Vacation week is tough

The greatest man ever, I mean the Fed Ex guy, brought me a box of beer this afternoon. I traded 2 Lost Abbey seasonals for this box of 12. Pretty good deal I think. I can't get any of these beers in California. Guess that's my plans the rest of the day.



(2) Dogfish 90 Minute IPA
(2) Victory Storn King Stout
(3) Bell's Expedition Stout
(1) Goose Island Bourbon County Stout
(2) Duck Rabbit Milk Stout
(1) Highland Oatmeal Porter
(1) Bell's Java Stout

I'm on a bigtime stout streak.

By the way I tried the most intersting beer I've ever had. Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout. It's an Imperial coffee stout that's been aged in bourbon barrels.

It was so good I reviewed it on BeerAdvocate.com. It's here: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1199/19960/?ba=bbothen

I have some spare ribs in the smoker. Gives me some time to sample a couple of these.

Obligatory Tiny pic. The sun makes her happy. Would she lose in a cute cat contest? Doubt it.




First stop. Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA. 90 minute means that for the entire 90 minutes the beer is boiling that hops are continually added, get it? They make a 60, 75, 90, & 120! minute version. Esquire magazine called this beer the best IPA in america, but what do they know? It's really good. Lots of double IPAs taste like hop juice, but this is nicely balanced with alot of malt. Not my all time favorite, but very good.



Dogfish are known for their wacky beers, always pushing the boundries of what a beer can be. They have a beer called Pangea that has 1 ingredient from every continent, beer brewed with muscat grapes, a stout that is 18% alcohol, stout brewed with chickory, a raspberry beer that is brewed with a TON (literally) of raspberries. My friend Alicia has one of these in her fridge, but hasn't offered it up at any gatherings yet. Hmmm.

Next stop. Bell's Expedition Stout. Never had this one before. 10.5%. Bitter coffee & licorice flavors. Definately taste the 10%. Good, not great. I just had the best stout I've ever tasted a week ago. This may be better than I'm giving it credit for. Jaded.



Ribs are done. Dinner time. With Chocolate Macroon cupcake made by my lovely wife for desert. I should have paired this with the stout, but oh well. Next time.



Here's the cupcake Ronda made. It's a rich chocolate cupcake with a macaroon filling topped with chocolate butter cream & shredded coconut.



Ummm ummm. Later.

Toronado 2008 Barleywine festival

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barley_wine

Saturday 2-17-2008 was the 14th annual Toronado Barleywine festival in the Lower Haight area of SF. This is the 6-7 time I've been to this fest. Arrived around 10:00 AM to see a line that alerady winded down to Fillmore St. Wasn't bad though as they opened up around 10:30 or so & let everyone in.

This year they had 55 barleywines on tap, yowza! My plan was to hit the highlights and get out of there before it got too packed. I almost made it.

From left to right: Angel's Share, Bourbon Bigfoot, Bear Republic, Firestone Walker

Good idea to go with a few other beer geek friends. That way you can order several and sample each. No way you could do this alone and taste everything you'd want. Unless you didn't have plans for your brain cells for several days.

Everything I tasted was really good, for the most part, at least decent. Some were awesome. But no way did I sample even 1/2 of them.

In all I sampled:

Lost Abbey 2006 Angel's Share - was looking forward to this one the most. Too sweet for my tastes though.

Sierra Nevada bourbon barrel aged Bigfoot - my personal favorite

Bear Republic Olde Scoutters - blend of their 1999 & 2007 barleywines

Firestone Walker Abacus blend - Barleywine blend aged in bourbon & whiskey barrels

21st Amendment's Lower De Boom - Hoppy & delicious. My second fav.

Russian River's 2006 Old Gubbillygotch

Stone 2006 Old Guardian - always great

Devil Mountain 1994 barleywine - yep, 14 year old beer. I wasn't too hot on this one

Full Sail 1995 Old Boardhead

Lagunitas Gnarlywine 2006

Cucupa barley wine from Mexicali, Mexico - the only international entry

The top in the judging were:

1) Lagunitas Gnarlywine 2006

2) Stone Old Guardian 2006

3) Firestone-Walker Abacus Blend 2yr and 1yr Bourbon & Wheat Whiskey

Met a alot of really cool people. Didn't catch everone's name, but cheers!

