Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Old Crow Medicine Show
Busking for tickets
Bread from spent grains
Dunkleweizen


FOD steam roller print

Carving pumkins
Camel on my bikeride
Fishing on Flathead Lake with Dad and Isabella
Fall in Missoula is about to wind down. But it has been nothing but sunshine for the past month...glorious. I attempted fishing Montana style with my dad and half-sister. We got skunked but Isabella and I got in a good skinny dip and we feasted on smoked salmon that I caught in Ak.

I made my way to Seattle to visit Sarah Patrick and went on several really cool and really long bike rides. I saw a couple of camels, yes camels and figured that they must be rotting away in the wet and rainy pacific northwest climate. I spent Halloween there and had several different pumpkin ales from several different local breweries and found them all to be wonderful. My favorite was the Great Pumpkin, an imperial pumpkin ale for the Elysian. Sarah and I carved pumpkins and then later carved them up again for a pumpkin soup. It may or may not have been a hit with her family.

When I got back to Missoula, I jumped into the Festival of the Dead activities and stayed dry in the pouring rain with my new rain jacket. Some friends of mine got so cold during the pre parade performance and the parade that they ducked out before the dancing in Caras park. I stayed warm and dry in my jacket!!!! If you know me at all, you know that this is quite the anomaly. I am the "reptile," the one who is always cold. On another note, for the first time, I was a spectator instead of a dancer in the FOD. It was fun but a bit sad. Later, I won my first silent auction bid and I won about 12 postcard size skeleton steam roller prints. I was more than happy to win them as well as support next year's FOD.

I brewed a dunkleweizen with a recipe that I formulated myself!!! I put a lot of stress and worry into the concoction. There is a lot to think about such as water pH and mineral content, types of grains used and at what temperature you mash them and what hops to use and when to add them as well as what yeast to use as whether or not you should prime them...and the list goes on and on. I finally settled on

Diabolical Dunkleweizen
7 lbs dark wheat malt extract
1lb Chocolate malt
1lb Belgian Pale
1lb Munich Malt
2 oz Hallertaur hops
wheat beer yeast

Then I made bread, flour and granola from the spent grains. The bread with spent grains and spent grains flour was awful. The bread with white flour and spent grains was great as was the granola. A friend of mine brought over about 25 lbs of spent grains from his wee heavy Scottish ale and I made three more batches of granola: Cinnamon, chai and pumpkin.

Perhaps the most notable occurence in the past couple of weeks was last Saturday when the Old Crow Medicine Show came to town. Their tickets sold out months and months ago and second hand tickets have been impossible to find. So Crazy Lisa and I spent half the day with signs around our necks that said "will pay and sing for OCMS tickets." We planned to camp out in front of the Wilma two hours before the show and play Wagon Wheel with her mandolin and my guitar until someone sold us a ticket. We started the evening at the Top Hat, however, because a friend had tipped me off that the band had hung out there before their previous show in Missoula. We sat around the Top Hat with our signs and instruments and had a lot of sympathizers, some looking for tickets others who had tickets and still others who thought we were brave as can be to offer to play for a ticket. They bought us beer. No tickets though. At around 5:30 we went to a friend's bon fire to practice and while there Joy's roommate sold us two tickets. We were so happy and relieved to have tickets. However, I still wanted to follow through with our plan just for memories and perhaps to get a tickets for friends who were still looking for them. It was really cold but we set up in front of the Wilma and played Wagon Wheel over and over. The folks lining up to enter had a grand time listening to us and singing along. No one seemed to catch on to the fact that we were looking for tickets and we saw many tickets exchange hands but no one approached us, the cute girls actually showing what big of fans we really were. Finally, we were overcome with cold and excitement and we entered the show. We missed a couple of songs but had a great time nonetheless. They only played for about 2 and half hours and so we had a lot of evening to kill after the show. While filling up our water glasses at the Old Post, I spotted two members of the band having dinner. I grabbed Crazy and we thanked them for coming to Missoula. They thanked us without even looking up. Wow, way to foster good fan relations. While on the way back to our table we ran into a third member and we thanked him as well. He greeted us with sarcasm and then ducked into the bathroom. But no matter, I still love them!!


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The pumpkin soup was devine, but visiting with R.K. was deviner.
Sarah's family.