Nah, You're Alright

Woof. Got to a point where I had decided I hated writing. So put a pout on and stopped blogging for awhile. Yeah, I know, big loss. Anyway, 'tween then and now...

Hard Liver '08 was great. Judged again this year. Good crowd. Great venue. Excellent beers. EXCEPT! There were a couple spoiled beers in the mix. Not so excellent. And a very first in my experience; I spit a beer out. Very first time in all my days as an uppity beer judge and self-styled con-a-sewer. I could not finish the taste I had taken. I love sour beers. I can handle the foulest shite beer put before me in a judging situation. But this beer (Pacific Rim Barley Wine) was supremely disgusting.

North Seattle Homebrew Drinkers entry tasting was great. Hosted here at the house. Had a good turn out. Beers we sent forward were a Dunkel Wit; nice brown/amber Grand Cru-ish beer with juicy plummy malt flavors and good Belgian-style spicy character, a Weizenbock; excellent balance of rich malt complexity and German-style wheat beer character, and a Saffron Wheat; based on SG's version in "Extreme Brewing", medium strength Belgian-syle Blonde seasoned with saffron. A richly flavored beer with warm, earthy notes from the saffron. My Smoked German-style wheat beer was going to go as the third pick. I fouled the bed thinking we could send four forward, so I kept my entry back as penance for the tension.

Cask Fest '08 was great too. Tons of great beer on hand, standouts were; Maritime Pacific's Bootlegger Bosun's Porter; my favorite local Porter with bourbon infused oak and dryhops, Pike IPA, and the wood aged Ram Strong Ale "Sleigher" with Brettanomyces. Vanilla/maple malt, firm bitterness and tropical fruit salad funk. Nummy!

I Probably Don't Like You

This won't count as one of my most productive posts, oh well. I'm about four real posts behind. Got the Washington Homebrewers Association, our Clubs' Wheat Beer Shindig, Hard Liver '08 & Cask Fest '08 to blawg over.

Looking over the bids on that eBay deal, I can't tell if any of the people who pushed the prices up won any of the auctions. Have to wait for all the feedback to register. Maybe see if eBay can give the series of auctions a once over and make the call on whether or not there were any shenanigans.

Plus that fawking AHA TechTalk mailing list is dumbing waay down lately. Knock it off with the clone recipe requests, shitheads. Sack up and do the work yourself!

Harumph!

The Cascade Crown Caper Results Show

Got my 30 year old Cascade crown today. Huge hunk of hop rhizome with tons of pale shoots coming off it. I won the eBay auction last week. I held off leaving feedback until the package came. I left my feedback (all excellent, Dave at Freshops is a gentleman and master of customer service) and noticed that all the auctions that ended before that f***u shithead caught wind ended at about 50 bucks. I ended up getting stuck for more than 3 times that. Grrr.

F***u, whoever and where ever you are, if you managed to actually win some of these hops, I hope that they rot in the ground.

The Cascade Crown Caper

Who's the fuckhead jacking these bids up? Bold moves to corner the Cascade Crown market.

Bring me the head of "f***u"!

Gary Gygax 1938-2008

Raising a tankard of mead in honor of the Grand Mage of Gaming.

