FOOLCiRCLE

So tonight I sampled four new beers that were brought back from GA for me from my bud Garrett.

First up was the Josephs Brau Double Bock Lager Winterfest - this was a big malty slightly sweet beer that I was expecting to be just OK but turned out to be a pretty good drinker. This isn’t an Oh Wow beer, but if it were local to me I would buy it at least seasonally.

Next was the Sweet Water Festive Ale - this was my least favorite out of the four tonight. Closest to an un-spiced (or lightly spiced) winter warmer style beer. Nothing was really wrong with this beer, it was just boring, and sometimes that’s all it takes.

After that was the Red Brick Winter Brew - this was a double chocolate porter is how I think they describer it. This was the beer that inspired the beers being brought back when I saw an empty 6-pack holder at Garrett’s and mentioned that looked good. And it was good. I drank it out of a snifter and slowly let it warm. As it warmed the flavors totally developed and came to the front, nice.

Finally was a beer I’ve wanted to try for a while, Terrapin’s Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout - (mmmmm, in a Homer Simpson voice). This beer smelt like what I remember the Opaque Espresso Stout smelling like, and it was quite good too. I wish they would have focused more on the base beer and a little less on the coffee, but I won’t complain. There wasn’t too much coffee, but a more developed stout could have helped carry this beer.

 Thanks so much Garrett for bringing me back beers. What can I say besides, you da man!

I got to try two of my favorite seasonal beers tonight, Weyerbacher’s Double Simcoe IPA and Troeg’s Nugget Nectar.

Both of these beers are huge hoppy beers, both very similar overall, yet completely different mainly in their hop profile. Weyerbacher labels their’s as a Double IPA while Troegs labels their’s an Imperial Amber. The Double Simcoe was way catty, even litter-boxy, with a definitive urine aftertaste and bite to it. The Nugget Nectar was similar in aroma at first, but the flavor was much more “traditional” citrus in its profile. The Simcoe grew to be way less catty and came across more piney. The Nugget developed quickly into an easy drinker. I bought a 4-pack of the Simcoe and a 6-pack of the Nugget, and I am already looking forward to my next 6-pack of Nugget Nectar. The next thing for me to find is a 6-pack (or case) of Sierra Nevada Bigfoot 2008!

I got a promotion at work, and today I start my new position.

Well, I officially start my new position. I enter the training period which is supposed to be only two weeks long. One week of soft training and one week of heavy training. But I’ll be moving from the Shipping and Receiving Regulator to the Purchasing Manager, a significant move. I’m actually quite excited to no longer be doing what I am doing, but also quite nervous about beginning the new position. I feel as if I could have a better training regime established I’d be more positive about the change, but for now it seems a little daunting. Change is good.

You call them chicken breast, my family calls them chicken boom-badi-addas. “Could I have my Chicken a la king without the alla-alla?”

Check out the boobs on that bird, nice! Tonight for dinner I made a beer-can chicken but took it up a notch, or two maybe. First I brined my first chicken. I used a simple brine of 1 cup sea salt, 1 cup white sugar, and 1 gallon cold water. I then also added the rind of one lime to the brine. I let the chicken soak in the brine in the fridge for five hours. While the chicken was brining, I took said lime and juiced the two halves. I then stuffed the halves with a butter and herb mixture and froze them. When the chicken was done brining I rinsed it well twice. I then brushed the whole chicken with about two TBSPs of vegetable oil nd the juice from one lime. I then rubbed the chicken inside, outside, and under the skin with “traditional” beer-can chicken rub. I then inserted the frozen lime and butter halves under the skin onto the breasts. This gave the appearance that the chicken had a boob job, but better served the purpose of a cool melt to moisturize the boobs. The chicken was then cooked on the grill beer-can-style with wood chips for approximately an hour and a half. I served the chicken with a warm fresh spinach salad with toasted pine nuts and balsamic dressing. It was a good winter’s feast.

I better be careful of this homebrew website is going to start to look more like a blog (I don’t know why, but I don’t like that word). Anyway, I figured New Year’s Eve and Day is a typical time of reflection, so come reminisce with me.

