Don’t show up early for brewing
If you do happen to show up early, there’s a good chance that Joel will be tearing down his deck and will guilt you into helping him. There’s also a good chance he’ll give you tissue paper gloves to use while chucking nail-ridden boards into the back of a pickup truck. Or perhaps he’ll bark out orders to you as you’re perched precariously on top of a pile of rotten wood.
Fortunately, Jeff finally showed up, and had the decency to crack open a MNB Breakfast Stout (oatmeal stout) for me. Based on our conversations yesterday… and a similar conversation with my roommate last night, here are my thoughts:
A good beer. Not quite there, but definitely one we should continue to work on. Perhaps tone down the taste of the alcohol and add a little more complexity. Also, it might be nice if it were a tad more “stout” and had a bigger head. Something about “stout” screams “nice ‘n frothy” to me. So look forward to a nice heavy stout laden with hints of cherry, nuts and chocolate. With a head rising up to the top of Stone Mountain.
Bloggerific!
Hey kids.
Wow, this is weird. I feel like I’m having some sort of out of body experience. Like I’m floating high above the room, seeing myself typing about myself. You see, this is my first time blogging. Ever. Isn’t this a big deal or something?
I guess I’m supposed to write about beer. Hm. Beer…ok, I think I’ve got it. I spent the past two weekends in Asheville, N.C., home to some fantastic brews. The problem is that Asheville is such a laid back town that I don’t think anyone who makes said fantastic brews feels any particalar need to share them with anyone outside Asheville. A few examples. Highland Brewery makes some incredible beers – my brother Stephen has dubbed Gaelic Ale “the best liquid in the world” – but I have only occasionally seen their beers here in Atlanta, a mere 3.5 hour drive away. And I think Asheville Pizza (www.ashevillepizza.com) has some amazing beers, plus the whole idea of having a brewpub/pizzaria/movie theater is just plain cool. They also have a video arcade, and last Saturday night (after a couple pitchers had beer taken care of), I got to see my mom and dad square off in the most bizarre Dance, Dance Revolution contest I have ever seen. It was truly a battle of the ages.
On a slightly different note, I brewed a batch of IPA with my dad, brother and brother-in-law over Christmas that we bottled on Monday (New Year’s Day). I changed around the specialty malts a bit in hopes of making a more American style IPA (not that I have anything against the Brits, aside from their dental hygeine). I have all the fixins for another batch to try with the MNB guys soon as well. I’m hopeful that we are well on our way to a really solid beer.
Ok, one more thing before I go. Contests. I’ve become convinced (for no real reason) that we need to start entering some homebrewing contests. At our party in the summer I want to be able to make up little cards that say something like “Our IPA, which won a silver medal at the Northwest Central Utah Homebrewers’ Club Contest, etc, etc”. I mean come on, wouldn’t you be more likely to try a beer with the words “silver medal” in front of it?
But enough. My general intuition is that blog entries are not supposed to be so verbose and self reflective. (Yet even as I write this, I realize that that, in fact, is the ENTIRE point of blogging.)
More soon…