the great gourmand vacation week: day 1

Through a series of coincidences, happenstance, and a handful of last minute plans, this week has been dubbed, for lack of a more grandiose term, the Great Gourmand Vacation Week. Ok, so a caveat--in "vacation" week I don't actually mean I'm taking any time off work, but I do mean actively trying to spend every single evening acting like I'm on vacation. The result? A week peppered with delicious adventures in an itinerary that I otherwise thought only occurred during the the most well-planned, luxurious vacations. It's phenomenal (and I wholeheartedly recommend trying it at home).

Today marks the halfway point, and while I really should be in bed resting up for my next big adventure tomorrow, I thought that the halfway point seemed worthy of a blog post. Here, in a bit of a delay, is how the week kicked off.

Day 1 (Sunday): Homebrew lesson and barbeque.
I knew from the second I started pulling brewing equipment from a friend's closet that nothing this week was going to top day 1. It all started on Saturday, during a last minute trip to Ballast Point brewery (which doubles as the Home Brew Mart) when a casual conversation escalated to reality. A beer style was decided on, ingredients were purchased, and a plan was set in motion to make my first ever homebrew attempt actually happen.

the bounty: malt, malt extract, hops, yeast, and sugar, all ready to be spun into one bewitching brew

We settled on an American Pale Ale, mostly due to me liking it, my friend having had success with the style in the past, and the home brew mart's helpful "beer recipes" telling us exactly what we needed to throw into the pot. Here's the recipe (although the version we made had a few more kinds of hops), here's the instructions we followed for steeping grains and brewing from extract, and here's a step-by-step visual recount of the event:

steeping the grains

removing the grains

adding the malt extract

adding the hops

chilling the wort

transferring to the fermenter and taking a hydrometer reading

adding the yeast

sealing the deal!

Three days later it is bubbling steadily at 71 degrees F. (that's good!) We've got dry-hopping and then the bottling process to come, and if all goes well the official tasting is scheduled for leap-year Friday, because, well what better day to taste your first homebrew attempt than a day that only comes once in as far as you can remember (Feb 29 on a Friday)?

Oh, and then there was the barbecue. Not one to let experiences skate by at anything less than epic, I decided to take advantage of the wait time during the 3-hour process by grilling up a massive cut of tri-tip. (Who has a homebrew session without lots of delicious food to accompany it?). Brandt Beef has started coming to the Pacific Beach farmers markets on Saturday mornings, and I've been celebrating first with chili, then beef stew, and I was excited to try my third purchase, tri-tip. I also was hankering to test out a smoker bag I recently picked up, and ended up with a hassle-free, one bag, outstandingly delicious dinner: tri tip, new potatoes, and green beans. I'd show you pictures but my camera was trained on the stove the whole evening.

Stay tuned for more adventures from the Great Gourmand Vacation Week!