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!!!

Bottling Bitters & the Apple Spa

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

This past week, Izzy has been helping out Seven Still Distillery with bottling their latest large shipment of their one-ounce bottles of Bitters. Because they are such a small operation that’s basically ran by a handful of people, they’ve needed a little help to make the timetable… but luckily Izzy has had some free time so she was able to help out. Wednesday night, I was even able to help out… and let’s be honest, bottling is kind of the monotonous & tedious part of just about everything involved in… really any industry, not just beer and/or spirits… but owners Tim & Clint were great and we were able to crank out a few thousand bottles in just the two hours that the four of us were there. Here are some great pictures of their modest setup…

 

 

Afterwards, we had both had a long day… so Izzy decided to make us some fantastic “Old Fashioned” cocktails using Seven Stills’ Fluxuate Whiskey which is distilled using Coffee Porter and Flux Cold Brewed Coffee. The whiskey itself is of course 47% ABV but even after the initial burn, you get some great coffee flavors… and notes of vanilla which are quite smooth & pleasant. This is probably my favorite whiskey from Seven Stills. For the cocktails, we modified the recipe a little bit… so it was essentially ice cubes, Seven Stills’ Fluxuate Whiskey, Seven Stills’ Cocktail Bitters & Maple Syrup (instead of simple syrup) and… it’s f**king fantastic. I highly recommend it…

 

My mom, stepdad & grandma are actually on a wonderful cross-country trip to see a lot of the major monuments in the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). Starting in Buffalo and going through places like Kirtland OH, South Bend IN, Nauvoo IL, Omaha NE, and ending in Kansas City to see some of the Mormon Temples, the Mormon Trail, and a slew of other sights & sites. I have to say… I’m a little jealous. Not necessarily for checking out a bunch of temples… but I remember when I used to be able to go on vacation without… you know… being absolutely necessary to every single aspect of my job. It’s been a good… six years or so since that was the case… and it f**king blows… and frankly I’m not fairly compensated for it… so yeah, changes are definitely on the horizon. You’ve been warned/notified that there’ll be EVEN MORE trip pictures coming soon. I’ve already bugged my mom to send me a pictures of Rick James’ grave (in Buffalo) but we’ll see if she can even operate her text messages any more. Love you mama…

 

Thursday night, Izzy & I watched a few… questionable movies. First up was “Death Spa” starring… well, they weren’t the stars but I did notice horror icon Ken Foree and the lovely ladies Chelsea Field (“Masters of the Universe”) and Karyn Parsons (“Fresh Prince of Bel Air” & “The Ladies Man”). This movie was recently reviewed on the How Did This Get Made podcast… but it’s an interesting story in 1980’s filmmaking… where apparently the story was written in the early 80’s when health clubs were all the rage (featured on Time Magazine) but the movie didn’t get funded or made until 1989… and then was released in like 1991, when nobody cared anymore but it has ALL the 80’s that you could ever want. The story is about the Starbody Health Spa… and there are mysterious deaths happening… like someone being nearly steamed to death by chlorine gas in the sauna… split in half by a pec machine (that one’s particularly odd) and others… and the police are baffled… there’s a theory that it’s this super advanced (80’s) computer system that operates the machinery, but that doesn’t hold water… so a paranormal expert is brought in… because the place may be haunted. Throw in a story of betrayal and alleged man-whoring… and you’ve got yourself a flick. Now… the movie sounds ridiculous… and it really is… but it’s the best kind of ridiculous. PLEASE watch this with your friends! The deaths are super campy (and a little confusing at times), the acting is right on par with what you’re looking for in a good laugh scare, it’ll just be a good time with your friends… and it’s so confusing & contradictory of its own rules that you can easily just shut the brain down & enjoy it. There’s really no mystery to be solved. I feel like me telling you that now will save you trying to put the pieces together… because the writers didn’t both with it either.

