But in my defense, I was making revisions to it off and on the whole time - including scrapping an entire part of it...
So ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu (or is it ado?), my year end blog post:
I went to Baltimore for New Year’s a couple of years back, and a friend of mine took me to a party. I got to share in one of her friend’s rituals – take everything you want to forget, write it down on a piece of paper, and burn the paper. Leave the bad stuff behind in the old year and start the new year with a clean slate, so to speak. I’ve done it each year since then, and when I thought about what to write on the paper this year, it hit me almost immediately. So what am I going to write this time? Hold on and I’ll come back to that.
It’s been an up and down year in a couple of different ways – I’ve made friends, I’ve lost friends, I’ve had good times, I’ve had bad times. In a more personal way, this feels like it’s been one of the most rewarding years I’ve had in a while. I think I learned a lot about who I am in this past year, more about what I’m capable of. I know that now, I’m handling certain situations in different ways than I would’ve even just a year ago. Due to some stuff that happened at work, I now see myself as being capable of more than I ever thought I could do. And through it all, my friends have been some of the most important people. Older friends like Chris, Amy, Jenny, Mike, and newer friends like Kim, Sanj, Eliot, Donna, Stacey, Jen V; they’ve all been there at various points to celebrate with me, to laugh with me, to listen to me rant, and I like to think that I’ve been there to do the same for them. Each one of my friends, even the ones not named above (and if you weren’t named, you just weren’t in my stream of consciousness list), has helped make me into who I am today.
My family is still very important to me, too. We added a new member this year, and everyone’s still healthy, happy, and the little ones are growing and making us proud. There’s a lot to be thankful for, you know? Everywhere I turn, good things are happening – you just have to try to keep it in perspective.
But even at that – with everything good that’s happening, there are things that I’m not happy about. It took me a while – a good bit of self reflection – and I realized that these are all things I have to change. But it’s not changing the world around me – I have to change ME. Some of them are things that may have been “wrong” for a while now, others are newer, but they’re still not right. They’re still things that I can correct myself and correct within myself. So this year, enough of the bullshit. Enough of the problems that I don’t work on. There’s no reason why I can’t get back down to 210 pounds. (Note – as of the time I’m posting this, 2/2/10, I’m at a hair over 205…) There’s no reason why I can’t do more traveling, no reason why I can’t become better with my money, no reason why I can’t learn to play the guitar this year. I’m not saying all these things will happen, but instead of looking for the reasons why they can’t happen… if they’re important enough, then find a way to make them happen. Work on the more important stuff first, obviously, but carry it through to as much of my life as possible. In some ways, this is going to be a partial reinvention of myself.
So what am I going to write on the paper?
My name.
So ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu (or is it ado?), my year end blog post:
I went to Baltimore for New Year’s a couple of years back, and a friend of mine took me to a party. I got to share in one of her friend’s rituals – take everything you want to forget, write it down on a piece of paper, and burn the paper. Leave the bad stuff behind in the old year and start the new year with a clean slate, so to speak. I’ve done it each year since then, and when I thought about what to write on the paper this year, it hit me almost immediately. So what am I going to write this time? Hold on and I’ll come back to that.
It’s been an up and down year in a couple of different ways – I’ve made friends, I’ve lost friends, I’ve had good times, I’ve had bad times. In a more personal way, this feels like it’s been one of the most rewarding years I’ve had in a while. I think I learned a lot about who I am in this past year, more about what I’m capable of. I know that now, I’m handling certain situations in different ways than I would’ve even just a year ago. Due to some stuff that happened at work, I now see myself as being capable of more than I ever thought I could do. And through it all, my friends have been some of the most important people. Older friends like Chris, Amy, Jenny, Mike, and newer friends like Kim, Sanj, Eliot, Donna, Stacey, Jen V; they’ve all been there at various points to celebrate with me, to laugh with me, to listen to me rant, and I like to think that I’ve been there to do the same for them. Each one of my friends, even the ones not named above (and if you weren’t named, you just weren’t in my stream of consciousness list), has helped make me into who I am today.
My family is still very important to me, too. We added a new member this year, and everyone’s still healthy, happy, and the little ones are growing and making us proud. There’s a lot to be thankful for, you know? Everywhere I turn, good things are happening – you just have to try to keep it in perspective.
But even at that – with everything good that’s happening, there are things that I’m not happy about. It took me a while – a good bit of self reflection – and I realized that these are all things I have to change. But it’s not changing the world around me – I have to change ME. Some of them are things that may have been “wrong” for a while now, others are newer, but they’re still not right. They’re still things that I can correct myself and correct within myself. So this year, enough of the bullshit. Enough of the problems that I don’t work on. There’s no reason why I can’t get back down to 210 pounds. (Note – as of the time I’m posting this, 2/2/10, I’m at a hair over 205…) There’s no reason why I can’t do more traveling, no reason why I can’t become better with my money, no reason why I can’t learn to play the guitar this year. I’m not saying all these things will happen, but instead of looking for the reasons why they can’t happen… if they’re important enough, then find a way to make them happen. Work on the more important stuff first, obviously, but carry it through to as much of my life as possible. In some ways, this is going to be a partial reinvention of myself.
So what am I going to write on the paper?
My name.
12/24: Watch this space.
