Leif has been fascinated with trucks. They are everywhere. We drive slowly past the fire station so he can see them and get all happy and laughy about them.
This past week he’s been all sick and snotty. Last night he had a hard time breathing with a hoarse voice and constricted airway. We brought him to the doctor bright and early, and with one listen of his cough and cry, stated that he had croup.
We were home and making cookies after two quick shots. Despite the cookies, Leif was still grumpy, and sat in Gavin’s room playing with his trucks. He made me sit there with him while he muttered “truck” (his new word), to let me know exactly what it was we were playing with.

After success with making a lilikoi ale, in which I didn’t post, I decided to try my hand with the guavas that were falling off the trees. I had a few ingredients lying around and thought they’d work nicely. See the recipe below.

A few weeks later and I popped open the fist bottle. Nicely carbonated with a thin beige, almost slightly pinkish head, the flavor of guava is noticeable, but not overpowering or too sweet. It is a very nice, quite drinkable and very tasty guava ale.

Guava Ale

.47 lb Crystal 60
.47 lb Flaked Barley
.53 lb Candi Clear
2 lb Extra Lt DME

.6 oz Tettnanger 3.9% @ 60 min
.4 oz Green Bullet 12.9% @ 15 min

Safale US-05 yeast
Approx. 20-30 Guavas (boiled 10 minutes with 3/4 cup sugar & 2 tbsp lemon juice).

Boil grains 60 min @ 155°
Add candi & DME
Add Tettnanger @ 60 min
Add Green Bullet @ 15 min
Cool wart to pitching temp.
Add guava juice & pitch yeast

Ferment for 7 days (or until reach target gravity)

Prime with 3.5 oz corn sugar (adjust according to fermentation temp).

After deciding that I need more control over my fermentation temperature, I picked up a 4.5 cubic ft GE refrigerator from Wal Mart this weekend. Even with the lip from the compressor, it’s large enough to fit a 6.5 gal bucket with an airlock. The only modification I had to make was to peel off the door shelves. Not bad.

My next step is to get the Brewer’s Edge Control II temperature controller so I can have precise control of the fermentation temperature. The Control II comes ready to plug and play. Simple set up with digital readings from a gas filled thermometer for accurate readings.

Having that, I’ll be all set to make some perfect lagers. That’s pretty good considering I live on a tropical island.

Leif has been a bit of a grump lately, largely due to not feeling so well. At a particularly grumpy moment, Leif emptied his entire juice cup onto the laptop keyboard while watching Thomas the Tank Engine. Then Leif had the nerve to complain because Thomas stopped and the screen went black. I closed, then picked up the laptop and watched a waterfall of juice stream out. Hmmmm.

I spent the remainder of the day taking apart and drying out the inside of the computer. When I finished, I tried to start it up again. No luck. The laptop was not revived. So I tried again. I re-cleaned and re-dried the insides and re-assembled the laptop. Do you think that helped? No. Of course not.

So where does that leave me? Without a laptop of course. It doesn’t look like it’s going to come back to life. Sadly, the laptop is dead.

Lesson of the day? Don’t let your two year old have anything to drink. While watching videos on the laptop of course.

I sat at the street corner at the end of the road waiting for Gavin’s bus to arrive. Lief waited in his stroller pointing out all the trucks that drove by with an enthusiastic “guck”. It’s our weekday routine.
The bus finally arrived and Gavin appeared from around the bus and ran across the street with a smile on his face and his hands held out in front of him. As he drew nearer I noticed that he had something in his hands.
“Dad! Look! See what I found in my back pack?” I did look and saw a gecko spread out across his little fingers.

Gavin explained how he found it and wanted to bring it home as a pet. About how nice it was and was sitting nicely in his hand and let him pet it. Indeed, it was sitting nicely in his hand. Half it’s tail was missing and it was scared. I told Gavin that we had to be nice to it and put it in a place that it would be happy. Like right over there on a little rock surrounded by plants and dirt. Gavin agreed with me and placed the gecko down on the rock and told it to be happy and live a good life. Such a good boy.