The Visit with Keanu

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

This weekend was pretty relaxing involving mostly horror flicks & finding out I needed a few more things to pull off the podcast… but here are the highlights…

 

First up, we watched one of director Eli Roth’s new movies called “Knock Knock” starring legendary thespian Keanu Reeves as a married architect whose home working& burning the midnight oil one weekend night while his wife & kids are playing at the beach (like five miles from his house?) when all of a sudden, during this rainy night, two young attractive ladies dressed in see-through party clothes are at his door saying that they got dropped off at the wrong place by their Uber & they’re looking for a party… can they use his phone? They’re not getting a signal. NOPE!!! Slams door in their face… roll credits. It was more of a short film. Of course that’s not what happens… he invites them in being a nice (stupid) guy… they start flattering him… long story short, Keanu pulls a three-way with girls who are younger combined. Well, he wakes up the next morning… and they’re still there… and just making themselves at home… like, completely… and long story short… sh*t gets out of control. Now… the premise of the movie… pretty good. That’s why I wanted to watch it originally. The atmosphere & everything built is a great little horror flick… tension is built… but then sh*t just gets f**king stupid. The second half of the movie is just one plot convenience after another… and yeah, it’s just kind of frustrating and hard to watch towards the end. Would I recommend seeing it? Sure, why not? I like Eli Roth movies & it’s not “Hostel” levels of gore (though there are moments Izzy had to turn away) which I support. That being said… there are definitely flaws. It’s basically the story of a stupid architect being outwitted by two attractive teenage chicks.

 

Next up was “Annabelle”, the 2014’s prequel to 2013’s “The Conjuring” with this installment detailing the “true” (documented) story of a doll possessed by an evil entity of some sort. So… a young married couple Mia & John are in a quiet neighborhood… and then there are some Manson Family murders next door… and because they went to check out the noise, they bring it to their house… and Mia is hurt while the assailants are gunned the f**k down! Well… apparently the soul of one of the attackers gets transported into her (already creepy f**king looking) antique doll and… look, I’m going to stop right here. This movie is “Child’s Play” meets “Rosemary’s Baby” or some crazy sh*t like that…  and occasional appearances from the dark demon figure borrowed from the “Insidious” movies. By the way, am I the only one that REALLY gets “Insidious” & “The Conjuring” confused because it uses the same actors (Patrick Wilson) and most of the storylines? I can’t be right? Anyway, if you’re okay with the whole killer doll thing & suspend your disbelief, then the movie’s pretty good. Tension is built, there are a few great creepy scenes, VERY ominous tone, you don’t really know what’s going on half the time… and I always thought that there may be a twist that somebody was just losing their mind… and maybe there are a few twists like that… you’ll just have to see to find out… but when you get down to it… it’s about a killer doll, right? I’d say check it out. The director did a decent job… and the only other major release movie to his credit is… “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” aka the pretty bad sequel. I’d say check it out if you want… but not mandatory.

 

 

Lastly was this year’s “The Visit” from infamous director M. Night Shyamalan who has made some real stinkers in his recent history… but everybody is apparently on board that this is his best in well over a decade. Well, this is the story of two teenagers (documentarian sister & younger cracker rapper brother) who go on a visit to their grandparents in Monroeville, PA (farm country) whom they have never met before… as their mom basically disowned them when she was 19 & pregnant… and there’s elusion to another event that led to them parting ways. The kids are there for about a week while the mom is on a cruise with her boyfriend… and they’re documenting the event with video cameras (found footage film) and things start off well enough… but their grandparents have some VERY unusual habits… that seem to be getting progressively worse… and creepier. Now, I thought this movie was pretty damn good. There are a few things that just irritated the hell out of me (mostly the dialogue from the kids sounding REALLY contrived and obviously from a writer/director/occasional cameo actor… and especially the kid rapping… and a few ‘found footage’ shots where I questioned who was videotaping… and a few scenes of “WHY ARE YOU JUST STANDING THERE???”) but overall, yeah… it’s a pretty good scary flick. I’d recommend checking it out. Is this the Return of the Shyamalan? We shall see…

 

Sunday morning, Izzy & I also started our first New Brew of 2016… and it was our 2^nd attempt at making a Russian Imperial Stout!!! That’s right, $teve’s Birthday Cake 2.0 has officially begun!!! You may remember from last year that this particular brew requires a LOT of fermentable sugars to get the high alcohol content that we’re looking for… and because of a few things we’ve learned the past year from getting proper attenuation from the grains, etc. we were able to increase our original gravity (basically sugar content) enough that it should be 1-2% MORE alcohol than our original… which after barrel aging was already 11-12%. Anyway, we’ll keep you posted obviously… but here are some pictures of the process…

 

 

The next morning... so much activity it blew off our bubbler...

