Celebration Ale in the Fermenter!

If you want to just read about the beer skip to the third paragraph.

On Friday I had quite the day.  First off I took a few hours off of work to get everything ready but was thrown a curve ball when I got home.  I entered the yard and my dog Marley greeted me as he usually does, then I was sitting on the deck with SWMBO and the dog started to have a seizure.  Now this is not totally out of the norm, my dog has had two of them before about a year a part and it has been about a year of so since his last one.  The odd thing was that once the seizure ended he ran around the yard for about a minute or two, came back up on the deck and immediately started having another, more intense seizure.  This made me quite nervous so off to the vet we went.  To make a long story short he is fine and after spend a frw hundered dollars at the vet they basically said to just keep an eye on him.  He has seemed fine since then so I am not too worried, I just hope he continues being well!  Here is a picture of him with Dank Brewer's yellow lab Nala:

Crazy thing part two is that I encountered quite the road rage incident that same time on the way to pick the dog up at the vet.  I was the recipient of the rage and it was quite the specticle.  I was ducking through some neighborhood street on the way to the vet.  I came to a stop sign (this is in NE Mpls) STOPPED and looked, there were cars on both sides of the street, I did not see any cars comming and I preceeded through the intersection.  Another SUV was going through the residential area at a pretty good clip and I had to gun it to avoid it.  I gave a wave as an apology and was greeted by a nice long rip of a horn, no big deal I thought...how wrong I was.  This person got on my bumper, pulled along side me and gave me the business.  I calmly stated that I didn't see them and that I am sorry, it is not like I want to get into an accident.  I have never in my 32 years seen such rage, I was called every name in the book and threatened.  When they reached into the glove box I took off with abandon, only to have them keep pace on the wrong side of the street, I stopped and told them that I did not want any trouble, and I still got screamed at so I told them to go and blank themselves.  This was crazy and the first time that I almost got the cops involved, they followed me for a few miles to the vet then ducked off so the cops were not called.  Whew, that was NUTS!

THE BEER...that is what we are here for anyways right!  The Champ, Spanky and I brewed up a celebration stout for Spanky's coming offspring.  The brew went off without a hitch and smelled really awesome, some really nice roasted aroma along with some caramel and coffee notes.  Man those dark ones always smell the best to my nose!  One little boil over that was corrected quickly and all of the hop additions went smooth and chilling went smooth as well.  Cooled the wort down to 75 and pitched around 72.  Fermentation was active and smelling nice the next morning.  We will most likely flavor a small portion during bottling as an experiment.  I will let you know how that goes!  Cheers!