I have some stuff to say for the end of the year, but it's something I need to write and edit a bit. However, it's coming - and I think you guys are going to like it. :-)
12/08: And after further review...
It turns out Dented Cap Brewing, as an entity, won't be coming to fruition just yet. I talked to a friend of mine who knows the guy who started his own brewery out of his home around here, and he told me that the only reason Paul's able to do it out of his home is because his home is actually zoned commercial. I'd need the real estate to do this in, not to mention the proper equipment, licensing fees for the labels, etc. The proper licenses from the state and feds would run me 1k-2k, and apparently that's the cheap (and somewhat easy) portion of the whole process... It's still a neat thought, though, you know? Something to keep in the back of my mind for when I win that lottery jackpot...
In other news, I finally did it. I booked my vacation for the late spring, to Brussels. Yes, Brussels. It hasn't quite sunk in for me yet, but I think it will once I pay the charge bill for it. :-) I'm heading there in April, and waiting on a copy of a book all about Belgian breweries as we speak. I figure maybe a couple of brewery tours, maybe a couple of day trips... but this is what I've been putting the money on the side for, you know? I don't have a wife, I don't have any kids, right now, I'm still living for myself. This trip, my trip out to Denver in the fall for GABF, all that kind of stuff - if I don't do it now, then when can I do it? :-)
Everything else is going pretty well, that I can think of - I have a brewery coming down to the next beer club meeting to do a tasting for us, and I have a pale ale in the fermenter as we speak. This one's kind of an experiment - a fairly standard pale ale, but I'm going to add in a pound of orange blossom honey tomorrow night, most likely. Wanted to let it get a little further through the fermentation before I added in more sugar. My holiday beer this year isn't too bad, just a little heavy on the cinnamon. Note to self - next year, STAY with the quarter teaspoon - don't up it at all. And I finally realized what I did wrong with my vanilla porter from last year - the wrong kind of vanilla. I used bourbon vanilla beans instead of Madagascar vanilla beans - live and learn.
Alright, that's enough for now - I'm a little tired and am going to turn in a bit early, in hopes of shaking what's left of this cold. Lots of tea FTW. I'm going to try to do more short updates like this, though, instead of the occasional epic update like I had been doing. Makes sense, yes?
-CB
In other news, I finally did it. I booked my vacation for the late spring, to Brussels. Yes, Brussels. It hasn't quite sunk in for me yet, but I think it will once I pay the charge bill for it. :-) I'm heading there in April, and waiting on a copy of a book all about Belgian breweries as we speak. I figure maybe a couple of brewery tours, maybe a couple of day trips... but this is what I've been putting the money on the side for, you know? I don't have a wife, I don't have any kids, right now, I'm still living for myself. This trip, my trip out to Denver in the fall for GABF, all that kind of stuff - if I don't do it now, then when can I do it? :-)
Everything else is going pretty well, that I can think of - I have a brewery coming down to the next beer club meeting to do a tasting for us, and I have a pale ale in the fermenter as we speak. This one's kind of an experiment - a fairly standard pale ale, but I'm going to add in a pound of orange blossom honey tomorrow night, most likely. Wanted to let it get a little further through the fermentation before I added in more sugar. My holiday beer this year isn't too bad, just a little heavy on the cinnamon. Note to self - next year, STAY with the quarter teaspoon - don't up it at all. And I finally realized what I did wrong with my vanilla porter from last year - the wrong kind of vanilla. I used bourbon vanilla beans instead of Madagascar vanilla beans - live and learn.
Alright, that's enough for now - I'm a little tired and am going to turn in a bit early, in hopes of shaking what's left of this cold. Lots of tea FTW. I'm going to try to do more short updates like this, though, instead of the occasional epic update like I had been doing. Makes sense, yes?
-CB
...does anyone know anyone who knows anything about commercial law? Company formulation and all that?
Or, more specifically, about forming businesses and possibly about the "hospitality industry"?
Or, more specifically, about forming businesses and possibly about the "hospitality industry"?
10/02: A little late...
..since I wrote this entry on the plane back from Denver, but...
So I'm on my way back home from the Great American Beer Festival - once again, a DAMN good time. Made some new friends, caught back up with some old - including one couple who I kept seeing last year, then a few times this year, in the airport. I still believe beer people are some of the best people in the world, though - everyone's the same, male or female, young or old, experienced with beer or not experienced with beer.
Unless you go into the restaurant with quite possibly the best beer selection in all of downtown Denver, quite possibly already drunk, and just proceed to piss off both the staff and the patrons, so much so to the point that the patrons start moving to other parts of the bar just to get away from you. And the staff gets pissed off at you because you're asking them about pretty much all of the 60-70 beers they have on tap.
Not that I saw that happen.
Nope.
