More on Beer

This past Monday I was invited back to Yasigi Beer Garden the little craft brewery that I found a couple weeks ago. The head brewer asked if I wanted to assist on brew day as a guest brewer. Of course I said hell yes ill be there. I was there at 10am and 7 hours later I had officially participated in the brewing of 1000 Liters of beer. It was a great day, and the icing on the cake is that I convince the brewer that we need to make an IPA next week to cater to more refined taste like many of the expats here in Kampala have. Most African like a very mild relatively tasteless light beer, nothing with much flavor body or alcohol content. I am going to try to change that and help this guy expand the palate a bit. I also met the owners and they are totally on board with my experimentation and told me I am welcome to come brew as much as I wanted as long as they don't have to pay me. I can handle that for now. Next week the first IPA in Uganda will be born. (Insert evil laugh here)

Street Food

As I am sure most of you either already know or have discovered in my blog that I a bit of a Foodie. However, not in the sense that most people use it, I am not a pretentious eater that only goes to the nicest restaurants that have the best reviews. I am a Foodie I will eat just about anything that is or isn't supposed to edible, sometime not so good yet sometime wicked good. Here in Uganda the street food is a bit more creative than Gambia. I discovered a Rolex about two weeks ago, not the watch but the food. Let me set the scene for this wonderful magic. Its a bit of an elusive beast but well worth the hunt, its can only be found on dirty markets corners (I know my American friends from The Gambia are saying "He will never learn"). So as I was saying it starts out with a thick doughy tortilla called a Chapati that is cooked on a homemade steel skillet on a stand heated by charcoal. Then comes the guts of the sandwich, 2-3 eggs, tomatoes,onions, carrots, peppers all diced up and mixed in with the eggs and cooked on the same skillet like an omelet. Then its rolled up in the Chapati bread thing and presto you have a Rolex. OH MY GOD its a foodgasm in your mouth. And, it costs about .50 cents.

Another interesting thing here is pop-corn. We as Americans associate pop-corn with movie theaters, county fairs and K-Mart. Here its a bit of a cultural anomaly, you can find it all over the place; markets, grocery stores, along the street. Welders even custom make these fancy little popcorn makers and sell them along the roadside. It actually doesn't taste too bad either. This might cost about .25 cents

One of the more non palatable foods for us westerners in apparently only available during this time of year; November-early December. Fried grasshoppers. They look like giant green locusts and they are everywhere. The locals take them and remove everything but the Abdomen/Butt part which is about the size of a finger and then fry it in oil and a little salt. They walk the streets with buckets of these things and sell them to people stuck in traffic or just walking around. A newspaper rolled into a cone acts as a cup and its filled up so you can eat your insects at your leisure. I finally worked up the courage to try one yesterday. It was not my favorite but it was edible and I can see how folks would like them.

Visitors

I am sure that we are all aware of the difference between annoying guests and welcome visitors. Well we have both on a daily basis however they are of the Avian kind. Just about every morning as we have our coffee and breakfast on the back porch the welcome visitors stop by. They are charming and handsome pleasant to look at and they don't talk too much and it has only ever been two at a time. The African Grey Parrot these guys are endemic to this part of Africa so they are obviously wild parrots that come and go as they please. They are inquisitive and sit up on the roof cocking their head from side to side try to get a look at us while we look at them. They have a very pleasant vocalization, little whistles and clicks.

The annoying guest are those that come by and overstay their welcome, they are loud and obnoxious. They travel in larger groups and just set up camp in the yard and bark out these LOUD squawking sounds like a goose swallowed and kazoo and has the lung capacity of Cher. The Hadada Ibis show up in the morning and stay until late afternoon. Its enough that if you are talking to someone in the immediate area you both have to stop and start over again. Imagine what it is doing to my lazy afternoon naps.

Ill find some pictures or videos to post later.

BEER!!

As the blog title lends to the Beer aspect its only fitting to add the subject to at least 50% of posts. We were pleasantly surprised at the selection of beers here in Uganda. Especially after coming from The Gambia that has all of three beers that they produce and a select few mediocre imports like Heineken or Becks (Bleh). Uganda has a plethora of beer to chose from to appeal to any taste; Stout, Pale, Pilsner, Lagers, and in a good variety from a few different breweries. Granted these are all from the mass produced breweries that only do packaged brew. However, (speaking now in a whisper) we heard tales of an elusive microbrewery hidden on the rooftop of some obscure multi story half empty building. And....ITS TRUE...we found it. Supposedly the only craft brewery in the country and the only place that you can get beer on tap. It was empty aside from a bunch of construction I couldn't seem to find anyone that worked there. Low and behold I finally find the Bar owner, a turkish guy that has been her for a decade, he promptly disclaimed "My beer is shit, you can try it if you want but its shit". Of course we want to try it, so he rounds up his assistant brewer (A local boy probably about 18 years old that doesn't seem to know anything about beer). So this kid goes into the brew room with 2 glass pitchers and pulls off a pitcher each of both a Stout and a Pilsner straight from the secondary fermentation tank. They were beautiful looking, frothy, cloudy and cold. The owner was right about the Pilsner it was not good at all, the Stout however wasn't half bad. So after a tour and a chat I proposed he hire me to help him make and market good beer, we shall see what happens.

