SF Beer Week 2016 - Part Two

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Wednesday night, Izzy & I continued our mild SF Beer Week adventures with a visit to Fieldwork Brewing in Berkeley. This brewery is HIGHLY regarded within the brewing circles that we keep, both professionally & amateur… and for good reason. They always have a wide variety of brews on tap (usually at least 12 different options) and they are CONSTANTLY changing… and some very unique options made in-house. For example, when we went on Thursday, they had options such as:

 

·         Mandarina – Tart Saison

·         Good Conduct - Barrel Aged Imperial Stout

·         Olde Dubliner - Imperial Dry Stout

·         Black Thai – Thai Tea Espresso Porter (very nice)

·         Chocolate Milk – Brown Ale with lots of TCHO chocolate & lactose (milk sugar)

·         Amarilloweisse – Dry Hopped Berlinerweisse

·         Coconut Milk – Double IPA with LOTS of hand-toasted coconut & lactose

·         5-6 different versions & levels of IPA with different hop characteristics

 

So yeah, I recommend checking them out if just for the fresh options & variety… and they also have Crawlers now, which are basically 32 oz aluminum cans of their fresh beer that you can take home in addition to their growlers.

 

Thursday night, Izzy & I visited Seven Stills Distillery’s Taproom for a special release of… BEERCEPTION!!! See… it’s a beer within a beer! How you ask? Well, as you may remember, Seven Stills specializes in making whiskey from distilled craft beers. Well… for Beerception… they barrel aged their Whipnose IPA in a Whipnose Whiskey barrel… and dry hopped the barrels with Chinook & Citra hops. Nice little spot… right over by Laughing Monk Brewing too (will check another time, private event Thursday) in the Dogpatch… go check it out… well, in a few months… they’re still getting things put together… it’s a work in progress…

Saturday, we did a new first… and that’s a DOUBLE BATCH!!! What’s that mean? TEN GALLONS of beer made… in ONE BREW. BOOM!!! SCALING IT UP!!! Well… sort of… see…this is how we did it different. We basically just doubled the grain bill ingredients (malt extract mostly in this case) to make a SUPER strong wort… and then diluting it down so that it’s ten gallons of wort instead of the five or so that we started with. Why? Because we wanted to make ten gallons of Stout to run a few experiments with… including some souring… and we wanted to cut the time in half (maybe more since we used cold water to dilute at the point where we were trying to cool the hot wort). Here are some pictures from our double batch of Chocolate Stout…

 

Sunday was the day of the big SF Homebrewers Guild / Seven Stills Barrel Aging Competition in which Izzy & I BOTH had entries of our delicious beverages. We had both a barrel-aged hard cider… and a barrel-aged Scotch Ale… and there were over 30 other barrel-aged beers there to try… and a few dozen others… so times were good. Food was provided by Casey’s Pizza Van… and yeah, EVERYBODY had a great time!!! Here are some pictures of the event…

 

Towards the end, they announced the winners for the Top 3 in the Barrel Aging Competition… and top for all of the other homebrew shared… People’s Choice, of course since there were almost all of the beer styles involved & with unique twists like Mexican Chocolate Imperial Stouts and all kinds of stuff. Well… the winners were announced… and some great beers won…

 

 

The Barrel Aged winners were announced… and we didn’t win for either beer… so we were mildly bummed… but then, the non-comp People’s Choice was announced… and somehow… we had won!!! Even though both beers were part of the competition…

 

Does this sound incorrect? Well… it should… apparently when you get a bunch of drunken hipsters together to tally up votes, math goes to the wayside. It’s a mix of Steve Harvey & a Hanging Chad… but when all was said & done… apparently Tricera-Scotch actually won 2^nd Place in the Barrel Aged Competition… and we don’t have a picture with the 2^nd place ribbon because… well, they just took our ribbon & didn’t replace it with anything… so yeah. Then again, I’m pretty sure that everything was just tallied wrong… and based on our feedback throughout the event… I’m pretty sure that we ACTUALLY won… even if it won’t show on the official ledger… regardless, LOTS of great beer & LOTS of great people!!! Even taking home 2^nd Place is pretty f**king amazing… and we’ll take it!!! WOOHOO FOR TERRIBLE LIZARD BREWING!!!

 

Anyway, so a great SF Beer Week 2016… and now we just get ready for the Super Bowl… and the clusterf**k that will be upon the Bay Area for the next few weeks. More on that to come… until then, have a Happy Groundhog Day everybody!!!

Going Experi-Mental

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Last Saturday night, Izzy & I watched “TMNT: Turtles Forever” which is an animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie from 2007 that… basically crossed-over the series of the 2000’s with the series from the 1980’s via… wait for it… transporting through different dimensions. Now, the way it was cut & everything made me think that it was meant to be four TV episodes (there are “commercial break” wipes every 7-8 minutes) but it was actually surprisingly good. Basically the new Turtles who are serious & super secretive and… well, ninjas, are sitting at home in the sewer when there’s some news of video evidence of green do-gooders running around NYC. “It wasn’t us” so they go investigate… and find out that it’s the brash, smartass older Turtles from the 80’s complete with catchphrases… and basically they have no problem with just walking around town in their dimension. Well, there’s also both Shredders involved… and just check it out if you’re a fan. There are a few things you’d probably like about it. By the way, both April O’Neills are in it too and… okay, 80’s April somehow pulled off the yellow jumpsuit look… and the newer one… I think she’s 14 years old… or at least looks that way, but dating Casey Jones? Is that… is that just the way that things are nowadays? I feel sorry for kids nowadays… anyway, check it out. Lemme know what you think.

