My visit is bitter sweet, because, I am indeed here on business and we are working 90% of the time. This makes it pretty difficult to get out and sight see during the day. Fortunately, we did have an entire day to do some touristy things on Monday because of the local holiday here. But since then it’s been work, and meals, and back to the hotel. And to make matters worse, I picked up one of the local viruses which started with a fitful night with a stuffy head and sore throat. It’s been lingering throughout the week. It’s been hard to get out of bed in the morning, get the suit and tie on and go to work. I’ve been muddling through, but I can’t help but to long for my own bed back in the states.

Yesterday, we visited a customer in Yamato. One of the engineers that we work with took a couple of us to a bar in Yokohama called Cheers which is basically a beer bar that carries a wide selection of European beers. After sampling a few good Belgian and German beers, we moved onto another more intimate and, to me, more fascinating place. Our host led us to what appeared to be a multi-story apartment building. However, on the third floor, after climbing a tiny stairwell, we discovered the Thrash Bar (I am not completely sure about that name, but it was something to do with Thrashing). The bar was literally, only 10 ft. deep by 25 feet long. Enough room for the physical bar, and eight bar stools. They carried a pretty nice selection of Japanese beers and strangely enough a wide selection of California beers. Behind the bar was a TV playing DVD’s of German Heavy Metal bands, and our extremely friendly bar-tender who had a very good grasp of English. What a great beer-soaked evening it was; new friends and great times. I’ll definitely do this again, if I ever get the chance.

As you read this, I’m likely on my way home or have already returned. I’ve posted to photos in the gallery, here.

Sayonara for now.

My congratulations to you Mr. Obama. You worked incredibly hard to get to this point and have won the hearts and minds of many of us over this journey. I’m proud of this country for making a wise decision for a change. You haven’t even become our president yet, but the sense of hope is already welling up inside us.

I just have one small request during your next four years.

Please help us to restore the sense of pride that we have lost over the last eight years. I hated to feel ashamed of our country when traveling abroad - but let’s face it, Americans lost the popularity contest and have been steadily dropping in the rankings over the past eight years. They’ll still think of us as fat and stupid, but at least that would be better than war mongers, liars, and hate filled nasty persons.

Yup - simple request. Make us proud.

Photo Courtesy of http://flickr.com/photos/raul

I don’t often write about music on this blog, but I feel it’s time to rectify that right now. Mostly, I didn’t really feel that gushing about the new music that I personally like, is all that interesting for the readership here. To hell with that. I’m going to gush and rave and hype. Have I lost you yet?

Recently, I’ve been turned on to a couple of fresh bands that I’m really enjoying. First of the bunch, in a more mainstream thread, Tokyo Police Club released an album called Elephant Shell. I’ve been hooked on these guys for months - even though something inside me says I shouldn’t like this album, I do. It’s impossible not to like the poppy-crunchy-ness. I fully expect these guys to be on your local alternative clear-channel radio stations any day now. Let’s see, who else, oh yes, PAS/CAL is one of my new favorites. Just listen to this track off their latest full length and tell me I’m crazy. Outstanding stuff. It’s just all over the place, changing tempo, starting, stopping, melodies, all in this six minute long song. I love it. And lastly for today, Noah and the Whale have at least one track that I am enamored with which you can listen to here (scroll to the bottom “Five Years Time”). It’s an endearing song. Hope you enjoy that one as much as I do.

I grabbed a bottle of my first homebrew tonight, and tossed it into the freezer to get it nice and cool. After about 30-45 minutes of cooling, I grabbed two pint glasses from the cupboard. The first test, opening the bottle. Using the fridge mounted bottle opener, I leveraged off the bottle cap which released a satisfying hiss as the carbonation rushed out. A misty fog briefly wafted from the top of the bottle. Also a good sign. I gingerly tilted the bottle to pour the liquid into the pint glasses, taking care not to stir up too much sediment. Bringing the pint glass to my nose, I sniffed to see if I could detect any off odors. Nope - nothing detectably bad. In fact, it smelled delightful. And then, the taste. Now, I won’t sugar coat this and tell you that it’s the best beer I’ve ever tasted… that would be over stating things just a bit. No, I’ll be honest, it’s not the best beer I’ve tasted. It’s a bit on the light side, not a very strong flavor. Not to say it doesn’t have good mouthfeel and body. It was fizzy and satisfying indeed. However, it lacked any real strong flavor of hops or malts - just smooth. Suzy says she detected a hint of lemon and seemed a little displeased with the flavor in general when paired with food. However, I couldn’t really complain. This is my first brew after all and the beginning of a great love affair with home brewing. I give it a B+. Next up, Hefe!

