Oh my. This trip is going by way too fast I haven’t had any time to write about it. Let me recap quickly. Sorry if it is a bit scattered I’m writing from a train and well things are just happening so quickly. Here are some random highlights.

Lima – I was very anxious when I landed knowing that I was in a new place and cetainly didn’t speak much of the language. Went on a rollercoaster taxi ride from the airport to my hostel in the Mira Flores district where I met up with Scott. We enjoyed an authentic local dish for dinner, walked around the city, enjoyed a couple Cusqueños at the hostel and called it a night.

Huacachina – The next day we departed early on a bus for Ica. We arrived after a short 4 hour bus ride and immediately took a quick cab ride to the desert oasis called Huacachina. This is a strange little Oasis city is surrounded by miles of massive sand dunes. The city itself consists of nothing more than a small oasis or pond surrounded by hostels, restaurants and craft vendors. This was a fun stop! Scott and I took a trip out to the dunes on a buggy and did a little sandboarding. It was so much fun, but also very dangerous. Let’s just say these buggys were a little ghetto. They had seatbelts were fastened with a simple overhand knot. Felt really secure as we tore through the desert. Sandboarding was great also. Sure it was fun to stand on a handmade snowboard shaped piece of wood and go down the sand, but if you wanted to go really fast you layed on your stomach. So that’s what we all did and whew dis we fly down the dunes. If you ever get to Huacachina you must give it a go!

Paracas – The next day was split between Paracas and Ica. We woke up early and took a bus from Huacachina out to the ocean-side village of Paracas for a boat tour of the Islas Ballestas. These island host a wide variety of animals that I have never seen before. There were sea lions, dolphins, pelicans, and lots of boobies. Of course I’m talking about the birds, you know masked boobies and blue-footed boobies. Oh and most importantly I got to see penguins! So great.

Ica- After our tour of the islands that morning Scott and I headed back to Ica. We spent our time negotiating bus travel to Cusco which is a little difficult when there are some serious riots going on in cities along the bus routes. We found a bus that didn’t go near these areas. After this Scott and I enjoyed lunch and pisco sours in one of Ica’s most historic restaurants. Pisco is a local liquor made from fermented and distilled grape skins left over from the production of wine. These are quite tasty but I think they give me weird dreams.

From Ica we took a long 25 hour bus ride to Cusco. Uggghhhh such a long journey. But it was worth it because Cusco is amazing! I will tell you more about this city very soon.

Am I anxious or excited? It’s really hard to tell. What does matter is that I’m going on an adventure. It’s been far too long. Goodbye Los Angeles, I’ll see you again in a little while. Peru, I can’t wait to meet you. I think we are going to get along just great!

Hey everyone.  Just wanted to post a quick note about my good friend Adam.  I don’t know if you have heard about the competition that the Murphy-Goode Winery is having, but let me just give you a brief rundown.  They want are looking to hire a social media correspondant and pay them $10,000 a month.  Applicants were asked to create a short video on youtube telling why they would be a good fit for the job. I just found out today that of the nearly 2,000 applicants Adam has just made the top 50.  This is really no suprise to me because I could think of no one better for the job.  So please take a quick second and visit www.tastethegoodelife.com.  You can also check out the video that he submitted below.

Ryan Nibouar › Edit Post — WordPress

Haven’t posted in a really long time.  Life has been busy as always and my adventures have been scaled back a bit due to an unfortunate bike adventure resulting in a broken clavicle.  Nonetheless here are a few pictures from a couple of my weekend projects.  On the left is a wheat/hefeweizen that I have been working on.  Basic rundown is 1/2 lb. 15 ºL Carmel Malts, 6 lbs. Wheat LME,  1.5 oz of 4.8 ? Mt. Hood Hops, and White Labs WLP320-American Hefeweizen yeast.  Should be pretty good, had a very active primary fermentation.  On the right is a raspberry braggot type recipe that I am fooling around with for Ruthi.  Consists of 3-1/2 lbs. Light LME, 1 lb. corn sugar/dextrose, and WLP720 Sweet Mead/WineYeast for primary fermentation.  Then today I added 3 lbs raspberry puree to the secondary fermentation.  It smells amazing right now so we’ll see what happens.  The process photos and the bottle picture are of  a West Coast American Pale Ale.  This recipe needs about another week to condition in the bottles and then should be ready to drink.  Here is what I did for this:

Fermentables:

US Caramel 40L Malt 8.00 oz 7.1 % 3.8 In Mash/Steeped
Extract – Light Liquid Malt Extract 6lb 8oz 92.9 % 4.2 Start Of Boil

Hops:
US Columbus(Tomahawk) 14.8 % 0.50 oz 25.9 Loose Whole Hops 60 Min From End
US Centennial 8.0 % 0.50 oz 7.6 Loose Pellet Hops 15 Min From End
US Cascade 7.5 % 0.50 oz 2.9 Loose Pellet Hops 5 Min From End
US Cascade 7.5 % 0.50 oz 0.0 Bagged Pellet Hops At turn off
US Centennial 8.0 % 1.50 oz 0.0 Loose Whole Hops Dry-Hopped

Yeast:
White Labs WLP001-California Ale

So I realized that I never finished talking about the cider that I made for Christmas.  It turned out pretty good.  Rather flat after a couple of weeks of conditioning then all of a sudden WHAM-O…super carbonated.  ABV turned out to be way higher than expected, probably around 12%.  Tasted more like a dry apple wine than a cider.  I learned a lot from this experiment and expect this year’s batch to be even better.