Joiner's Musings

Festa West Coast IPA It is the season for beer-making. I picked up this Festa brew kit (West Coast IPA) a week ago to try it out, a second time actually, but the first for an IPA. This one is rated 42 on the IBU scale (bitterness units). Most commercial beers that you would buy in a store are quite low on the IBU scale, likely 8-10 IBU or even less. IPAs are traditionally higher in bitterness with 100 being the highest I have seen. Now, I am not sure if there is such a thing as higher than 100 but I would imagine that at 100 IBUs it might be just a little too bitter for most folks taste and perhaps even for me though I like bitter beer. However, I am anxious to try this. The primary You cannot brew beer any simpler. With this kit you do not even add water. The yeast is hydrated before putting into the wort. The only other difference is that once you move to the bottling stage they suggest mixing the corn sugar with 2 cups of boiling water before putting it in the secondary p...

150mm 1/250, ISO 200 f/5.6 138mm, ISO 200, 1/60s, f/5.5 This lens is the Olympus 40-150 f/4-5.6 that I picked up prior to this past summer. It is a budget class lens in the Olympus line-up. Although it does not excel as other, more expensive, 150mm, f/5.6, ISO 200, 1/320 Olympus zooms do, it is pretty decent and gives a lot of bang for the buck. It is really good all the way up to 100mm and then softens a bit after that. On my EPL-5 I found it quick to focus, and very light to carry. Because of the excellent 16mp sensor on the EPL-5 I had little difficulty getting good clear shots on higher ISO settings thereby maintaining a good shutter speed to compensate for this fairly slow lens. I have no regrets. Many of my better shots this summer have been taken with this lens. Here are a couple of shots that I was testing at the long end to see if there was good detail and I am pleased - not tack sharp, but pretty good nonetheless. Even makes a pretty good macro lens with...

 A cabin in the woods. While it looks like it has been there forever it was actually moved from Kemptville, Ontario about 20 years ago, piece by piece and reassembled on this site. I tried capturing it in the setting sun to give the shot a little drama. It is very cozy inside and it has a second floor where the bedrooms are located. This is now a cottage and it located about 10 minutes drive (on the same lake) from our own cottage. We sent a glorious weekend at our cottage as I mentioned in previous posts and while we were there we celebrated Thanksgiving. As many of you may know Thanksgiving is celebrated in Canada earlier than in the US. Not really sure why. Being close to Halloween we decided to carve some pumpkins as backdrops to our full course turkey dinner. The second photo was taken by J. Boychuk on his Olympus E410 while the two others were taken with my EPL-5. For some reason oak leaves turn from yellow to very dark brown, somewhat odd I find. In the last photo...

 Every picture has a story. This was once a bar in a little way point called Charteris which is about 10 minutes north of Shawville Quebec. I have driven by it a hundred times and always thought, what is a little bar doing in the middle of nowhere. It seems it has a story. We stopped by to pick up some pumpkins across the street and the old guy we bought them from just had to tell the story of this little bar. It seems that this guy owned the bar and he had a pretty sketchy background. He provided young women for the locals around the area and I imagine most of the customers were "transient" types. In fact he had a couple of small huts back of the bar which served as areas for the customers to engage in a little fun. Well, he was clearly doing something illegal. The locals, the folks whose ethics did not include prostitution and gambling, decided to run this fellow out of town. They did so by felling some trees on the roof of the bar, late at night, thus scaring...

 We spent a stunning weekend at our summer cottage in Quebec. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. The weather was quite something in that it was unusually warm for the year. In fact, on Saturday it must have risen to 24C. The rest of the weekend was T-shirt weather and although I was tempted to go for a swim, some neighbours braved the cold waters, nonetheless. We got in on the Thursday evening and stayed through till Monday morning. Yes, at this time of the year the nights are cold at +1C but we kept very cosy-warm with our wood stove. The first two photos show the lake in the morning mist. The third shows our deck perched nicely above the water. I especially like the shot of our dock in the early morning mist. Taken with an Olympus EPL-5 with 14-42mm lens.

A herd of pumpkins  We were driving along the highway from a shopping trip in the Quebec countryside when we came across a sign that said "Free Pumpkins". Naturally we thought it was a come-on but our curiosity got the better of us and we stopped to inquire. Sure enough they were free. Now, they are missing the top. Not a big deal for us but they are not commercially attractive without the stem. No worries, we were not greedy so we asked for two. We took them back to the cottage and decided to use them as props for our Thanksgiving turkey dinner (with wine and all the trimmings I might add - so, thanks Jim). Happy Face I carved the one you see in the middle photo. I am not the most creative person in the world but I thought - simple is best, and put the knife to the pumpkin. The bottom photo shows it lit up.I was in a happy space - the face of the pumpkin reflected that mood. I hope you enjoy. Comment if you like. Half lit like all of us that evening Olympus...

One of the best kept secrets of northern Nova Scotia is the Tatamagouche Railway Restaurant & Inn. In mid September we enjoyed a wonderful meal at this fine out-of-the-way restaurant located in the sleepy town of Tatamagouche. Here are a few photos from that evening. Obviously the last one is not an evening shot but one that was taken about two weeks afterwards when we could not resist a drive back up to this wonderful little town. The last photo shows a 66 Ford Galaxy 500 convertible parked in front of the railway restaurant. I must say that the place is busy, there were always folks milling about. While we were there we talked to an English couple who remarked that their stay at the Inn was one of the high points of their vacation to Canada, high praise for an out-of -the-way gem. We only live an hours drive away but if we were any great distance I would not hesitate staying at this fine abode.