Recently in beeeeeeeeeeeeer! Category

could this be it? am i done with beer?

i haven't brewed any in almost a year, now. since beginning my "wine journey" last month, i've had nearly no beer at all. last night i went to an easter party at the captain's apt, where, of course, beer was served, but while tasting the rare beers (a batch 001 from russian river!) all i could think of: when's the wine on?

yes, the beers were good. oh boy, hops. and, uh, orange peels. but where were the strawberries, the blackberries, the tannins? oh my, the tannins, which i thought i hated, but, like brussels sprouts, now cannot get enough of?

at last, after slogging through three or four (rare!) beer tastings, i finally got to have some wine, a gifted, over-oaked california syrah -- and that was the beverage i enjoyed for the evening.

this morning i considered getting rid, finally, of my brewing equipment and my electricity-hogging beer fridges (to be replaced, of course, by electricity-hogging wine fridges).

one thing has remained constant, though, and gives me cheer in its constancy: want some rye? COURSE I DO!

i considered a consideration the other night, which, in the current economic climate, is perhaps too real a consideration to be taken lightly, that were i to lose it all, were i to need to sell everything just to put food on my table, i'd keep just one thing. my smallest, heartiest, most beloved shot glass, which found me in a thrift shop, having abandoned its former owner to find its way to me.

even were water all i could afford to fill it with, i would still meditate upon the count of its bubbles, and further, meditate upon who prior to me meditated upon the count of its bubbles.

seems good enough for now.

i like it!

i think Utahns should also be required to register when they buy beer at a store, and be subject to fingerprinting and 7 day waiting periods when purchasing wine.

I think that it is our duty as Californians to organize a campaign to interfere with the internal affairs of the state of Utah and majorly fuck their shit up.

It's an embarrassing rule that insults guests and makes the state look intolerant.

The state doesn't look intolerant. The state is intolerant. You should see what it's doing to the youth of the state. Heh.

i disappointed my lunchmates yesterday by not ordering a beer at lunch. i was the only one (besides He Who Wouldn't Ever Buy Beer) and that irritated and confused them.

today, i did buy beer with lunch. the difference? yesterday's beer would have been a sierra nevada. today's was a leffe.

i don't drink socially. i will drink in social situations, but i will not drink simply because others are drinking. this isn't a theory or a supposition, it has proven to be 100% true. if what's being served is boring or not to my taste, i'll have a water.

i end up feeling uncomfortable and awkward, but i spend 100% of my life feeling uncomfortable and awkward in one way or another. i mark the moment i realized i was not only okay with that, but proud of it as a part of my personalty as the moment i became an adult.

i went back for the other 3 in the 4-pack, saying to hops and the cashier, "i've never met a barleywine i didn't like".

whelp, now i have.

if you're reading this, and you're you-know-who, i've got barleywines for you.

i had possibly one of the best xmas breaks ever. xmas itself was great, with a good haul and a pretty high success rate on the giving, too, and lots of great family interactions.

but the day after xmas, we chucked ourselves in the hybraxi and took off for escondido. we arrived at Stone Brewery around 2pm and inquired about the 4pm tour. We were too late -- by 2 minutes after 2 all the tickets for the 4pm tour had been distributed, and our entire party needed to be present to get tickets for the next tour. spudnutz and his gang were still en route.

oh darn, i probably said, here we are stuck at stone brewery/pub/beer gardens and we have to wait around another hour for another chance at tour tickets. whatever shall we do? this problem was solved by the bartender.

but first, a LOST-style flashback. a while back i'd told the folks and chef jeff that i'd like bear paws for pulling barbecued pork. well, i opened up a gift from my dad, and it was a set of big, three-tonged, dull-pointed plastic salad tosser thingies. he said he'd been to the kitchen store and they didn't have the bear paws so he got these which should also work. i had my doubts but kept them to myself. the next round of gifts, i opened up a set of real bear paws from chef jeff. ha! he'd been to the same store and then just ordered them on the internets.

