Home Brewed Beer Project ~ complete the first steps

Boiling water with Malt

A few years ago, my neighbor gave us home brewed beer and it was very tasty.  I wanted to make beer some day.   However, I did not have a chance to do it.   Especially, we moved last summer and it was very busy and I did not have time at all.

This year, we settle in the current place and finally, I have a time to try own beer.

Got starting kit from a local store, HopTech

I got a starter kit from a local store in Dublin / CA, USA, HopTech. This is a shop the neighbor recommended to me to get the kit and ingredients.   It is very close to where I live.  However, I did not have any chance to stop by before.
During July 4th weekend, I decided to try this and I finally stopped by on the way back to home from a park.   There were many brewing equipments and ingredients.  Also, people in the shop is very friendly.   When I told them, this is my first time, then they explained what I need / how I can make beer.   I felt it was much better to get a starter kit from online shop like Amazon.

I got a starter kit and 30 qt boiling kettle.  I also asked an easy recipe and got "Golden Ale" ingredient kit, that includes "ready to use Malt", "hops", "dry yeast" and "priming sugar".

You may get them from on-line as well.   I think their quality is very good.

Preparation

 Last night, I read all instructions coming with the kit as well as the recipe.   Also, I did a "dry-run" with just a water to under stand how to transfer the contents one to the other during the process.

Getting started!

Then, I went through a whole process for fermenting beer.  It took about 6 hours including preparation and cleaning up after the process.   The kettle with water that is about 4 ~ 5 Gallons might be too heavy to use kitchen stove.  So that I used a camping stove in my back yard to boil the water and the malt.   I guess it might be a good idea.

The process was simple enough, just following the recipe instructions.   Boiling water, added malt, adding hops, then cooling down the liquid and settled.  The finally moved to the fermenting bucket with the yeast!

It was fun and I could not wait for it is ready to drink!!

Based on the instruction, the fermenting may take a few weeks.  Then, bottling and wait for another a week to get it ready!   I just checked the bucket and it seems to be good!

I have not drunk the first beer, but I started looking for the next batch!!  It is so fun and excited to make own beer at home.   The smell during the process is very very good!!!!

Anthony Lake Chabot Regonal Park ~ much less water due to drought this year.....

Due to drought, the water level was externally low!!

Anthony Lake Chabot Regonal Park

Anthony Lake Chabot Reagonal Park is located near Castro Valley in Almeda county in California.  It is about 30~40 minutes from San Francisco International Airport.   This is called "Lake" in the park name, but it is actually a reservoir.

In the park, there are many trails around the reservoir, picnic area and camping grounds.   This week is a part of a long weekend, 4th of July weekend, in the US and it was very crowded today.

There is a parking lot after the toll gate.  However, many people parked on Lake Chabot Rd.   Since the street is almost full and I had to walk long way to get to the park.  I decided to park Nike Classroom Parking lot on a hill.  This parking lot is also free but we need to walk down a hill about 30 minutes.

No thing on the hill!

A last a few days, San Francisco bay area was hot more than 85F in daytime.  Even if it was early in the morning around 9am, the temperature is over 80F.   Around the parking lot, there is no shade and it was very hot and almost no wind.

 Near Nike Classroom parking lot, no shade!

 We walked down from Ten Hills Trail to Cameron Loop Trail toward the east end of the reservoir.  It takes about 30 minutes to reach a trail around the reservoir.  At the east end, there is a small bridge, but there is no water or water stream under the bridge.  It was dried out.

 Good thing was, once walked down from the top of the hill, there is a shade and there was wind on trails around the reservoir.   It was not too bad to hike in such hot day.   There were many people walk around.   On the other hand, there was no people except us on top of the hills.  It was obviously too hot to walk.    It might be better to park near the reservoir even if we need to pay some parking fee!!

We can walk to the islands

The right side of the islands is dried out!

