Two Weeks Down...The Lessons Learned

So as I sit here on my computer this morning, I'm listening to music, catching up on email, and reflecting back on the last 2 weeks of my life.  It was exactly 2 weeks and 7 hours ago that my beautiful daughter Avery was born.  As you could tell by my previous post, I wasn't really sure how I'd do at the daunting task of being a father.

Although not outlined in that posting, some of my fear had to do with the fact that I'm pretty set in my ways and I wasn't sure how having a child throw into the mix would jive with the whole routine and flow I had going on in my life.  I mean we aren't talking about the responsibility of taking care of a cat (which to this point I thought was the ultimate in responsibility).  We are talking about taking care of a human being.  Making sure that this child has everything that it needs...food, water, shelter, and probably most importantly love and happiness.  That's a big friggin deal!

Proudly I haven't had a
draught beer in 3 weeks!

So as I sit here two weeks into this whole thing and still learning how this all works out, I can tell the fathers-to-be out there that it really isn't that bad.  Sure you have to put some of the things you love to do on the back burner for a little bit.  My brewing, beer drinking, and disc golf are now taking a back seat to helping my wife with feedings, changing diapers, and calming down the baby when she's fussy.  But in the grand scheme of things, that is okay.  In fact, it's kinda fun to help out with these new challenges.

Beyond having a little buddy to spend my days chumming around with, I think my favorite part of fatherhood so far is getting to calm the baby down when she's crying.

I've come to realize that there are five main reasons a baby will begin to cry.  They are:

1. If the baby is hungry
2. If the baby has a wet or messy diaper
3. If the baby is gassy and needs some help burping
4. If the baby wants to be held
5. If the baby is sick or hurt (I assume as thankfully Avery has not been sick yet)

Beyond that, there may be other reasons for a baby to cry, but I've yet to experience them.  Sometimes the crying from one of these needs listed above will last beyond the fixing of the situation.  That's where your Daddy skills come in.  I'm proud to say, in the very short time I've been a Dad, I've mastered the art of how to calm my baby down pretty quickly.  

For some reason unknown to vocal talent judges around the world, Avery loves when I sing to her.  I'll scoop her up, hold her in my arms so that she is facing me, and begin to sing to her.  Within a minute or so she's super calm, looking right into my eyes, and sometimes even has a smirk on her face.  If I stop singing (usually as a result of me racking my brain for the next song to sing), she'll start fussing until I sing again.  Eventually she'll fall asleep peacefully in my arms.  The feeling it leaves me with is amazing!

So far, the songs that Avery likes me singing to her are:

• Guns 'n Roses "Sweet Child of Mine"
• Guns 'n Roses "Patience"
• Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Tuesday's Gone"
• Lynyrd Skynyrd's "All I  Can Do Is Write About It"
• Supertramp's "Take the Long Way Home"
• Ozzy's "Goodbye to Romance"

I don't have this CD, but I think I should
get it.   It looks pretty cool!

Those are a few of the songs that I can sing completely out of memory and know all the lyrics to.  Pretty soon I'll be making a list and practicing new songs so that Avery doesn't get bored of hearing the same show every time she wants some Daddy time.  

Other lessons I've learned so far that may be of use to other fathers-to-be:

• The Target brand of diapers are the crappiest diapers on the market.  Do what you can at all costs to avoid buying these leaky pieces of crap.  That is unless you like mustard colored crap all over your baby's clothes and doing laundry all the time.  Pampers and Huggies seem to do the job a million times better.  Plus they have strips on them that turn blue every time the baby pees (Target brand does not).  Friggin genius!  
• Do not listen to people when they say that infant diapers do not smell bad because the baby isn't eating real food yet.  These people are bold faced liars and Avery has had a few diapers already that could turn the strongest stomach in the world.
• Don't buy into the "Oh get you sleep now cause you will never sleep once the baby comes" lies that people will fill your head with prior to having the baby.  Amounts of sleep have been normal in this house, just not consecutive.  Look, you have good days and bad days (or nights).  You are going to go stretches where you are up every 2 to 3 hours before getting more sleep, but in the grand scheme of things that is okay and you will get used to it.  It's not the miserable hell that people tell you about.  Don't let their lies scare you.  
• The Diaper Genie is not useless and not a flimsy piece of crap.  Even the smallest baby can produce a diaper that packs quite the stinky punch.  You don't want that nastiness in the kitchen or bathroom trash can.  That is where the Diaper Genie comes in.  It contains the smell and does a pretty good job at it.  It's also pretty easy to use.  So people who tell you their Diaper Genie broke after a short period of time are a bunch of wild animals who go through life breaking everything they touch.  The concept of how it works is pretty easy and there's not too many moving parts.  If you try to force the moving parts into doing something that they aren't meant to do, then you will have problems.  It's friggin plastic people!

Embrace the Genie!

Okay well I think it's time to go play with my little girl as it sounds like she's just waking up.  I'll be sure to share whatever other words of wisdom that I learn in this journey of a lifetime.  

Cheers!

Brent

The Brewing of The Writ's Wit

So on Sunday, May 9th, I took to the back yard of Casa MacAloney to brew the first of many beers that will be brewed on the patio.  It was also my first time brewing alone with all the new equipment I've been putting together over the last few months.  So it was really an exciting day in my book.

