GABF week..

Just a quick note from the field... in Denver, CO in the hotel room posting to say I'm in town for the Great American Beer Fest.. Good time yesterday, and today is the last session for us. Should have some stories to tell and pics to post when I get back. Some really fabulous coffee was obtained while in town here as well.

GABF..

Great American Beer Fest.. ah, yes. Just a couple more days to go and we're there.. craft beer Valhalla!

Just put the nest box in the chicken coop yesterday. Noticed the girls were digging weird dugouts in the bedding the past couple days, so I put the box I made in there for them, just in case. I also am hopeful the chicks will survive the few days I'll be gone.. the wife doesn't seem really interested in their care taking during that time, it seems. A beer a day to whoever wants the feeding and watering job for Thurs-Sun this week! Payment at the door on completion of the job.

The IPA I made with Frank seems to have run it's course.. I'll probably dry hop it when I return from my trip.. or just before my trip, and keg it on return. Really cleared up in the fermenter.. looks nice.

Also, I flipped the cheeses in the fridge, too. Looks like the end of the month and I can open up the Jack cheese, and the Jalapeno can be pried open another week after that. I guess when I return from the trip, we might look into that. Pics and discussion to follow, of course. Still plotting my first raw milk cheese. Probably gonna be a peppercorn variety, I think.

Rustling Wind Creamery tour...

..it took all of about 12 minutes, but me and Sa went on a motorcycle ride over to Falls Village and hit up Rustling Wind Creamery for the tour and a block of cheese. We ended up talking for a while with the woman who owns and runs the place, who also happens to be the head cheese maker. It's kind of a one woman show, I think. Here's what we found in the fridge that followed us home:

I just cut off a very small piece to try while watching Gary Vey-ner-chuck on Wine Library TV's artisan cheese segment. Consider me blown away. I've never had raw cows milk cheese before, but this is the duke! This cheese so TOTALLY captures the real, well.. for lack of a better word, rawness of the milk this animal made. It's *so* pungent, and huge in taste. It takes but a 1/2 centimeter square cube to really get a big punch in the face flavor that lasts well over 5 minutes. This is really an eye opener for someone just stepping foot in the cheese making area. Very exciting!

In somewhat related news, I just found a place yesterday (a dairy, of course..) that sells raw cows milk, Holsteins in fact, to the public in a timely fashion and at a decent price. And weirdly, it's open 24hrs a day.. cause it's 'honor system' style stuff, I can swing by after my evening shift of work and bring a couple gallons home for cheese making on the weekend.. sweet! The pieces are falling into place, I can see it now.

In brewing news, I just scored a fitting from McMaster Carr last night that's gonna enable me to yet again fine tune the brewery to bring it to the next level. This is evolutionary, but it's going to really make for an ease of use model that will be hard to top. Brew partners, stand by.. you're gonna love this thing!

Double yolker! What the.. !

So, currently raising chickens, of course I've heard of these things.. the double-youlk egg. But to this day, I've only ever bought non-store, backyard flock eggs twice. The second time I bought 'em was 12 minutes ago on my way back home from the Dr's appointment I had. The backyard flock I bought these from (for just $2.00 none-the-less!) is a relativly large one of 30-ish chickens. I got the tour of the place pretty quick by a 10 year old boy who translated his Hungarian speaking grandmothers words for me quite well.. enough to gather that they've only had these chickens since this spring, and that they have had no chicken casualties all year. Nice! I noticed their sign for eggs pop up late last week and this is the first time I've stopped in.. glad I did. Nice folks.

Anyway, to bring this back around, a picture, worth a thousand words:

 

Color me surprised! Yeah, I've heard of 'em, but never before seen one.. but there it was, in my fry pan. This was just a medium sized egg too, not especially large. It tasted like heaven! I slapped it on a bagel made just yesterday in my kitchen, and covered it with a piece of cheese which was, unfortunately, not made in my kitchen. Give me some time on that front and we'll get that taken care of. 

In other chicken news, here's a pic of the girls enjoying a bowl of pasta this morning.. couldn't quite finish it last night, and figured they'd enjoy it..

Other than that, the IPA I made with Frank yesterday is bubbling away happily in the fermenter downstairs.. should have that on tape in a few weeks if all goes well.

KIA..

 

Dark Wheat beer.. so sad.

Don's *other* beer... and some cheddar.

So.. here's Don's other beer, which also happens to be one of my old beers as well.. the Chocolate Rambler! Here's a couple action photos I took seconds after I opened a bomber that Don handed over for review the other day...

Here's the area where I opened it..

As you can see, there was a bit of a mess as the very-excited-to-see-me beer gushed forth and tried to jump in my lap.

Here's another shot of the trail-of-destruction as we ran to the sink:

 

..and shortly after that trip, we ended up here:

 

..in the sink. The entire bottle pretty much blew out of the container and I was only able to catch what you see there in the 22oz Bodum glass, which.. well.. isn't even quite half full. 

So.. what'd I think? Well, it was a gusher! No suprise there.. the real suprise was this: It tasted fine!

I taste massive chocolate flavor here.  I *see* the gusher and just *know* it should be infected.. I mean, what else would cause such uncouth behavior? But I get no Brett flavor. No weird sourness. Nothing. Just a really nice, mellow chocolate taste, and low carbonation.. I think the majority of it (the carbonation, not just the beer itself.. ) went down the sink when it exploded. The chocolate is probably more pronounced than my old brew, I would guess because the majority of the carbonation isn't there to layer the beer any more, and the chocolate really gets to storm to the front. Aroma is nondescript.. hard to place. Flavor is so prominent, though. Weird! Quite a good brew... just wish it didn't blow out like that so I could have consumed some more..

In other news, I waxed the Jalapeno cheddar yesterday. This one went much smoother than the last. A few tricks I learned and things were sweet. I put the wheel in the fridge for a couple hours prior to waxing cause it' supposed to make the wax adhere quicker. Which, I think it did. Worked like a charm. I used tinfoil for a protective layer around the stove and counter top and since that stuff won't catch fire like the paper towel I used last time, I was able to put that right up to the edge of the pot on the stove without fear of disaster. Here's a finished shot of the thing:

The label is a little funky with wax, but otherwise, it's good. I'll be able to tune back in to this in two months minimum, it says. One month, twenty nine days to go..

That's all. Now go click my Google Ad, you skinflint!

And there it is.. Cheddar!

Just a quick post today with an update and pic from the Jalapeno cheddar. Just out of the press and onto the drying rack, there she is:

What a masterpiece! Well, we'll see.. in a few months. See, the downside of cheese.. ah, you get my point.

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