"Deathly Hallows" Butterbeer

If you know me, you know that I am a big nerd. I can't wash a beer glass without thinking about surface chemistry, looking at carbonation in a beer reminds me of nucleation and growth. I can't be at a wedding and here "this ring" without thinking "precious!" I also own an English to Klingon dictionary. I am a big nerd.

It should not surprise you that I am also a Harry Potter fan. To get ready for the release of the next movie, "Deathly Hallows" I am working on a recipe for "Deathly Hallows Butterbeer."

I modified a recipe that is supposedly "historically accurate" (if its on the internet, it must be true!) that I found here. The beer I used was Dead Reckoning, a hoppy porter from Troegs. I thought it fit very well with the dark tone of the book as well as the name has "dead" in it. It is also a great beer by itself.

Here is what I did.

Heated up 3 bottle of the beer with the spices over medium heat (cinamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg). While that came to a boil, I beat 5 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 1 tablespoon of white sugar (big deviation from the original recipe, but I didnt have 500 g of sugar). To avoid curdling the eggs, I beat them over a double boiler and slowly added in the hot beer mixture while whisking vigorously. Continuing to whisk, I added a stick of butter, small pieces at a time, waiting for a piece to fully melt before adding the next. The internet recipe says you can cut the beer but up to half using hot milk, but I only added a little bit (not sure of the exact amount).

I really enjoyed it (a non beer drinker complained that it tasted too much like beer) but I think a better cook could play with the spicing and make it better. At any rate, it is a good, beer centered replacement for egg nog come christmas time. And don't forget, when ordering a butter beer, say "Accio Butterbeer!"

Random Update

Well I don't really write as much on here as I probably should, so I am trying to fix that now. Since I have been slacking off on the pancake front (I drink all the beer and leave none for breakfast) as well as homebrewing (just a lazy asshole), I have had nothing really pressing to write up. With nothing big going on, here is a bunch of little things going on:

-Ottos Pub and Brewery in State College finally got their license approved and will open up the doors at the new place on Monday at 11 AM. They are only moving slightly down the street, but it's still exciting.

-Gamble Mill's new brewery is getting pretty close to pouring beer. Apparently only 1 more hurdle to go. I wrote a bit about my visit with the brewer, Mike, here.

-Went to Stoudt's Microfest last weekend and had a great time. Tried beers from some PA breweries that I had never heard of before and also got to taste a nice variety of IPAs.

-Speaking of IPAs, I am drinking a Sly Fox Rt 113 IPA...great beer in a can.

-I did some research on beer glass washing, and saw people rinsing with water/baking soda solutions...this seems to work well.

-Despite not really being a blogger, I volunteered to do some blogging/tweeting for some work related activities (research conference) and got the position. That is some crazy shit.

I think that is about all for now, but hopefully there will be more updates either like this or with a more focused themes in the future. Maybe I will start reviewing beers or beer places in the area....who knows.

Battle Beer Stout Beerfest

I didn't get to go to the Great American Beer Festival this year, but fortunately there is still beer for drinking here in Pennsylvania. Dr. Tom and I decided to have a beer tasting to celebrate the beginning of fall with some stout. With the variety of stout styles and places that brew stout, we did two head to head tastings and one random beer just for the variety.

The head to head competitions pitted two chocolate stouts against one another and two imperial stouts. Choosing one contender from the UK and one from the US in each category, we drank:

Rogue Chocolate Stout vs Young's Double Chocolate Stout

Sam Smith Imperial Stout vs Victory Storm King

While at the store, we wanted another beer but didnt want another head to head, so we bought a sixer of Dominion Oak Barrel Stout. A perfect choice since we were playing the card game Dominion (it's like Magic the Gathering....yes we are nerds).

We started with the Rogue which has a nice chocolate flavor with some pleasant bitterness. Dr. Tom described it as drinking a candy bar. A strong start to this battle beer. Next up was the Young's double chocolate, a less intense chocolate and didnt have the creaminess that I was expecting (it came in a normal bottle, not in the nitro can that I am used to). While the Youngs was good, the Rogue was much better and the clear winner.