UPDATE 10-15: Tasted another bottle tonight and wow what a difference a day makes. The beer tasted brilliant today. Maybe that last bottle was a slightly off sample - or maybe it just needed more time. Either way, this is getting more exciting by the day!

Yesterday, Suzy and I bottled the beer. Yes, after two weeks of waiting anxiously, we opened fermenter and siphoned off the delicious liquid into a another large bucket which we used to finally bottle the beer. This part of the process has had me very nervous for the past two weeks. With so many variables, there are lots of opportunities for something to go wrong with the process.

After carefully extracting the fermenter from the bathtub, in an effort not to stir up any of the yeast residue clinging to the sides of the bucket, I slowly transferred it into the kitchen where the bottling was to take place. I lifted the heavy bucket up onto the counter, accidentally slammed the base against the counter-top, I cursed myself for not being careful enough. Probably not a big deal, I told myself. I stood for a moment mentally preparing myself for potential catastrophic beer failure. Then I began to crack the lid open. As I did this, a wonderful smell arose from the container. A sweet aroma, a bouquet of distinctly fresh… beer. There was no mistaking it - the process had worked. The smell and appearance of the liquid proved this a success.

I quickly hooked up the siphon and began transferring the beer into the second bucket with the priming sugar. After siphoning the beer into the second bucket, I was able to attach the bottling wand to the hose and spigot and begin the bottling process. At this point, I decided to actually taste the beer. Understand that at this point, it has just been mixed with the priming sugar, is still warm and of course, flat. However, I needed to know if the flavor was right. And thus, I poured out a shot glass worth of the liquid and lifted it to my lips. I emptied the container into my mouth, let is slosh around a bit, testing the flavor and finally swallowed. Success. Sweet success. Literally - definitely could taste the priming sugar. But at this point, it was definitely, beer. And quite tasty I might add.

And so we spent about an hour bottling the stuff up and transferred it to the bathtub again (mostly in case any bottles decide to explode). The fermentation is still in process and that priming sugar should generate some great carbonation to give it just the right mouth-feel. In two weeks, I’ll have a very drinkable beer - I hope. Wish me luck.

The jig is up. I got the following note from YouTube today:

Video Disabled

A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video What’s Inside: Continuous Spray Bottle. The audio content identified in your video is Crimewave by Crystal Castles vs. Health. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

Replace Your Audio with AudioSwap

Don’t worry, we have plenty of music available for your use. Please visit our AudioSwap library to learn how you can easily replace the audio in your video with any track from our growing library of fully licensed songs.

Other Options

If you think there’s been a mistake, or you have other questions, please visit the Copyright Notice page in your account.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

It seems a big corporate recording company doesn’t like people using their copyrighted material in our personal YouTube videos. Even if those videos were only viewed a total of 50 times by probably only a handful of unique visitors. Well, big recording company, I’m sorry - truly. I should have gotten your permission first. I suppose there was some blatant copyright infringement here, but isn’t it good marketing in the end? Please, please don’t sue.

Oh well, I’ve swapped out the audio with some creative commons licensed music from NIN. All is right with the world again.

The fermentation process has slowed to what seems like inactivity. However, this may actually be part of the conditioning phase of the brewing process. My concern is that, it has only really been active (active = visible gases bubbling the airlock) for about 6 days or less which perhaps could mean that the entire fermenting process may have been at too high a temperature (over 75F), and possibly caused the yeast to ferment too quickly. If this is the case, my beer could attain I higher alcohol content and thus a strong alcohol taste. However, leaving the beer in a conditioning phase for another week may help to even that flavor out.

And if I’m wrong about the conditioning phase, Suzy and I moved the whole bucket to the bathtub which we filled with cold water to bring the temperature down a bit. Perhaps this will help move things along at the proper pace. Probably should have done this in the first place, since it’s really hard to control temperatures in warm house in the summertime.

