Domestic Wednesday: It's Cidertown

This post is a two in one type situation, because it's hard to get more domestic than this cider. It's currently fermenting just a few feet away. If it's drinkable, I'll call my home production set-tup the "Under the Sink Cider Company" and our mascot will be an old sponge. If it isn't, we shall never speak of it again. I bottle on Sunday. 

What, it's a jug of cider under a sink. What did you expect, Ansel Adams?

I've made small batches of beer before, to rather middling results. These results tasted worse when I considered the time I spent brewing them. It was a whole day's worth of work (not including fermentation) that tended to turn my kitchen into a sauna, for beer that was pretty meh. Cider seemed like a way to slowly get back into DIY drinks. It's more like making wine: pour apple cider into something. Add yeast. Wait. (Also, sanitize EVERYTHING.) Of course, people who take this sort of thing seriously will question my methods on my first batch. I just bought some local President's Choice cider and pitched in half a leftover packet of yeast from a previous brewing attempt. It's english ale-style yeast, so who knows what horror I'll uncap in two weeks. Something delicious? Or something that makes me believe in the existence of a cosmic, unknowable evil, one that happened to be sitting under my sink for two weeks?

Domestic Wednesday: Socks and Suds

Because of the awkward placement of Canada Day right in the middle of last week, I was left with two awkward days on either side of the holiday. I knew that, come Thursday morning, I wasn't going to want to wake up and go back to work. So, I cashed in some vacation days and gave myself a five day weekend.

I also decided to give myself a vacation from social media at the same time. No refreshing my Facebook wall, no Twitter scrolling, no Instagram favouriting. The exception would be some Shenmue 3 tweets, but that was out of love for Dan, my Shenmue fanatic. It would be five days of productivity and writing.

Instead it was five days of finally watching Orange is the New Black and knitting.

Eh, you do what you can.

I was working on my second or third attempt at the Pomatomus socks, a pattern that is now ten (10!) years old. I've made it to the foot of the first sock, which was a stunning improvement over my last attempt, which ended with half a sock finished and the rest of the yarn in a massive tangle. I'm using Rowan Fine Art in Blue in this attempt. I don't like the way it's pooling, but I love the way it feels. Hopefully I can make it to the toe of the second sock without the ball turning into a Gordian knot.

And, of course, there was beer on my five day weekend. Phillips Brewery is one of the great lost loves from my time in Victoria, along with my growlers Rock 'Em and Sock 'Em, and the half-dozen unrequited crushes I nurtured while there. So, when I saw their Electric Unicorn White IPA at the LCBO, I had to buy two bottles. It's a brassy, hazy beer, reminding me of a pineapple spliced with an herbal tea bag, with a head like a marshmallow and a yeasty character. It's perfect for the summer, even if you can't spend that season on a deck in Fernwood Village.

Finally, the social media holiday was nice. Maybe a little too nice. I felt more disconnected from the world at large; Twitter had largely become my source of current news, and so I forgot the Greek referendum was even happening until hours after the result was certain. But I also felt less frantic. It was like I had been in a box full of people yelling, and suddenly they were all on mute. I'm half tempted to do it again (though I've checked Twitter nearly ten times while writing this post.)