My new favorite glass, and old Guatemala's..

So this is my new favorite glass. Well, it's sorta tied with my old favorite glass, a Dogfish 22oz snifter.. and that's a tough one to beat. But man, I've been dying for a tulip for a while now and I'll be darned if I don't just love it. Makes for a fantastic presentation, too.

I just came into the house from the cold garage, so you can leave your comments about my hat at home. I was out there roasting up an old Guatemala from (are you sitting down?) what look like October of 2007, according to my documentation here. And that's just the date *I* received it. Who knows what crop this actually was.. Thing is, I had it vacuum packed and freezer-ed for the better part of the last year, so we'll see what it tastes like tomorrow or the next day. I'll keep ya's posted, of course. Naturally, I had this set of beans roasted to my satisfaction in my own damn garage! Check the past vid tutorial for details, eh?

The ferment of the Jolly Pumpkin yeasted beer, the "Oro de Maggie" as it's now known, is STILL going full blast. I've never seen anything like this. 2030 hours tonight will be a 7 day fermentation, but that includes the 1.5 day lag time.

OK, that's all. Click the Google mad-money links, kiddies! Thanks.

Update on a few things..

So this is a poor pic of the Jolly Pumpkin yeast I hijacked from their bottle... I've never seen a ferment quite like it before. It's a really thick chunk of yeast. Super dense, and about 3/4 of an inch thick. Sort like an off colored dollop of sour cream floating on there. The activity in the

 wort itself is very active, but has been going on now for about four days. the temp has ramped up inside the bottle from 65-ish degrees when I pitched this, to just a hair over 67 degrees now. The smell is still of that really floral sort of Mead smell. There's also a hint of a sour smell under there, but I recognise that from the intense sour note the yeast had when I pitched the dregs from the original bottle in. This new beer hasn't had a chance to star souring yet. No word back yet from Jolly Pumpkin personell regarding the questions I posed to them on this stuff. 

As far as that glass of wort I had on top of the fridge.. I came home last night to find it had taken off, fermented, and crashed, all in one shot. *something* got in there and had a wild party and the stuff now smelled like a glass full of garbage. It got tossed this morning. But hey, that's like almost 5 days of infection free wort. My sanitation procedures must be good enough, I suppose. Hell, I didn't even sanitize that glass, come to think  of it. ;-)

Thomas Hooker brewery visit. Again. :-)

So me and Timmay took a trip to the Thomas Hooker brewery yesterday to sample the wares again.. a seemingly frequent but always enjoyable event. On tap this time was the Munich, IPA, Pale Ale and Blonde. Their Munich was spot ON this time around, and was very tasty. The IPA also held it's own quite well. The Blonde wasn't as nice as I normally remember it.. but wasn't bad by any means. Jay the brewer mentioned that product cycles sometimes play a role in how things taste at any given time, and he agreed the Munich was really sweet now. This photo, btw, was taken on the steps to the brewery stuff, while I still had a mouthful of beer. Nice job, Tim! And yeah, that's a plastic cup. So sad..

Afterward, me and Timmay went over to Liquor Depot, where Tim just about lost it in his shorts when he saw the selection there. He rolled out with a few fine selections. I also carted off a couple prizes.. including couple of Tulip glasses that were on sale for $2 (had my eye on some tulips forever now. SWEET!) One of the few glass styles I was missing that I really wanted. Also left with a small bottle of Rochefort 10, the blue top. We'll review that one next weekend, I think.

While at Timays place, after the Depot trip, we ripped into a bottle of one of my SouRED Roselare beers that I brewed up back in Sept (I think..) with Jody (world renowned medal winning brewer!). Well carbonated and the color was beautiful. Good, full mouthfeel, and an interesting flavor... but still too early to really drink this and no real sour flavor was present. We'll open one maybe once a month to check for sour things happening and drink 'em when they're ready.

We Also got to dip into a bomber of Stone brewing's Old Guardian, an early 2008 release, so with about a year on it, it was ready for us. Here's a shot of that beer along with one of the new Tulip glasses I got (Tim also scored one..). Beer just tastes twice as good from one of these babies! ;-) A copper colored brew with little foam and minor lacing.. not much alcohol on the nose, which is funny from an 11% beer. The beer smells appropriately sweet like you'd expect, with a big toffee aroma. The hops smell seriously earthy, and English to me, which was later confirmed.. Goldings and First Gold, per the web. Bitterness develops a bit as the beer warms, but never gets too mean like some big beers to. There's a definite Spiciness here towards the end of the beer that wasn't there in the beginning. Big malt flavor here, more English style than American style barleywine. Goods stuff, for sure. We enjoyed it quite a bit. 120 is still my favorite, though.

So Tim decided to get completely crazy and subsequently broke out a 12 oz'er of Southampton Publik House Double White Belgian style stuff. I was not at my best tasting and reviewing form at this point, but I'll mention that this beer had a CRAZY fat Vanilla, Banana TAPIOCA PUDDING aroma to it that was just not real. Tapioca pudding? Seriously? Weird. And delicious.

It was a full day, and good times were had. In other news, the beer I made from the Oro de Calabaza yeast is doing very well now. A lag time of about a day and a half.. I might have underpitched. It's going good now, and the glass of wort I put aside on top of the fridge to sort of check my sanitation process is STILL in perfect un-funky condition. Three and some such days later and it's still good? Nice! I'd take a picture, but we still haven't found the camera.. The starter for this beer, as well as the whole batch now, smells distinctly of Mead. Really interesting! You'd swear it had a truckload of honey in this thing, where it actually has none, if you went only on smell. I'm gonna touch base with the brewery in a few minutes and see if this is a normal characteristic of their yeast.