For battle imperial, we started with the Sam Smith. Smokey and meaty. It smelled a little like port with a bit of apple on the tongue. Dr. Tom kept saying candy apple or spiced apple, something he thought was obvious in the beer, but I didnt pick up on it as strongly. The Storm King fought back with a big kick of bitterness. Actually that was about all that we got from it. Sitting here drinking one as I type this, I am tasting a lot more than bitterness but I think maybe with the 3 preceding stouts, the bitterness was the only thing standing out in comparison. Normally I am a big fan of Storm King, but it just didnt match up well tonight. The winner in this battle was Sam Smith.

Finally we just sat and drank the Dominion (smooth, with vanilla and oak flavors) while playing Dominion and discussing the beers overall for the evening. Dr. Tom ranks them as follows:

1. Rogue Chocolate Stout

2. Sam Smith Imperial Stout

3. Dominion Oak Barrel Stout

4. Young's Double Chocolate

5. Storm King

I would switch the Dominion with the Sam Smith, just because I was not a big fan of the port flavors I got from the Sam Smith. Also, I would move the Storm King up in the rankings just because I do enjoy a nice bitter kick in the face.

The Session

So apparently, there is this thing called "The Session" or Beer Blogging Friday where beer bloggers blog on the same topic, on the same day. Once a month one beer blogger "hosts" and gives a topic and compiles links for all the posts. I discovered The Sessions when The Beer Babe announced this week's topic via twitter. Since the topic is all about "the new kids," I figured it would be the perfect first session for me.

The general theme of this week's topic is centered around the large spike in brewery openings in the recent years. Chances are there is a new brewery opening near most of us, and as members of the beer community, we should welcome them. As it turns out, there is a new brewery going in to the Gamble Mill restaurant in Bellefonte, PA. This is only about 20 minutes down the road, so that counts as my neighborhood.

I was able to get in contact with their brewer, Mike Smith, and went down to the brewery to talk with him. He's a real nice guy who got his start with Dogfish Head and moved up to Ithaca Brewing Company for a bit and is now back in his hometown. Since I started my beer drinking career with Ithaca and I am also a fan of Dogfish Head, I was pretty excited to chat with him and taste some of his beers.

The idea of this session was to visit a "new" brewery, and the brewery at Gamble Mill is so new, that they havent even started serving their beers yet. Part of the reason is the PLCB (sucks) and the also had some equipment issues. Good news is they are on track to pour beer soon. The brewery itself is tiny (sorry, forgot to take any pictures)! The fermenters are 7 barrels, but they can only make 3.5 barrels of wort at a time, so a beer made over two brew days.

Right now they have 3 beers in the tanks and Mike poured a taste of each. This was my first taste of beer fresh from the tanks, so that was pretty cool.

1. Golden ale - This is Mike's "stepping stone" beer for those who may be new to the whole idea of beer with flavor. Mike adds corn to the beer because he likes some of the flavors it adds. The nose was very bready and yeasty, which was nice, but I am not sure if that will stick around once the beer is finished and filtered. This beer wasn't my favorite, but keep in mind it wasn't brewed for me.

2. Saison - This beer is closer to something that I would order at the bar. A little bit of spice and nice and refreshing. Nothing crazy here just a good beer. I dont think it will take long for people to step from the golden ale to the saison, I think anyone can enjoy this beer.

3. Pale ale - Mike prefaced pouring the beer by saying that it is a little dark to be really considered pale, but with all these crazy black pale beers, I dont think anyone will give him any trouble about it. As soon as the beer went under my nose, I knew this was a beer for me. Nice strong hop aroma. This is a great pale ale. There must be something about central PA water, because now I have 3 brew pubs within a 30 minute drive with pale ales that I really like (Ottos and Elk Creek are the other 2).

In addition to tasting, we just chatted about beer and brewing for about an hour and I got a feeling that there is going to be some incredible stuff going on here once they get rolling. Mike mentioned ideas for wild fermentations, barrel aging, traditional cask beer and beer dinners. He seems pretty excited about being a part of the community (especially, I'm sure, because he grew up around here) and wants to do a lot of things. Also, he seemed open to starting a twitter account for the brewery, and there is always room on twitter for more breweries.

It looks like Mike, and the guys at Gamble Mill are on the path to being a great brewpub...now to keep a look out for when they start pouring the beer!

