Beer, hockey updates

And now on to more uplifting updates, Slootz and SharpShooters.
Yes, the event that caused me to even be on the road Wednesday night was a SharpShooters game. Against the Stars, who we are chasing for 2nd place in the division. The top-2 make the play-offs, and we're 5 (or 3 if our appeal on an earlier game is accepted) points behind them heading into the game. With only 3 games left after this one, it's a must win.
Games with the Stars are fun, because we're evenly matched. Whichever team works harder will typically win. Obviously, if one team has a break-out performance by a goalie or something, that can swing the tide. But that's unusual.
Luckily, they did not have a good game as a team. They had a substitute goalie that was quite frankly amazing. It was this girl that couldn't have been over 5'3", but she was incredible in net. Robbed several guys of sure goals. And not just any of our guys, our scorers. While I'd like to blame her for personally getting blanked, I was my own worst enemy. I managed to hit the post/crossbar not once, not twice, but 3 times. Twice on the same shift on 2 nice shots, too.
But we were able to score when it counted and keep them to only 2 for a 3-2 win. So their lead is down to either 3 or 1.
The aforementioned appeal goes back to a game early in the season when a team used a player that was not on their roster. That should go down as a forfeit, but the league has yet to say either way. They likely are waiting to see how the play-off race goes. If we are 3 points behind at the end they'll give it to us. (Or if we're 1 point ahead). But if not, who knows.

Slootz
Well, the next Slootz beer is officially brewed and in primary fermentation. The MoppleBoch. It has been talking about for a long time, so it's nice to see it happen. And a good team beer. I had the maple-brown sugar idea, Mark had the name and was able to track down some grade-B maple syrup. 1 quart of maple syrup, 18oz of brown sugar, on top of an already solid base, is giving us the potentially strongest beer yet. Initial gravity readings have this lined up to be in the 8-10% range! The fermenting should be fast and furious this week! We should be moving it to the secondary fermentor next Thursday night, then on to bottles a week or 2 after that. So roughly by mid- to late-March, we'll have some magic on our hands.
And we hopefully have a fix to our low-carbonation issue that was seen with the Double-Bagger. It's likely that the beer was bottle conditioned at too low of a temperature, which resulted in the yeast not being able to re-start fermentation of the priming sugar. Keeping the beers inside the apt while conditioning should fix that problem. The stairwell was probably in the 50s last time, with 70-75 being desired. We just didn't realize it would be an issue, as it's never come up before.
And yes, the Slootz website is again being talked about. We don't have a smuggled machine to host it on any more, but we'll still put something together. We owe that to our loyal drinkers. Which is really just Mark and I.

Well, time to do a little "work".