I also move the Google AdSense banner up to the right corner of the page now. Keep clicking! Later..

Beer Review: New England Brewing's Imperial Stout Trooper

Ah, drats. Forgot to Left justify that pic. Too late! Anyhow, because I'm still sad to have lost my dog earlier today, I went totally crazy and did a couple funny things.

First, I brewed a beer in her honor. Using the yeast I cultured up from the Jolly Pumpkin 'Oro de Calabaza' bottle, I whipped up a fairly simple Belgian inspired pale ale that I'll sour with the Jolly yeast. I call this beer 'Oro de Maggie', which I think means "Golden Maggie" or "Maggie of Gold" or something similar. Maggie was generally made of stink, feces and laziness, but "Maggie of Gold" is a more approachable name for a beer. You know, something you'd maybe *like* to drink. The beer is made up of 80% two row pale malt, 20% Wheat malt for the base, and 1/2 lb of Crystal 20L for a little flavor and gold color. I also beat a lb of cane sugar into the mix to bring up the strength without affecting the color and to assist in drying out the beer as well. I wanted a really pale, not sweet brew to let the sourness shine, if and when it comes around. the hops are just an ounce of Perle at 7.6% AA for an hour, nothing more.

This mysterious picture: is about the best I can do right now till we find our normal camera. I took this one with the video camera, and that ain't got a flash on it. I lit it up a bit with a flashlight to get this crappy shot! But, you know, mysterious is good. Builds the suspense up, see?

The other funny thing I did was to open up that there bottle of New England Brewing 's "Imperial Stout Trooper" Imperial Stout. I was trying to save this for a special occasion in the far future, but man.. my ol' dog needs a salute, and this beer is supposed to be worth it. Rated at something like 10.5% abv, it's fairly hefty. The price tag is too, as it's the single most expensive beer I've ever bought. $9.00 a 12oz bottle. Snap! Even Dogfish 120 minute is still a bit under that, and that brew packs a twice as powerful punch. Anyway, in drinking this beer, I get.. and I know this is strange.. but I get a sense of bacon. No, seriously. The aftertaste I get in the finish here, is of bacon. I know it has something to do with the roast malts and the residual sweetness and whatever I also taste here, but it's still a funny thing to have in a beer. Otherwise, the beer pours a wicked black color, insanely thick appearing.

It's not bottle conditioned either, so no yeast falls out at the end. The carbonation is fairly low, and there's little head on the beer (light brown in color) in the glass, which in my case is a 22oz Dogfish Head snifter, my favorite glass. There's a serious bitterness to balance all this malt out, but not over the top. Definitely even keel here. This is a good beer, here. About halfway through it now... but I've got some big Stouts downstairs on the shelf that I brewed with my boy Pete W. that are just as good, I think. Of course, you have to age the damn things for several years to get 'em just right...

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I think that's all for now. Don't forget, keep on clickin' that stinkin' Google ad at the bottom there to bring in the money!

A good dog... mostly.

R.I.P. Maggie.. ??/??/????(adopted) to 01/15/2009.

Her last statement to the world was to crap on the vet's lobby floor in spite. Good girl. That'll teach 'em.

Somethin' growin' in there...

Well, I'd surely take a picture of the thing and post it here, but the wife up and lost the camera, so you'll have to stay in suspense while we try to find the thing. I'm referring, of course, to the yeast experiment we (Frank and I) cultured up from the Jolly Pumpkin 'Oro de Calabaza' that we sampled in the last post. The half gallon starter seems to be up and running well now, and the smell emanating from within is totally awesome. Perhaps I'll whip something up tomorrow to throw that crazy mixture into to see what we can get... stay tuned, true believers!

Beer Review: Oro de Calabaza from Jolly Pumpkin

So that's one of the glasses of Oro de Calabaza from Jolly Pumpkin brewery that I opened up (750mL bottle) and shared with neighbor Frank. They told us no pint glasses, should be a tulip.. but since I didn't have any of those, we opted for a red wine glass to work with. Not ideal.. but it'll do. This is technically a wild yeast/bug beer, but it's very approachable.. no real kick in the teeth sourness here. Noticeable, but not over the top. A real nice barnyard character as well. The bubbles were so extremely fine as to be in a class of their own. I've never run into a beer so finely carbonated like this that it actually felt like you were drinking a mousse or a whipped cream! Amazing stuff. The flavor was great right out of the bottle, but as the beer warmed up, it got even more pronounced. I'd suggest leaving this one on the counter a it before opening it up... let it breath for a bit. A really light, well.. golden/straw color fabulous to look at will be very clear, unless you flub the landing and slide some of the yeast from the bottle conditioning into your glass. Highly recommended, I'd suggest it with dinner instead of a white wine for a change.

Next up was a whole growler of Thomas Hooker brewery Nor'Easter, as supplied by our friend Timmay. No photo for this one, as we were in the midst of trying to culture the yeast/bacteria from the bottle of Calabaza at this point and got distracted... but a really nice beer. Went down pretty easy, and by the time we were finished with this whole damn thing, we were ready for..

Bud Light! Yup. We even drank it! It was left here from the New Years party, and by the end of that growler, we were ready for anything! So, we drank it from wine glasses as well! Looked weakly yellow, was fizzy, and tasted like a lightly sugary mess with no detectable hops. Just what we were expecting, I guess. In either case, it was still a good night. I'm not sure the yeast culturing experiment is going to work out or not... the half growler of wort I've got the sample in from the bottom of the bottle isn't looking so happy.. but we'll see what some time brings. Stay tuned!