Trappist Beers

Trappist beer is nominally brewed by or under Trappist Monks. The brothers evolved a very distinct style of beer, plus a unique beer, Orval, one of my favorites.

There is politics involved. The Dutch monastery, the only non-Belgian one, was denied use of the above logo for a while for getting too much commercial assistance.

Here's a Michael Jackson review of the newest Trappist brewery, and one of an Abbey beer, i.e. not official but in the same style.

Here's one of the mentions we got for our brewery. Though not for the same style of beer, it was great that the Beerhunter got what we were trying to do.

Seek out authentic Trappist brews and get in touch with your spiritual side.

The 24 Hours

Since I've been working from 4pm to 4am, I have to stay up 24 hours to shoot in a Sunday tournament.

I went to a beer festival in Belgium once called The 24 Hours---it was better.

Words Fail

Yes, this is an actual item. A gift from the US to the UK.

Too Late, but Wisdom May Follow

The BBC photographer, reporter, family, or Hezbollah PR man, pushed forward this kid to stand next to unexploded ordinance (UXO). This sort of behavior may be evidence that, locally, Hezbollah may have jumped the shark.

Globally, western media are still celebrating Hezbollah's great victory, but this fellow has been mentioned. Here's a more recent shorter biography from Wikipedia.

Maybe we can hope that although Hezbollah wins the infowar, democratic forces will win the peace. But hope is not a plan, as Ike famously said.

Zombie on Faking News

Zombie, who usually covers marches in San Francisco where protesters who really should don't wear clothes, analyzes a smear campaign against Israel. Having seen several of these in the past, I would say that you can't believe anything on TV that comes out of the Middle East from either Islamic sources or wire-service sources---ditto CNN, etc.

These guys look sharp

Yep, those are Iraqi flags on that rolling beauty. It's a photo of a tactics demonstration during a change over from American forces to domestic ones in charge of security for a region. These are 6th Army troops. We seem to only hear about the bad operators over there on our TV and Radio, but a lot of reports from the field say that a lot of these guys are pretty sharp---with some units up to our standards in tactics if not non-corruptibility.

OK, say you have a nice Stryker and you don't want to ding it up... well protect it with a dismount carrying a rifle. I gotta get me one of them thangs---but I think I'll shoot it in shorts, it's hot out.

"Day Off"

Friday's one of my days off when I can turn my schedule around to a normal, i.e. daylight schedule. But, when drilling wells, mother nature gets her say---and she say complete da well. So all we have to do is grout in the casing and move off the site...supposed to only take a few hours.

Well, it was a 13 hour day. So I'm just going to stay up to go help set up the match for our local IPSC shoot, then sleep early, then hopefully shoot the match, then go back to work for another 12+ hour day.

Woot.

Von Clausewitz Redux

Just as Darwin never seems to be eclipsed even as knowledge of the biosciences grows by leaps and bounds, Von Clausewitz still stands as the theoretical genius of the science of war. Current theorists often think initially that they are moving beyond the old master, but are subsumed by him in the end.

Here's a short article on modern theories incorporating non-state actors. (N.B. the reference to WWIV is typical of us who consider the Cold War WWIII. Sometimes I think that August 1914 - Early 1990s is just one long war and post 9-11 is the start of another long war.)

Here is a post tallying up the winners and losers up to the latest cease fire or hudna in the Middle East.

Finally, Michael Totten experiences danger relativity on his trip to Israel. This reminds me of a mil-blog post I read where the writer was describing how he calculates the time he has in his bunk from the first mortar hit until he has to get up and put on his body armor.

Brewing Beer: Yeast

Well, it's time for another technical talk at our homebrew club, but I won't be able to attend because of work schedules. So, here are some notes anyway.

Yeast turns the weak sugary water from the mash---that was boiled with the hops---into beer. The yeastie beasties eat the sugar and we drink their, ahem, p**s. It's a good deal for all concerned.

Yeast does come in a dry form, but most interesting yeasts only come in liquid form. There are two outfits that we locally use for liquid yeast: White Labs and Wyeast Labs. Besides their normal lineup, both these outfits will grow up most library yeasts for you or keep your own private yeast line for you.

Yeast is very important for the taste of beer. We as a club conduct experiments every time we have a megabrew and pitch different yeasts in carboys that ferment side by side, starting from the same wort. Sometimes the difference is astounding and unbelievable, except it just happens.

There are two general types of brewers yeast: top fermenting and bottom fermenting. The top variety is traditionally associated with ales and the bottom with lagers. Top yeast is so-called because they tend to grab gas bubbles and rise to the surface just after their most-active phase. Bottom yeast tended to sink and stay cleaner in old-fashioned open-top fermenters.

Modern day enclosed fermenters have blurred the effects and behavior of traditional yeasts, but the taste differences are still there. Ale yeasts are harvested out of the bottoms of conical fermenters these days.

You can delve into yeast ranching yourself, but most of us tend to stick with the commercial libraries. However, you can repitch lager yeasts about 5 times without restarting them and ale yeasts about 9 times. If you fish top yeast off the top of an open fermenter with a net, you can repitch practically forever---with the occasional acid wash---or homebrew wash.

Here's my advice: pick a beer style that is new to you, get its most characteristic yeast, and take a shot at it. Repitch the yeast a couple of times with the same recipe. Taste them and marvel at the complexity that is yeast.