The Final Toronado Barley Wine Festival

2/15: Off to Frisco for Long Weekending. Into Oakland early Friday. Off, off and away on our hybrid magic carpet. Lunch at La Note in Berkeley and a quick jar up at the Triple Rock. (Red Rock Ale and an Ipax, respectively). Up to Santa Rosa for a run by Russian River Brewing. Half orders of a couple things; Pliny the Younger (Triple IPA; big body, firm expansive hop character, warming and way drinkable), the Pale Ale with Brett (medium bitterness, great hop flavor and intense pineapple from the Brettanomyces; so good), the Pinot Barrel aged Dark Strong (medium-ish for a Dark Strong with pleasant tartness) and a Czech-style Pilsner (for a brewery noted for such huge hoppy beers and strong flavors a great glass of beer). I heart Sonoma. Back to drop the car off and make our way into the City. Dinner at Ramblas; delicious tapas-style food. Great fruity sangria. Saturday morning and across town to the Toronado for the Barley Wine festivation. Tried for an early-ish start in order to get a table. Learned a very important lesson. Getting down at the Toronado for the Barley Wine thing is like playing Frogger. To get ahead you gotta hop at just the right moment. In the past we've managed to hop in late enough in the day to score a table just as the first wave is beginning to retire. This year we didn't hop early enough and got pasted. The lads showed up early and managed a few courses of 3 oz. tastes hunkered over the end of a table of attractive young urbanite fuckheads. The lasses showed up later and were less than impressed with the accomodations we'd managed. So we bailed. Into the Upper Haight to some Irish Bar for lunch and a few Guinness waiting for the rest of our party. Walked back down to the Toronado to check in on some Barley Wine. Out of all of them the Bear Republic "Old Scoutter" stood out the best; good example of the West Coast style, not just a Double IPA but bigger malt character, firm alcohol and well moderated hop character. Quite a few vintage selections. An 11 year old "Old Boardhead" from Fullsail and a 13 year old Devil Mountain (?, closed in 1995), both quite vinous yet very, very tasty. Exactly what I would hope for in a well kept up "Old Ale". Interesting that most of the comments I heard really put them down for being "sour and nasty". Fucking Philistines. Somewhere between this point, beers at the Pilsner Inn, dinner at Chow and back to the apartment; I lost my tasting notes. Not the end of the world but a fitting end to the whole beer festival shitteree. We'll see how the Hard Liver and the Cask Fest fall apart. I may be off the beer festival thing altogether. Anyway. Sunday; lunch at the excellent Monks Kettle, Chinatown, North Beach, stayed in with pizzas. Monday; goofed around at Golden Gate Park and dinner at Suppenkuche. Great German-style restaurant; German biers on draft, tasty pickled herring starter and awesome meat-potatoes-and-brown-gravy entrees. Tuesday; Home!

Robopo

2/24: Brewed my Robust Porter. Six glorious gallons of 21P palatatious potable. Pretty much my homage to Anchor Porter. Love that Anchor Porter. Mine is a bit bigger and with a fair bit of residual sweetness like drinking rich chocolate truffle. Fermented with the Wyeast California Lager strain, which I like for its malt accenting properties and the wee bit of residual sulfur that I like. Like I'd said before, I like beers with an edge. There's something that I find quite appetizing about lager beer with just a faint hint of sulfur. Yum.

Summer Ale Again

2/22: Kegged the Summer Ale. Finished out at 2.5P. Light bodied, good grainy flavor, and tangy bitterness. Should be drinking real nice with a good amount of sparkle put into it.

Club tasting to determine our entries is next Tuesday. Should have a dozen or so to go through. Gonna be fun.

Honorary Irishman

2/10: Brewing the '08 Dry Stout. Hmmm... Dry Stout. The usual deal; 7# Marris Otter, 1 1/2# Roast Barley and a pound of flaked barley. Going for bitter this year with 45 or so IBU. Fermented with the Wyeast Irish Ale strain. Good solid Guinness-like brew. Goes down well with the corned beef and mashers. I'll skip the corned beef from the Egg this year, gonna roast it off in a low oven for 10 or so hours. I liked grinding up the spice pack and using that as a rub, so I'll do that again. I'd like to get back on the Egg. It needs some new felts and a bit of a cleanup, no big deal.

Off to Frisco at the end of the week for the Toronado Barley Wine Festival. Going to spend the day Friday off to Santa Rosa to visit Russian River. Looking forward to Pliny the Younger and bringing some bottled stuff back. Saturday is at the BW Fest. Sunday, laid out hating life swearing that I'll never drink again. Monday, toodling around town. Tuesday, back to the house. Whee!