Didn't move to a different part of the bar, either. :-)
But I digress. I really like what some of the brewers were doing, what they were showing there this year - including this one small brewery from Wisconsin that I've never been disappointed by. It's called New Glarus - they have a pretty well known fruit beer that I LOVE, and when I was waiting on line at their booth, it turns out they had brought a sour beer with them this year. A sour porter. This is the first and only sour porter I've ever seen or heard of, and I have to say, it was pretty nice. I'm not sure if I'd want to try doing something with sour beers after that one, maybe a sour wheat beer or a sour stout or something, but it's put the idea in my head. It was also nice to see some of the "local" breweries winning awards - I think one or two of the ones from down near college won some awards... Allentown/Bethlehem Brew Works won a couple of awards, I think Troegs won an award, and I know that Southampton won an award. Captain Lawrence may have, also, I don't remember offhand. I know I had a list of all the winners, but for the life of me, I don't know what I did with it. Meh, doesn't matter. Also, while I think of it - you know how I just mentioned New Glarus? They took a bronze for their fruit beer. And when I was on my way home from Montreal, I found this little out of the way brewpub in Vermont called The Alchemist. As it turns out, The Alchemist took gold and Bronze for two of their gluten-free beers - go little guy. :-)
I think I'm coming back a bit more balanced, too. I'm only 28 - I'm still learning how to balance work, and life, and home, and family, and everything else. It's not easy, as I'm sure you all know - but I think the little bit of time away has really, really helped. Things aren't perfect, obviously - but if you have a perfect life, where everything happens exactly when it's supposed to and your apartment stays clean by itself and nothing ever goes wrong, I'm calling bull. :-) It doesn't happen - it just doesn't happen. I don't care who you are. :-) I'm really doing my best to not let things get to me as badly as they used to - and, in classic me fashion, I may have gone from letting EVERYTHING get to me to not really getting anything get to me. I'm not sure that either one is necessarily healthy, per se, but I'm not too worried. I'd rather become passive and just try to let everything slide off my back than let it all get to me, you know? Let me pick and choose what gets me worked up - why should I let everything have that effect? So for some people who know me, they still know that little things (like from in the game) will get me worked up here and there. But not everything. It's just not healthy.
And speaking of healthy, doctor's appointment coming up. I need to go in for the blood work this week, and I'm not quite sure what to expect. I know I haven't been eating well this year, my last attempt at joining a gym ended up petering out based on the fact I couldn't justify paying what I was paying and only going maybe once or twice a week. (But I am joining a gym that will be opening near work that will be a third of the cost...) So I'll talk to my doctor and see what he has to say - I'm sure the fact I put on about 10 pounds or so over the course of this past year can't be all that good. I also want to start taking some sort of vitamin, since I know that's one of the problems as well - when I go to the chiropractor and my leg almost cramps when he stretches it, that can't be good. So I know that overall, I'm in good health. I might just need to work on the specifics a bit - and the gym will likely help with my mood. Or at least it's supposed to, anyway.
So I'll get home, break fast with my parents (not that I've been fasting, but they're my ride to/from the airport) for the holiday, then go home and probably spend the rest of the night cleaning, straightening, and putting stuff away. I live an exciting life, I tell you what. :-)
Took some nice pictures, too - I'll either get them up here, or I'll get them up on my facebook, or both - hopefully in the not too far future.
So I'm on my way back home from the Great American Beer Festival - once again, a DAMN good time. Made some new friends, caught back up with some old - including one couple who I kept seeing last year, then a few times this year, in the airport. I still believe beer people are some of the best people in the world, though - everyone's the same, male or female, young or old, experienced with beer or not experienced with beer.
Unless you go into the restaurant with quite possibly the best beer selection in all of downtown Denver, quite possibly already drunk, and just proceed to piss off both the staff and the patrons, so much so to the point that the patrons start moving to other parts of the bar just to get away from you. And the staff gets pissed off at you because you're asking them about pretty much all of the 60-70 beers they have on tap.
Not that I saw that happen.
Nope.
Didn't move to a different part of the bar, either. :-)
But I digress. I really like what some of the brewers were doing, what they were showing there this year - including this one small brewery from Wisconsin that I've never been disappointed by. It's called New Glarus - they have a pretty well known fruit beer that I LOVE, and when I was waiting on line at their booth, it turns out they had brought a sour beer with them this year. A sour porter. This is the first and only sour porter I've ever seen or heard of, and I have to say, it was pretty nice. I'm not sure if I'd want to try doing something with sour beers after that one, maybe a sour wheat beer or a sour stout or something, but it's put the idea in my head. It was also nice to see some of the "local" breweries winning awards - I think one or two of the ones from down near college won some awards... Allentown/Bethlehem Brew Works won a couple of awards, I think Troegs won an award, and I know that Southampton won an award. Captain Lawrence may have, also, I don't remember offhand. I know I had a list of all the winners, but for the life of me, I don't know what I did with it. Meh, doesn't matter. Also, while I think of it - you know how I just mentioned New Glarus? They took a bronze for their fruit beer. And when I was on my way home from Montreal, I found this little out of the way brewpub in Vermont called The Alchemist. As it turns out, The Alchemist took gold and Bronze for two of their gluten-free beers - go little guy. :-)
I think I'm coming back a bit more balanced, too. I'm only 28 - I'm still learning how to balance work, and life, and home, and family, and everything else. It's not easy, as I'm sure you all know - but I think the little bit of time away has really, really helped. Things aren't perfect, obviously - but if you have a perfect life, where everything happens exactly when it's supposed to and your apartment stays clean by itself and nothing ever goes wrong, I'm calling bull. :-) It doesn't happen - it just doesn't happen. I don't care who you are. :-) I'm really doing my best to not let things get to me as badly as they used to - and, in classic me fashion, I may have gone from letting EVERYTHING get to me to not really getting anything get to me. I'm not sure that either one is necessarily healthy, per se, but I'm not too worried. I'd rather become passive and just try to let everything slide off my back than let it all get to me, you know? Let me pick and choose what gets me worked up - why should I let everything have that effect? So for some people who know me, they still know that little things (like from in the game) will get me worked up here and there. But not everything. It's just not healthy.
