06/16: Better late than never, right? :-)
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...