Pablo's Wit...takes 2 and 3

Ok, so my summer project did not go as planned. I didn't brew as much as I wanted to and I never really figured out a perfect wit recipe. As a last resort, I decided to do 2 beers at once...the best between the two gets kegged and brought to the wedding. I had 2 goals for these beers

1. The recipe needed to give the beer more body than take 1 (the beer turned out a little bland and watery)

2. The beer needed to have more pronounced spicing (nothing extreme, but noticeable)

Since I basically ran out of time, I had to brew 2 beers in one night, my first double-brew-day. Surprisingly enough, everything went well and both batches are fermenting away in Dr. Tom's basement.

I will post the two recipes separately either later this week or this weekend. Just wanted to give a quick update.

Belgian Wit Take 1

I have a project this summer...I need to make a beer good enough to serve at my friend's wedding. Pablo (his real name is Kevin, but I call him Pablo) asked me to brew one beer, and he would brew another to be served at the reception. We haven't discussed it in too much detail, but since it will be a summer wedding, his first thoughts were an IPA and a Belgian Wit. Since my first attempt at a belgian wit was not very good (no one even pretended to like it) I figure I should get some practice with the style. I decided to start easy, order a kit from Northern Brewer, and just swap out the bitter orange peel that it comes with (that stuff just looks like wood chunks) for fresh orange zest.

The plan was to do this in a scientific manner...I bought a notebook, I was only going to change one thing at a time, write down everything I did...but while setting up for brewday, I broke my hydrometer...aaaahhhh! Now I have to do this "science" project with only half of my "science-y" tools (the other being my thermometer). Oh well, even if I did take great notes and great measurements, the chances of me being able to repeat it is slim.

At any rate, this was my first all grain batch so maybe not knowing that I missed my gravity, or my efficiency is only 12% is a good thing. Here is the recipe (adapted from the directions that came with the Northern Brewer Belgian Wit kit)

3.5 lb Weyermann Pale Wheat

3.5 lb Belgian Pilsner

1 lb Flaked oats

Mash Schedule

Added 3 gallons of 163 degree water to bring to 152 degrees F (ok actually, the water was hotter, so I had to add ice cubes to bring it down to 152, but it went to 151, then dropped to 149 while it mashed for the hour)

Added 1 gallon of boiling water, to bring it to 156 F and started to drain to the brewpot.

Batch Sparged with 1.75 gallons at 172 degrees, plus some hot tap water (.25 gallons)

At this point I am not sure if I am even doing anything right, but I eventually got a pot full of wort, and put in on to boil.

Hops

60 minutes - 2 oz Strisselpalt

10 minutes - 1 oz coriander (whole)

10 minutes - Orange zest from 5 navel oranges

I pitched wyeast Belgian Witbeir yeast (I made a starter the night before, split between 2 growlers) and it is currently sitting in Dr. Tom's basement...we will see

Dark Lord Day 2010

I ended up not getting to Dark Lord Day until a little before 11 and it was already packed. There were no more legal parking places (I parked illegally, but there were too many cars for anyone to do anything about it) and the line was incredibly long. I carried my cooler full of beer and went in search of my friend Shane who had arrived much earlier. After finding each other, we went back to where he was hanging out with his co-pilot/Dad. From where we were standing, it seemed like we were waiting in line near the front... I asked Shane if we were in line and he didnt know. When the doors opened at 11, there were cheers and we started moving towards them...it turns out we were in line! I dont recommend trying the show up late and then cut in line strategy, but apparently it worked for my. I appologize to all that I cut, but in my defense, I didnt know and I only bought 6 of my 8 alloted bottles. The other two I used to get some 2009 vintage.

There they are...in all their glory...my freshly purchased dark lord (along with an empty bottle of Ottos Mt Nittany Pale Ale that I shared with guys around me in line)

Speaking of sharing, there was a lot of it. The sharing was by far the best part of the day. It seemed like anyone that I happened to be standing around was a homebrewer and had homebrew to share. It was awesome. Two guys I met while waiting in line to get a taste of the Dark Lord, Dave and Cy, were very cool and we tasted beer and talked about homebrewing for a while. Apparently they were taught to brew by the guy who is now the head brewer at Revolution Brewing in Chicago and they really wanted to introduce him to me. It would have been cool to meet him (especially since I could go and drink his beer later that night at the brewpub) but they couldnt get in touch with him. They also told me to try and come to some brew fest in Wisconsin, but that may be a little too far for me.