now, a LOST-style flash-forward from the flashback, but not a full flash-forward to the present, or a goofy season-four-style flash-forward to the ever-impending future. no, a plain old season-two-style flash-forward to slightly later than the current flashback, but not all the way to the present. how about: last saturday, at spu's barbecue. i took the bear paws to pull apart his smoked pork, and they worked quite well. but before the barbecue, i made some cole slaw, and for that i used the salad tosser thingies, and they worked quite well for their intended purpose. so now i have two highly functional plastic dinguses for tossing salad and pulling pork. i don't know how i lived without them.

okay, now flash back to the stone brewery. people came and went -- spu's party arrived, hops and chef jeff went to the hotel to check in. only one thing remained constant: i stayed at the brewery and drank. eventually we went on the tour but i was a bit tipsy by then and really didn't get much out of it. anyhow, by now, anyone who's not doing something interesting or innovating in their brewery has, to me, a boring brewery. stone makes really great beers, but they do it through pretty standard means -- so nothing out of the ordinary piqued my interest on the tour.

that's okay, though, we used the tour to bond with the guide, in order to obtain extra free beer samples at the end. we have an easy time bonding with brewery tour guides, because we're friendly and we know about brewing and drinking beer. the more a guide knows about brewing, the easier it is for us to bond with them. the guide at stone wasn't a brewer but was quite knowledgeable (unlike the guide at green flash -- more on that later). everyone at stone was tremendously friendly, and usually quite knowledgeable about beer.

after 6pm tour, we had a 7:30 dinner. the food was disappointing, though the soup was really good. the menu was promising, and hops liked her vegetarian shepherd's pie, but i got some mediocre mac and cheese, which i was too full of beer to eat anyhow.

after dinner we went to the gift shop where i, in my inebriated and uninhibited state, purchased a boatload of branded crap and bottled beer. i ended up, i discovered yesterday, with a big red long-sleeved shirt that says "i am an arrogant bastard". i wonder what i'll do with that one?

i also got a "levitation ale" long-sleeved bike jersey, which is warm -- just what i need in this crummy weather. i dig it!

aside from the pale ale, every beer i had that night was excellent. here's what i tried and what i barely remember about them:

stone pale ale: weak, might have even been poured through dirty lines. seemed better when i had it as a sample after the tour, but that could have been alcohol-induced-fondness.

super-cali-belgi-listic ale: possibly my new favorite stone ale. fruity, hoppy but not too hoppy, toasty, and delicious.

cali-belgique ale: not as good for me as the other stone belgian ale. similar but much hoppier. normally i like "much hoppier" but the hops drown out the belgian.

bitter chocolate oatmeal stout: so chocolicious! i dig it. i dug it. i bought bottles of it.

oaked arrogant bastard: the only thing better than arrogant bastard.

arrogant bastard: hey, they're using my name for their beer! the other day at spu's house i pointed out that i'm dr. house and that spu is my wilson. hops and wilson/spu seemed like i'd laid some big revelation on them. i though it was obvious. idiots.

stone ipa: i like the stone ipa. i'd drink it if you gave it to me. but i'd be thinking: man, this isn't quite as good as green flash's west coast ipa.

levitation ale: EPIC WIN. i bought a sixer. amarillo in tha hizzouse! also, it's 4.5% alcohol, so it's got that budweiser stuff. you know, drinkability.

i think i had more than that but i can't recall. i didn't have a barleywine, though -- not until the next day.

