Tag Archives: beer

American Craft Beer Week

Beer

As part of American Craft Beer Week, our local brewery (Swamp Head) and Cigar City from Tampa had a “taproom takover” (I’d call it a “tasting room exchange”, but that’s not as alliterative). So we got our choice of eight CCB beers on tap.

The smallish tasting room was already packed at 5:00pm, so we got a pint of Florida Cracker Wheat Ale, and a growler of Table Saison.  It took me nearly 15 minute to get those, and I almost changed my order halfway through to add another couple of growlers.  I should have done that, because by the time I came back to get more growlers, the crowd was much worse, and three of the kegs blew while I was waiting to get a couple growlers, including both the beers I wanted.  So I had to take my third and fourth choices (Jose Marti Porter and Maduro Brown Ale).

Luckily, I’ve never had a bad beer from Cigar City, and these were no exception.  The Cracker Wheat Ale was a great cloudy hefeweizen, with just enough spice and citrus to make it interesting.  The Jose Marti was inky and intense, with a little sweetness and not too smoky.  The Maduro was a great brown ale, with a big malt and lot of subtlety to match it (and I found some 12 oz. bottles at Tipple’s, so we can get more).  The Table Saison was not as sour and bold as their Sea Bass, but a more mainstream farmhouse, very light but with a definite sourness, almost like a kolsch.

We’re going to round out Craft Beer Week with Victory‘s V-12, which should be muscular enough to go well with chili.

I May Be Doing This Wrong…

Beer,

Dinner did not get off to a good start.  I was going to make lasagna, but for some reason that didn’t seem like a good idea when walking home in 90° heat.  So I decided I’d take most of the ingredients and make a pasta bake instead, since that seemed like it would be lighter.  That was going OK until I knocked one of my Guiness glasses off the counter, sending shards of broken glass all over the kitchen.

Then we decided we’d rather have beer than wine, so I opened a bottle of Lectio Divina.  When I opened the last bottle, the cork blew out of my hand as soon as I looked at the wire cage funny.  So this time I carefully held the cork down with one hand and loosened the wire with the other.  But then I had trouble getting the wire cage off and forgot to hold the cork down for a second, and it exploded out of my hand, sending the cork into the next room and cutting my thumb with the wire as it zoomed by.

And then I stained my favorite white shirt with the pasta sauce (that’s my own fault, I should’ve changed my shirt…).

At least the beer was good and all but one of the kids liked the pasta bake.

Beer Bread

Beer,

I made another batch of beer bread today, using a leftover bottle of Sam Adams Double Bock.  It was basically undrinkable, but it makes for tasty bread.

The bread is the simplest I’ve ever seen: mix flour, baking powder, sugar and salt, pour in a bottle of beer, mix until combined, knead just enough to get a ball formed, turn it out onto a baking sheet, brush with egg, and bake.  And it’s good (got rave reviews last time).  The sickly-sweet double bock makes for a great bread, not too sweet, but goes very well with honey.

World of Beer

Beer,

So I was eating the best hamburger I’ve ever had from a restaurant today (at Burger 21, a new-ish place in Tampa) thinking that it was going to be hard to top.  Down the street was a beer shop I’d read about online called World of Beer.

Luckily, World of Beer did indeed top the burger: they had nine coolers side-by-side, full of beer from around the world, with very few duplicates or empty spaces.  I’d estimate 350 unique bottles.  5 of the coolers were European beers (2 coolers just for Belgium!), so that was great.  Unfortunately, it was local beer I was looking for.  I bought their last 3 bottles from Saint Somewhere.  Other than that, they only had two other Florida beers, both IPAs which I’m not interested in.

So I had to make do with a couple of Belgian abbey ales and some Scottish wee heavy to round out the cooler for the trip home.  And of course, now we’ll have to go back.  The bartender said they were going to open up a shop in Gainesville, but who knows how long that’ll take…

code4lib BrewUp (aka Beermaggeddon)

Beer, ,

One of the nice side effects of having people come from all over the country for a conference is that if everybody brings a bottle or two, you wind up with the beer tasting to end all tastings. In fact, we had so much beer we decided to do a pre-tasting last night (which was mostly dominated by stout).

Tonight was the main tasting, and we had a bathtub full of bottles on ice, a two-room suite packed with tasters, and a makeshift bar staffed by my boss and coworkers from UCSD. I started out with my favorite beer from last year in Asheville (French Broad Wee Heavy-est) and followed that up with some Lost Abbey Sinners 09, a Belgian-style sour fron San Marcos. There were some stouts and other interesting things in the middle (even a white chocolate ale), but I finished the night with the beer I brought: Cigar City‘s Sea Bass, also a sour, though Cigar City’s labels are so clever I wasn’t sure until I drank it.

The Sea Bass was a real hit, and I think I’m going to need to pick up a few bottles when I get back home. Though the tastings were all by the thimblefull, so we’ll see how I like it by the pint.

Boxing Day Brew In Bottles

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We bottled the scotch ale last night, after a nice day out at the zoo with the kids.  The gravity was still a few points higher than what the recipe asked for, but hadn’t changed in a week, so I figure it’s done one way or the other.

I did a quick search for the final gravity being too high, and found people suggesting problems with

  • the grain bill
  • inaccurate thermometers
  • mashing temperature
  • stale yeast
  • going to second fermentation too soon
  • temperature fluctuations during fermentation

So I’ve got a few ideas of what to do better next time, but I’m mostly confirmed in my paraphrase of Tolkien:

Go not to the tubes for counsel, for they will say both yes and no and RTFM!

Boxing Day Brew

Beer, ,

Today was seeming quiet enough, so decided to brew a batch of beer.  This time around I wanted to make my new favorite type: a Scotch ale (also called “Wee Heavy”, strong and malty).  We have a mini-mash recipe that’s supposed to be like Pike’s Kilt Lifter, though I’ve never had it, so I’ll have to take their word for it.

The mash went fine, but I was using dry extract which gunked up because I couldn’t open four bags and stir at the same time.  If only I had three hands…  By the time I had that mostly sorted out, it nearly boiled over.  After that was taken care of and the last chunks of malt goo broken up, it was clear sailing.  Well, filtering out the hops was a pain, but it’s always a pain and I’m going to do a secondary fermentation anyway so what’s a little extra muck in the primary?

My wort chiller (which is worth it’s weight in, well, copper) brought the wort temp down pretty quickly, but I misjudged and stopped at 80° instead of 70°.  Luckily, it’s unusually cold today, so our walk-out freezer (the garage) got it cool enough to pitch the yeast in about an hour.

So assuming everything goes according to plan, it’ll be ready to bottle by the end of January and I can bring a few bottles with me to a conference in February to share.

Epic Beer Tasting

Beer, ,

Epic Beer Tasting posterI’m not much help with the knitting, so I’ll have to help keep the beer quotient up around here.

Luckily my boss took me out to an epic beer tasting, appropriately titled “Epic Beer Tasting”, with 67 bottles to pick from.  The list was dominated by porters and stouts (which I have to be in the mood for), but I found a dozen or so that looked good.  They ranged from pretty good (like Cigar City‘s Sea Bass) to basically undrinkable (Drake‘s Jolly Rodger).

Most of them were more “interesting” than enjoyable, but at least they got me motivated to start another batch of homebrew.  We’re going to make a strong Scotch Ale this time around, and I just stopped by our local homebrew shop for supplies this afternoon.