Summer Ale

2/3: Brewed the fourth batch for the Wheat Beer Competition. British-style Summer ale. Hugh Baird Marris Otter, Belgian Pils malt & malted wheat for 12.5P. Tangy, moderate bitterness from Columbus (I know, hardly tradtional, but I've got 'em on hand) and a touch of Gypsum in the kettle , finished with Goldings, fermented by the Safale S-04. Should dry out pretty well and with an effervescent condition be light and refreshing.

Kegged both the WIt and the Smoked Wheat. The Wit needs to drop a bit more yeast and clean up a bit. Should be pretty nice; good citrus peel flavor with faint pithy bitterness at the finish and very light coriander flavor. A bit too light. The Smoked Wheat on the other hand is a bit "not so much". Near spot on German Style Hefe yet smoke flavor and aroma just isn't there. Hm. We'll see what the club thinks about it as a competition entry. I really enjoy that heavy Schlenkerla Beech Smoke character, but to get that intensity I'll need to smoke my own malt.

Through the Tasting Glass

1/26, Water Street Brewing' s Strange Brewfest 2008: Rolled up to Port Townsend on Friday night and checked into the Palace. Great old Victorian building. Bite to eat and over to the Water Street for a quick one before an early bedtime. Hassled the dude at the door and got in with paying just one cover. Thank you. Recognized a few folks on the way in, some familiar East Sound faces in town for the Festival too. Jar of the Imperial IPA for me and a fresh lime Margarita for J. I like beer with a bit of an edge to it; the IPA is firm bodied, pleasant tea biscuit malt sweetness, slightly coarse bitterness, grapefruit pith and resinous spruce hop flavors with ethanol apparent. Reminds me a bit of the first iterations of the Pike IPA; firm biscuity sweet Marris Otter, moderate bitterness accented by judicious addition of brewing salts, huge sweet fresh cut grass and herbal tea East Kent Golding aroma and flavor with a strong ethanol character. Almost fusel. Dryhopped in the Cask and served off a handpump. Excellent glass of beer. Oh, and the Margaritas are fantastic at the Water Street; fresh fruit squeezed at the bar is the best. Offered another round and I got a Barley Wine. Way deep mahogany with bright ruby highlights, very aromatic; lots of dark dried fruit, hops and sweet alcohol, rasiny dark toffee malt flavor, firm bitterness with lemon peel/black pepper flavors, medium-full body with a long warming finish. Perfect nightcap.

Up at the crack of 11. Off to breakfast and over to the Water Street for the starting gun promply at 1. Good crowd this year. Our usual beerfest cronies; some folks from the clubs, people we know in the Industry, well respected beer dorks and about 150 Elkheads (like the whole town of Buckley showed up to support the brewer). Wide range of beers; many regular offerings, some wood finished beers, some perennial Strange Brew offerings and a few that appeared to be regular offerings tarted up to show well at the festival. Silver City Basil infused Pilsner. Egad! Dr. Johns Spearmint Vanilla Porter anyone? Actually not bad at all, like a chocolatey sasparilla soda. I Liked the Baron Barrel Aged Liberator Dopplebock; deep ruby brown, rich and elegant malt flavors with maple notes from the wood, lightly warming. Excellent example of using wood finishing to add depth and complexity instead of just "wood flavoring". The Maker's Mark Barrel Aged Sleigher from the Ram Northgate on Nitro, was fantastic; toffee malt flavors, forward bitterness, rich vanilla bourbon flavors accented by the creamy Nitro service. Whiskey Barrel Aged Bigfoot from Sierra Nevada; another great glass of beer, my favorite Barley Wine given greater depth and character by wood aging. Got sips of most of the rest of the field. Wasn't really feeling most of the beers on tap. Settled for a few rounds of the above beers, the Boundry Bay Imperial IPA, the Rogue Issaquah Imperial Red and the Big Time Maine Thing East Coast-Style Pale Ale. Cut out for a dinner break. And back to the Water Street for some music. Same great funk band as last year. Stood in line for service for their first set (an hour). Hooked down our drinks facing an empty stage and called it a night.