And speaking of healthy, doctor's appointment coming up. I need to go in for the blood work this week, and I'm not quite sure what to expect. I know I haven't been eating well this year, my last attempt at joining a gym ended up petering out based on the fact I couldn't justify paying what I was paying and only going maybe once or twice a week. (But I am joining a gym that will be opening near work that will be a third of the cost...) So I'll talk to my doctor and see what he has to say - I'm sure the fact I put on about 10 pounds or so over the course of this past year can't be all that good. I also want to start taking some sort of vitamin, since I know that's one of the problems as well - when I go to the chiropractor and my leg almost cramps when he stretches it, that can't be good. So I know that overall, I'm in good health. I might just need to work on the specifics a bit - and the gym will likely help with my mood. Or at least it's supposed to, anyway.
So I'll get home, break fast with my parents (not that I've been fasting, but they're my ride to/from the airport) for the holiday, then go home and probably spend the rest of the night cleaning, straightening, and putting stuff away. I live an exciting life, I tell you what. :-)
Took some nice pictures, too - I'll either get them up here, or I'll get them up on my facebook, or both - hopefully in the not too far future.
...or next to it, anyway. :-)
Flew out to Denver yesterday - and I've had a great time out here so far. Granted, the Lubavitcher and the guy who spent time in seminary sitting in the row in front of me sitting there and talking religion the whole damn flight just irritated me a little, but at least I didn't have to sit next to them, you know? So I was able to just put my headphones on and ignore them - didn't feel bad about it at all. :-)
Coming out here has been great for me, though. Just a nice, relaxing time - and it's given me time to do some thinking. I've been working on trying to improve various parts of my life, and having SOME success - but some's better than none, I suppose, right? All things considered, though, I'm pretty happy with where my life is right now. Are things perfect? No, they're not by ANY stretch of the imagination. But I'm becoming more and more ok with the stuff that's not how I want it to be. This is all stuff that I can't really do anything about, so I can sit here and work myself up into a lather, or I can be a bit more realistic about things. Can I directly influence this stuff? No, not really. But I can at least try to do something to adapt to it, you know?
I did a lot of reading on the trip out - finished off my copy of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. There's something in his writing that I just LOVE - the tone, the relaxed nature, something about it.
...and, once again, it's getting a little too loud and too crowded for me to write comfortably here. I'm really not very good with people watching over my back, etc. So, I'll hopefully have the chance to write more at another point during this trip...
Flew out to Denver yesterday - and I've had a great time out here so far. Granted, the Lubavitcher and the guy who spent time in seminary sitting in the row in front of me sitting there and talking religion the whole damn flight just irritated me a little, but at least I didn't have to sit next to them, you know? So I was able to just put my headphones on and ignore them - didn't feel bad about it at all. :-)
Coming out here has been great for me, though. Just a nice, relaxing time - and it's given me time to do some thinking. I've been working on trying to improve various parts of my life, and having SOME success - but some's better than none, I suppose, right? All things considered, though, I'm pretty happy with where my life is right now. Are things perfect? No, they're not by ANY stretch of the imagination. But I'm becoming more and more ok with the stuff that's not how I want it to be. This is all stuff that I can't really do anything about, so I can sit here and work myself up into a lather, or I can be a bit more realistic about things. Can I directly influence this stuff? No, not really. But I can at least try to do something to adapt to it, you know?
I did a lot of reading on the trip out - finished off my copy of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. There's something in his writing that I just LOVE - the tone, the relaxed nature, something about it.
...and, once again, it's getting a little too loud and too crowded for me to write comfortably here. I'm really not very good with people watching over my back, etc. So, I'll hopefully have the chance to write more at another point during this trip...
09/06: I'm not dead yet!
Sometimes I feel close to it, but I'm not quite dead yet... the past few months have just been all over the place for me recently. Good and bad reasons, and not everything I'm necessarily going to discuss here. Just suffice it to say that with everything that life has thrown at me (and at people who I care about) in the past few weeks, we're not down yet. And if we are down, we won't stay that way. Not our style - any of us.