The recipe I used was one I lifted from Brew-Dudes.com for an Allagash White like beer and I scaled it to the size of my brew system using BeerSmith.  With summer right around the corner and my homebrew club's competition schedule having whites and wheats on tap for the June meeting, I wanted to try something light and refreshing.  Allagash White is amazing and I had to get some going before it gets too hot here in Maryland. 

So now to the naming of the beer.  I wanted to name all my beers after Black Sabbath songs, but for some reason that is probably unreasonable.  There is a limited catalog of songs and I could probably only take it so far.  Anyways, I figured the first one had to be named after a Black Sabbath song and because I was brewing a Wit, the only song that came to mind was the song "The Writ" off of the Sabotage album.

"The Writ" is a song that Black Sabbath wrote about all of the foolish people running the music industry back in 1975.  It's amazing that things really haven't changed at all in the last 35 years as the music industry is still run by a bunch of buffoons.  The song is powerful and timeless.

So why am I writing so much about the song itself?  Well there's a lyric in this song that kinda strikes home with my Writ's Wit recipe.  It goes something like this:  "Are you Satan? Are you man? You've changed a lot since it began."  Truth be told, I was frustrated to all hell with this beer.  The brewing process rocked and the fermentation started off like a champ.  Then I did what all brewers shouldn't do.  I was checking the gravity of the beer and smelled something rank coming from the 2 carboys.  I thought to myself "Oh shit, what happened?"  Then I got freaked out and worried.  I know that it's a big no-no to smell your beer when it's fermenting, but it's too damn hard not to.  I even had my friend Chris G. tell me not to worry.  He said "it smells fine for a wit."  I should have listened, but I didn't and worried.

To make matters worse, The Writ's Wit made its debut at a friend's party.  I had a sample that morning and was really unhappy with the beer. I can't really pinpoint what the issue was other than I thought I overdid the ginger in the recipe and didn't put enough orange into it.  The carbonation level was off too and I really didn't have the time or know-how to fix it at that point.  Unfortunately there was a lot of buildup that there was a homebrewed beer coming to the party and I didn't want to disappoint the party goers.  So I sucked it up and brought it.  Most people liked it which further proves my point that most beer drinking Americans can have a cup of piss put in front of them and if you told them it was beer they'd gladly drink it.

Well to make a long story short, after the party, I just left the two 5-gallon kegs in the basement and let it sit.  A wiseman once told me, "If you make a shitty beer, let it sit for a while and who knows what will happen.  Whatever you do, don't pour it out."  So taking these amazing words of wisdom (or whizdom in the case of my pissy beer), I let it sit a month.

Saturday, June 26th was my wife Manina's 30th birthday.  She is really proud of my brewing and wanted all of her friends to sample what I have made, even though I didn't like it.  She probably thought I was being too hard on myself.  Either way, it was her birthday and I threw a keg of The Writ's Wit on ice.  As I was hooking up the party tap and CO2 canister to it and took my first sample, I was floored.  What was really a disappointing beer turned into a delicious, refreshing summer beer.  This is what I wanted!  People loved it.  Hell I even kicked a whole 5-gallon keg in about 30 minutes.  When it was gone, people were asking for more. Who would have thunk that it would have turned into such a good beer?

Well with that experience out on the table, here's the important part of this blog.  Lessons learned. 

1)  Don't smell the beer as it is fermenting - People say it all the time and doofus' like me never listen, but it is really true.  At the point it is fermenting, your beer is a work in progress and not complete.  So why judge it as if it were?  Don't worry.  Sit back.  Let the yeast do its work and relax.  Most of the time, if you have a sterile environment, everything will turn out OK.

2)  If it's yellow, let it mellow - I guess this is in reference to all beer in general.  Once you are done with your fermentation and it is ready to keg (or bottle), don't judge your beer too hard or get discouraged enough to dump it out if it doesnt taste exactly the way you envisioned it.  In my case, I could have tossed the whole batch and it would have been a HUGE mistake.  All it needed was a little time to mature and let the flavors settle out.  We are not talking long either....in my case, it was about 3 weeks and it transfered into a decent beer.

3)  Have some damn confidence in yourself - This is the last thing I leave you with.  I'm normally a confident guy, but in this case I had no confidence in what I was doing (mainly because I was brewing alone for the first time).  This lack of confidence could have really tanked my homebrew right out of the gate.  The key here, if you lack confidence, is to think back and remember the steps that you were taught on homebrewing.  Whether it's from a beer making class you took, learning from a buddy, or reading a book, the steps have all been laid out for you.  Before you brew, sit back....think about things....Do you have all your supplies?  Do you have all your equipment?  Do you have a step by step plan so you don't forget anything?  If so, have some confidence, step up to the plate and knock your homebrew out of the park! 

So that's that.  The last keg of The Writ's Wit will be consumed at my friend Brandon and Steph's housewarming party later in July.  Should be a grand old time.  In the meantime, it's time to prepare my second batch.  I have the whole month of July and most of August where I'm in town, so I'm really planning on hitting the back patio to brew up about 3 or 4 batches of beer during this time.  Should be fun now that I have the confidence that I need to crank out some amazing beers.  You can read about them here in a few weeks.

Thanks for reading.  Best of luck with your homebrew.  Cheers!

-Brent