  

Next up was “The Apple” which is a 1980 musical from Cannon Pictures starring… well, again not really people that you’d really recognize in anything. Now… as you know, musicals are not necessarily my thing (even though I have a Musical Movie List from years ago) but… this movie… well, I’ll be honest… it’s not as horrible as I thought it was based on the preview. It might actually be even worse. Okay, anyway… the story is about a young man & woman who go on a VERY popular singing contest in the far distant future of 1994 where the world is… well, very colorful… and you know, it’s a lot like 2015 in Back to the Future clothing wise… and they don’t win the contest (due to some rigging) but are invited to party with the winning band & Mr. Boogaloo (who looks like Ming from Flash Gordon but apparently runs the music industry & therefore the world?). What follows is a big psychedelic kind of retelling of the Garden of Eden story (hence “the Apple”) and just incredibly outrageous outfits and musical dance numbers and… it’s definitely an interesting watch. If you like musicals and can get through the music… then by all means check it out. Spoiler alert: Mr. Topps / God arrives at the end… and he’s played by Joss Ackland with a magnificent blond wig. Who’s Joss Ackland you ask? Well… you may know him as the bald antagonist Denomolis from “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” or I think I can give you the image in two words from “Lethal Weapon 2”… DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!!! Now picture that man with hair in the fashion of John Schneider from Dukes of Hazzard… and rolling up in a heavenly gold Rolls Royce… f**king roll credits.

 

Anyway, busy weekend coming up with Learn to Homebrew Day (we’re not hosting this time), a new brewing of a Belgian Quad, a baby shower for Izzy’s sister, and most importantly… The California State Homebrew Competition at Anchor Brewing on Sunday!!! So yeah, I’ll fill you in on the activities soon… until then, have a great weekend everybody!!!

Seven Stills & Two Docs

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Tuesday night, Izzy & I watched a documentary that I was personally really excited about called “Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films” which documents the legendary rise & fall of this film production company and the two Israeli men who ran it (Menahem Golan & Yoram Globus). Basically, they started out making Israeli films in the 60’s & early 70’s… then they made enough money to go to Hollywood and start films there… but they were essentially fantastic, charismatic & passionate salespeople who would basically sell a movie poster of an idea… and then make the movie around it after getting financial backing. Sounds like a great way to make movies, right? Hell, I do it all the time on this blog. Well… they start out with pretty schlocky films full of gore & LOTS of nudity… and of course most of them are panned, but they make money due to their meager budgets… and they put the money onto the next film… and they’d usually make DOZENS of movies a year. There are plenty of interviews from past actors, directors, producers & other business people like Robert Forster, Avi Lerner, Boaz Davidson, John Avildsen, Tobe Hooper, Gary Goddard, Molly Ringwald, Richard Chamberlain, Dolph Lundgren, Bo Derek, Elliot Gould, Michael Dudikoff, Alex Winter, Franco Nero, and even the many ladies who appeared nude on screen and Boogaloo Shrimp himself!!! They’ll talk about the history of legendary movies like “The Happy Hooker”, “Superman IV”, “Over the Top”, “Masters of the Universe”, “Breakin’ & Electric Boogaloo”, “Bloodsport”, “Delta Force”, “Death Wish 2-5”, “American Ninja” and a whole bunch of others that you didn’t know existed but now want to see if you’re into horrible movies like we are… like Lou Ferrigno in “Hercules”, Bo Derek in “Bolero”, Chuck Norris in “Invasion U.S.A.”, random sexy chick in something called “Lifeforce” and this musical called “The Apple” that looks like it’s “Xanadu” on a f**king acid trip! I highly recommend checking out this movie… because yeah, though a lot of people talk sh*t on the Golan-Globus method… it’s basically what the movie industry has been reduced down to now. How you ask?

 

·         Maximizing Profits – Ever wonder why Halloween is the time of year when all these ridiculously bad & modestly budgeted horror flicks come out? It’s because they can make a $2-5 million movie starring young, cute people… and they’re pretty much guaranteed a $10-15 million opening weekend. Or how about the kiddie flick that comes out on holiday weekends? And most of them being CGI now? Because CGI characters with voiceover is a LOT cheaper than trying to deal with prima donnas & coordinating hundreds of people to film.

 

·         Bigger = Better? – Bigger budgets, bigger names, bigger explosions, bigger titties, bigger everything… that’s how you get the better movie, right? Don’t agree with me? Explain the “Fast & Furious” franchise to me… or any of these cinematic universes that are coming out (Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Universal monsters, etc). How about “Pirates of the Caribbean”? Add more big names… add nine-digit budgets… only make 3-4 tentpole movies that’ll make or break your year, because there’s only so much money in the world.