THE NEXT DAY:

this was a good one. we got up, i went for a nice little run up the rolling hills of escondido, and we headed out to "santana's", which had been recommended by our stone tour guide.

well, santana's was an epic fail. it sucked thoroughly. it's a local chain, fast-foody, flavorless. demoralizing. i'll reveal this now: we tried two days in a row to get good mexican food in san diego county, and failed both times. cathedral city: excellent mexican food. san mateo: good mexican food. san diego: crap. i'm talking on average, too. you can pick a mexican restaurant at random in the 760 and it'll be excellent. pick one at random in the 650 and it will be good. we picked two semi-randomly in 619 and both sucked.

anyhow, our bellies full of mediocre guacamole, we headed to green flash.

green flash is tiny. and boy-howdy is it dirty! and the tour guide has been working there as a tour guide for 6 years, but knows nothing about brewing beer. she was friendly and quirky and not irritating, but hardly knowledgeable. who cares? i was working my way through a flight of green flash beers.

green flash is not as nice a brewery to visit as is stone: no restaurant, no garden, no warm seating, no bar. but they had better beer, and that's what it's all about, right?

my flight of green flash beer:

some anniversary pale ale of some sort. it was a 30th anniversary for something, certainly not the brewery, which is 6 or 9 years old or something. it was excellent. everything the stone pale ale wasn't.

west coast ipa: the best ipa you'll ever have.

hop head red: not available up here, as far as i know, even though it took gold at the world mo-fuggin beer cup! anyhow, it's amarillo dry-hopped, and it's malty, and i bought a sixer. you think i liked it?

le freak: i've had this in a bottle. it's basically the same idea as stone's belgiany beers: fruity but hoppy. i think it was better than stone's lesser belgian, but not as good as their better belgian. i liked it much better at the brewery than out of a bottle. go figure!

saison: i don't remember whether i liked this one. i think i did but i was getting pretty tanked, despite the small serving sizes. the lame carnitas i had for lunch was malfunctioning as an alcohol buffer, and the beers at green flash are all high alcohol.

double stout: this one i do remember. man was it good! chocolaty, thick, hint of bitterness. winner!

trippel: green flash's trippel was fantastic. i'm not a trippel fanatic. i have a buddy who is. i'll drink one and like it but it's not my favorite style. this one was really quite good, though, enough to make me want to buy a bottle. just not a 22-ouncer. oh well.

barleywine: best beer of the morning. it was on cask. it was chocolatey, it was oaky, it was rich, caramelly, and delicious. i made chef jeff, the wine guy, buy a bottle to lay down and age. he balked at the price until he realized he was buying a 22-ounce bottle and not a 12. heh.

After parting ways with spu, who returned home at this point, hop, chef jeff, and i headed over to lost abbey/port brewing in san marcos. when we got there, the SD brewery tourbus that had joined us at green flash was already at lost abbey.

i couldn't get people to take my order at lost abbey. sure, they were busy, but i've seen busy bars where one bartender can handle it well. they had two bartenders handling a small crowd poorly. oh well. i guess it's more of a taproom than a bar. whatever.

i sampled four beers. the beers:

avant garde: i know the type that likes this kinda stuff. the type isn't me. i'm sure it's good for those people, but if i wanted to lick a sweaty horse, i'd lick a sweaty horse. make my beer taste like beer, please. bleh.

red barn ale: now that's more like it! i bought a bottle of this. fruity, raisiny, delicious. okay, you got me: i don't remember anything about this other than i liked it and bought a bottle.

judgement day: also great. i liked it a lot. fruity, clean, tasty, clear.

two others that aren't on the website: lost abbey does a lot of one-off beers. they had a huge room full of aging casks, which they use for blending or single-cask beers, apparently on a "when they feel like it" basis. most of their beers are thus one of a kind, you-missed-it releases. i think the other two beers i had there were like this. they were dubbel-style beers, thick, "contemplative", raisiny, and just my kind of beer.

this brewery had some serious brewery-ambience, on account of the casks all over the place. the staff was friendly enough, i guess, and the beer was excellent. if i lived there i'd go back often, but there was no tour and the tastings were a bit of a pain.