  

Sunday night, I watched “The Fisher King” starring Jeff Bridges & the late Robin Williams. It had been a LONG time since I’ve seen this movie… and I forgot how poignant& good it can be at times. From director Terry Gilliam (“Brazil”, “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas”, “12 Monkeys”, etc) comes the story  of a radio shock jock named Jack (Bridges) who spouts off his mouth… and incidentally causes one of his crazy listeners to shoot up a bar killing seven people & himself. Well, feeling responsible, Jack goes into a bit of a rut… drinks himself into a stupor for the better part of a few years… and then is mistaken for a homeless man by some young white assholes just looking for somebody to beat up on… and they’re just about ready to set him on fire (no joke) until he’s saved by a homeless man (Williams) and his friends. Well, when Jack comes to… he finds out the homeless guy is named Parry & he’s… well, mentally unstable. As he tries to leave though, he finds out that Parry was actually a college professor… until his wife was gunned down in front of him during the incident that Jack “incited”. So feeling a little responsible, he tries to get Parry back on his feet… sorta… really just make himself feel better… but then stuff happens as they search for the Holy Grail. That’s right. Terry Gilliam made another movie about the search for the Holy Grail I believe that you might have seen. I don’t want to give too much away because I want you all to go check it out. There’s also a REALLY good performance by Jack’s girlfriend (Mercedes Ruehl) throughout the movie… and Robin Williams is pretty fantastic… and yes, even the Dude does a pretty decent job… though there are some parts where he’s just being the Dude too cool for school… and really just a great ensemble cast & one of those weird twisted kinda love tales with some heart tugging moments. There’s a lot of concepts brought up like how homeless people are actual people with backstories, how people react to tragedies, relationship dynamics, and a couple crazy silly stuff to keep you entertained too.  Check it out.

 

Tuesday night was our company Softball opener… and I was actually a little ready this year. No, not really hitting the batting cages or fielding grounders a bunch or anything… but I have been running a bit… but most importantly, this year I’m dressing the part. That’s right… in previous years, I was my usual amazing self… wearing jeans and raggedy ass “everyday” sneakers. This year, I’ve got some actual baseball pants& some good running sneakers. Heck, even my socks are supported for betting play and match our colors of navy blue & silver. Yup, I’m lookin’ pretty fine this year. We even have new uniforms. Nothing too incredible, but definitely better than the ones we’ve used for the past decade or so. As for the actual game, both teams started out slow so it was tied 0-0 after the first three innings. I played the first two innings and… 0-for-2 with a ground out & a pop fly. Nothing in the field came my way either. Then I substituted out since we had about 16 players to work in. Over the next three innings though, we pulled out to a 15-1 lead… and after the last inning (and a few gimmes), we won 15-5. Afterwards a few of celebrated with pizza & beer… and I’m liking our chances to pull off a three-peat this year & win our 3^rd consecutive championship… but I may be getting ahead of myself. I have to start playing better on a personal level before I can claim anything on that. Lots of fun though & a great way to hang with coworkers, especially since I’m too damn busy to do so when actually at work.

 

Thursday night, Izzy came over to my place and made me a wonderful dinner of Hunter’s Sausage in what basically because a Irish Red Ale reduction sauce… fresh sliced tomatoes from her garden with lemon pepper sprinkled on them… and some homemade garlic sourdough bread with a little cheese mixed in & garlic butter. Needless to say, it was pretty f**king fantastic… here are some pictures…

 

Also on the menu, was our Bock that is finally ready for consumption… and as you can see, it’s a beautiful color… a little darker than your typical Maibock… and the taste is pretty amazing as well. I’m a HUGE fan of Bock beers… and this is really good. If I had one lone criticism, it’s that it’s a little more bitter than a bock typically is… but I think that’s because we used the Chocolate Malt instead of the Black Prinz that was recommended to us by the Anchor Brewers a few months ago. You see, when we were making this, you had to know somebody who could get Black Prinz as it wasn’t a readily available malt, basically a priority malt to professional brewers as it provides the coloring and characteristics of a chocolate malt… but without the bitterness that usually comes with it. Of course, about two weeks after we started this Bock, we started seeing Black Prinz available in homebrew stores… so now we’re REALLY excited about this already delicious beer, now with Black Prinz instead of Chocolate malt. It’s one of my favorites already. BEHOLD!!!