 

·         Your Big Movie Pays off for the Other Movies – Can’t get funding for your Academy Award begging movie starring Robert Pattinson and a new unproven talent? How about a movie starring JGL from a pretentious French director? New Meryl Streep vehicle? A movie about playing drums starring some kid& the guy from the insurance commercials? Well… you’d better hope that Transformers 6 makes some money this summer!

 

Anyway, it’s a very interesting movie… check it out! And please, don’t worry… reviews will be coming soon for some of Cannon Films’ greatest hits... and we’ll probably talk about them on our podcast “Everything I Learned From Movies” coming out next week. Yes, I know… I said that before… but yeah, we’re actually finishing up musical intros (I don’t know music, but I know what I like) and our first episode “Tremors 5: Bloodlines” should be coming out VERY soon. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Wednesday night, Izzy & I watched another documentary about the movie industry called “Back in Time” which is about the making of & fanatic following of… what’s essentially a perfect film called “Back to the Future.” As you may know from past entries/rants including my Time Travel Movie List (gold medal winner) that I hold a special place in my heart for this movie. The original was one of a handful of VHS tapes that I had growing up as a kid, so I’ve probably seen it literally a thousand times or more in my life, and as critical as I am about movies… it’s airtight. Unimpeachable. Go ahead & try… I’ve probably got it covered. What’s Doc Brown’s backstory? Why is he hanging out with a 17-year old boy like Marty? Is he a vampire? What about Lorraine Baines-McFly? She had some slutty tendencies, right? Can even Confident George fulfill her desires? Do you think she contacted the real Calvin Klein once he kinda blew up in the early 80’s? “Hey, remember me? Lorraine? We went to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance a few years back? We were gonna… park? I think about you every time I’m with my husband and our three kids… one of which I named Marty on your suggestion” which led to a restraining order. Probably not since it felt like she kissed her brother (spoiler alert) but… you never really know. Look… I could go on for days… but I’ll probably save it for a podcast.

 

Anyway, that’s just the original… and I hold the entire trilogy in incredibly high esteem… or at least I thought I did until I saw the kind of incredible fans of this movie that are interviewed in this film. Have you ever wanted a DeLorean? Of course you have! Everybody has & does! These are the people that not only have a DeLorean… but tricked it out to be an exact replica of the movie’s time machine version… and go to BTTF conventions… and run website forums around the movie… and recreate the town square of 1955 Hill Valley… and travel as a cover band… and have full-on musical productions inspired by the movie… and make 9-hole miniature golf courses based on the movie in their backyards. They’re in a WHOLE different stratosphere of fandom… and it’s pretty damn awesome. This movie goes over not just the production of the film (including the story of how it got greenlit & the famous casting change of Eric Stoltz as Marty) but then into all the fandom and how so many people were affected by this movie. There are some great interviews with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Claudia Wells, Lea Thompson, James Tolkan and many, many more. It’s extremely interesting… and I assume since you like good movie, you all love Back to the Future… so check it out. It’s currently streaming on Netflix as well and is a good way to spend 90 minutes.

 

Wednesday, Izzy swung by Seven Stills Distillery to pick up our new “fresh” barrels for aging our homebrew… but she also had a wonderful opportunity to help bottle some of their DELICIOUS spirits and learn the process a little bit. She’ll probably elaborate more on her blog (Untidy Venus) but in payment for helping them out for  few hours… they were kind enough to share some of their delicious products which we’d admittedly had a very hard time finding in stores… so we got to try some of the defect bottles…

 

First up was Chocasmoke, which is whiskey distilled from chocolate oatmeal stout & peat smoked malted barley. The result is a fairly smooth whiskey (though 47% ABV burns a bit when you’re not primed for it) with great smoky & chocolaty notes… as a fan of whiskey AND stouts, I highly recommend it.

 

Then we tried their Whipnose Whiskey, which is made from a Double IPA in collaboration with Pacific Brewing Laboratory along with some maple sugar. This one had more notes of citrus & kind of a rye bitterness… but it was MUCH mellower than what I was expecting with the threat of so many pounds of hops used in the original brew and then being distilled. There’s little trace of that. Also a good whiskey… like there’s rarely bad whiskeys, am I right? They also gave us a few samples of their Bitters but we’ve yet to try those… we’re not much for cocktails usually. We’re far too casual with our drinking… like marathon runners instead of dashers.

