HAHA NICE BACKGROUND, TONER LOW 2

Had an Adnams Broadside last night.

It is a ruby red bitter which I am normally a big fan of but I couldn't shake the lemony citrus taste of it. Overpowered the other flavours and left me a little disappointed in the overall taste. I'll give it a miss next time.

Don't think I've had one of those since I lived in Cambridge.

Tried another smoked porter this evening - on a clean palate it was an entirely different drink, bitterness much more to the fore, there's obviously a whole load of hops in there. Had a little sliver of some Blue Vinny cheese (which is a bit of a tastet-bud wrecker) and suddenly all the sweet caramel notes from the other night were back there. Good pairing.


<img src="http://alcoholandaphorisms.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/6breweries.jpg" width=500>

Now I'm trying another good pairing:





boom ting
rock and a tasty brew
this is why evenings in on your own rock, long live shift work!

edit - how'd you fuckin adjust image width nowadays?
editedit - I give up, MODERATOR, ADJUST ME

these beers are loaded with good looks.

hello sailor, not seen you in here before

Dwellers goes quite well with everything.

Sounds like a great time. At least post a picture of the sign you pained for GF.

I'll try to post a picture. I forgot my camera in SD and haven't heard from my boss if he's got it or not. Due to some bottling line issues the sign didn't go up until after I left. I have a couple of pics but we'll see if I get my camera back.

Cool, thanks for posting.

I always like the colors you get with your work, SL. The different shades you managed to capture on the guy's clothes is particularly cool in this one, IMO.

Yeah, and the two guys on the side look totally lifelike.

It took me forever to get their eyes just right.


The guy on the left is Chuck, the head brewer, and the guy on the right is one of the owners of Falling Rock.

WOW, THATS REALLY COOL!

SOCIAL REALISM AND BEER IN ONE, THATS A PARADIGM SHIFT

Ha, thanks. I'm a big fan of Art Deco-era posters.

Nice work!!



I went on an experiment, I'm not sure how it still will turn out. I made a 100% all maize beer. I started off with 12 pounds of maize, rinsed and malted it (took about a week) and then dried it out, mashed it (BIAB), cooled and threw in hefe yeast (Rinsed it and had it in jars from 2 months ago). It's been in the primary now for 2 weeks and I opened it up tonight to take a gravity reading and to try it. Good news is, it's 5% alcohol, bad news is..wow.. it pretty much tastes fucking awful. It tastes watery like it's gonna lack body and smells like dirty laundry. It's still really cloudy but that might change in time..I have no clue...so... instead of just tossing it, I'm going to rack it to the secondary, drop in some lemons and lemon flavored kool aid powder, and try for a lemon shandy type thing because this beer is BLAH...leave it for another week bottle it and try it over the next few weeks to see what happens. After all the bullshit I put into this (it's been a real learning experience) I'd really like to make it work.

On the flipside i'll be ready to bottle some hefeweizen this week.. I also did EdWort's Apfelwein recipe which is quick and easy and I'm kinda stoked about. Have the stuff to make a steam beer, but I've run out of things to ferment in :\

Any of you SDers going to the Lost Abbey 6th Anniversary? I'm heading down for a Trash Titan rehearsal Saturday morning, then hitting the 4pm session at Lost Abbey.

MM, would love to meet up. Maybe Ryno is around? LA is not too far from him.

Been drinking a Triple IPA lately, got a case, trying to drink it as fresh as possible. Super Citrusy (Grapefruit!) and at 10.1 % ABV the alcohol makes it's presence known, in a good way. Extremely flavorful. Obviously the name is a combination of Simcoe and Citra (hops)
131 IBUs...


Tonight we are headed to a new SD Brewery started up by former brewers at
Russian River and The Bruery. They are going to focus on Barrel Aged Sours but for now have a triple and an IPA. They are right down the street from me and will be the closest brewery to my house. Anytime anyone wants to meet up let me know. I have plenty of bottles to share!

In celebration of getting into graduate school I splurged and picked up an Uncle Jacobs Stout from Avery, part of their barrel aged series. At 17% abv this thing is a big ass beer but worthy of all the hype that has been written on it. Lot of big, rich flavors to this and pretty damn smooth considering its strength, though at 17% there is no hiding the alcohol in this. Worth the $11 for 12 oz, at least this one time.

Drinking a Rochefort 10. Beautiful beer. Viscosity like a liquor with chocolate and dark fruit.

In AZ visitng my folks and finally got the chance to try Bell's Two Hearted IPA...yeah, it's great. Worth the wait for sure.

Currently checking out Missions IPA....enjoying this one too, though it aint no Two Hearted.

There's a new Trappist brewery in Austria.
Stift Engelszell
First beer is called Gregorius.

Nope, I haven't had it yet.

How did you beers fare, NCR600, in that contest? Any update?

Checked out the latest New Belgium Lips of Faith, Tart Lychee, the other week and really liked it a whole lot. Going to have to try it again to make sure it wasn't just a right time and place moment but I might go as far to say I prefer it to La Folie, which is a fantastic beer itself. Nothing crazy about Tart Lychee or anything but I just found it super tasty. Nice easy combo of tart and sweet.

Also tried my first Parabola, thought that was good too.

Just got back from a night at the (good) local that was affiliated with our local micro brewery. Theory was that the master brewer would pick beer to match a tasty menu.

For the sake of full disclosure, bar was Drafthouse, Battersea London. Brewer was Sambrooks, Wandsworth.

We had the Sambrooks pale ale to start with bar snacks, foot long pork crackling and some cheese straws. The pale ale was tasty, big on the hops a little farmyardy for my tastes. But anyone who is in the UK will know that it is DAMN hot at the moment and a chilled beer went down a treat. I had a lot.

With the starter was a dry hop, wooden cask Sambrooks Junction. I'm a big fan of the Junction- it's one of our best local brews- and I was very excited to try a brewers cut version. It didn't do it for me. The best thing about Junction normally is the crisp, fresh taste, with this iteration I felt that the strengths had been minimised. Shame.

After that we had a Powerhouse Porter and matching Porter pie. As the apologies form the landlord showed this menu had been planned a fortnight ago when the climate in London was very very different. Today has been pushing 30 Celsius. So the pie was heavy, hot and heavy. The Porter was delicious. Thin in consistency, full in hops with a nice malty kick. Beer of the night.

After that the evening descended into puddings, Wandle (Sambrooks' golden ale, most popular and commonly found beer) and arguments with murderous bus drivers.

Good fun.

Just as a PS, finishing now with a Bath Ales Dark Side- a beer as tasty as it is well named.

Thinking of you, Paul!

Ha, sweet!
They didn't put it up until after I had left, so I never got to take pictures.
Nice to see it with the bar and brewery in there.

Which probably wouldn't have mattered since I lost my camera while I was out there. Stupid, Paul.