I bought myself a new toy recently - a netbook. I figure I'm making good money at the moment, I'm only taking care of myself, why not buy myself a toy, you know? Something I want - not necessarily something I need, but something that will make me smile. So I've been playing around on there recently, and will likely take it with me when I go on vacation in a couple of weeks (keep reading for more on that). It's a nice little machine - basically, a notebook computer, but an even smaller form factor. I've been installing a couple of programs on it to get it working just how I want it, and I'm almost there - I need to do some more reading about how to configure this one program I installed. Soon enough, though, soon enough - and I won't be limited to where I'll have to worry about packing and using a notebook with a 15 inch screen. This thing isn't much bigger than a fairly large woman's wallet (the wallet is large, not the woman. Just clarifying. *grin*). I even went through and made a custom wallpaper for the netbook - a new logo for my "brewery." Not tonight, but I'll get a copy of it up soon - just want to play around with these configuration files like I mentioned and I'll post a screenshot. :-)
So yeah - I'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks. Back out to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival again. Since I've done it once already, though, I'm making a couple of changes to my trip. (Of course, this is assuming I'm going - there's a slight chance that I might have to cancel it for family reasons, which (given what the reasons are) I wouldn't be too terribly upset... but I'd still like to go in general. If that made any sense.) :-) But I'll be out there Tuesday to Sunday - and Tuesday night, I'm planning on going to a Colorado Rockies game. I don't follow baseball too terribly closely, but I've always liked the Rockies - so why not? And like I said, I have a few extra dollars in my pocket, so it may very well be a box seat at that game. And then, afterwards, I'll walk the half a block or so to the Falling Rock Tap House. Quite possibly one of the greatest bars I've ever been to. Tons of different beers on tap, and considering it's the weekend of the GABF, they'll probably have some rare kegs to tap - they did a killer business last year for the festival and I can't imagine it would be any different this year. I also need to get in touch with Avery Brewing - they had a list of different beers they were tapping over the course of the week in their tasting room ("Only 8 gallons of this beer in existence!"), and... I just looked at their website. Wow. Wow is all I can say. They're tapping some RIDICULOUS beers this time through, and I think I'm going to have to head up there just for the sour beer that they're unveiling on Wednesday. Yes, I'll likely be up there on Friday as well, but still - I WANT a bottle or 6 of this sour beer. There's nothing like a good sour beer, if you ask me. :-)
Personal life is still personal life - some ups and downs, but other than that, nothing horrible to complain about. Like the mother of a dear friend of mine says, if no one's bleeding and no one needs an organ transplant, we can handle the rest of it. (I don't think that's the EXACT quote, but it's the general idea of it.) I'm doing my best to help my friends through their trials and tribulations, and they're helping me through mine. Sometimes I feel like they're doing yeoman's work, and I don't know that I can ever express just how grateful and lucky I am to have friends like them.
(And I'd like to take this chance to specifically tell my favorite world traveler that I hope she's doing ok. I hope you find what you're looking for soon, hon, and I hope you come back stateside once you do.) :-)
So I'm still a brewing fool. :-) Remember that slightly soured pale ale I mentioned a couple of posts back? Well, it's definitely taking on more of a sour character. Not a bad thing, though - I don't know how to explain the taste, but it's nice. I think I need to get through the rest of the bottles, though, before the sourness takes over and dominates the beer - but if one can "spike" a beer, well, I'd say in this case, it worked pretty well. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's something I'll be able to recreate - but hey, sucks to be me. :-) I've done a couple of german wheat beers this summer, I have a fresh-hop APA (think Sierra Nevada, but with hops right off the vine) in the fermenter as we speak, and next up will likely be my holiday beer for this year - so I have a little while to get it into bottles to age properly - and the Orange Blossom pale ale I mentioned below. I'm still really curious how a beer like that would come out. :-)
So hopefully, things will calm themselves down for me in the near future, and I'll be able to get up more regular updates. Ideally, anyway. :-) I know of a couple of interesting things coming down the pipe, and at least one of them will involve lots of pictures. :-)
But for now, I have a 2 year old bottle of Left Hand Oak Aged Widdershins barleywine to attend to. Be good, guys, and comment up a storm. :-)
I bought myself a new toy recently - a netbook. I figure I'm making good money at the moment, I'm only taking care of myself, why not buy myself a toy, you know? Something I want - not necessarily something I need, but something that will make me smile. So I've been playing around on there recently, and will likely take it with me when I go on vacation in a couple of weeks (keep reading for more on that). It's a nice little machine - basically, a notebook computer, but an even smaller form factor. I've been installing a couple of programs on it to get it working just how I want it, and I'm almost there - I need to do some more reading about how to configure this one program I installed. Soon enough, though, soon enough - and I won't be limited to where I'll have to worry about packing and using a notebook with a 15 inch screen. This thing isn't much bigger than a fairly large woman's wallet (the wallet is large, not the woman. Just clarifying. *grin*). I even went through and made a custom wallpaper for the netbook - a new logo for my "brewery." Not tonight, but I'll get a copy of it up soon - just want to play around with these configuration files like I mentioned and I'll post a screenshot. :-)
So yeah - I'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks. Back out to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival again. Since I've done it once already, though, I'm making a couple of changes to my trip. (Of course, this is assuming I'm going - there's a slight chance that I might have to cancel it for family reasons, which (given what the reasons are) I wouldn't be too terribly upset... but I'd still like to go in general. If that made any sense.) :-) But I'll be out there Tuesday to Sunday - and Tuesday night, I'm planning on going to a Colorado Rockies game. I don't follow baseball too terribly closely, but I've always liked the Rockies - so why not? And like I said, I have a few extra dollars in my pocket, so it may very well be a box seat at that game. And then, afterwards, I'll walk the half a block or so to the Falling Rock Tap House. Quite possibly one of the greatest bars I've ever been to. Tons of different beers on tap, and considering it's the weekend of the GABF, they'll probably have some rare kegs to tap - they did a killer business last year for the festival and I can't imagine it would be any different this year. I also need to get in touch with Avery Brewing - they had a list of different beers they were tapping over the course of the week in their tasting room ("Only 8 gallons of this beer in existence!"), and... I just looked at their website. Wow. Wow is all I can say. They're tapping some RIDICULOUS beers this time through, and I think I'm going to have to head up there just for the sour beer that they're unveiling on Wednesday. Yes, I'll likely be up there on Friday as well, but still - I WANT a bottle or 6 of this sour beer. There's nothing like a good sour beer, if you ask me. :-)
Personal life is still personal life - some ups and downs, but other than that, nothing horrible to complain about. Like the mother of a dear friend of mine says, if no one's bleeding and no one needs an organ transplant, we can handle the rest of it. (I don't think that's the EXACT quote, but it's the general idea of it.) I'm doing my best to help my friends through their trials and tribulations, and they're helping me through mine. Sometimes I feel like they're doing yeoman's work, and I don't know that I can ever express just how grateful and lucky I am to have friends like them.
