George Dieter for Town Council IPA is in the bottle! Hope it’ll be ready for election day so we can celebrate with George (and Barack)!
The beer is definitely a lot more cloudy/opaque than I was expecting, but it tastes like an IPA, so go me!
The dark basement brewery, now located on the 4th floor, is back in action! Today was the beginning of George Dieter for Town Council IPA! Hopefully on November 6th we’ll all be kicking back, drinking a delicious Rye IPA, and celebrating glorious victory!
I followed this recipe, with a few substitutions. So, I won’t outline the whole process since you can find the details there. As he suggested, I cut the Flaked Rye in half (down to 1 lb.), and cut back a little bit on the hops. Anyway, here are some photos!
I was missing Australia, so I picked up some James Boag’s at Beers of the World.
So many hops!
Apparently there are (at least) three types of American Ale yeast…
July 22 - Just moved ‘Keviweizen’ over to secondary fermentation. Specific Gravity is at 1.010, so amazingly I think it’s pretty close to done fermenting. Might even get to bottle it before I head out of town!
Still not at the finished product yet (obviously), but I’m liking the color and it sort of tastes like I think it’s supposed to!
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July 15 - As of today I’m back in sunny (what?) Rochester! The highlights of the journey back included, nothing. There is no highlight to being on 3 planes for a total of 24 hours, or driving an hour and a half from the airport at 1AM (although I was wide awake at that point), or driving 6 hours to Rochester (I was not wide awake for that!). However, Air New Zealand did give me a complementary glass of wine, and I had an empty seat next to me on the flight from Auckland to LA, so that was nice.
Anyway, thanks all for following my journeys on here! Turns out more of you than I thought were reading this! Hope you enjoyed. Feel free to keep checking back, or keep it on google reader or whatever. I occasionally post photos, and I’ll be posting about beer brewing (which I hope to be doing a lot more of).
July 10 - Well, it’s come to the last night in Sydney :( How did this happen!? Probably terribly cliche to say, but this really did fly by. Hopefully the next 48 hours of plane rides goes by as quickly!
You probably won’t hear from me again on here until I get back! I remember that it was $20 to get internet at the Auckland airport, and I’m not going to pay that just so I can update the blog (which about 2 people read) :P So, when I next post on here, I’ll be back in NY. Also get excited - there may be a new beer brewing post soon after I get to Rochester…it’s definitely long past hefeweizen time!
Bye Sydney! I’m gonna miss you, but I’ll see you soon I’m sure. This trip has been amazing - the people, the places, even the work has been a nice change of pace (maybe I’m just getting carried away). I’m not going to be able to walk to the ocean in 45 minutes back home…
July 9 - Oh man, I completely spaced on the whole blogging thing! I was just doing a mock packing run (half heartedly, I barely packed anything really) to see if everything can come back with me…it’s looking all right I think!
Anyway, today featured the glorious, glorious defeat of MATLAB, as I finally got my damn curve fitting code to work. This has been an off and on battle for the better part of 2 years (the off portions of the battle are the portions where I gave up). Turns out it’s kind of motivating when your supervisor just says, “Oh you can do those curve fits today right? Because I’m going to talk about this data at the conference I’m leaving tomorrow to attend.” Not the exact words, but the basic gist.
Sadly, tomorrow is my last (full) day in Sydney, at least for a while (I have a sneaking suspicion I will return someday). This may call for a return to the Portuguese chicken place (Angelo’s, I found out, is it’s name) because they were closed today! Oh well, I was not sad to eat Pad Thai instead (although they did not give me any utensil, so I had to use two plastic knives as chop sticks. Actually this was not as much of a disaster as I expected).
July 8 - By all definitions, I am definitely an old fart now. Bring on the late 20s! So what, now my grey matter density starts declining, and my body starts falling apart, right? Time to start meditating I guess!
Anyway, me and my decrepit brain/body slept in until after 11, and then spent the rest of the morning listening to the Yankee game (until it got really ugly - 4 errors guys, seriously!?). A bit after noon I headed off to Coogee (pronounced, surprisingly, as it is written, “coo” - “gee” ) Beach to do another coastal walk from Coogee to Maroubra (hard to say). It was almost two and a half miles walk just to get to the coast, and then about 5k (~3 miles) each way from Coogee to Maroubra…just another 10 mile day, no big deal. Most of the walk to the coast was on Rainbow Street, which I consider a huge missed opportunity for Sydney - why would you not name it Rainbow Road! I really want to photoshop this picture with the Mario Kart characters and colored road, but I’m not sure I’m really good enough with photoshop to pull it off. Takers?
Anyway, for those of you playing along at home, Coogee Bay is the next bay south of Bronte (and then Bondi is north of that) which you might remember from two weeks ago, and it was a clear enough day to get a view all the way up to Bondi. Looking at google maps, it seems there is only one more bay (on the East end of south Sydney…) which I sadly will not get to, Long Bay. Here was the view looking south from the start of the walk.
At one point along the walk there were stairs going down to the rocky coast, so I went down and wandered around a bit.
Little did I know that part of the walk later on would require walking across a large stretch of rocky beach, so I really didn’t need the additional beach walking. There were big boulders in the way, so not much of a view south from here, but you could see a bit north (looking right into the sun). Similar to other coastal walks I’ve done here, this one had various points where the walk just ended, and you had to wander through the neighborhoods to get to the next section. Usually the markings were clear enough…
Just before getting to Maroubra Beach, there was a very high outcropping of rock that gave great views back all the way to Bondi. It seemed like a good lunch place, though sadly I had not seen a single cafe (except one that was closed until 2013) along the walk (luckily there were some at the beach). It was already after 3 at this point, I was hungry!