 

Saturday, Izzy & I made another batch of the simple Pale Ale recipe that we made last week… but we have different plans for this batch. A month or so ago, I had purchased a Quad Core Kit, which is basically four one-gallon glass carboys as opposed to one five-gallon glass carboy. Last week’s batch’s plan is basically to ferment for 10-14 days and then we keg it so it’s ready to drink in about two weeks’ time. The plan for this 2^nd batch is a little more experimental. We make the batch, set it up for primary fermentation for about a week, and then transfer into the four separate one-gallon carboys, each with a different ingredient to add in secondary fermentation… and any extra (that 5^th gallon) to be bottled so it’s ready to drink in a week or so. As far as secondary ingredients, there are a lot of different options that you can do. Fruits & berries are also good for sweetness or tartness of just the hint of flavor, dry hopping is good for various bitternesses, you can even add things like liquor or wine to give it some of those characteristics. For this batch, using essentially the same base wort, the different ingredients in the containers will be:

 

1)      Dried Strawberries from our dehydrator

 

2)      Dried Kiwi from our dehydrator

 

3)      Dried Pineapple from our dehydrator

 

4)      Dry Hop - TBD

 

5)      Bottled with Izzy’s Jalapenos in each bottle

 

Then after about 7-10 days of secondary fermentation, they’ll be bottled & we’ll have five different Pale Ale varieties to contrast & compare… six if we still have some leftover from last week’s batch in the keg. True, we’ll only have about 10 bottles of each, but with those samples, we can see if there’s a particular kind that we REALLY want to make again for a full batch. It’s pretty exciting… but then again, I’m now kind of a beer nerd.

 

It was also time to bottle our second batch of ChocoNut Stout, so we added the coconut extract during the bottling process & they should be ready in about two weeks. Mmm… this is the version with the Black Prinz instead of Chocolate Malt (discussed earlier during the Bock) so it should be interesting. Upon taking the final gravity, we tried the amount that was in the hydrometer and… yeah, it was pretty f**king delicious... and only going to get more delicious when carbonated…

 

 By the way, this is how active our Pale Ale was this morning... we had to add the blowoff tube...

Anyway, that was the week that was… hope you all enjoyed reading about it… or learned something maybe, I don’t know. Not sure who all reads this thing anymore. I also wanted to do a special shout-out to my lovely ladyfriend Izzy for making me some wonderful meals & helping me start a mini garden in the backyard, both pictured below... and Big Ben for his magnificent Mead that he shared with us...

 

Have a great weekend everybody!!!

Guardians & Their Duties

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Saturday, Izzy & I went to El Cerrito Theatre for the first time & hit a matinee of “Guardians of the Galaxy” starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Michael Rooker, Benecio Del Toro and the voice talents of Bradley Cooper & Vin Diesel. It’s the story of a group of five space misfits who find themselves teaming up to not only escape prison but to save the universe from destruction. That’s about it… and if you want more specifics, I’m sure you can get them online. It’s through Marvel studios… and one of their less popular entries (for example, I didn’t know squat about it until they announced it a year or so ago) but let me tell you… this movie… was AMAZING!!! The effects are great… the characters are… well, some are kind of cliché but still very interesting, funny, exciting… the bad guys are badasses… it’s just an amazing time in the theatre to share with others… and the soundtrack is absolutely thrilling… but then again, I was kinda raising on the hits of the 70’s & 80’s rock. Not only do I recommend going to see it in the theatre… I’d probably go with you if you invited me. It’s worth the price of admission… and not too many movies out there can say that. GO SEE IT!!! Solid frontrunner for Movie of the Year in the $tevie Awards!!! The role that Vin Diesel was born to play… and he should be nominated for an award that Bradley Cooper wins!

 

After the movie, we made our way back across the bay to my place & we did a few homebrew related activities starting with transferring the ChocoNut Stout from the primary fermenter to secondary…

 

Then we kegged the Cali Common brewed at Motobrewer & prepared specifically for unveiling at the Northern California Homebrewers Festival in about a month…

Then we cold crashed the keg in the kegerator and took out the Bock to let it warm up slightly… so that Sunday morning, we could bottle it & get some great carbonation (and then some)…

 

We also got to taste test all three during the processes & checking the gravity, etc. The ChocoNut Stout tastes like an excellent chocolate stout (coconut added later), the Cali Common tastes like a strong Cali Common (which makes sense because it was 8 points high in brewing) and the Bock… is a little more bitter than I was expecting but still VERY good and that may mellow out a bit later on. We also used the Chocolate Malt instead of Black Prinz, which in future batches using the Black Prinz will reduce the bitterness. Either way though, we’ve been making some very good beer.

 

Izzy has also made some wonderful meals for me this weekend… including pineapple & kiwi (that we also dehydrated), turkey burgers, bagels with smoked salmon & capers, and boar burgers with bleu cheese slices… BEHOLD!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To work off some of those delicious meals (and beer) we hiked the Bay Area Ridge Trail of the Presidio… which was about a 4-5 mile hike… and gorgeous views along the way. Of course, my phone was dead so I didn’t have a camera to show you some pics… but I think Izzy will on her blog later… or maybe I will the next time we hike it which will probably be very soon as it’s pretty convenient to my house & a nice 90 minute or so walk.

 

Anyway, that'll do it for this entry... GO SEE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY!!! And most importantly, have a great day everybody!!!