Then today, I got lost trying to find my way home after dropping Nikki off at work and (whispers) guess what I found?? ANOTHER CRAFT BREWERY, SAINTS BE PRAISED. The guys working there didn't speak a lick of english and the place wasn't open yet since it was 9am so we are going back tonight to try the brew and hopefully meet the brewer...Stay tuned.

Duke the Truck

We agreed to purchase a vehicle from Nikki's predecessor as to avoid the calamity that we endured when we got to The Gambia a couple years ago. First of all Uganda is a right hand drive, wrong side of road country. The first day we took the little mitsubishi out we were in for a surprise. Kampala is a a very hilly city, its name is actually derived from this fact. Our little truck "Duke" I will call him as it is written on his door doesn't do hills very well. We went to Nikki's new boss's house for dinner and realized upon trying to leave that Duke refuses to go up hills backwards. This became a problem as the only way out was backwards and straight up a very large hill.

It went like this: first trying to back straight up and only making it halfway, then trying the same in four wheel drive, then trying the same in four wheel drive and the teenage boy pushing, then having them move their car into the yard so I can get a run at it, then finally getting a run at it -in four wheel drive - without Nikki in the car and the teenage boy pushing me to get started up the hill. 

Lesson learned: back into driveways in Kampala. 

Upon further research I find out Duke has a 650cc engine which is the roughly the size of an average motorcycle.

New Arrivals

The first week in Kampala was a blur. We just came from a country that is roughly the size of Delaware with about 1.8 million people spread out across the whole country. We are now living in a city with the same amount of people, as everyone says "the traffic is horrible" and at times it really can be. To put it into perspective Nikki's office is about 2 miles from our house we can walk that distance in about 30 minutes, however sidewalks don't exist here either and neither do traffic lanes or laws. So its safer to be wrapped in steel when venturing out, but this doubles the travel time. Aside from traffic its a pretty interesting place, we can get lots of beer, pretty much any type of food in the stores, any type of restaurants as well as the usual amenities of clothes and electronics. The downside is that cost can be pretty high. The country is very clean, this is a stark contrast to The Gambia where trash is a part of the landscape where ever you go. The weather is just about perfect, low 80s during the day and low 60s at night. We have a beautiful house up on a hill and we leave the doors and windows open all day to enjoy the breeze. This is the rainy month for the fall and when it does rain it really can RAIN. We are adjusting well and have already started planning our safari getaways.

A Brussels Layover

We packed up and left The Gambia 2 days before Halloween en route for Kampala, Uganda. As any westerner can attest, living in a developing country presents many challenges; severe diarrhea, hook worms, heat stroke, heat rash, severe dehydration, uncontrollable vomiting, blister ants, deadly snakes, and unpalatable skunky beer...just to name a few (all of which I also have intimate knowledge of now). So we decided to extend our layover in Brussels from a couple hours to a couple days. GREAT decision by the way (my idea of course). We arrived to our hotel an hour before it opened, so we sat outside until someone showed up it was a bit chilly for us, coming from 105 degree heat index to about a 45 degree heat index. We checked in and I ate about 5 pounds of waffles and maple syrup that was out waiting for guests that were yet to stir. HOLY CRAP they are good too, there must be at least 5 types of waffles, and endless toppings. There are big soft ones like giant swollen Eggos, slightly smaller soft ones covered in hard sugar that tasted just like a doughnut, little thin crispy ones, and so on. So after my attempt at instant diabetes and heart attack we went for a walkabout with Thor around old town Brussels on a self guided tour. We found the largest antique flea market I have ever been to, I seriously could have spent the rest of the day in that one square. We tried beers from all of the country and even some small craft beers from the city itself. Once the sugar high wore off, the beer buzz began, once that wore off we realized we had been up and traveling for about 28 hours and it hit like a sledge hammer. Once in the room we were comatose. The next day was more exploring, more waffles and definitely more beer. We took a 4 hour walking beer tour of the city which was pretty good, it included a couple hole in the wall pubs and a 500 year old brewery where the Lambic was born. Lambic is a very interesting beer, its only brewed in the winter and its fermented naturally by wild yeasts in a large open tub in the dusty attic of the brewery. Each year its slightly different because there is no controlling the yeast strains that contaminate the brew. Its bitter and tangy and meant to drink at cool room temperature. That pretty much concluded our visit to Brussels, honestly 2 days was probably enough unless you are studying the architecture of 17th century Gothic cathedrals.  Now off to to Uganda.