Wit

1/20: Brewed the third batch for the Wheat Beer Competition. Belgian-style Wit beer. Belgian Pils malt, malted wheat, flaked wheat, and flaked oats for 12.5P. Moderate bitterness from Domestic Goldings, flavored with ground coriander (in the mash & in the kettle) and fresh citrus peel (lemon and grapefruit) and fermented with the Wyeast Wit strain. I'll definitely be pitching that forward, I'd like to get some Strong Golden going.

Rauch-Weizen

1/19: Second batch for the aformentated Wheat Beer Competition. 75% German Rauchmalt + 25% Malted Wheat for 13P, 10 IBU & the Wyeast Weihenstephan in another 3 gallon batch. Gravity sample didn't seem too smokey. Be interesting to see how it plays after the beer attenuates.

Country Bier

1/15: Brewing the first of four batches of wheat based beers for the Pyramid Brewing and Washington Homebrewers Association sponsored Wild World of Wheats Homebrew Competition. Brewing a Country Bier. Malted Wheat, Munich and Vienna malts for 17P or so. Medium bitterness and firm hop flavor. Fermented cool with Wyeasts' seasonal "Hella-Bock". Just a three gallon batch for the Comp. I'll hold the yeast back for a larger batch of Maibock later. Yum.

Don't like your job? Quit!

I did. Gonna put some hours in at Bob's Homebrew and try to pick up a Beertending gig while I complete my Business Plans. More on that later. Mind is still slightly blown. Does that hard dark knot in the pit of my gut signal the exit to self employment?

"This one time at Judge Camp..."

12/1: Advanced Judge training at Full Sail, Hood River, Oregon hosted by Ted Hausotter, BJCP Master Judge. Loooong way to go. Good information on sour flavors in beer, flavor effects of sugars in brewing and judging mead. Young Orval only misses the point, Sorry Ron. Jammed 50 5-gallon Corny kegs in the back of the truck for the ride home. Nice. Oh, it stormed and poured snow all the way home. Real nice.

Big Wood

11/29: Went down to Brouwer's for their wood aged beer festival. Tons of amazing beer on draft. Dozen or so sour beers and about three times as many big beers. Most of them being stronger styles. Two sour Lost Abbey selections; "Brouwer's Blend" Stong Dark and "Yellow Bus" peach beer. Brouwer's Blend appeared to be a blending of different vintages of Cuvee de Tomme; excellent flavors of resinous herbs, chocolate and balsamic vinegar. We managed to show up right as it was 86'd but did get a short sip from a friend. Yellow Bus on the other hand was a bit of a challenge; very firm acetic/white vinegar with a distinct pedio/diacetyl note long through the finish. Wooof. Maritime Bourbon Bosuns' Black was the best; firm bodied chocolatey/smoky Porter with delicious caramel candy flavors from the Bourbon Barrel. The beers that showed the best were the ones where the addition of wood added real dimension and depth of flavor. Flyers Laphroiag Oaked Bottleworks VIII Imperial Scotch Ale; quite a mouthful and quite a mouthful; full bodied, boozy, rich malt sugar flavors against firm & phenolic oak. Elysian Jack Frost; candyish malt and firm citrusy bitterness out of a Jack Daniels barrel. Hair of the Dog Fred on the Wood; hearty, sprucy and candyish Strong Golden. Port Brewing Older Viscosity; sugary, intense maple and roast-like flavors with a huge Port Wine nose. Amazing beers, every one.

National!

11/25: Got the word from the BJCP Mothership that I've been awarded the rank of National in the Beer Judge Certification Program. Huzzah! Now, on to Master.