 

Friday night, well… it’s been a while since I mentioned this… but Izzy & I got a few more barrels for aging beer from Seven Stills Distillery this past week… one of which will be aging our Scotch Ale that we started a few weeks ago… and another that we’ll be aging our latest Cider in until Big Ben & Lone Cicerone are ready with their latest brew that they want to barrel age. All of which will be fantastic I’m sure… but here are some pictures of the process of preparing the brew & the barrels for aging…

 

We’ll also be bottling our Barrel Aged Chocolate Porter soon from our first barrel… which is starting to turn sour a bit… so we’ll soon be preparing a Flemish Red or something like that to age in it for quite some time. That’s right ladies & gentleman… our first (intentional) sour beer is coming VERY soon… as well as our first Belgian beer… but more on that in the coming weeks. Until then, Happy Halloween everybody!!! Have a wonderful & safe weekend!!!

Adventures in Barrel Aging

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Friday, Izzy stopped by Seven Stills of San Francisco, which is a local distillery that makes whiskey by distilling craft beer. Distilling is essentially the process of heating wort (you know, that solution of water, sugar, etc that you get during the brewing process) until it evaporates… and with alcohol being lighter than water, it will pass through the process more efficiently, producing a solution with higher alcohol content. Basically, after a few times, it’ll take about 5 gallons of beer that’s normally about 5% ABV… and turn it into about a gallon of whiskey that’s more like 40% ABV. Then Seven Stills will age this whiskey in a charred oak barrel for a few months or years depending on what they want to do with it. In this case, they had filled these barrels with whiskey distilled from a coffee porter… so on top of the smoked oak flavors from the barrel… and the whiskey portion, there’s also a little hint of coffee & malty porter in there too… but honestly, for my pallet, I’m sure the burn of the 30-40% ABV will pretty much conquer that until it wears off on the back end. I’m curious to try their shine though… and in the meantime, they were offering some of their smaller five-gallon barrels to our homebrewer’s guild to make some delicious brews… and so we picked up one of their barrels to age some of our homebrew.

 

What we decided to do with our barrel is use it to age our Imperial Stout that has been aging for the past few months in my apartment. The result is taking our Imperial Stout which should already have a strong malty backbone with molasses, caramel, chocolate and vanilla notes up front… and then with the barrel aging will bring out some of that smokiness from the charred oak and possible some of that lingering coffee & whiskey notes that has soaked into the wood on the back end… which should make for a great full bodied beer (with about a 10-13% ABV overall) ready just in time for my birthday in April. First though, we have to prepare the barrel…

 

When you get the barrel, because of a multitude of things… like it being made of wood… and bacteria & other things can get into it VERY easily… and frankly, we have no idea where this thing has been other than passed along through a warehouse in the Dogpatch for the past few months/years… we have to do a few things to unsure that we don’t get a lot of living things growing & reproducing in our beer besides our own yeast in the stout. The first step is to clean the barrel up a bit on the outside (luckily this one was pretty well maintained).

 

 Mmm... smellovision... check out the oak layers...

  

Then you’ll usually get enough water to fill up the barrel and let it soak overnight to make sure that the wood hasn’t shrunk a little bit & left gaps between the wood planks that comprise the barrel. Again, luckily this is a fairly fresh barrel so we didn’t have to do the overnight thing… but this brings up another point.

 

Sidenote on Barrel Maintenance: If you’re going to use a barrel for multiple brews (which we intend to) then you never really want the barrel to be empty. That’s to say, you always want liquid in the barrel. If we didn’t have a batch of beer ready to put in it this weekend, then we would’ve put five gallons of water in there. This is to make sure that the barrel doesn’t dry out & crack or just cause the barrel to become less uniform and leak. We plan on having our next batch ready to go when we take our Imperial Stout out in a few months… but to be honest, we have no idea what it’s going to be just yet. Also, just as a rule of thumb, after about three batches of so… your barrel IS going to get a bit of an infection, meaning that some bacteria and/or wild yeasts are going to get into the wood. However, these yeasts that would otherwise just sour your beer (because you can’t brew anything that’ll kill you, just taste unexpected) can also be utilized to make some rather unique Sour Beers or bring out different flavors in an old recipe that you might want to try or experiment with. Some of the world’s most unique & highly regarded beers are from process like this. So yeah, we’ll probably try something like that with our 3^rd or 4^th batch with this barrel… but that’s a bit down the road. For now, let’s continue to prepare this barrel for our first barrel aging batch…

 