I tried looking for people I knew through twitter, but I had no luck. The cell phone reception was not great and sometimes couldnt get twitter to work properly. Maybe next time. I used my last ticket to get a taste of the alpha king, bought a sausage and went back to Chicago.

I finished the day at Goose Island with Amanda, and had some mussels and Matilda. It was a great dinner. On my way out, I bought myself a bottle of 2010 Bourbon County Stout and a t-shirt. It would have been awesome to be able to hang out for longer, but I had to get up and go to church with Amanda (she was preaching, it was pretty cool) so we called it a night after dinner.

Dark Lord Day was definitely worth the trip and I hope I can do it again next year. Cheers!

Day Before Dark Lord Day 2010

I did it. I went and drove over 600 miles by myself for a beer. Sure, I drank more than one, but just one beer inspired this journey: Dark Lord Imperial Stout, brewed by 3 Floyds. You can call me crazy and I am ok with that.

Day 1. April 23, 2010...the drive to Chicago.

I loaded up the car with some PA beer, both homebrew and commercial and headed on my way. My first stop was slightly out of my way in Cleveland, OH. I had lunch at Great Lakes Brewing Company and tried some of their beers. The bartender gave me a taste of the pilsner, but it didnt really do anything for me. I went with two styles that I normally drink: irish red, and pale ale.

Conways Pale Ale: This beer made me a little nervous because something was a little weird in the nose. There was some grain aroma, but something else that I couldn't really put a finger (a nostril?) on. The flavor was all grain and malt flavors. Nice roasty/toasty notes.

Pulled pork sandwich: This (obviously) is not a beer, but drinking without eating is not recommended on a road trip... A good, but small bbq sandwich with coleslaw right there on the sandwich. I like cole slaw on the sandwich as does James from @basicbrewing...the reason I point this out is because it was a reoccurring theme on his podcasts I listened to on the way.

Burning River Pale Ale: Smells like a brewery with the mash and fermenters going full steam ahead. Nice amount of hops with some sticky/viscous bitterness in the finish. Nothing crazy or over the top, just a nice lunch beer.

Continuing on my way, I drove to Chicago where I was staying with my friend, Amanda. She took me out for some Chicago Deep Dish Pizza and then for a beer. This was really cool for 2 reasons: 1. I have been craving real chicago deep dish pizza ever since I knew what it was, but I had never been to Chicago. 2. Amanda is allergic to gluten, so she could not take part in consuming the wonderful pizza and beer of Chicago, but she came out with me to the pizza place and the bar anyway!

We went to Small Bar and I had 2 beers:

Metropolitan (Flywheel?) Lager: I am not sure if this was the flywheel or not because I didn't write it down and all I remember is that it was a pale lager and I think there was an M on the tap handle. It was good but not great (I didnt take any notes)

Two Brothers Cane and Ebel: This is a hoppy rye beer that was really good. I wish I could be more descriptive, but again no notes, just that I really liked it.

Stay tuned for part two...Dark Lord Day 2010!

Coffee and Pancakes

Java Head Stout Pancakes with Espresso Maple syrup

Sometime I feel that the beer flavor in my pancakes just isnt strong enough. I decided that I needed to use a beer with a bit more in your face flavor and I chose Troegs Java Head coffee stout. This is a great beer with nice coffee flavors and lots of roasted malts. Since it was just me eating the pancakes, I took my normal recipe (here, just replace with a beer of your choice) and just did 1/3 of each of the ingredients. It works out nicely, because you only use 1 cup of beer and that gives you a little left over for drinking.

For the pancakes
Dry:
1 Cups AP flour
1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 Tablespoon melted butter

Wet:
1 egg
1 cup beer (Troegs JavaHead)

You may (or not) notice that I switched the butter over to the dry side. I hoped that adding the butter to the flour would stop the butter from getting all lumpy like it does when you add it to the cool beer and egg, but it just makes the flour lumpy and the batter thin and lumpy. In the end, the pancakes were more like lumpy crepes, but they tasted GREAT!!!