after this, we headed to the beach at carlsbad, my old childhood summer stomping grounds. we took a longish walk on the beach, had some fried zucchini, and engaged in some heavy nostalgia. i walked in my new vibram five-fingers, and got them all stinkified from sweat and seawater. ew.

after our walk on the beach, we headed to Pizza Port, in carlsbad. somehow we never went there when i was a kid. if we had, i might not have thought the pizza was excellent, i'd have been used to it. as it happens, though, imho, that was the best pizza i've ever had. pepperoni was heavily smoky, crust was beer-ful and wheaty. ambience was rockin, beer was awesome.

the beer:

by this point, i wasn't really wanting beer. i had a hop-suey, a whopping 10% monster with huge hop aroma. normally, my kind of beer. by this point, too much. i couldn't finish it, and i cried a little about that.

i also couldn't finish my pizza, which made for a tasty snack later on. yay!

right next to the restaurant is the Port bottle shop, where we got a bunch of local beers from breweries we hadn't visited, as well as some Port brewing beers. we got a tip from the shopkeep that stone was tapping some 7.7.7 vertical epic that night! i said it was sad that i was so finished with beer, i couldn't take any more that day.

so back to the hotel to catch another episode of house, finish off my pizza, and rest up for more beer on sunday.

but i couldn't leave it be: what would Bowdler say if he knew i'd turned down veritcal epic? we were only 2 miles from stone, there was no good excuse, not even "alcohol poisoning" would do. so back into the car, back to stone we went.

as soon as i got in the door one of the workers started shouting at me. he flagged me down and wanted to know all about my shoes. he'd seen them the day before and told his surfing buddy all about them, and wanted to know if they'd be good for surfing. i told him probably, they're grippy, though maybe not when salty/wet. we spoke for a bit then headed to the bar.

alas, no vertical epic in the bar -- it was for growler fills only, which was back in the sampling room. so we headed back to the sampling room. i had no room to consume a growler's-worth of vertical epic, but luck and stone's awesome staff saved the day: manning the growler taps was my shoe buddy, and he insisted that all three of us have a sample of the 7.7.7. well, now i've had it. i thought it was very good in all respects besides the aftertaste. it left an ick in the mouth after its fruity belgian goodness had vanished. we had a nice chat with the shoe guy, and i wrote down the name of my shoes for him.

then it was really time for bed.

next day, on the way out of town, we went back to carlsbad to try to get some mexican food. we stopped at "señor grubby's" and got mediocre food. argh. they had a delicious-looking shawerma-spit roasting some chicken, so i ordered a burrito full of that. they pulled some steamed crap chicken from a drawer and that's what i got! wtf?!?

anyhow, they were a walk from pizza port, where we went to top me off before leaving town. i ordered the cask knight rider -- of which i only got a tiny amount, because the cask emptied on us. doh!! what i got, though, was excellent. woodsy, chocolatey, silky, and thick. yum!

i consoled myself with a lost abbey/port quadrupel, which was frighteningly drinkable for such a huge beer. chef jeff liked it, too. in fact, aside from the one that tasted like a dirty goat, all the lost abbey beers were frighteningly drinkable. that's what the monks in belgium go for when they brew, and lost abbey has got it down.

after that, we stopped to visit some relatives on the way home to sleep off our weekend. the next day, we took chef jeff and the folks' golden lab puppy on a really great hike, but that's another story.

BREWERY RATING : Stone
beers: B+
staff: A+
ambience: A-
equipment mojo: B+
food: C
overall: A-

BREWERY RATING: Green Flash
beers: A
staff: C
ambience: D
equipment mojo: C
food: D- (they had pretzels)
overall: B-

BREWERY RATING: Lost Abbey/Port
beers: A
staff: C
ambience: B
equipment mojo: B+
food: F
overall: B+

BREWERY RATING: Pizza Port
beers: A
staff: A (the bartender remembered me the next day, even without my funky beard!)
ambience: A
equipment mojo: B+ (the brewery is split between the restaurant and the bottle shop)
food: A+
overall: A

