I'm a dude who loves to brew. And run. And travel. And sometimes climb mountains. But mostly brew...
Brewing
My brewing "career" started at the University of Oklahoma around 2007. A buddy (who had a Mr. Beer kit) and I decided we wanted to try our hand at making some beer, so we drove into OKC and bought a basic homebrew kit (never did use the Mr. Beer). Our first beer was a blonde ale kit that we added a bunch of honey to. It came out tasting funny, but you'd start to feel the alcohol before finishing even one glass so, being the poor college kids that we were, we drank it anyway. We tried two more batches - a Nut Brown and an Irish Red I think. Both came back with the same weird flavor except progressively worse. We eventually figured out it was due to an infection originating in the bottles. We tried our best to get them clean before filling with our precious liquid, but every bottle ended up tasting terrible despite the warm and flat pre-bottling samples tasting great. Eventually we gave up and I swore off brewing until I had the space to set up a kegerator.
Fast forward to 2013. I had moved to Houston and had a job and a Fiance. We purchased a town home in March with a perfect spot for a built-in kegerator, so by April I had a brand new kegerator, a set of kegs, and all new brewing gear. My *new* first batch was a stove-top, extract-and-hops-only Texas Bock. It came out with decent flavor but strong fusels, so I built a chamber to control fermentation temps and tried again. I traveled for several weeks while the second attempt fermented and returned to a nasty batch of sugar water - I must have killed the yeast when I re-hydrated them.. Not to be deterred by 5 straight terrible batches (progressively getting worse), I tried again except this time I upped the difficulty slightly by doing a sort of BIAB/partial mash method on a Honey Rye Irish Red... and.. BOOM CITY! I had finally created a beer that was good! Or good enough anyway.. I did 3 more of these BIAB/partial mash style brews before making the leap into all grain in October of that year. Since then my brewing process, equipment, and knowledge have grown by leaps and bounds, and the quality of beer along with it. As of May 2015, I've brewed close to 30 batches. I still make what I'd consider B+ to A- beer at this point (sans a few batches that I personally thought were amazing - those batches never last long enough..), but I hope to continue to grow and improve as I crank out more and more batches.
This blog is meant to be a way of tracking my progress. I'm currently not a part of any homebrew clubs (no time) and very few of my buddies brew, so this is the place I'll let my inner-monologue out (I'm sure my wife will really appreciate passing that torch). I don't anticipate many people will read this, but if you do, drop me a line - especially if there is something you think I can be doing better.
Fast forward to 2013. I had moved to Houston and had a job and a Fiance. We purchased a town home in March with a perfect spot for a built-in kegerator, so by April I had a brand new kegerator, a set of kegs, and all new brewing gear. My *new* first batch was a stove-top, extract-and-hops-only Texas Bock. It came out with decent flavor but strong fusels, so I built a chamber to control fermentation temps and tried again. I traveled for several weeks while the second attempt fermented and returned to a nasty batch of sugar water - I must have killed the yeast when I re-hydrated them.. Not to be deterred by 5 straight terrible batches (progressively getting worse), I tried again except this time I upped the difficulty slightly by doing a sort of BIAB/partial mash method on a Honey Rye Irish Red... and.. BOOM CITY! I had finally created a beer that was good! Or good enough anyway.. I did 3 more of these BIAB/partial mash style brews before making the leap into all grain in October of that year. Since then my brewing process, equipment, and knowledge have grown by leaps and bounds, and the quality of beer along with it. As of May 2015, I've brewed close to 30 batches. I still make what I'd consider B+ to A- beer at this point (sans a few batches that I personally thought were amazing - those batches never last long enough..), but I hope to continue to grow and improve as I crank out more and more batches.
This blog is meant to be a way of tracking my progress. I'm currently not a part of any homebrew clubs (no time) and very few of my buddies brew, so this is the place I'll let my inner-monologue out (I'm sure my wife will really appreciate passing that torch). I don't anticipate many people will read this, but if you do, drop me a line - especially if there is something you think I can be doing better.