To continue the coffee theme for the morning, I wanted to make a coffee syrup to put on the pancakes. I really dont know anything about making syrup, so I just took a shot of espresso and dumped it into my maple syrup. Delicious! (Ok, so the syrup was thin too, but it was still good)

I think that I will be experimenting more with dark beers in my pancakes. Today was a success.

Welsh Rarebit with IPA Poached Eggs

This recipe is the second of mine served at the beer geek brunch with Hawthorne's and Philly Beer Scene magazine. This recipe actually started as an attempt to infuse beer into one of my favorite breakfast/brunch foods: eggs benedict. The problem with me doing eggs benedict is that I am not really sure what traditional eggs benedict is exactly. I normally use Bearnaise sauce, but I think its supposed to be hollandaise. I don't care if I serve it with ham or bacon (I usually just use whatever is in the fridge if anything) but probably a purist would say it has to be a specific form of swine. Without knowing what "real" eggs benedict is, and also not being able to taste the beer I put in my Bearnaise sauce, I decided to go a different route.

I still liked the idea of poached eggs over a toasted bread product with a sauce, I just needed to find out how to put beer in there. The best beer sauce I have made before is a cheese sauce made with porter. The sauce is part of a recipe for Welsh Rarebit, something I saw on Good Eats. Welsh rarebit is basically rye toast with a cheese sauce. All I did was add a poached egg.

Poaching the eggs in an IPA worked great. It gave the eggs a nice bitter flavor that went well with the roasty, cheesy goodness of the sauce. Also, I love mixing the runny yolks with the sauce and soaking it all up with nice rye toast.

IPA Poached eggs

Poach the eggs in an IPA (I used Sly Fox Oddyssey Imperial IPA) diluted in half with water. The whites should be cooked but the yolk should be nice and runny.

Welsh Rarebit

2 T butter

2 T AP flour

1 t dijon mustard

1 t Worcestershire sauce

1/2 C plus 1 T porter style beer (I used Victory's baltic porter, Baltic Thunder)

3/4 C cream

6 oz sharp cheddar cheese

1/2 t crushed red pepper

Salt and pepper to taste

Rye toast

Make a roux with the butter and flour over low heat. Add in mustard and worcestershire sauce, 1/2 cup of beer, cream, and season with salt and pepper. Slowly add in the cheese and let it melt into the sauce while stirring. Finish with the crushed red pepper and the tablespoon of porter.

Assembly: Place toast on plate. Place eggs on toast. Smother with cheese sauce.

My "famous" Wheat Beer Pancakes with Beer-nana fosters sauce

Why famous? Because it was served at the Philly Beer Scene Magazine/Hawthorne's Beer Geek Breakfast along with one other of my recipes and a recipe from my fiancee. It was all part of an epic beer weekend that included getting engaged (I'm sorry that I don't have a story for you, but it was a beer filled weekend and I woke up on Sunday with a hangover and a fiancee...).

Philly Beer Scene Magazine (@phillybeerscene) had a recipe contest for beer-infused brunch recipes. The top picks from each of the 4 categories would be served at Hawthorne's for the Beer Geek Brunch. Carolyn and I took 3 of the 4 categories! I will post my second recipe later and hopefully I can get Carolyn to do a guest post with her recipe.

My first recipe is a standard beer pancakes recipe with Troegs Dreamweaver Wheat and a sauce inspired by bananas foster made with Victory Golden Monkey (belgian tripel) instead of rum. The only thing really missing from this recipe is a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Wheat beer pancakes with Beernana Fosters sauce:

For the pancakes
Dry:
3 Cups AP flour
3/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 Tablespoon kosher salt

Wet:
3 eggs
3 cups wheat beer (Troegs Dream Weaver Wheat)
2 Tablespoons melted butter
3 Tablespoons maple syrup

Mix together dry ingredients. Whisk together wet ingredients and when thoroughly combined, add to dry ingredients. Whisk until they come together as a lumpy batter. No need to overmix trying to get the lumps out. Ladle 1/4 cup portions of the batter on a 350 degree F griddle. Flip when bubbles set on the surface and cook until golden brown.

