Media training, beer and golf

Last week I was fortunate to share some media training by Richard Moorcroft (formerly of the ABC) with Jan Richards (current ALIA president) and Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director. It all occurred at the NSW State Library in Sydney, and was the result of Jan winning the training at a conference.

Richard, as you would expect, was very professional and had the most mellifluous of voices. The hints he gave were actually quite practical. His three main tips were know your stuff, don’t engage in an interview if there aren’t benefits to you or your organization, and you have the control so do your best to use it. If ever you have the opportunity to work with him I’d suggest you take it up.

On the beer front things have been reasonably active. I recently bottled two beers, one a craft beer and the other a kit beer. The craft beer was ostensibly an American wheat beer however I used Munich Wheat yeast so I think the end result will be a European style wheat beer. I’m pretty confident it will be OK.

Because my craft beers take so long to make – a lager can be up to 8 weeks and even an ale type beer can be up to 4 weeks – I sometimes need to resort to a kit beer  to keep my supplies up. This time I brewed a Coopers Real Ale.

As I’ll be home alone this weekend I’m planning to put down a Maibock , a type of lager, using a recipe from Zainasheff and Palmer’s Brewing Classic Styles  so it will take about 8 weeks from boil up to bottling.

I’ve still got the middle finger of my right hand  in a splint due to the mallet finger injury I gave myself on Anzac Day. It looks like I’ll have it until the end of June. So for now I’m playing golf with nine fingers gripping the club. I thought I would use the opportunity for my handicap to gently slide out as with nine fingers I couldn’t possibly play as well as I could with 10 fingers. Well, I’ve played about four competition rounds since then & I don’t think I’ve played much over my handicap. I’ve even managed to reduce my handicap as I played one round four under what I should have. It just goes to show that the more you  concentrate the better you play! Who knows what will happen this weekend!

An update at last …

It has taken me much longer to add another submission than I would have liked. Here’s a few things that have occurred.

ALIA

 I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend, as an observer, the March board meeting in Canberra. There are certainly quite a few very important issues on the ALIA table that will need to be dealt with over the next year or so. A number have been highlighted by Derek and Sue in the annual report, while there are other issues that are quietly bubbling away in the background. If you’re an ALIA member & wish to keep informed I urge you to read Incite & regularly visit the ALIA web site.

The new Board, under the presidency of Jan Richards,will have its first meeting on 19 May, the day after the AGM. the current Board’s last meeting will be on 17 May.  It will certainly be a big three days as we farewell the retiring board members and welcome the two new mebers, Kate Siniclair and Gillian Hallam. Gillian is no stranger to the Board as she is a former national president.

Brewing
The was quite a bit for fermenting activity during February but not much since. I’ve put down three beers since my last entry – a Bar n Brew bitter (a tub developed by the local brew shop), a Vienna larger and one of my favourites, a Belgian Saison. The bitter was basically a quick and dirty brew – add the wort, a bit of boiling water, fill up the fermenter with cold water,  add the yeast & hey presto in about a fortnight you can bottle the beer. Its not a  bad brew its light in colour, well carbonated, light in flavour but not much depth. The Vienna lager is a European amber lager and demonstrates a number of the characteristics listed in the  BJCP style guide for a Vienna lager Its a mid-strength beer of about 4.3%. The Belgian saison is a beer that packs a punch. I accidentally put a bit more malt in than needed and let the yeast really attenuate with the result that its a full strength+ beer coming in around 8.1% ABV. Its certainly a beer for drinking at home!

Golf and Cycling
I’ve been playing more golf than cycling of late as my wife has taken up the sport. So we’ve been having quite a few rounds together after work and on weekends. I’ve drifted out to 8 and have even managed to play to it a few times. I’ve gone through a phase when I’ve been hitting greens in regulation so that makes playing to ones handicap a bit easier. I’m back on the bike and am regularly cycling to work.