Since it was really hot day, we decided to rent a row boat instead of walking around the like.  Walking around the lake is about 13~14 mils (about 20+km).  So we walked to the visitor center on the south west side of the park.
The rental fee is USD$20 / hour, $28 for 2 hours and $40 / day.  Not much different more than 2 hours.  So if people stay longer or do fishing, it is worth to pay some extra dollars.   We just rented for 2 hours and ate our lunch on the boat!!

Even if there is no shade on the lake, it was not too bad.   Duo to nice wind on the lake, it is nice to stay on the lake.

 Friendly ducks!

Ducks were very friendly and they came very close to our boat and kids were so happy many ducks around our boat.   I was with 2 kids, therefore, we did not have an options to rent kayak.  But renting kayaks would be another good option to enjoy the lake. 

Since we parked on top of a hill, we had to climb the hill after that..... It was too hot and we talked that we would park near the visitor center next time!

But it is a fun park near tri-valley in summer time!

Villa Montalvo Arboretum County Park (Saratoga CA) ~ Short Hiking Trail in shades

Villa

Trail in a shade

This time of a year, most of trails on hills on the east side of San Francisco Bay are getting brown and almost no shade.   It is hard to enjoy hiking in summer time.  It might be too hot!!

Villa Montalvo Arboretum County Park is one of good trails in summer time in the bay area.  Most of trail in this park is under shades.

Nice trail under shades

I went hiking this park today.  Even it was very hot today, it was about over 85F in a town.  However, there was a nice wind and it was really nice hiking in the park.   There is a nice vista point in the end of a trail.   That is only part where does not have a shade.   The view is nice, we can see entire the bay area and hills on the east side of the bay.

Nice view from the vista point

The trails are short, there are some combinations of trails.  However, the total distance could be around a few miles and a few hours are good enough.   Many people on the trails are chatting and enjoy hiking.  

This is really easy hiking course in a spare time!!

Hidden Beach / Aptos CA near Santa Cruz ~ A quiet beach!

Entrance to a trail toward a beach

No hiking this weekend!

Due to a rest day today, I did not go hiking as usual weekends while kids in a Japanese school.
The Japanese school in San Jose and it is just less than 1 hour away from Santa Cruz beach.  I drove to Santa Cruz with my wife this weekend.

After dropped kids, it was around 9am, we filled gas and went to Aptos where is close to Santa Cruz / Capitola.   My wife knows a quiet beach near Capitola.

The beach called "Hidden Beach".  We took Rio Del Mar Blvd exit on CA-1 and made left at Summer Ave.   We parked on the street and just took a walk to the beach.   There is a small parking lot at the trail head, just need to drive a litter far on Rio Del Mar and making right at Townsend Dr.  Then after residence area, you can drive to the parking lot.  However, the parking lot is small and we only saw one empty parking spot on the parking lot in the morning around 10am.

Wooden structure of a bridge for a real load

From Summer Ave, there is a rail load and going through under a bridge of a rail load.  The structure is made by wood.    Then we can reach the parking lot at the trail head.   From the trail head to the beach, it is only 5 minutes walking.  There is a residence area on the left and a small park.

A small park next to the trail head

After the park, you can see the beach.   In summer time, Capitola is usually busy in weekends, but this beach is less people can quiet.

Benches ~ you can sit and view ocean

 View from the benches

It was cloudy in the morning and getting better close to noon.  However to pick up the kids from the school, we need to leave around noon time.   There are some people on the beach.  I think the most of people on the beach were the local people, some of them were taking a walk and some of them were running on the beach.

In summer time, Capitola is usually busy and noisy during weekends.  So that it might be a good place just to enjoy the beach.   You might need to carry some stuff to the beach from your car.  However, you can have more private time on the beach.

It was cloudy, but not many people there

(I thought I published this last week, but it seems that I did not.  This was last week activity on June 7th, 2014)

Fruits Picking in Brentwood / CA, USA

Peach is ready to pick!

This weekend is a long weekend.   However, our kids has Japanese school on Saturday.   We did not have any specific plan for the long weekend.   The weather was getting hot like summer, in daytime, it is about 100F last 2 days.

