A Honeymoon in Barbados!

After our wonderful wedding weekend, Ashley and I were able to escape to the Caribbean for 10 days of complete relaxation.  Most of this post will just be pictures with captions.  So enjoy.  For those that don't know, we ended up switching resorts after the second day because of an incident at the first resort (we can explain better individually, not worth typing up the whole story here).  We decided it would be better to leave and enjoy our honeymoon elsewhere.  It didn't dampen our spirits and we left Barbados completely relaxed and with tons of good memories.  Enjoy the pics!!

Flight into Barbados.  American Coke on left, Caribbean Coke on the right.  Biggest difference: Caribbean coke had about 1/3 of the Sodium and had cane sugar (not high fructose corn syrup) in it.

The plane landing in Barbados.

On the walk down to Bathsheba Beach

Bathsheba Beach, Atlantic Coast.

Big Rock.  This beach reminded us of something out of a pirate movie.

Ow Oooowwwww!

Bow chicka wow wow

Sea-U Guest House.  Where we spent our first 2 days.  We were really having a great time, shame we had to leave.

Rum punch.  The drink of Barbados.  We had plenty of these during our stay.  This is a pic from the lawn of Sea-U, just up the hill from Bathsheba Beach.

My beautiful wife with a rum punch.  In front of the Sea-U.

I had a whole lotta these.  This is the main beer of Barbados.  A typical pale lager.  Perfect drink for the hot Caribbean weather.

Our catamaran trip.  A wedding gift from James and Krystal!  It was an awesome boat and a beautiful trip.

Hairoun Lager.  A little dryer than Banks, I didn't like it as much but it went down just fine!

Getting ready to snorkel!

Sandy Lane.  Apparently the most exclusive resort on the island.  We anchored out front for lunch.

She looks like she could own a boat like this.

No caption necessary.

A lot of pretty plants on the island.

Enjoying a coconut cocktail on Crane Beach ('The Crane' was our second resort of the trip)

One of about 5 pools at The Crane.  Overlooking the sea.

Breakfast burrito at Cutters Deli.  Delicious w/ a french press coffee.

Up on a diving cliff on Crane Beach.  Ignore my hair.

Crane Beach

Ice cream break!  Hey, we needed it after our diets leading up to the wedding.

Ash, enjoying the view.

The resort had several larger buildings.  The one in the background here is the original hotel from the late 1800s.

Another pool overlooking the ocean.

For anyone who has knowledge of it, this is my attempt at recreating the infamous 'Sandcastle' photo.  Sans Mark, of course.

Oistin's bay.  Fish fry on Friday night.  

Our fish platters.  Absolutely delicious.

Those were mostly my bottles, but Ashley had one or two!

Royal Barbados cigar.  It was ok.

If you build it, she will find it!

Lunch on the Caribbean side (Sea-U was on the Atlantic coast, and the Crane was on the South coast, Caribbean is the west coast).

A view from one of the higher points on the island.  The picture doesn't really do it justice.

Before one of many date nights.

Piton lager.  The clear glass made it a skunk bomb.

View from the elevator leading to Crane Beach.

Sunset in Barbados (we weren't staying on the west coast so we never saw it set over the water.

Nighttime view down on Crane Beach.

A picture taken back towards Crane Beach.  I had taken a stroll down the shore to explore the beach beside Crane beach.

A preview of the beach just beside Crane beach.

Basically a deserted beach.  It was gorgeous.

Lunch at the tiki-grill in the grove behind Crane Beach.

Our hotel room.  Living room.

Bedroom.

Bedroom again.

Bathroom.

Kitchen.

This lady loved Ashley.  Thought she was Miss Arkansas.

Trying to show off our tan lines!

A favorite food stop for us. 

Entrance to The Crane.

Valence, our cab driver for the whole week.  He was partial to Ashley, obviously.

Well that's all we got for now.  We have plenty more photos but this is a good cross-sampling.  Writing this post made us miss the island.  I guess we'll have to go back!

Mill-Iron Brewhouse Updates

Ashley and I are married!  It has been a whirlwind last month and a half for me and my love.  Things are finally now starting to wind down.  We are excited to blog about our honeymoon etc., but just haven't had time yet to round up the pics we wanted to share...stay tuned for that.  I have a little free time tonight so I figured I'd better update my brewing brothers and sisters (and my non-brewing brothers and sisters) on my brewhouse.

Overall my hops have been doing really well.  Somehow, my 2nd year cascades have really been struggling and I'm not sure exactly why.  I am thinking they may have gotten a little too much water since they were accidentally too close to the roof drain-off side of the house.  The last two weeks or so they've been doing better.  But the 2 organic rooted cuttings I got from my Aunt Pat have been doing awesome (EKG and Willamette).  The Willamettes have been setting the pace but the EKGs are holding their own.  Definitely a quality product from this company.  I will be using them for any of my future hop needs.

Willamettes up front, EKGs in the middle, Cascades at back.

I also recently brewed a Belgian Witbier for my good friend Dustin and his wife, Ryan.  They had a spring party out at their farm and he likes a good belgian/french ale.  So I thought I would brew him up a batch at the last minute.  Brewed it three weeks ago today, kegged it this past Tuesday, and force carbonated it so it would be ready to drink last night.  We floated the keg.  And I didn't write down the recipe.  But here is a pic I took on Friday while I was sampling it:

For being such a young beer, it really was very good and refreshing.  I'm making it again soon!

I had a pretty exciting day today from an equipment standpoint.  I added two new pieces to the brewhouse stable by day's end.  The first is a massive stainless pot.  I don't have an official volume capacity on it just yet but I am calculating off it's dimensions that it is between 25 and 30 gallons.  It's made of a very thick (11 gage or so) stainless steel and has two 'frankenstein' type stud attachments at the side.  This will be my future mash-tun in my next brewery (to be built this summer hopefully) and probably won't get much use before then.  For $100 I couldn't pass it up.

Original picture from Craigslist posting.

To the right is my Volrath 10 gallon pot.  That used to be the biggest pot in the brewhouse, until the behemoth to the left came along.

My other purchase today was also a unique find.  An electric canner.  Made in Holland, there are very few websites where you can buy one of these.  All stainless pot (~8gallon capacity) with heating element at the bottom and a spigot for draining off liquids.  The really cool thing about this is you can set any temperature between 85F and 212F and the canner will maintain the desired temperature.  I tested it out and it seems very accurate.  This little beauty I bought for $175 and it's barely been used.  I will be using immediately for mashing operations and once I go to my new brewery set-up I will use it for different functions like HLT and probably more frequently as a decoction chamber.  Plus, Ash and I will probably also use it for canning operations!  Homemade pickles anyone?

Not the best picture but it seems to be a very well made unit. 

I'm looking forward to incorporating these new babies into my brewery.  Stay tuned for more updates from the brewhouse and also (hopefully soon) for a honeymoon recap!