The waves crashing into the coast were really ridiculous, I sat and watched them for a while. There were lots of large rocks going out into the water, so the waves would hit them, get redirected, then crash into other waves…something like that. Anyway, the result was water splashing very very high in the air and very violently (I think maybe the tide must have been coming in). Neato.
I continued on to Maroubra Beach where I was finally able to get some lunch. Once again I had to stare down several seagulls so that I could finish it all, they really come right up to you just waiting for you to stop paying attention for 2 seconds.
After hanging around there for a while, I started the long journey back. I certainly could have taken a more efficient route, but I decided to retrace my steps to enjoy the beautiful scenery a second time. I also finally went to the bakery I’ve been eyeing for most of my stay here (Breadtops, about 4 blocks south from where I’m staying). Why I waited this long, I do not know. I got something called (I think) a chocolate horn, which honestly rivaled the pain au chocolat from Paris. The chocolate was soft, I seem to remember it being harder in the French ones. But man was that good. I think I’m going to go there for breakfast every day until I leave, and I may bring some to lab meeting Tuesday!
July 7 - Due to technicalities of the massively fast forwarded time zone here, I am actually not older yet, and won’t be until 3:17AM tomorrow! But for tradition’s sake we’ll say that today was indeed my birthday. Today featured many things, including: 1) another friggin’ rainbow (a double rainbow in fact…keep reading), 2) the world’s most pointless lookout, 3) one of my more ridiculous souvenir purchases, and much more!
The plan for the day was to set out for Watsons Bay (basically opposite Manly, all the way out east), and then to head back to circular quay and wander through “The Domain” (giant park south and east of the Opera House). And the plan was successful! First took the ferry to Watsons Bay (bit less than 30 minutes), and as usual had many great views of Sydney (I’ll spare you most of them since I’ve probably posted a ton already).
After getting off the ferry, I headed left (north) towards South Head - yes, that is correct. I passed my birthday dinghy (the boats all had numbered slots, but not all of them had stickers) 
and first stopped at Camp Cove, about halfway to south head.
As you can see, it was another one of those weird Sydney winter days where if I look in one direct, it’s a beautiful sunny, almost tropical, day. And if I turn around, it looks like the world is about to end. I continued along the path through remnants of an old fort (I think, I’ll be honest I did not read any of the signs here…), and you could see back all the way to downtown (weather permitting).
This path also featured the world’s most pointless lookout,
where you could stare adoringly at the trees in all directions. Finally I made it to south head, atop some rather dangerous looking cliffs. In fact signs (foolishly I did not take pictures) assured me that people had been injured jumping from the cliffs. I really did not need convincing on this one.
From here I headed down to the “Gap” (not the shopping one). I don’t really know why this park was called the gap…but it was! Again, nice views of Watsons Bay, and theoretically downtown although it was getting a bit too apocalyptic out to see all that way. It never did more than lightly rain, but the clouds really looked like doomsday.
Oh hey, I’m still on this trip! I was confused by the timer, hence the awkward almost smile. I really need a haircut…
This was also sight of the double rainbow (whoa). In addition to there being two of them, one of the rainbows was EPIC. On the plus side, I could see where it ended. On the downside, there didn’t appear to be a pot of gold, and if there was, I wasn’t about to dive down there to get it…
OK. By now it was about 2:45…lunch time! There was a place selling fish and chips by the ferry terminal, so I got some food there, fended off the seagulls, and then departed back to Circular Quay. I entered “The Domain” (so dramatic), and made it to the government house barely 10 minutes before they closed the gates. This was a neat building, although I was too late to get a tour of the inside. Proof that Europe wuz here.
After the security guard told me it was time to leave, I continued to the other “arm” of the park, opposite the opera house. The sun was setting so there were some nice views. Here I saw 2 groups taking wedding photos (and 2 more later in Hyde park, across from St. Mary’s).
Speaking of St. Mary’s, yes, that was the next stop! I ended up way farther east in the park than I though, so it was a bit of a hike to get back to Hyde Park. But I made it in time to get some dusk photos of the cathedral, and to take a brief stroll through the inside (it was under construction on the last trip). I am particularly proud of the photo of the church with the fountain in the foreground :)
I kept walking south in the park until I got to the ANZAC memorial (Australia and New Zealand Army Corp, I believe).
Well, this was as far south as I wanted to go, so I crossed over to Pitt Street (which runs right next to the Sydney Tower). There is TONS of shopping along here, and an extensive pedestrian mall where there was a band playing. I bought a kebab, but decided to save it until I got back down to the harbor area. Along the way I passed the Queen Victoria Building (they are all about her here, also I think this building might have been pictured in a previous post)…
I found a nice spot for my kebab, and I couldn’t help but laughing at all the photographers who were out. Now, I’m all for night photography (obviously). But this scene just made me laugh a little, just everyone lining up their tripod right next to everyone else. And after these people left, more people took the spot! Be a little creative people!
And now that I’ve made fun of other people, here are my night photos :P
On my walk back to Circular Quay, I remember that I still needed to buy a few souvenirs, so I walked a block back up Pitt Street.
On one hand, I’m ashamed I spent money on this. But on the other hand, no, I’m not.
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