I figured I’d help everyone think about the things you may avoid thinking about on a daily basis. I assume anyone who reads this, anyone for that matter, could probably relate to or improve some measure of their life related to the resolutions listed above. For me personally, at some point in my life at least, I have struggled with the idea of all of the above. For me, I like to continuously set new goals, may they be small or large. I think goals are important to help people continue to grow as an individual. Fortunately for most of us New Year’s is a time when we can reevaluate our goals in life and try to remember just what we hold important and prioritize our values. I know I like to celebrate the end of the year and reflect on all the wonderful people and good times that have touched my life, but also to self-evaluate where I could have done more, been stronger, and maybe have been more useful to others. I also like to celebrate the beginning of the new year and anticipate the possibilities of the unknown through excitement, nervousness, and preparation.

Here are a few of my favorite moments from this year wrapped up in a nut-shell.  Hopefully you’ve enjoyed at least a few of these moments with me this year. Thank you all.

I hope all of you have had a wonderful 2007 and have lived your lives to the fullest with no regret. I can’t say I have squeezed ever moment out of every day this year, but I’m going to keep on trying to be the best me I can be. I hope 2008 finds all of you in good health, high spirits, with family and friends often, and out of trouble and burden-free.

This is kind of a silly post for me, but I got to play with a new Christmas toy, and I think it’s going to be quite useful.

My sister and her family gave Karen and I a cool multi-function Panini Grill for Christmas.  It’s kind of like an uber-George Foreman Grill. It is a panini press (essentially what a GF grill is), a flat top grill, a flat top griddle, and a waffle press all in one. It has interchangeable non-stick plates, closes like a press, or lays flat to use both sides as cooking surfaces. So far we have only used it once for breakfast (see above) and it worked great. Typically for the same meal we would have had to cook it in two shifts, now we can do it all at once. I can’t wait to try the press and the waffle maker too. Thanks Nancy & Chip!

Merry Christmas

What if Christmas didn’t come this year
And no one paid for Christmas cheer?
Who would cry the biggest tear,
The child or the store?

Last night (10.26.07) was another high-brow tournament. This time it was the best fictional villain / bad guy / evil character of all time, again non-seeded and randomly drawn.

Click the tournament picture and you’ll find the results of a few hours of us being idiots.

Things were run very similar as last time with the Greatest Front-Man Tournament. It was Robert, Mitchell, and myself again, Wooly was suppose to be there but something happened and he couldn’t come. I think we had 155 names to start with this time and we had to wean them down to the top 128. Again the names were randomly drawn from a bowl to flush out the brackets, two at a time and then that was the match-up. After the initial 64 match-up the tournament would run as a normal tournament would, well except for out “nah” rule.

Our rule kind of went like this, in the first round each of us were given two “power nahs” in which we were able to say “nah” to any match-up that was pulled out of the bowl. If we used a “power nah” then that match-up would be thrown back into the bowl to be re-pulled in a different combination later. This was typically used to keep heavy hitters from going up against each other too early. For example, if Darth Vader and Megatron went up against each other in the first round then someone might use a “power nah” to throw their names back into the bowl so a big decision like that wouldn’t have to be made too early in the game. After the first round each of us was also given two regular “nahs” that could be used in the second, third, and fourth rounds. What these “nahs” did was basically give the loser of a match-up a second chance. The winner of the match-up had to get a 2 out of 3 vote to stay in verses the normal 50/50 chance - make sense?

Now remember, none of us fully agree with this, this is just what happen when the three of us ran this tournament. It would probably be different with any three people and obviously with any random drawing. There were actually a couple really tough match-ups, a couple that some people totally disagreed with, and a couple that I looked at afterwards and thought ‘how did that happen?’ Regardless, I’m not going to argue with these results, but I am going to say there were a few surprises. If you don’t recognize some of the names go ahead and ask or look them up yourselves, you may be surprised who did and didn’t make the cut. And just for fun, I’ll include the “Jobbers” bracket too. This is the bracket of guys who didn’t make the initial 120 out of the 155 and had to really fight to get one of the last eight spots, whatever. Click on the picture for a larger shot of it.

Happy Halloween!

Sometimes it’s good to be the brewer.

Tonight I enjoyed a 2005 MacRae Strong Scotch Ale.

Gluttony, pure and simple. And, boy, did I enjoy every moment of it. If only every Monday’s menu was so much fun to prepare, to cook, to eat.

A delicious tender Delmonico steak seasoned with only salt & pepper grilled to a perfect medium-rare, paired with Russian Purple Fingerling potatoes and root vegetable medley, accompanied with fresh local Jersey tomatoes and Cooper’s Sharp cheese topped with extra virgin olive oil brought back from Trevi in the Umbria region of Italy and fifteen year old Modena balsamic vinegar, and finally complimented by a cool red wine blend both sweet and tart.