Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
First & foremost… no… I have not seen “Blues Brothers” in its entirety… but I’m attempting to remedy that. I’ve caught most of the main parts during various TV showings, random video clips & parodies throughout the years… but I couldn’t tell you much about the movie other than they’re on a Mission from God to get the band back together… and it’s basically a musical where they probably say sh*t a lot (thanks to TV muting). I did watch about 2/3 of it this weekend before the well-worn DVD through Netflix decided to stop working… but I’ll save my review for then. “How can I know anything about movie comedy & have NOT seen Blues Brothers?” I’ve seen Blues Brothers 2000 first… so I know what movie comedy is NOT. More to come…
Sunday night though, I did watch the new movie “Road Hard” starring Adam Carolla, David Allen Grier, Jay Mohr, Larry Miller, Diane Ladd, David Koechner & others. This was the crowdfunded movie through FundAnything.com that comedian, podcast supermogul & wine purveyor Adam Carolla wrote & funded last year and is now getting its theatrical release. It follows a comedian named Bruce Madsen (Carolla basically playing himself) who after coming up as a stand-up comedian, relished in the heyday of the 90’s & 00’s with some big buck holding deals and like, now has to revert back to stand-up comedy to make a living (for his ex-wife & kids) while his former partner from the Bro Show (not Man Show) has gone on to become the king of late night (played by Jay Mohr, not Jimmy Kimmel). The movie is basically a parodied look at his own life… or rather where it was before the podcast really took off, and maybe to a certain point still is… but it’s really a look at a LOT of comedians that are hitting the road & clubs the past few years. I really enjoyed the movie! I know that’s now surprising since I listen to the podcasts & have been a huge fan for many, many years… but the movie itself is pretty well done as well. Similar to his previous headliner “The Hammer”, Carolla seems to stick to what he knows… which is primarily boxing, construction, touring the country and hilarious observations of everyday life. His actual acting seems to be a little less than desired… as there’s not a whole lot of emotional range shown… and it’s kind of a story where he’s his own worst enemy & he never really draws your sympathy into the situation… but he does have great comedic timing & there are moments here& there. See? Not suckling his teet… there are flaws. The random situations seem to be a lot more memorable than the actual main story… but a lot of comedies have that issue. Laughs over character development. Not a bad thing, just a thing. Of course there’s the love interest thrown in & all of that, as it IS a movie… and moviemaking 101 apparently has that in there somewhere… but it keeps you laughing throughout. Also, Larry Miller damn near steals the show with his portrayal of superagent “Baby Doll” Dixon. I’m really glad to see that he’s made a pretty fair recovery from his head injuries a few years back… and I recommend that you all check out this movie. Heck, VOD it for $7. That’s cheaper than ONE ticket. Hell, that’s cheaper than parking for the theatre at most places here in San Francisco. Or the accompanying popcorn. Let Orville Redenbacher spot you a bag of movie puffs. Make it a sexy date night like we did… oh & as I donated to the cause a few months back, this movie also has my first official real life “big” budget movie credit… a star is born!
Saturday after a quick run to the East Bay, we started yet another brew batch… with this entry being an all-grain recipe for a Scotch Ale that we’re going to age in our whiskey barrel. This particular recipe called for about 16 pounds of grains for our 5 gallon batch… so it’s gonna be pretty strong when it’s all said & done… just how we like it. Here are some pictures of the mash process, where we basically extract the sugars from the cracked grains in our mash tun. I’ve gone over the process a few times before in more details… but there’s a lot to cover from this weekend, so pardon my brevity. More details can be found here.
One new thing that we tried was adding strawberries to our Hefeweizen when we transferred it to secondary fermentation. Now, in the past with our experimental pale ales, we took fruits that we had dehydrated & put them in the carboy with the beer. This takes care of any “bugs” that might interfere with the beer and cause off flavors… but it’s also a timely process & you can lose some flavor compounds & components from the fruit that you’re using when you take out all of the water. This time though, we went a different route. We took about five pounds of frozen strawberries from the supermarket freezer aisle… heated them a little bit in a sauce pan with some water… puree them into a smooth mixture… and heated them to about 170 degrees to basically kill anything that might cause contamination.
Once the puree has cooled back down, we then put it into the carboy… and mix in the beer. This method will hopefully maximize the dispersion of the strawberry sugars thoroughly throughout the beer as much as possible, even though it appears that a lot of it tended to go towards either the top of the bottom of the carboy once everything was in there. Now, the yeast has a batch of new sugar to play with & turn into alcohol… and some new flavor characteristics will be in the hefeweizen as well… can’t wait to try it… and it kinda looks like a beer milkshake…
Another pretty amazing thing, since we pushed off our bottling until the next day, there were FIVE FULL CARBOYS in our brewhaus area… that’s 25 gallons of delicious boozy goodness… and all of the colors of the booze as well as you can see here…
Saturday night, we went to Peter’s Birthday Party… and good times we had by all…
Sunday morning, we headed over to the East Bay to help Izzy’s Aunts bottle their Torpedo Clone that we started with them about a month ago… and they even gave us what may be our new stirring spoon… but it may also be a little too big for most of what we need… at least at the five gallon scale…
Then we went to “Phonominal” for a Vietnamese pho lunch… but I had this!
Then we returned home to bottle our Torpedo Clone, they should all be ready for drinking in about two weeks… but the sample we used for final gravity… was pretty damn good…
Also, we’re still doing pretty damn well with our green smoothies, healthier eating (though not crazy) and hiking & walking a lot more… here are some pictures from our Sunday night stroll over by the Palace of the Fine Arts…
… and after our walk, Izzy made me a delicious meal that started with a HEARTBEET salad, complete with marinated artichoke hearts & beets… then followed it up with some leftover turkey chili mac, and an Anchor Porter to wash it down… absolutely delicious… she spoils me… and there was even an elephant playing in my porter…
Hope that you all had a great weekend as well… and there’s plenty more adventures coming up very soon… so until next time, have a great day everybody!!!
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