One sad note… was that our Belgian Quad that we started before Christmas… apparently got an infection, probably due to poor sanitization on our part… so unfortunately we ended up dumping the batch. We’ve also been trying to completely sanitize every piece of the FastFerment conical fermenter that it was in. With the fermenter being made of plastic, it’s easier to get some things in the microscopic nooks & crannies… but hopefully we can still salvage it. Worst case scenario: We have a new souring fermentor… but we should be able to get it back to prime. Dumping the entire five gallon batch is sad of course… but since this is the first batch that we’ve really had to dump in about 50 attempts over the past 2.5 years… apparently that’s REALLY good luck & preparation on our part. Still… it would’ve been nice to try out that quad… oh well… soon enough I’m sure…

 

Izzy also made some jerky... with secret ingredients... okay, it's Mountain Dew & Adobo... and it's delicious...

 

Monday night was the Annual Party for employees at Elevation 66 Brewing… and we were invited!!! YAY!!! Big Dave remembered!!! No, seriously… Super Dave honestly just forgot to invite us last year… but this year, he took everybody to Albany Bowl for pizza, beer & bowling!!! It was awesome!!! I showed up after work so everybody was WELL into the festivities by the time we got there… but we had a great time with Super Dave, Lady E, Big Ben, Lone Cicerone and everybody else.

 

Later this week, Izzy & I will be heading off on a nice little getaway to my former mistress… Las Vegas, Nevada (as opposed to Las Vegas, New Mexico). What are we going to do while we’re there? Wouldn’t YOU like to know? Well… we’re still kind of figuring all of that out since I’ve been there MANY times and she hasn’t really been there as an adult… but if you know us, you know the kind of crazy stuff we’ll end up stumbling upon… oh and my Wingman will be meeting up with us too!!! Musicals? Possibly. Brewery tours? More than likely. Drinking? B**ch, please!!! EPIC PARTY WEEKEND ALERT!!! Have a great weekend yourselves, everybody!!!

Belgian Quadrilogy

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Monday night after work, Izzy & I finally started on our Belgian Quad that we’d been planning for a few weeks… and are using some of the dry yeast that we got at NHC back in June. This is our first Belgian beer… and they’re often quite more in-depth and difficult to control than other types of beer. Historically, Belgian beers use multiple-step mashes… which is when you use the mash tun to extract the sugars, you’ll often add water to reach different temperature points during the mash to extract more of a variety of sugars for your wort. This process obviously requires a bit more math & fine tuning to get exactly what you want, especially on a homebrew level. We ugh… totally just went the partial mash method with malt extract, but also about four pounds of various specialty malts for various flavors and coloring… so that’s a bit of a cheat. Again, it’s our first time.

 

Another aspect of Belgian beers are the ingredients. Probably the “Belgian” beer that most people are familiar with is Blue Moon which is a Belgian-style wheat ale that also includes coriander & orange peel. Typically, true Belgian beers don’t use a whole lot of spices in their preparation… but it’s the yeast that gives different characteristics like the notes of coriander, orange, black pepper, white pepper, and the like… but often times there will be additions of these spices to emphasize the characteristics. In this particular batch that we did, no spices were used… but we did add Belgian candi syrup which is a distilled syrup of two of my favorite fruit sugars (fructose) from beets & dates. How could that possibly go wrong? (Please don’t look back to our Beet Beer that we experimented with about six months ago… we’ll fine tune that one next time around)

Also, the Belgian yeast is unique as well. For this recipe, we used the Abbey Ale dry yeasts that we were given at NHC that are for higher-gravity beers… which a Belgian Quad is, hopefully about 8-10% ABV if all goes well. These yeasts often give off notes of pepper, phenolic spiciness, and other different notes that say… a California Ale yeast would not. A little over a year ago, I did that side-by-side comparison at Southern Pacific Brewing where we sampled the same wort, but fermented with different yeasts… and the results were quite fascinating. I highly recommend it if you get the opportunity. The White Labs tap room in San Diego was a great place to try that with a WIDE variety of beers & yeasts. Another interesting aspect of the Belgian yeast is that they typically ferment best at higher temperatures in the range of 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit. We’ve had a bit of a cold spell that started here in San Francisco, but our brewhaus (my living room) is still a pretty decent 60-65 degrees. We may have to raise the temperature a bit though and make sure we do what’s best for the yeast. If our starter was any indication, it loved the warm kitchen while we were brewing.

 

Anyway, the brew went pretty smoothly… and we’re SUPER excited about the results over the next few weeks. Belgian beers may be difficult to brew (when not cheating like we did) but they can often times be worth it. These beers often offer a different complexity that you wouldn’t expect from a standard beer… and hopefully we just do those Belgian monks that perfected these styles justice in our attempt. We’ll definitely keep you posted. Again, congratulations to all the winners of the California State Comp! Thank you to all the judges & stewards!!! Thank you to Karlo & Sami for hosting LTHD!!! Just a big thank you to everybody, especially if you’re still reading this blog thing… I find it therapeutic… but hopefully you find it at least mildly entertaining or informative. Have a great day everybody!!!