REGION RATING: San Diego
mexican food: F
friendly people: C
ambience: C (F for escondido, but carlsbad is nice, if you stick to the beach. the Carlsbad visitors guide in our hotel featured a scenic picture of a quaint dutch windmill -- with a "TGI Friday's" sign on it)
beer: A+
mojo: B
weather: B+
accomodations: A (tasty biscuits!)
overall: B

REGION RATING: Coachella Valley
mexican food: A
friendly people: i don't talk to people in the Coachella Valley
ambience: A (snow capped mountains!)
beer: F- (BYOB)
mojo: C-
weather: A-
accomodations: B (too much dog hair)
overall: B

is that so wrong?

yesterday evening, after taking Spu to the Whisky Shop in sf (where I pressured him into a second bottle, heh) we navigated streets and public transit to get to The Toronado for its 21st birthday. I was pleased with myself when after exiting MUNI, I knew the route to the Toronado. I'm really getting to know my way around sf, as long as you ask me how to get to the Toronado.

We arrived and ordered some beers. Tattoo was in a splendidly good mood, I've never seen him so non-angry. I've got a kind of fearful awe of the guy, based on his anger when customers aren't as fast with their cash as he is with his beer, so I had a 20 ready before I even ordered the 3 beers. When he barked out the price I held out the 20 only to discover it was a 1. I must have had a pretty funny look on my face, he nearly laughed as I fumbled to find a real 20.

The Captain was supposed to meet us there, but he'd called to say he'd be late, on account of he was stuck in Berkeley at a post-race festivity. But, he'd said, some friends of his/acquaintances of mine were in the back room. So we went into the back room and there were some of The Usual Suspects, beer (and even sailing, sometimes) pals of the Captain's. We sat down and started talking.

The beer was excellent, by the way. I've had a disappointing trip before to the Toronado, where the beer was not as nice as I'd hoped for. Not so last night.

While talking, I looked up and saw a familiar face. It was the brewer from drake's, who'd led us on a tour. at the time I said I thought I recognized him from... where else... the Toronado! He said he remembered me, and I asked if it was because of the beard. No, he just remembered me. Score!

We got to talking about things, and he mentioned that he had a CS degree from Cal Poly! Hey! Me too! He graduated the year I started, but we talked about profs. He says I really ought to get a brewing science degree. He doesn't use his CS skills anymore, but sounded like he actually had some at one point, none of the poser crap I'm used to.

Presently I ran out of beer, and pointing this fact out to brewer, I left to get more. After a while, the Captain showed up and that was cool. More stories, laughs, and good times. I didn't get to share in them all, because Drake pulled me into a complicated game of "washoes", which is like horseshoes, played with big washers. I didn't have much beginner's luck. We played against some Toronado employees and a brewer from North Coast Brewing, and some guy who described himself as an asshole but seemed like a brewer. During our second game, the friends of friends left, and after the game, I sat back down with the Captain and Spu.

A drunk whom the Captain had run into before came over and auditioned his mad beatboxing skills for us. Actually he wasn't bad. He was desperate to find out our answer to the following question, and polled most people in the room: "beer, wine, meat, cheese. pick two." beer and meat for me and the captain, some losers said beer and wine. bah!

the back room closed and we were ushered out into a room with a TV, where we caught Phelps winning his first Olympic race, by a huge margin. someone tried to start up a USA chant, possibly even non-ironically, but it didn't catch.

Anyhow, what made the evening so great is that I'm becoming part of a community. I can show up at an event and know people with whom I did not coordinate. Even the bouncer seems to be getting to know me.

It makes me a afraid to rid myself of the beard, because even though Drake denies it, it's certainly a memory jogger.

