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  • Affleck Wines Cellar Door
    Affleck Wines Cellar Door

    [ Key ]:
    B = Purchased
    S = Smelled
    T = Tasted
    W = Wishlist for another day (most of the wines are want?s at some point but given limited budgets, the ones I really want to come back and grab a couple of).

     

    Riesling 2013 [S+W]: ?Chalky shite flowers, Pear Apple combo on the nose.

    Semillon 2013 [S]: Fruity almost cider lime twist on the nose.

    Rose 2013 [S]: Strawberry nose, delicate.

    Pinot Noir 2013 [S+W]: Makes the saliva flow, red fruity nose with slightly smoky background notes.

    Shiraz 2010 [S]: White pepper dominates the nose, cherry fruits also.

    Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc [S]: A familiar scent that I could not put my finger on, Almost citrus flower, dusty, good nose (dash of Viogier in it).

    Sweet White [S]: Christmas cake, rum + molasses on nose. (told it tastes smooth by mum who I was being chauffeur for)

    Muscat [S+T]: Nose spirit edge to it; ?spicy, light in ?mouth good length.

    Port [S]: Spirit edge here, coffee, toffee and co come through.

     

    Overall the Pinot?and Riesling were the standout here. The fortifieds seemed to be showing signs of their fortification spirits which as off putting. The Shiraz was enjoyable, but not standout and would have no qualms about drinking a bottle.

  • Mangrove Jacks Dutch Lager kit

    CBW Pilsen Light pure malt extract

    W34/70 Lager Yeast

    SG 1.042

     

    Currently the wort is at 24C, will rehydrate and pitch the yeast tomorrow morning, hopefully it will have cooled to the ~12C range.

  • This morning I bottled my stout, made from an ESB 3kg “extra special stout” kit and 200gm of chocolate malt grain.

    It’s been in the fermenter for 16 days and spent the last 5 days at a specific gravity of 1.018 I am a little concerned by the last as I was expecting ~1.012-1.014 range, so I reduced the amount of sugar at bottling time hoping that all will be well. Tasting the beer that was used to measure the SG, indicated that all was reasonably well with things. There is no initial SG reading as I have previously not bothered with such things, but as I was concerned that the ferment may be on the stuck side, I decided I better start recording these things.

    I have included a photo of the stout in a clear bottle (the bulk of it is in green 680mL glass bottles or brown 750mL glass bottles), but I like to have a little to snoop on as things progress. I like the colour and look forward to tasting this in a few weeks. Out of this bottling I ended up with 12x 680mL bottles, 12x 750mL bottles and 1x 330mL bottle.

     

    stout may 2014

  • Just put down a Pilsner to begin ferment in the lovely mid autumn Canberra weather.

    Using the following:

    Yeast S-189 Pilsner/German Lager

    Morgans Golden Saaz Pilsner kit

    CBW Pilsen Light pure malt extract

     

    The specific gravity was 1.043 and is now sitting in the shed to ferment for the next 2 – 3 weeks. I’ll update this post as required and things change.

  • I bottled a home brew cider on the 24th of April.

    I grabbed one of the bottles and decided to taste, this is the result:

     

    Colour is a fairly deep yellow/orange.

    Nose is yeasty, herby and apply.

    Taste hits with a nice sharp apple twang, progresses into a smooth taste, then the yeast dominates and comes to the fore. Then abruptly finishes.

    Fizz is barely there (not surprising as bottle conditioning is still occurring.)

    At this stage I’d rate it as just a cider. Better than many commercial mass produced ciders, not quite as interesting as some of the more boutique ciders available. The abrupt finish is surprising and perhaps slightly disappointing as I kind of expected it to linger a little longer.

     

    Given this is only a week old it’s showing a lot better than expected. I look forward to revisiting this again (and again).

  • As a Canberra local it’s only natural for me to completely take for granted the local wineries, and not visit them until having a visitor to take around. This seems to be a common theme among locals of most wine regions, they rarely if ever visit them and typically when they do visit it’s because they’ve moved away from the locale and have come back visiting friends, and now that the wineries are no longer just a few minutes down the road they must fulfill the need to visit (me after I moved from Adelaide to Canberra re: McLaren Vale), or ([and] as in the case for me after 8 years in Canberra) they have a friend or family member staying who’d like to check out the local wines.

    In my case my mum visited, and we got a chance to check out the local wineries and my thoughts on other CD’s and wines will be posted in the coming weeks (probably months), but for now my visit to Lark Hill:

    Lark Hill is a biodynamic winery, personally I don’t mind if wine is grown bio-dynamically, organically, or with the assistance of modern pesticides and fertilizers, however anecdotally, those who are prepared to put the effort into maintaining a certification for BD or Organic tend to work pretty hard to get the vines to express a sense of place (or as the Frogs would say Terrior) and pretty tasty wines.

