More Brew Crap - & "Post Previous"

So Friday night I boiled the black beer alluded to in the post previous. Things went well, I took my time seeing as how it was friday and I had the whole weekend in front of me. Oh, but also I was working on finishing my exam as well. I got home from work (after a stop at the brewstore for my specialty malts) around 6pm and got the mash started right away. Basically, from 6-9pm, whenever I wasn't doing something with the brew I was sitting in front of my computer scribbling out answers. I was hoping to have the eXam finished that night but at around 9pm I gave up with 8 questions still remaining (out of a total of 25)....so not too bad. Anyway I had to get that brew session wrapped up. Here's the 'pe:

9lbs Maris Otter 2-row malt
.75lb Munich malt
.5lb Cara-foam dextrin malt
.5lb Belgian De-husked black malt
.25 Chocolate malt

I hit a gravity of 1.064 which might even be a touch high but I am happy with it. A mere .25 ounces of Pacific Gem flowers in the kettle should have gotten me about 14 IBUs....everything is proceeding as I have foreseen (-the Emperor).....I imagine a nice, sweet-ish, malty-but-not-too-malty base beer with its own natural chocolate undertones. This should work well with the cocoa nibs, vanila beans, and sour cherries I plan to addd during conditioning.

The rest of the weekend saw me gradually finishing my exam, re-writing it all out again so it could be faxed and actually read by another human being, smashing my head into the table repeatedly, and then sampling a few brews. The new Belgians I mentioned in the post previous were both tasted; the pale hoppy one is a DELIGHT, and the dark one is ok but for a sort of acrid, lingering sensation in the back of the mouth which I attribute to the dark sugar syrup I used. We all noticed this. Man, I am really getting sick of those trendy-ass syrups...I might have to break up with them, I mean, it's been years and I am still just unsatisfied with the relationship.
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The Deborah's & I drove over to Kevbone's place in Brookline Saturday night to "help him brew" and meet the new canine in his life. On the way home we ran into a gal named Hanna. She was loud and had winds of up to 40mph. She also dumped gallon after gallon of water on us as we drove home. But, she was nice enough to clean all the dried up beer & food remnants off of the driveway for us back home, so I can't complain.

-Wrence