I had to drive us all home and then bike the next day (today!) so I didn't overindulge, which was also nice for a change. I tried some excellent beers, most of them limited special editions, and Drake bought me a Blind Pig (which I'd been meaning to try).

and yet, i have much to say on the topic. here are my things to say on the topic, in bulletted list form:

BANG! My buddy Spu has discovered, through the grace of The Duchesse, that he likes sour beers. My other beer buddy, The Captain, is a huge fan of sour beers. Once the Captain gets back, I forsee some sour beer trips in Spu's future. Actually, I forsee such things this weekend without the Captain. We'll see.

BANG! I overhauled the pub last weekend. Bottled the remains of two kegged beers, cleaned the kegerator, brought beers into work for the coworkers, and prepped a pair of full half cornys for dispensing, which leads me to the next bullet...

BANG! The Fifth Commandment Belgian Stout will be fully aged on 8/2. I may tap one of the half cornys before then. It was brewed in February, with help from The Chef, in honor of the wedding anniversary of our parents. I will attempt to bring them into the presence of their beer at some point. The half corny is eminently transportable.

BANG! I have resolved to get back into the beer festival scene. There's one that looks rather crummy this weekend in Monterey. Now, it's got the fact that it's in Monterey going for it. I haven't been to Monterey too often, but it's always nice when I'm there. However, the lineup doesn't look great. The good news is that next weekend, there's an IPA festival at The Bistro in Hayward. Now, Hayward isn't Monterey, but The Bistro is a great pub, and I went to their Double IPA Festival earlier this year. Assuming the IPA fest is mathematically half as awesome as the DIPA fest, it should still be a pretty excellent festival. That should kick off and (probably end) my re-entrance into the scene.

BANG! Speaking of beer next week, as of today, the Chuchichäschtli beer has been dry hopping for one week. Next Wednesday I reckon I'll undergo the delayed pain of transferring it to a keg. Pain, that is, because I will most likely have to resort to extreme measures to get the hop bag out of the carboy. I knew that when I put it in, but that's the swell thing about delayed pain: you never know if you'll get lucky and not have to deal with it.

BANG! The Captain gave me a bottle of cherry wit that is even now chilling in my fridge, and will be ready for consumption this evening (comprising the entirety of my plans for this evening). Bowdler gave me some mead a couple weeks ago, which will also be consumed soon. I realized a moment ago that I hadn't assigned a nickname to Bowdler. Hopefully he is pleased with Bowdler.

BANG! Speaking of consuming beer, I'm not buying any liquor at all (to take home, that is) for the next month. I'm full up on beer. What that means, though, is that I'll be depleting my stores. My goal is to be totally empty by month's end. It seems a worthy challenge.

i racked the latest batch of homebrew to secondary, making a mess in the process, and stuffing a hop bag down the neck of my carboy, which i am certain i will not see whole again (the hop bag, that is, not the carboy).

that finished, i decided to transfer the 2 half cornys of 5th Commandment Belgian Stout into my lagering fridge (heh). i took a CO2 tube and connected it to the CO2 tank, then to the keg. the line immediately filled with beer. oh crumb, i realized i had not pressurized the line. hooray for clear tubes, though, that's what I bought them for.

so i removed the tube from the CO2 tank and received my second free physics lesson of the evening! there wasn't just beer in the line, there was pressurized beer in the line, but not for long once one end of the line was exposed to atmosphere! and then the atmosphere was exposed to beer! and the beer was exposed to gravity. and then I and my furniture were exposed to beer.

lots of exposure. i forgot to open my mouth during all of this and thus have still not tasted the beer.

after a cursory, lackluster wipedown, followed by a whole bunch of sanitizer spritzing, i redid the lines, keeping in mind the laws of pressurized gasses, and stacked the two kegs in the fridge. only i didn't quite do this, since i can't stack them both in there if either of them is connected to CO2. so i removed the CO2 line from the keg, and then from the fridge itself since it's a pain to have all those kegs *and* a CO2 tank in there.

then i had to find space in the other fridge for the bottles that had been in the lagering fridge. man, i'm bushed.