For the Beernana Foster Sauce
1 stick of butter (8 Tablespoons or a half cup)
1 Cup brown sugar
1 Cup Tripel ale (Victory Golden monkey)
8 bananas sliced into bite sized rounds

Melt butter and brown sugar together on low heat and then add the tripel. As this mixture reduces, add the banana slices and cook until slightly softened and coated with the syrup.

To assemble: Place desired number of pancakes on plate, top with sauce.

Pale Ale #Fail

A couple weeks ago I did an experimental pale ale. I probably tried to do too many "experiments" with it and so it turned out pretty undrinkable. Greg managed to get down a whole pint, but then complained that it made him feel sick.

The original idea was an all cascade hopped, small batch, short boil, late extract addition beer. See what I mean about too many experiments? To be honest, I don't think that any of these things really made the beer fail, I just think I was too distracted by the experiments and didn't pay attention to the normal details of brewing.

The aroma was very fruity, like over ripe (maybe rotting) apples. The taste was similar but with a little ethanol/solvent taste to it. I think it is because we pitched a whole packet of yeast and let it ferment way too hot. Greg thinks it is because we let it sit in primary too long. Either way, the beer was bad. We have begun talking about using the keggerator to control fermentation temps and maybe starting to do some lagers.

The next beer will be better.

Beer Brined Pork Chops

I am really behind on posting and I am sorry. The good news is that I now have a bunch of stuff done and hopefully can post something routinely for a bit. I have some homebrew recipes to post as well as beer/food recipes and some other stuff. In random news, I finished my second Zenos passport, putting me in a tie with my advisor and one passport behind Erhan. Additionally, I will be writing a guest post for Daily Beer Review (@dailybeerreview on twitter). I will let you know when that is going to happen.

The recipe for today is a beer brine. When you brine a meat, you are basically soaking it in a salty seasoned water and I just replaced some of the water with beer (you will notice that I do that a lot to make a recipe into a "beer recipe"). Inspiration for this comes partly from Alton Brown and partly from The HomebrewChef (@homebrewchef on twitter).

Brine:

12 oz water

1/4 cup kosher salt

1/8 cup brown sugar

24 pepper corns

1 Tablespoon thyme

Bottle of harpoon UFO pale ale

Pork chops

Microwave the water, salt and sugar to dissolve the solids. Add in bottle of pale ale, pepper corns, and thyme. Soak the pork chops for about 45 minutes.

Normally, the next step in the recipe would tell you how to cook the chops. I totally failed and overcooked them, so I will let you figure this part out on your own. Fortunately, the over cooked chops were still pretty juicy, and the left overs still had a nice beer flavor. Next time I would use a more assertive beer and see what that would do.

A Wine Drinker's Beerfest

I got a call from Dr. Tom requesting help drinking his first shipment from a beer of the month gift he got for Christmas. Obviously I cannot turn my back on a friend who needs help, so I picked up some beer and we had a mini beerfest. The other participant in the tasting, Abby (Mrs. Dr. Tom) is a big wine fan and not so much into beer. I wrote down some of her reactions so we could get the wine drinkers perspective on the beer.

On to the beer...

Saranac black and tan: The smell of this beer immediately reminded me of Guinness. With the beer of the month package, Tom got tasting notes on each of the beers. Normally I don't pick up on a lot of the flavors described, but Tom and I both immediately agreed on a strange one: apple peel.
Abby: " I am having trouble taking this seriously"

Choc Beer Miner Mishap: This is a black lager, a style that I rarely drink. Also I had never heard of the brewery before and I was quite impressed. It had a coffee and chocolate in the nose. The taste had the type of bitterness you expect from a pilsner and a smoke quality in the after taste.
Abby:"It smells burnt." "I just burped up the other beer, it tasted good." She preferred the black lager to the black and tan.

Choc Beer Basement Batch: This is choc beer's pale ale. Each of us had a different take on the nose.
Me: orange citrus, Tom: pine and citrus, Abby: lemon cleaner
The flavor is less intense than the aroma, but was pleasant and not very harsh or bitter. Tasted a little like grapefruit. Abby disagreed about the bitterness and kept sticking out her tongue trying to rid it of the bitterness or something.