(And I'd like to take this chance to specifically tell my favorite world traveler that I hope she's doing ok. I hope you find what you're looking for soon, hon, and I hope you come back stateside once you do.) :-)
So I'm still a brewing fool. :-) Remember that slightly soured pale ale I mentioned a couple of posts back? Well, it's definitely taking on more of a sour character. Not a bad thing, though - I don't know how to explain the taste, but it's nice. I think I need to get through the rest of the bottles, though, before the sourness takes over and dominates the beer - but if one can "spike" a beer, well, I'd say in this case, it worked pretty well. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's something I'll be able to recreate - but hey, sucks to be me. :-) I've done a couple of german wheat beers this summer, I have a fresh-hop APA (think Sierra Nevada, but with hops right off the vine) in the fermenter as we speak, and next up will likely be my holiday beer for this year - so I have a little while to get it into bottles to age properly - and the Orange Blossom pale ale I mentioned below. I'm still really curious how a beer like that would come out. :-)
So hopefully, things will calm themselves down for me in the near future, and I'll be able to get up more regular updates. Ideally, anyway. :-) I know of a couple of interesting things coming down the pipe, and at least one of them will involve lots of pictures. :-)
But for now, I have a 2 year old bottle of Left Hand Oak Aged Widdershins barleywine to attend to. Be good, guys, and comment up a storm. :-)
All sorts of fun stuff to write about - just not right now.
This weekend, guys - I promise. :-)
This weekend, guys - I promise. :-)
06/28: Random question...
any of you reading this have any suggestions/recommendations on how to... pace my cooking? So that things all get done closer to the same time and all that?
So, I'm only a day or so late - but here's the nice long post I promised. And, knowing me, it'll be somewhat disjointed - and DEFINITELY rambling - but when you have a writing style that works for you, you go with it. :-)
Probably one of the best things I did for myself recently was go up to Montreal for Mondiale de la Biere. (And yes, I know there are accents that are supposed to go in there, but honestly, do you miss them? I mean, really? *s*) It was a 7 hour drive up to Montreal, and between Albany and the border, you're on one road. This road is called the Adirondack Northway - or just The Northway for short. I now learned that there's nothing on the Northway except for trees and troopers. It may have very well been the most boring drive I've ever made, but once I got over the border into Canada, it was just kind of... surreal. First time I've ever been there. First time I've ever "really" been in a foreign country, day trips to the Dutch Antilles over spring break my senior year of college notwithstanding. I get to the hotel, and once I'm all checked in, ask about how to get to the fest. Turns out I'm within walking distance of a metro station where 3 out of the 4 Montreal metro lines converge - think... Grand Central Station, if you've ever been to Manhattan. Not quite as big and important as Penn Station, but still a sizable station that will get you a lot of the places you want to go. Picked up a 3 day tourist pass (if they still have them, I HIGHLY recommend getting one - $17 for all the metro/bus you can ride), took the metro downtown, and when I got to the fest, I just followed the noise. Came up the stairs at Windsor Station, and once I saw the environment, once I saw all the booths and the people and the beer, I couldn't help but smile. It was a GREAT feeling. I started off at a booth for a brewpub I was familiar with by association - someone I met at GABF in Denver in October told me about it - and was impressed to see a Randall being used. I explained to a couple of people what it is, and made a couple of friends from the area who I ended up walking around the rest of the festival with that day. There's a TON of great little breweries and brewpubs from up in that direction. I'm sure some of you have seen beers from Brasserie Dieu de Ciel!, but they have even more, even better stuff north of the border. One of them was a stout with cocoa and vanilla called L'Aphrodisiaque, one is a Kolsch called Basse Messe, they have a beer brewed with hemp, one with hibiscus, one that was a highly hopped white beer... this kind of stuff is the future of brewing, if you ask me. They didn't lose touch with the traditional styles and definitions, but at the same time, they're not afraid to push those boundaries. They want to keep it interesting, keep it new and different, and I applaud them for that. (The food at their brewpub on Laurier is pretty damn good, too.)