The next step is to disinfect the inside of the barrel. We do this by heating up enough water to fill the barrel (in this case, five gallons) to somewhere between 140-180 degrees Fahrenheit. Water this hot will kill any bacteria and other organisms that it comes into contact with. In this case, we were on the high end of 170 degrees because better safe than sorry. I’ve read that the higher the water temp, the more stuff is taken out of the oak (in this case whiskey) but it’s probably just a miniscule difference between 145 & 175… and we just don’t want bad things growing & then dying in our beer. This also takes the place of other sanitizers such as StarSan or One Step because the chemicals in those are bad for the oak from what I understand. Anyway, you leave the water in there for about 45-60 minutes… and then you drain it… pulling out what appears to be heavily diluted whiskey from the barrel as well as any floaty things that you don’t want in your beer…

 

Once the water has been drained… now your barrel is ready to receive your brew…

 

From there, you just transfer it into the barrel, plug the top with a bung & stopper, and set in a cool, dark place for a while. Well, technically you probably don’t really need it to be that dark since it’s surrounded in oak & light won’t get through… but don’t put it in sunlight or anything, that’ll dry out that oak REAL quick & cause cracks. We put it in our brewery corner. Also, as far as how long you want to leave it be… there are a few trains of thought, but it’s really up to you. Some just give it a set amount of time… and then bottle or keg when the time has passed, of course checking periodically to make sure that the pressure release stopper on top is still bubbling periodically. Others test the beer periodically through a little sampling port or just scooping some out of the barrel… but that can obviously lead to more infection from the open air or the vessel used to get the sample. It’s your barrel, do what you want… we’ll be keeping an eye on the bubbling… and probably checking and/or bottling around the first part of April, depending on the activity. That way we can get a LOT of whiskey out of the oak… and it’ll have to be quite a lot of be noticeable in the Imperial Stout… and we have some high gravity yeast in there anyway (had to repitch a little bit just before Christmas) so it’s still working pretty good.

 

 Cleaning out the carboy with PBW...

We also sampled some of our Imperial Stout as is… and it’s f**king delicious. Like I mentioned earlier, very rich, malty, molasses & caramel notes, hint of vanilla… and you get a little bit of burn as well because… if my calculations are correct going from 1.088 OG to 1.010 gravity reading right now… it’s already about 11% ABV and now it’s being soaked in a whiskey barrel… and still bubbling away… so it should be pretty potent… and have a LOT of different flavors giving it a full body flavor (hopefully not too dry since it’s turning a lot of the sugars into booze, but so far so good). Anyway, we’ll obviously keep you posted.

 

Since we had everything out, we also transferred our Ramble Tamble Red Ale into the secondary fermenter… and thanks to being an all-grain recipe, dry hopping AND remembering the Whirfloc tablet this time… there was a lot of trube to be cleared out… but the beer is looking great…

 

After doing beer stuff, we headed a few houses down to J-Mo’s Smash Party… you know, setting up old Nintendo gaming systems (N64 & GameCube this time) and playing games of our youth? Well, I never had an N64 or GameCube, so this was my first time playing games like “Goldeneye” & “Super Smash Brothers” but I’ve obviously played similar games… apparently these were the original 4-player first person shooter & battle field style games… and honestly, they held up pretty good. Of course the 1997 graphics from “Goldeneye” are nothing compared to 2015 ANYTHING but for being almost 20 years old… you can definitely tell who is who at least… and the gameplay is pretty good too. I can see why this is always on the lists of Top 25 games of all time. We of course also played some “Super Mario Kart” as that’s just a fun f**king party game… so yeah, good times.

 

Sunday was the Super Bowl Party at Izzy’s Aunts… and we brought some beer… and some beer muffins… and it was just amazing fun… and of course my predictions were really, really, really, really close. I was one point off the final score (Patriots scored 28 instead of 27) and the game did technically end on an interception by the Patriots Defense… but it was their 3^rd string situational corner instead of Darrelle Revis. That’s pretty close… and let’s face it, Katy Perry was the real winner of the Super Bowl.

 

Anyway, that’s about all I have for this weekend… but plenty more fun still coming up this next week… including a batch of Cider, making another batch of “Damn Good Beer” with Izzy’s Aunts, and a wonderful dinner at Elevation 66 Brewing coming up next Monday. Have a great day everybody!!! Oh… and one more thing…