Novembeerfest '07

11/3: Judged at the Impaling Alers' annual Fall event. Sat a flight of 7 American Pale and Amber Ales. All pretty good, firm upper 20's and mid-30's. Good clean beers, good expression of style. Lunch, then a flight of 8 Spice/Herb/Vegetable beers. Standouts were two Sweet Stouts; one flavored with vanilla and another with ginger, orange and cinnamon. Obviously the same beer with differing flavor treatments. The ginger, orange and cinnamon version was real nice; like a black treacly Christmas pudding. Ooh, and a pale beer flavored with oregano. Interesting but not without it's own distinct nauseating charm. These types of beers are a challenge to judge, especially when the base beer style isn't mentioned. Your Spice/Herb/Vegetable, Wood Aged, Smoked and Specialty entries would all score better/more accurately if you'd make sure to include ALL the pertinent info with the entry. Base beer style, special ingredients, types of wood, types of smoke, and whatever else you can fit in would be sooo much help. Sat the Best of Show panel. 15 top notch homebrews. Best of Show was our ginger, orange and cinnamon Sweet Stout, 2nd Best of Show was a Dopplebock (fine malt complexity though a little bit thin bodied and hot) and 3rd Best of Show was a Strong Scotch Ale (firm malt, a bit of booze but lacking a distinct smoky phenolic). Seemed to be a bit of difference of opinion about what constitutes Best of Show judging criteria (first time I've ever used that word in a sentence, I swear). Got down to the last 3 beers of the 1st pass, one of which was a lambic. Judge X starts to spiel about how wonderful it is. I say not so fast; it's far too acetic and very one-dimensional. It simply did not taste very good. Judge X starts to comment about how it represents the style better than the other two beers in our taste-off. I say well at this point the most important thing is quality of flavor. Judge X hisses at me, hisses at me!, "We judge by style!" Not so fast Chieftan, these beers have already been judged for style. That's the whole point of the mornings' previous judging. Best of Show round is the part of the contest where we pick the best tasting beer. Style considerations are important, but mostly when you're making eliminations or ordering the remaining entries and then as a way of edging one beer over another. Sheesh. Judge X also didn't appreciate a comment made about the Strong Scotchs' lack of smoke. "These aren't smoked beers." Duh. Style guidelines state that Scotch Ales may have a phenolic smokiness. Which means that if you expect one and it's not there and that one consideration means it comes up short against the Dopplebock then it's getting a downcheck for not having it. Are there a lot of prick homebrew judges out there?

2007 Season Opener

10/13: Brewed the first of this years' Christmas beers. 10 gals. of 17P Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale inspired wort.

12# Marris Otter
12# 2-row Pale
1# each 120L & 80L Crystal

Chinook, Centennial & Casdade in the kettle for 80 IBU

1# Golden Bakers' Sugar and 1/2# Corn Sugar into the kettle right before the fire went off and 2 ounces Cascade went in to steep.

Pitched a big 2 quart starter of Wyeast 1056.

Bitter wort was yummy and bitter. Mmm...

This will transfer onto dryhops, same as the kettle hop varieties. I'll put it into a keg with more dryhops still.

Got the goods for 5 gals. of Belgian-Style Dark Strong and 5 gals. of Robust Porter. May not get the Dark Strong put up in time for the Holidays. The Robo-Po shouldn't be a problem. Makes a delicious full bodied chocolatey and strong Porter that's ready to get into pretty quickly. Mmm, indeed!

10/14: Scored 15 gallons of Fox Island Farms' 13.5P apple juice. Bruce managed to get it into town in one piece this year. Huzzah! Straight apple juice + yeast this time. No honey or other sugars. Poured off 2 quarts or so for a starter of the Wyeast 1056. Turned over pretty quick and then into each of the 5 gallon carboys. They kicked off real quick; very frothy and slightly sulfurous fermentations. This stuff should attenuate pretty well and make a nicely drinking dry cider.