On Sunday, kids enjoyed in a community pool.  Then, we went to fruits picking in Brentwood (CA, USA).   Typically, it is a good time to pick cherry around the memorial day weekend.  However, it was the last day of the long weekend, most of cherry picking farm was closed or sold out when we were there.  So as strawberry.  

We drove around to find out a place to pick other fruits.   Finally we found a farm that had yellow peaches and enjoy to pick peaches.   It seems next a couple weeks will be good for peaches and other fruits.   It could be very hot in day time especially in the afternoon.  I would really recommend to be there early in the morning before getting hot.
  

Plan to start a Recovery Training

Planter Fasciitis

I have "Planter fasciitis" on my left foot.  I got stress fracture on my left leg in late 2012 and I had to stop running for six months.  During the recovery training, I got Planter fasciitis.   It was not too bad some time late last year.  However it was getting worse and I had to stop running again at the end of last year.

I have still a little pain at the first step after getting up from a bed in the morning.  However, a doctor told me it could be OK to start running.

Plan

As I mentioned in a few posts before, I found some new training plan in Garmin Connect.   Since I was getting this problem in a recovery training from the stress structure.   Therefore, I would like to be conservative this time.  That is why I picked "Getting started Level I".

It seems that this plan would be easy for me.  But I want to slowly start running this time to avoid any other injury due to a training plan.

This plan is heart rate base training plan for beginner.

I hope it works for me well!

I will also report my progress in this blog as well.

Alum Rock Park (San Jose / CA) ~ Nice trail in wild flowers

Nice trail in wild flowers

Alum Rock Park (San Jose / CA)

This weekend, I went hiking in Alum Rock Park in San Jose when I was waiting for kids in Japanese school.  The park is  located east San Jose.   From Berryessa Rd Exit on I680, the park is about 2.5 miles away.
There is a gate at the entrance of the park and people needs to pay USD$ 6 for a day use.  However, many people park on a street before the gate to save some money.   When I was there around 9:30am on last Saturday, there were many cars parked on the street.

Once getting into the park, there were many empty parking spots in the park.  It seems that there is no problem if people are willing to pay the fee.

I parked Rustic Lands Parking and started hiking from the parking lot.   There is a trail head post and it shows overall trails in the park.  However, the map was running out.  It is better to download a map from the web site of the park and print it just in case.

Hiking

This time I took North Rim Trail and Eagle Rock Trail to get a vista point.  From the vista point, we can see South part of Silicon valley.  Since this is short hiking, there were so many people on the vista point.  After that, I took Todd Quick Trail, then getting into Santa Clara Country Open Space Authority and took Boccardo Trail to get a top of a hill.

 Still many wild flowers were blooming

The trail is nice.  There were many wild flowers along the trail.   Since there are only low height grasses and we can see the southern part of Silicon Valley almost all the time.  Some part of trail is a bit steep, it seems that people who were riding mountain bike had a hard time to climb the hills.  Some people enjoy trail running.

We can see San Jose down town from the trails

There were many people hiked in the bottom part of trails.  However, once trail is getting steeper, I did not see many people any more and it was really quite and enjoy the nice view.  Since there is almost no shade on the trail, it might be too hot in summer time.   I guess it is the best season in spring.

Other Park activity

Since this is my first time to visit this park, after hiking, I took a walk in the park what else we can try in the park.   There are many picnic tables along a creek.  Also, there is a flat trail along the creek.  It might be very nice just short walk along the creek and enjoy picnic.
Some of picnic sites require to make a reservation to use.  However, there are also many tables just walk in to enjoy picnic.   Actually, there were many people along the creek other than the trails I walked.

It might be better to pay the fee if people try to enjoy picnic.   If people try hiking, I guess it might be better to park outside of the park.  It may need to walk extra a few miles, but people can save some money.

I think it is still good season to see wild flows in the park.  You may want to tray this park some time soon!