Met up with a couple of my friends up there - M and Z. I know Z from a game I play online, so since I was in their neck of the woods already, they invited me over for dinner. Great people - and afterwards, M and I went to do some karaoke in the gay district of Montreal. In some odd way, I think that was one of the more interesting, yet enjoyable, parts of the whole trip. :-) To meet Z in person was pretty damn cool, though - when you get to know these people from different sides of a computer screen, then you actually get to meet them in person, it adds a completely different dimension to the friendship. I know all these people are real people, just like I know all of you are real people, but for those of you who I haven't met, I hope to soon so I can get a better feeling of who you are. I think what it is is that I'm very big on experience. I've always considered myself an empiricist - I find it easier to garner knowledge from actual situations than from logical extensions. I need the empirical data more than I can act the part of a rationalist and come to the intelligence by reason. I think I've always been that way, but thank you, Dr. Pawelski, for helping me put words to it. I forget which 200-level class it was, but it was called "Rationalism and Empiricism" and when we first went over the Empiricism aspect of it, I just smiled and felt like the class was about me. Might also have something to do with my interest in epistemology, but that's another story entirely. :-)
But I digress. I was able to do a little exploration while in Montreal, and saw some interesting sights - including the city-wide bike network they've deployed, called Bixi. It looks like a PHENOMENAL idea and execution.
And, I'm still brewing. Just bottled my Patersbier the other night, and had the Bottling Run From Hell.® No matter what I did, I couldn't get a good siphon started using the one piece of equipment I was trying, so I ended up (after frustration and irritation that I'm not going to go into here) going to my trusty autosiphon to get the bottling done. What's wrong with that, you ask? Well, the last time I used the autosiphon was with my sour beer. The organisms that are responsible for souring the beer were still on the autosiphon - many brewers will only use one set of equipment with their sour beers, because these organisms are so difficult to kill. So I may end up with a slightly soured Patersbier - and if it turns out that it doesn't come out well, then I'm not out too much money. If something like this happened with, say, my barleywine, I'd be much more upset. Here, since I spent about... 30-40% of the amount I spent on the barleywine, I don't mind if this one doesn't come out well. Not every beer will be good, not every beer needs to be good. Dad needs slug repellent too, you know. :-)
So I entered a couple of beers and a cider into a competition out east here on Long Island. I got my scores back - they said the cider started out perfectly, but ended up way too sour, so I'm hoping time will smooth that one out. The two beers I entered, they said I entered in the wrong categories. So I found another competition not too far from here - outside of Philadelphia - and entered the two beers in there.
One did better, one did worse.
Just goes to show you that sometimes, you should trust your instinct with these beers. The judges don't always know what they're talking about, either. But the fact of the matter still remains this: I make good beer. I may not make good beer from a critical perspective, but I make good beer. I have a LOT of respect for a Norwegian brewery called Nogne O. I decided, on a whim, to pick up a bottle of Nogne O porter and grab a bottle of my porter - do a little makeshift taste test with some friends. The friends who tried my porter were split as to which they liked better - mine or the Nogne O. And since those are more the people who are going to be drinking the beers, that meant a LOT to me to hear them say that. I wasn't expecting anyone to choose my beer. Not to mention my friend, who took a bottle of my wheat beer and a bottle of wheat beer by Weihenstephaner - and liked mine better. Like I said, these are more the kind of people who would be drinking my beer than judges.
I make good beer, just maybe not critically. :-)
So I've been thinking about taking my brewing to the next step and going all grain. From a baking perspective, this is going from buying the Betty Crocker boxes off the shelf to making my own batters. I'm not sure if I'm going to do that quite yet, but what I do know is the beer I'm going to try next. It's going to be an Orange Blossom Pale Ale - just need to work out a recipe for it. And hopefully I'll get to brew it somewhat soon - if the weather stays relatively cool, that is, because I want to have a fighting chance of this coming out the way I want it. And if it doesn't, well, then I'll just have to call into service the project Dad and I are working on right now. "Red Headed Stepchild of Fermentation Chiller" - our own twist on the Son of Fermentation Chiller design. With any luck, if this whole thing works well, I'll be able to set my own fermentation temperature and make pretty much whatever style of beer I want any time of year. Hopefully. :-)
Ok, enough rambling for one night - I doubt any of you even made it this far. So for now, I'll sign off - but I'll be back soon enough to update this post with links where appropriate...
Probably one of the best things I did for myself recently was go up to Montreal for Mondiale de la Biere. (And yes, I know there are accents that are supposed to go in there, but honestly, do you miss them? I mean, really? *s*) It was a 7 hour drive up to Montreal, and between Albany and the border, you're on one road. This road is called the Adirondack Northway - or just The Northway for short. I now learned that there's nothing on the Northway except for trees and troopers. It may have very well been the most boring drive I've ever made, but once I got over the border into Canada, it was just kind of... surreal. First time I've ever been there. First time I've ever "really" been in a foreign country, day trips to the Dutch Antilles over spring break my senior year of college notwithstanding. I get to the hotel, and once I'm all checked in, ask about how to get to the fest. Turns out I'm within walking distance of a metro station where 3 out of the 4 Montreal metro lines converge - think... Grand Central Station, if you've ever been to Manhattan. Not quite as big and important as Penn Station, but still a sizable station that will get you a lot of the places you want to go. Picked up a 3 day tourist pass (if they still have them, I HIGHLY recommend getting one - $17 for all the metro/bus you can ride), took the metro downtown, and when I got to the fest, I just followed the noise. Came up the stairs at Windsor Station, and once I saw the environment, once I saw all the booths and the people and the beer, I couldn't help but smile. It was a GREAT feeling. I started off at a booth for a brewpub I was familiar with by association - someone I met at GABF in Denver in October told me about it - and was impressed to see a Randall being used. I explained to a couple of people what it is, and made a couple of friends from the area who I ended up walking around the rest of the festival with that day. There's a TON of great little breweries and brewpubs from up in that direction. I'm sure some of you have seen beers from Brasserie Dieu de Ciel!, but they have even more, even better stuff north of the border. One of them was a stout with cocoa and vanilla called L'Aphrodisiaque, one is a Kolsch called Basse Messe, they have a beer brewed with hemp, one with hibiscus, one that was a highly hopped white beer... this kind of stuff is the future of brewing, if you ask me. They didn't lose touch with the traditional styles and definitions, but at the same time, they're not afraid to push those boundaries. They want to keep it interesting, keep it new and different, and I applaud them for that. (The food at their brewpub on Laurier is pretty damn good, too.)
