Posts Tagged Lazarus Ale
State of the Writer: October 2011
Posted by DLThurston in Capsule, State of the Writer on October 1, 2011
Another month. September absolutely sped by. Here in the DC area it was a hell of a month with earthquakes and flooding, and on a personal end included getting a new sewer line finally installed at the Casa Del Thurston.
What it didn’t include much of was writing, unfortunately. I’ve been working on a steampunk short story located on Venus that has a lot of promise, but needs better direction than it currently has. In the end it’s one story that could be told in two different directions, which is interesting considering my upcoming project for October.
After the blog post I made a few days ago about my conjoined novel, I’ve been thinking more and more about the status of Capsule. The final conclusion is that it is, and always has been, two novels. The final straw was reading Kraken by China Mieville. It’s a story that goes in a lot of different directions, but at its heart it remains a heist story. Capsule? It’s gone in not only different directions, but has transitioned from being one type of plot line (murder conspiracy) to another (cult kidnapping) with only the most tenuous of ties between the two. It’s had this problem as long as I’ve been writing it. On one hand, I wish I could have seen this sooner, on the other I’m glad I was able to see it at all.
So this month, the process of division starts. I’ll track it in the blog, as I suspect it’ll make for an interesting case study. Scrivener for Windows is going to be my tool of choice, identifying which pieces go in novel A (still called Capsule) and which go into novel B (working title: Post Apocalypse). Really, the entirety of the process will be broken into three parts:
- Identifying the pieces that go in each novel.
- Identifying what needs to fill in the missing pieces from each half.
- Outlining.
- Writing.
In an ideal world I’d have one outlined enough to be a Nanowrimo project, but I highly doubt that’ll happen.
Two other big October features:
Capclave! As I’ve attended other writers conventions, the local one here in DC still strikes me as my favorite and the best I’ve attended. If you’re a genre fiction writer in the DC area and you haven’t been to Capclave…why the hell not?
Flashathon! There are still some details to leak in the coming three weeks, and then the event itself three weeks from today. October 22nd. I’m hoping to get a nice turnout for the event here on the blog. I’m hoping even more for some fantastic mental exercise and inspiration.
State of the Writer’s Blog
Blog viewership continues to grow, for which I am eternally grateful. In the ongoing quest to reach eyeballs in all 50 states, I entered September needing six more states. During the month, this blog got its first views from Montana, South Dakota, and Louisiana. That leaves only North Dakota, Arkansas, and Delaware to go. I’m not sure what the next goal is going to be after finally collecting all fifty, but I’ll figure that out when I get there.
State of the Writer’s Beer
No news. Haven’t done any brewing or much drinking this month. Means that bottles we have are that much better aged. Been meaning to crack another bottle of Lazarus.
New Peculiar Bottle Day 2
Posted by DLThurston in Home Brew on July 2, 2011
Oh what difference the correct hardware makes!
When we bottled mustache cat, we were stuck with tubing that was too wide bore to fit on to either the auto siphon or the bottling wand, which meant a lot of flying by the seat of our pants. Since then, I took a trip to Home Depot and found the right size tubing (yes, food grade tubing, it’s intended for ice makers). And then…it’s like magic! When you can get a vacuum seal everything works so much faster.
Oh, and when you remember to add your priming sugar and don’t have to empty all the bottles and starting over, it also works a hell of a lot better.
As for the beer itself? Lazarus Ale is, to remind, a lemongrass ginger ale with a pound on honey thrown in to boot. It smells strongly of ginger, which is not something that I’m used to beer smelling like. I suspect it’ll be a fantastic beer to try the next time I do sushi.
I did take a sip of it, it’s just something that I do when I’m bottling a beer. Yeah, the end product will never taste quite the same as that taste, but it can give an indication as to where the beer is heading. The sip wasn’t very bitter at all. The flavor…was interesting. That’s the first word that both my wife and I used to describe it. Interesting. Which isn’t always the best of words. But after that sip, after I thought about it, I wanted more. I wanted a full bottle.
Patience. August 1 is the earliest I’m going to put a bottle in the fridge. I’ll have to bide my time with Mustache Cat until then.
So what’s next? Well, there are two directions I’m thinking about going. The first would be to attempt to recreate my greatest success from my Mr. Beer days, a boysenberry stout called Pie Stout. But I’m also thinking about taking a break from beer and instead going for a hard cider.
On a side note, we got some wormwood today for the garden. Wormwood is used for vermouth and absinthe, so I was curious if it was ever used for beer. Well, I knew there were other ingredients used to bitter beer before hops became the primary go to. Apparently wormwood was one of those. Does that mean I’ll eventually brew with home grown wormwood? Not necessarily. But it’s tempting.
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