Running
As far as hobbies go, running is about equal with brewing for me (right now anyway..). I started running in High School. I was on a good cross country team with a great coach (Flower Mound Marcus - we were a 5A Texas school that won Regionals and finished top 4 at State all 3 years I was on the team) and I learned a lot. In college, I played on the University's club ultimate frisbee team and didn't do much running beyond that. After graduating and putting on 30lbs I decided to get back into it. Since then I've trained for and completed 2 marathons including the Boston Marathon a few weeks ago. Running Boston had always been a goal of mine and I built up for several years before running my first marathon in Vancouver, which I was lucky enough to complete in a BQ time of 3:03:13. Now that I've finished Boston, I'm not sure what my next goal should be (try to win my age group in a 5k or 10k? finish an Iron Man?) but I'm sure I'll figure something out soon enough. For now, I track some of my workouts on Movescount under the member name Bunt1828. I'll probably post a few things about running/endurance training and competing on the "Other Hobbies" blog, so check that one out if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Traveling
Not much to say here.. I enjoy seeing the world. My wife and I are lucky enough to work for an international company so we've had the opportunity to see a lot of unique places. Plus, when we can find the time and money, we do our best to travel to new and exciting places and experience what this world's got to offer. I may post some stuff from our travels to the "Other Hobbies" blog as well.. who knows.
Climbing
My last hobby is mountaineering. I don't know what it is about the mountains and snow and being at altitude, but I absolutely love it! Unfortunately this is an expensive and time consuming hobby, so I don't do as much as I'd like it (maybe one day I'll win the lotto. Or if you'd like to fund a climb I'll gladly accept). For now my goal is one climbing trip per year for as long as my buddies and I can hold that up. Again, I'll probably post to the Other Hobbies blog about these climbs. Some of the trips I've been fortunate enough to go on were truly epic, so I may throw together write ups of those at some point. For now, I'll just list the peaks I've climbed below:
Mexico
California
Washington
Alaska
Colorado
I sure hope the list doesn't end there..
Mexico
- Popocatepetl - ~17,800'
- Pico de Orizaba - ~18,700' North America's tallest volcano, and 3rd tallest peak
California
- Mt. Whitney - 14,505' Highest point in California and the contiguous US
- Planned: Mt. Shasta is on the short list of peaks to climb next. We had originally planned to climb this immediately following Whitney, but several feet of new snow the night before made that impossible.
Washington
- Mt. Rainier - 14,409' Highest point in Washington. A never finished first-draft (free trial ran out and can't justify buying the software) of the climb can be seen here.
Alaska
- Mt. McKinley / Denali - 20,322' Unfortunately, I didn't get to top out on this one. My team (sans one) made it to high camp at 17,200' before a storm blew in that pelted the summit with 50+ MPH winds for 7 days before we were able to sneak out and retreat back to Talkeetna (I'm fairly certain no-one topped-out for 7 days after we left either). Despite the bust, I still include it because I spent 3 full weeks climbing and camping on a glacier, and I feel confident that, given better weather, our entire team would have been successful. Plus, it was a hellofa time! If I do end up blogging about past climbs this will be the first.
- Pico Austria - ~16,400'
- Pequeno Alpamayo - ~17,600' the most beautiful and exciting climb I've ever been on (with the exception of maybe Denali)
- Huayna Potosi - 20,000' (and not 1 foot less - we've got the picture to prove it!)
Colorado
- Mt. Lincon, Mt. Cameron, Mt. Bross, & Mt. Democrat - 14,286', 14,238', 14,172', 14,148' All in one go - this was my first trip above 14,000 ft and it didn't disappoint
- Pikes Peak - 14,110' okay, full disclosure: we drove up this one. I'm still counting it..
- Mt. Elbert - 14,433' Colorado's highest peak!
- Quandary Peak - 14,265' Climbed with my wife in February - our first winter ascent!
- Grays Peak & Torreys Peak - 14,270' & 14,267' Climbed together with my wife on our trip to GABF
I sure hope the list doesn't end there..