Harpoon UFO Pale Ale: This is an unfiltered beer and it is crazy cloudy. It smelled kind of like honey and according to Tom, a little bit of cinnamon.
Abby:" It smells sweet." (I of course told her that sweet is not a smell, and we may have gotten into an argument...)

At this point we were playing a card game and didn't really review the next two beers, Saranac IPA and Sly Fox 113 IPA. Abby did describe the Sly Fox as smelling exactly like a Cannu Chenin Blanc (a wine). Crazy.

Winter Break Beerfest

My friends and I were able to gather some beer from all over the place over break, so we decided to have a world tour beerfest. We had beer from India, Costa Rica, Germany, Belgium and USA (I bet you can guess which ones we were most excited about). Here is a quick list of the beers we had:

Imperial (Costa Rica)
Kingfisher (India)
Gaffel Kolsch (Germany)
Landbier Reigel er Bier (Germany)
Rothaus Pils (Germany)
Becks Dark (Germany)
Hacker Pschor (Germany)
Anchor Steam (USA)
Bluegrass Brewing's Nut Brown (USA)
Lagunitas Pale Ale (USA)
Straffe Hendrick (Belgium)
Corsendonk Tripel (Belgium)
Grimbergen Blonde (Belgium)
Victory 12 (USA)
Abbey Affligen Noel (Belgium)

I doubt anyone wants to read reviews of all those beers (I also doubt I took good enough notes to supply reviews) so I will just give some thoughts/quotes from the evening.

Upon tasting the Imperial: "Booo!" -Greg

My favorite of the Germans was the hacker Pshor (a dark wisse beer). Nice apples and caramel/molasses. Greg reminds everyone that he doesn't like wheat beers.

The coolest beer of the night was the Bluegrass Brewing Nut Brown. I normally don't like browns but this one was really good. Smelled like cocoa and tasted like peanuts at first, then more chocolaty towards the end. I will seek out more brews from Bluegrass.
http://www.bbcbrew.com/

Crowd favorite: Abbey Affligen Noel. Again, another style that doesnt get me excited but the beer was good. Dubbed the "best brun in belgium" by greg. The spices jumped out when I opened the bottle but kind of dissapeared while drinking. I enjoyed the fact that the spices didnt overpower the beer, since beers like that just taste weird.

Overall, a great night of beer (with some monopoly there at the end). I highly recommend this style of beer tastings: just have people bring some random beer, drink and discuss (monopoly is optional).

Cheers!

Las Cervesas de Costa Rica

Just got back from a trip down to Costa Rica for my friend's wedding. I got to see some monkeys, I learned to surf and .... I drank BEER! I didn't know much about Costa Rican beer other than there is beer brewed in Costa Rica, and the most popular one is Imperial. As long as I knew there would be beer, I was happy.Beers that I tried:

• Imperial
• Bavaria Dark
• Bavaria Gold
• Pilsen
• Bavaria 1460
• Mystery beer at wedding (maybe a bavaria beer? Can anyone tell from the picture?)

Unless the beer at the wedding was Bavaria Light, this is the only one I know of that I did not drink.


My first beer was Imperial. It had been a long travel day, it was hot and humid and I needed a beer. Fortunately, Imperial did not disappoint in its refreshment. I expected the same stale flavors that you get with mass produced beer at home, but there were none. Unfortunately, there was not much else for me to get excited about with this beer. By the end of the beer, I had no real desire to have another one.

The next day, at the bar by the pool, I found some variety. There were the Bavaria beers (Dark, Light and Gold) as well as the Pilsen. They all tasted a little different but there were no flavors that really stood out. The Gold did have a nice sweetness to it (Carolyn said it tasted like honey) but by the time I finished, I didn't feel the need to order another one. The Dark was nice, Carolyn and Mom seemed to like this one the best. Nothing exciting about it, but I would drink it over a Yuengling if I had the choice. The pilsen just tasted bad, nothing more to say about it.

Overall, there was nothing exciting about the beer. However, most of it tasted fine and were decent go to beers for the trip. I stuck with the Imperial and the Bavaria Dark. Of course the other option is to just drink pina coladas made with the incredibly ripe pineapples they have down there. I mean, thats what I have been told...there is no evidence that I would partake in that non-beer beverage...