Yep, those are our boys

Hopefully it will not be necessary to pencil in sensitivity training at 0500 hours.

Strange connection

Rocket vs Car

Michael Totten is another reader-financed blogger who hangs out in Beirut and travels the Mid-East. He has a post wherein he meets Michael Oren, mentioned before on this blog as the author of Six Days of War, and a Hollywood screenwriter (!).

If you poke around on his site, you can find his adventure of driving to Iraq through Turkey.

Sidebar Surfing: Peoples Cube

If today's NY Times had been covering the action in Eastern Europe in 1943, we might be entertained with this front page. Other reporting can be found at The People's Cube.

Protests on the News

Typical Sensitivity towards Others Demonstrated

Usually when the news media cover a protest, there is an asymmetry: outrageous right-wing placards are featured but similar or more outrageous left-wing placards get left on the cutting room floor. Here's one that didn't make the news along with the terrorist and communist banners that normally get cut. Zombie snaps everything, however, and posts it on his site.

Zombie works in San Francisco so as you tour his site be aware that there may be some walking nakedness that really should be covered up.

Way down upon the Litani River

...where I don't wanna be...

One of my favorite bloggers, Bill Roggio---who hangs out these days at the Counterterrorism Blog---is keeping track of the IDF offensive.

Bill is the kinda blogger who, in the near past, raised money to embed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He calls 'em as he sees 'em. Anyway, he and I are both disappointed that the Israeli Government waited for Hezbollah to recover and set up defenses before authorizing a ground campaign to the Litani River---which could fizzle out politically as it is. Stand-off air campaigns against people who want to die fighting are not very threatening.

The initial response should have begun (this is strategy, the realm of amateurs) with a strike to the Bekaa Valley with the flanks protected by air assets, a la Patton's sweep through Southern Germany. Hezbollah will be victorious if they stay alive and make more news videos.

The Litani River should be a place to fall back to with peacekeepers left behind in all of southern Lebanon.

Let's meet at 5 for beers

I've been going to work at 4pm (1600) and getting off at 4am (0400), so that means that a beer after work happens at 5am (0500). You would think that it would be weird, but actually it works out pretty well.

Now to turn my body clock around for a day and a half of normal life.

What do human shields look like?

Ok, you're a Hezbollah (Hizballah, etc) gunman and you want to shoot at IDF soldiers but you don't want to be turned into a grease spot, what do you do? Well, you stand in front of civies and kids.

Amazingly, you can find people in this country that sympathize with these goblins---who until 9/11 had killed more Americans than any other terrorist group. Some people like Senators, for example.

Whatever the 1948 Geneva Convention (and prior) called a civilian is out of date.

OK, I call Bullsh*t

Check out the collection of pictures the wire services are trying to sell to your local paper. Always have a throw-down toy when attempting to bias the story.

This is not in the same league as staging corpses in different poses in day-long shoots, but, you know, civilizations can be judged by how they treat their toys.

The image I have of these various photographers wandering around Beirut taking pictures of these toys reminds me of a geologist joke---his wife says: don't you have enough pictures of that damn hammer?

A couple from VDH

Some sidebar surfing with VDH. A nice one, wondering why our own Senators have forgotten that Hezbollah killed hundreds of Marines. And some cowboy cinematic allusions in response to Time Magazine.

I too have wondered at the appeasement of the 30s, but living through today I can see that those pathetic individuals in the past are not so different from those strident voices today.

Local Man Has 15 Minutes

The goblin who shot 6 Jewesses in Seattle recently is from West Richland---a local city. Mark Steyn has a column mentioning him this week. That is making it in the goblin business.

Besides his mad-dog qualities of shooting unarmed women, our local goblin evidently exposed himself to young women at a mall fountain and failed at dentistry school. He wasn't a letter carrier, but if he was it would have been of a piece.

Although he is from a Muslim family who helped build the big Mosque on, get this, Bombing Range Road, he is rumored to have converted to Christianity sometime in the past. Several interest groups should be interested in hanging that bastard. However, he's probably crazy so our justice system will just give him a smooch.

Good doggy, wipe that foam off your mouth.

Are you prepared to be an acceptable casualty?

13 hour range day

Saturday was an off-day from work, and I managed to get my sleep cycle arranged Friday so we could go be Range Officers at the public range in the too-early morning. Wow, it was really busy with a lot of hunters chomping at the sight-in bit. I quess there is early hunting in Canada. So after we closed the range, we still hadn't done any shooting ourselves. No problem---just head over to the bays and cook some more in that ol' desert sun.

I ran just over 100 rounds through the new Brazilian 1911 to start break-in, and then did Mozambique drills with the Kahr MK-40.

We watched the sun go down behind Rattlesnake Mountain and enjoyed the 15 F drop in temperature...then picked up the brass. Mmm, stoop labor.

Blogger Resurfaces...

Nope. Not a bad Monty Python Skit.

I don't really like the looks of the Beretta,

but I'm warming up to it.

After pounding rocks for 3 days, I was able to get the network up and can post the pictures that were supposed to accompany the previous post.

You may think that the allusion to pounding rocks is a metaphor, but I can assure you it's not.

Up All Night

Compare and contrast us vs them.

Life has veered dangerously close to regular work over many hours of the day, actually night. Upside is that ammo will be aquired more easily (or less guiltily) and 3-gun completeness will be achieved sooner. Downsides are not so bad either.

The motorcycle component will get more workout, which is nice.