There was a family from Boston that were in the city on vacation, were walking around teh Haight, and came in to see what all these people were doing in a beer bar at 11:00 am. The dad described himself as a Budweiser drinker, so this was a whole different world. That's them standing under the yellow Fuller's sign. Very nice people. They were still there when I left around 1:30 pm.

Takes awhile to get served. The bartenders were swamped.

Go to the Toronado now.

http://www.toronado.com/

Sunday brisket & catching up with beer recent beer stops

The first sunny Sunday in a long time. Time to fire up the smoker and try doing a brisket. Wasn't very happy with my last attempt. Trying a different cook this time. 325* for 4-5 hours instead of the standard 225* for 10-12 hours.

Bought an 11 LB untrimmed brisket at Smart & Final. Trimmed away the fat(about 2.5 pounds!) and rubbed it with my favorite homemade rub.

Using hickory chunks for the smoke.

Should take about 3-4 hours to reach 170*. Then I'll wrap it in foil for the final hour or so.

Beautiful sight.

Good opportunity to try a beer I received in a trade from my good friend & fellow beer advocate, Rusty Diamond(his real name).

This is Baptista from http://www.pisgahbrewing.com/index.htm in Black Mountain, Ga. All their beers are certified organic. This particular brew is a Belgian Noel style. It was a limited edition

From their site: This Belgian Noël takes it’s name from Jan Baptista van Helmont (1579-1644), the Flemish chemist and physician who first discovered CO and coined the word “gas” by recognizing the existence of gases distinct from air. This energy luminary was the founder of pneumatic chemistry and also the first to bridge alchemy and early chemistry. Hats off to the man behind the bubble.

Thanks to Rusty for mailing one out to me. If you didn't know, I'm a pretty big beer geek.

Reminds me. Last weekend I was in Irvine for work. Took the opportinity to drive down to Pizza Port in San Clemente. Place is great. Pizza is awesome. They have 8 of their own bers and 10 or so taps of guest beers. When I was there they had Pliny The Elder, Racer X, Gonzo imperial porter, Alesmith Speedway Stout, and other great beers you don't see on tap every day.

I didn't park on the roof. I parked on El Camino with a view of the Pacific Ocean.

That's a Monterey Pizza(Pepperoni & Artichoke) & a Speedway Stout.

Also went to Stone Brweing in Escondido. Mixed bag. The place is beautiful. By far the coolest looking & neatest vibe of any brewery I've been to. Huge outdoor garden area with streams, walking paths, etc.

Their logo etched into the wall.

The menu is all organic & every item is made with beer. We had the IPA battered onion rings with smoked porter BBQ sauce. Despite how AWESOME they look. They were just ok. The sauce was really good though. Also had the cheddar, garlic, & IPA soup. Wasn't very good. In fact is was gross. I appreciate what they were doing, but it wasn't very good in my opinion.

All in all I'd probably be there once a week if the place was in the Bay Area. Just for the beer selection though, which is incredible. The Orange County/San Diego area is pretty much the Napa of beer right now.

My cat, Tiny, is pretty happy the sun is back too.

Big plate of smoked beef!

Brisket sandwich with homemade BBQ sauce. Sauce has Coca Cola in it. How can that be bad?

Chico, Ca July 2007

Ronda & I took a Wednesday off work to go see Queens Of The Stone Age~! and spend some time at the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico. It was about 110* outside, so some brews inside the air conditioned brewery sounded good.

They have an "experimental hop farm" outside the brewery.

They have about 20 different Sierra Nevada brews on tap. I had Torpedo Ale, which is an IPA and a 2006 vintage Bigfoot, and Draft Pale Ale, which is different than the famous bottled version. Smoother & not a hoppy. Ronda had a german style dark wheat & Kristal Weizen. They had at least 5 different wheat beers for the summer.

Food was good. All their beef is from a farm at the college. The cows are fed a special diet that includes the used grains that made beer at the brewery. And they're fed beer. Yep.

We were too late to take the tour, but they let us walk around and do a self tour, which was cool.

Magic happens inside these things.

Smart men making great things.

We stayed at the $75 a night Holiday Inn. Turns out the whole band was staying there as well. Yep, big rock n roll stars staying at the Holiday Inn. We ran into Josh Homme in the elevator, talked to him for a bit. Nice enough, despite the fact that he's a Corona drinker.

Ran into teh band as well in an ice cream/candy shop in town before the show. Took this pic with my cell phone of Ronda & Josh.

Show was great. They played mostly stuff from the latest CD, but threw in some old gems as well.