UPDATE (11 Dec. 2010): It might be fun for people in the neighborhood, but the market was NOT worth a 90 minute subway ride. My friend Mark and I crossed Seoul to get to it, and found (to our immense dismay) a small stand of four tents with overpriced goulash, mulled wine, Krombacher beer, sausages, and such. The facepainting area looked dreary. I did pick up some pretty lace Xmas ornaments for Miss Jiwaku, but overall it was not worth going to this. ORIGINAL POST: I don’t know if it’s going to be any good, but I’m going with a …
Month: December 2010
Brew Plan: All-Wheat Berliner Weisse
Making a beer with only wheat in your grist isn’t supposed to be easy, but I heard someone refer to it on a podcast, and ever since then I’ve wondered how to do it. The problem, of course, is the mash tun. When you brew with grains, you have to mash them, and wheat is not like barley. Now, when I say “mash your grains”, I don’t actually mean mashing them up. It means, basically, soaking the crushed grains in warm water to get some nice chemical reactions, like loosening up proteins, getting enzymes to convert starches to sugars, and so …
“90% of All Unsolved Murders in Kyeonggi Province Were Committed By…”
… is the beginning of sentence you know was written by a moron. It’s part of the sole comment on this article, about a Bangladeshi man who apparently killed a Korean woman half his age, which concludes with the police still trying to figure out why he did it. The comment is a priceless example of Korean netizen commentary. After claiming that Koreans need to start putting electronic bracelets on Southeast Asians in Korea–despite the fact that crime rates are much higher across the board among Koreans than non-Koreans here (this morning’s news had a litany of horrors, such as …
초능력자
Tonight I saw 초능력자 (Choneungryeokja, which you could translate as “Psychic” or “Person with Supernatural Powers”1) with Miss Jiwaku, and I have to say that it actually pretty much was what one of my students described: …pretty good for the first hour or so, and then ramps up an exponential curve of silliness until it hits infinite silliness at the end. That said, the film seems to have been received rather well by the Korean public, and some people are praising it. My experience is that films that are very highly praised in Korea are sometimes good, but often don’t …
Pseudo-Sahti Boiled
I’m not sure how soured it went in the 36 hours or so that it sat there–I could taste a touch of tartness, but not a lot–but I figured 36 hours was long enough to let the wort sit, so I boiled up the Pseudo-Sahti on Wednesday morning, with the following “hop schedule”: First Wort: 10 grams Amarillo 5 grams Cascade (because I didn’t have enough Amarillo) 40 grams crushed Juniper berries 15 grams uncrushed Juniper berries 2 grams Laurel Leaves 3 Minutes before Flameout: Irish Moss (oops, should have been earlier… been forgetting the Irish moss a lot lately!) …