    On this trip, I was driving, so the bulk of my thoughts and comments are based on the nose (of which I find a good portion of enjoyment in a wine can be gained); Some I did of course taste and spit, and they will be noted. I have not recorded recommendations to buy/skip wines in this case because my tastes and yours will likely not be the same, and quite frankly, it’s worth checking out the winery and making your own mind up, especially if you’re a local to the region . Due to some time constraints some of my notes now make little sense to me, so take them with a grain of salt, as they represent moment in time what’s going through my head.

    [ Key ]:
    B = Purchased
    S = Smelled
    T = Tasted
    W = Wishlist for another day (most of the wines are want’s at some point but given limited budgets, the ones I really want to come back and grab a couple of).

    We were greeted in the cellar door by the softly spoken, and quite knowledgeable Sue who ran us through the range available for tasting.

    2012 Riesling: [S+T] This was a Lemon/Lime combo hit to the nose, quite alluring; On the palate the nose came through as expected based on the smelling – Lemon/Lime w/ Zestyness. Yummo!

    2013 Viognier: [S] This wine is to the spicy/musky end of the spectrum, relegating the oft found apricot characteristic to playing a minor role.

    2012 Chardonnay:[S] Smells like VF (What ever that means?- EDIT: VF = Vasse Felix – a lovely ’09 Chard from them that we’d had recently), well integrated and nutty.

    2013 – Mr V (Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier): [S+T] Nose is intriguing, the palate is spicy, with a very good mouthfeel.

    2013 ‘Eliza’ Risling: [S+T+B] Named for the cute little 3 year old daughter of (i think) Chris at the winery this is an off dry Rizza that has a lime sherbert nose. The palate the lime sherbert came through on the palate, the acid is brilliantly balanced with this style, it’s a vibrant wine, and one that mum grabbed a few of.

    2013 Sangiovese: [S+T+B] Nose is dusty, alluring cherries come through, almost a hint of mulberries with a hint of star anise. Palate – soft tannins; food friendly I’d match to pizza (or nearly anything Italian).

    2013 Pinot Noir: [S+W] Sour cherry end of the pinot spectrum, slight edge of gameiness.

    2013 Shiraz Viognier: [S] Excellent schnoz – initial whack of white pepper, sour/juicy fruit then set the stomach grumbling follows.

    2009 Exultation (Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Merlot, Sangiovese): [S+T+W] Nose – tar, truffles, anise/licorice. Palate – firm tannins, sour acid, really a nicely integrated wine. A definite check out again.

    2012 Auslese Riesling: [S] Tiny edge of kero on the nose and marzipan. A rich descendant smelling wine, but one that does not give an indication that it would be cloying and sickly. I recall sticking my finger in an tasting just a little of this, it was tasty. Mum bought a few bottles.

    Overall I enjoyed the stop at Lark Hill and would love to revisit (I also must try and buy their bubbles) and would definitely revist. The restaurant on site has also been added to the must sample list.

  • Restart printer to get it to a default state.

    Locate the * (asterisk) key, remember (or mark with a post it note – it;s inline with the “WiFi” text.

    Open the printer as if you were going to replace a toner cartridge. Press and hold the (*) until a menu appears, select the appropriate option for your toner (CMYK – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black; HC = High Capacity).

    The LCD should read “Accepted” once this process has been completed.

  • After a server move took out the database, I discovered that my automated backups were not as good as I thought. We’ve now gone back in time 18 months and now have to fill out the missing content, mainly some really good recipes :(, oh well, not the end of the world.

    I have been reminded again of the importance of not only creating backups, but testing and verifying the restore procedure every now and then.

    M

  • Just having a whine about google changing the way they’re doing google apps for your domain. I’m sure that there are a lot of organisations out there for whom this is relevant, but really, would it have very nice to have been able to at the very least merge all my domain management accounts (eg adsense) into the admin account for my domain rather than having to go with a .gmail.com or an external email address.

    I like to break up various tasks by uid under my domain, cest la vie.

    Don’t get me started on the hassles that now abound with a GAFYD vs a standard google account 😥

    /whine over.

  • If you like me had a hankering to play the original StarCraft and ended up with odd colour (color – for those from the USA) artifacting the following reg file fixed my issues (a fully patched to 1.16 at time of writing)

    Just copy the following text into a new text document, rename it to a .reg – and play away.


    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DirectDraw\Compatibility\StarCraft116]
    "Flags"=hex:00,08,00,00
    "ID"=hex:ca,89,65,49
    "Name"="Starcraft.EXE"