Until next time…

UPDATE: After submersing the bucket in the cool water of the bathtub, the fermentation seems to have resumed to normal. Now the challenge is keeping the water level up in the bathtub so we can keep the temperature within good fermentation levels. I think despite this, I’m going to bottle this weekend. I’m really looking forward to bottling actually - should be quite fun.

Just as I had mentioned in previous post, I have stepped up and made good on my plans to brew beer. Today, I peeled myself off of the couch and went down to the local home-brew shop. There I was confronted with a vast array of confusing choices of equipment and brewing materials. I quickly made friends with the guy running the place, who himself had just started brewing beer a couple of months ago. I told him what I had wanted to do - and we started off trying to keep it simple and cheap and then escalated from there.

First, I chose a beer kit which consists of all the delicious ingredients to make the actual beer. I chose the “Strong Nut Brown Ale” which comes with all the grains (Pale Liquid Malt Extract LME, Victory Malt, Chocalate Malt), Hops (Northern Hops from the UK, and Willamette Hops from Oregon), Irish Moss for flavor, Turbonado sugar for brewing, yeast for brewing also and bottling sugar.

Next, I chose to purchase the actual fermenter (5-Gallon Bucket) and gear from the same shop. This is how things started to escalate in price. As we chatted over the course of 45 minutes, we slowly began piling on item after item. It started with just the fermenter, the airlock, then the rack and bottling bucket, the siphon, the tubing, the bottling tube, and the list goes on. Not really all that terrible when you consider after purchasing all of this it was still around $80 with about $35 going to the actual beer kit contents.

The brewing process is relatively simple, but very precise. In a way, I feel a bit like a cop-out by not actually doing the process from scratch - actually selecting the ingredients one by one and preparing the malts, etc. However for a first timer, I think that going with a kit is a wise choice. Maybe if I really enjoy this, I’ll start to experiment with more complicated brews.

Thankfully, HopTech has some great instructional videos online which helped me immensely. I learned some new stuff that wasn’t in the instructions from these videos. They really helped me visualize what I needed to do during the entire process.

In two-three weeks, I’m hoping to have 5-gallons of delicious, delicious beer. Wish me luck.

It’s been a long, long time. Sorry I haven’t written you, internet. Life gets busy you know. With work and the house, and a fast paced lifestyle there hasn’t been much time to jot down my thoughts, whims, musings, etc. But let me try and make up for it. I know it’s not much but I have a few pictures from a recent attempt at the John Muir Trail here in my gallery. And how about a couple random paragraphs?

Random thought: Winter Beer Season is coming soon bringing with it a bevy of delicious dark yummy beers. I’ve been talking about it for a really long time now, but I think this year I’m finally going to do it. I want to brew my own beer. It’s been a fantasy of mine for a really long time - to start my own brewing operation and eventually work my way up to a microbrewery a’la McMenamens in the Pacific Northwest.

I’m going to Japan in a few weeks and thusly needed to pull the old monkey suit out of the closet. That old suit is over five years old, hard to believe. Knowing that the suit is now a tight fit (I’ve put on a few pounds over the last 5 years, ok, jeez), I decided to take it to get altered. The whole experience was very humbling - and really put my weight gain into perspective. I’ve literally gained about 4-5 inches around my mid-section. Shock! And so I ended up walking out of the store having donated my old suit to charity and purchased a brand new suit. Am I a complete sucker?

Hopefully that holds you over for now internet. Sorry about the cold shoulder - can we still be friends?

Well, I didn’t get a chance to write from the campsite. There was far too much “relaxing” going on for me to whip out the phone and tap-out a full post. However, I didn’t want to leave you hanging with nothing after I teased you with the possibility of pictures in my Friday post.

Let me preface the link with just how cool this spot is. Somehow by magic, we were able to obtain a group spot in the campground which is nearly unparalleled for it’s sheer size. We literally had multiple acres to ourselves, completely separate from the other campgrounds. We had our own bathrooms, charcoal grills, potable water taps, garbage and recycling, several fire rings, and just all around amazing nature around us. It’s just a short hike down to the sea shore (less than a mile), where you can check out the tide pools or just fly a kite (like Suzy and I did). We’re definitely going to have to organize a repeat trip to this place.

Click this link to go to the Salt Point gallery.