Met up with a couple of my friends up there - M and Z. I know Z from a game I play online, so since I was in their neck of the woods already, they invited me over for dinner. Great people - and afterwards, M and I went to do some karaoke in the gay district of Montreal. In some odd way, I think that was one of the more interesting, yet enjoyable, parts of the whole trip. :-) To meet Z in person was pretty damn cool, though - when you get to know these people from different sides of a computer screen, then you actually get to meet them in person, it adds a completely different dimension to the friendship. I know all these people are real people, just like I know all of you are real people, but for those of you who I haven't met, I hope to soon so I can get a better feeling of who you are. I think what it is is that I'm very big on experience. I've always considered myself an empiricist - I find it easier to garner knowledge from actual situations than from logical extensions. I need the empirical data more than I can act the part of a rationalist and come to the intelligence by reason. I think I've always been that way, but thank you, Dr. Pawelski, for helping me put words to it. I forget which 200-level class it was, but it was called "Rationalism and Empiricism" and when we first went over the Empiricism aspect of it, I just smiled and felt like the class was about me. Might also have something to do with my interest in epistemology, but that's another story entirely. :-)
But I digress. I was able to do a little exploration while in Montreal, and saw some interesting sights - including the city-wide bike network they've deployed, called Bixi. It looks like a PHENOMENAL idea and execution.
And, I'm still brewing. Just bottled my Patersbier the other night, and had the Bottling Run From Hell.® No matter what I did, I couldn't get a good siphon started using the one piece of equipment I was trying, so I ended up (after frustration and irritation that I'm not going to go into here) going to my trusty autosiphon to get the bottling done. What's wrong with that, you ask? Well, the last time I used the autosiphon was with my sour beer. The organisms that are responsible for souring the beer were still on the autosiphon - many brewers will only use one set of equipment with their sour beers, because these organisms are so difficult to kill. So I may end up with a slightly soured Patersbier - and if it turns out that it doesn't come out well, then I'm not out too much money. If something like this happened with, say, my barleywine, I'd be much more upset. Here, since I spent about... 30-40% of the amount I spent on the barleywine, I don't mind if this one doesn't come out well. Not every beer will be good, not every beer needs to be good. Dad needs slug repellent too, you know. :-)
So I entered a couple of beers and a cider into a competition out east here on Long Island. I got my scores back - they said the cider started out perfectly, but ended up way too sour, so I'm hoping time will smooth that one out. The two beers I entered, they said I entered in the wrong categories. So I found another competition not too far from here - outside of Philadelphia - and entered the two beers in there.
One did better, one did worse.
Just goes to show you that sometimes, you should trust your instinct with these beers. The judges don't always know what they're talking about, either. But the fact of the matter still remains this: I make good beer. I may not make good beer from a critical perspective, but I make good beer. I have a LOT of respect for a Norwegian brewery called Nogne O. I decided, on a whim, to pick up a bottle of Nogne O porter and grab a bottle of my porter - do a little makeshift taste test with some friends. The friends who tried my porter were split as to which they liked better - mine or the Nogne O. And since those are more the people who are going to be drinking the beers, that meant a LOT to me to hear them say that. I wasn't expecting anyone to choose my beer. Not to mention my friend, who took a bottle of my wheat beer and a bottle of wheat beer by Weihenstephaner - and liked mine better. Like I said, these are more the kind of people who would be drinking my beer than judges.
I make good beer, just maybe not critically. :-)
So I've been thinking about taking my brewing to the next step and going all grain. From a baking perspective, this is going from buying the Betty Crocker boxes off the shelf to making my own batters. I'm not sure if I'm going to do that quite yet, but what I do know is the beer I'm going to try next. It's going to be an Orange Blossom Pale Ale - just need to work out a recipe for it. And hopefully I'll get to brew it somewhat soon - if the weather stays relatively cool, that is, because I want to have a fighting chance of this coming out the way I want it. And if it doesn't, well, then I'll just have to call into service the project Dad and I are working on right now. "Red Headed Stepchild of Fermentation Chiller" - our own twist on the Son of Fermentation Chiller design. With any luck, if this whole thing works well, I'll be able to set my own fermentation temperature and make pretty much whatever style of beer I want any time of year. Hopefully. :-)
Ok, enough rambling for one night - I doubt any of you even made it this far. So for now, I'll sign off - but I'll be back soon enough to update this post with links where appropriate...