Work
Work as ever is busy. I currently have responsibility for the Library, Academic Learning Support Unit (ALSU), English Language Centre (ELC) and Curriculum Design (CDDU). The Library and ALSU are my two key areas of responsibility. It looks like the ELC will be realigned to another area within the univeristy, and I’ll be staying with CDDU until a Director is appointed.

Each of the areas have their own tensions caused by different drivers:

 The Library is currently focussnig on supporting the Office of Research with the HERDC and ERA submissions. Our involvement is centred on the utilisation of our repository, ACQUIRE.

The ELC is focussed on recruiting enough students to balance the books – its key activities are ELICOS, IELTS testing and hosting study tours.

ALSU is currently battling the problems of too much demand.  STEPS enrolments have have increased signnificantly on 2008 numbers, and with an increase in domestic numbers demands on the Communications Learning Centre have also increased.

Curriculum Design is heavily involved with the implementation of Moodle. It is caught between supporting normal operations and supporting the implementation of the new LMS.

Over the past month I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to attend ACODE and CAUL meetings. ACODE was in Melbourne and CAUL was in Newcastle. The ACODE focus was primarily Web2.0 and much of CAUL was focussed on research support.

In other news I had a couple of weeks off around attending CAUL in Newcastle. We drove down rather than flew and visited Gunnedah, Nelson Bay, Musselbrook, Sydney, Orange and Tenterfield over a couple of weeks. Today I was diagnosed with a mallet finger & it looks like I’ll have the middle finger on my right hand in a splint for about 6 weeks.  Whats a mallet finger & how did I get it? Well check this link out. The example they provide as a possible cause is exactly what happened to me – last time I make a bed!

Brewing

The most recent beer I’ve bottled has been a Belgian Saison. For those of you familiar with Belgian beers this one certainly has some earthy, and unusual flavours. Surprisingly this beer likes to ferment in warm weather – the warmer the better actually. anything from 27 to 35 degrees which makes Rocky in summer the perfect place to brew this type fo beer. I obtained the recipe from Jamil Zainasheff’s Brewing Classic Styles. This beer took 7 weeks to ferment and has a kick to it coming out at about 6.4% alcohol per volume.  If you’re interested in the tasting notes you can check out the 2008 BJCP Style Guidelines.

Belgian Saison

I obtained most of my ingredients with the exception of the liquid malt and hops from Craftbrewer.com.au. I used Tetnanger hops which I obtained, in addition to the liquid malt, from a local brew store. The secret with many of these brews though is the yeast. Fortunately places like Craftbrewer.com.au keep speciality yeasts, grains and the like to enable us more adventurous brewers to brew more exotic beers. Otherwise we’d be just churing out the standard homebrew fare, which in the m ajority of cases is beter than the mega-swill one normally pays through the nose for.

The current beer I have down at the moment is a Californian Common Ale. Again I obtained the recipe from Brewing Classic Styles and got most of my ingredients from Craftbrewer.com.au. I got the liquid malt from a local brew store. With both the Saison and the Californian Common Ale I mini-mashed the specialty grains as I’ve yet to master the full mash. One of the frustrating things with home brewing in this part of the world is that its quite difficult, (I won’t say impossible) to obtain different strengths/densities of liquid and dried malt.

This current brew requires fermentation to occur at 17 degrees Celsius. How does one achieve this I Rockhampton I hear you ask?  Easy peasy really if you’ve got a fridge controller. I got quite a simple set up from Dave’s Homebrew in North Sydney. Once  you’ve got your fridge controller all you need to do is to plug the fridge into the controller and dial in your temperature accordingly.  The controller has a probe which you need to  keep in a bottle of water to ensure the temperature of the wort is consistent with the dialed in temperature. Other types of controllers, including digital ones, are available but you need to wire them into your fridge. Although I come from a long line of electricians I afraid that’s not my thing. Easier the better for me.

I think my next beer will be a nice a simple light lager which I’ll be able to easily brew now that I have the magic controller. I’ll talk more about lagering in my next beer missive