FOOLCiRCLE

I got to try a new beer AND a new beer-style for me tonight, awesome!

This is the Ring of Fire Porter from Iron Hill Brewery. I bought three bottles yesterday, one for myself soon, one for myself later, and one for a trade. I also happened to be at Iron Hill again today and bought another bottle to split with the people I was with, Todd, Carrie, and Karen. The bottle is 13oz and 9 dollars, so to split between four you don’t get much to sample but at a good price.

This is what the bottle has to say: Ring of Fire Porter  - Aged and Finished in a Tabasco Pepper Mash Oak Barrel - Ring of Fire Porter: Brewed naturally with the finest malted barley, hops, and yeast. Our house porter, aged and finished in a Tabasco pepper mash oak barrel, imparting a hot pepper character which marries with the roasty and subtle chocolate notes of the porter. - OG: 1.057, Color: 23L, IBU: 37, ALC: 5.4%.

Rumor has it that this was originally a lighter beer, Iron Hill’s Light Lager perhaps, aged in the Tabasco barrel. Problem was there wasn’t enough to the Light Lager and basically they made a Tabasco beer, for real. Again I believe this to be the West Chester location, supposedly Chris figured that they needed a bigger beer with more body and flavor to help cut and carry the Tabasco. They chose their house porter, the Pig Iron Porter, which was a great choice. They really built a great “hot chocolate” one off.

I thought the beer had a great Tabasco burn characteristic commingled with the roast and chocolate of the porter, but with neither being overbearing. Both the Tabasco-type heat/flavor and the porter-like body/chocolateliness built a strong beer. The heat of the Tabasco did build a little in the back of the throat and made sure its presence was known, but I never felt like i needed to cool it down or rinse it out. Very excellent attempt at an ambitious idea. If it wasn’t so expensive, I would love to marinate some London Broil in this to make an excellent BBQ/grilling addition.

So I kegged the Naked Wheat and transfered the Frootid the Wheat the other day.

Since this both happened in the same time-frame I was able to pull samples of each and compare and contrast, and run them by the wheat beer guru, Karen. As I said before the Naked Wheat was mild and clean, nothing wrong there, actually can’t wait to try it carbonated and cold. The Frootid the Wheat was way cloudy and a little shady looking. It still smelt of fruit so I was hoping the fermentation was complete. The flavor was actually great, nice and fruity, a little sharp, the blueberries still shone through - nice! Karen really liked the fruited wheat (surprise), so I guess things are on target. I figure I’ll keg the fruited wheat sometime next week at this point. BUT, that would then mean I have no beers in carboys at the moment, I guess it’s time to get behind the brew kettle again.

So on Tuesday I received a package in the mail from a blind trade, shweet!

The original trade was suppose to be for an EMPTY DFH 90 Minute IPA Special Edition bottle that Robert and I scored at the DFH Bocce Tournament. We drank the beer, but the bottle was cool enough to keep, but I don’t really collect that many bottles. I posted it on BeerAdvocate kind of as a ‘one-man’s-trash’ kind of trade. About a month later someone asked me about it. Initially it was suppose to be the empty bottle for an AleSmith Old NumbSkull. Then we decided to bump it to a blind three for three trade on top. He sent me The AleSmith Old NumbSkull, a Firestone IPA, a Russian River Supplication, and a Drake’s Bourbon Barrel Aged Barleywine. I was stoked. I am actually enjoying the Fire Stone IPA right now, and I am very excited about all of the other three. I sent him the empty DFH 90 Minute Special Edition, Legacy Hoptimus Prime, DFH Santo Palo Marano, DFH ApriHop, Stoudt’s Pale Ale, and Dock Street Illuminator (all from his wants list). Good times.

So tonight I took the plunge and started to keg with my second batch of kegs.

I kegged two beers tonight, the Pacific Gem Pale Ale and the Naked Wheat. The Pacific Gen Pale Ale was brewed with all whole leaf Pacific Gem hops and boy did it smell good! I didn’t even use any dry hops and this thing smelt like hoppy-goodness. The taste wasn’t bad either, but the hop punch was lost in the glass. Also, I kegged the Naked Wheat, this was the “plain” American Wheat Ale that Garrett and I brewed a 20 gallon batch of just over a month ago. The beer tasted very mild, which was fine with me, but was actually very much more clear than I would have expected, go figure. I think the kegging of both went off well, nothing that I can remember that was weird. I will say though that I have to get my technique down better when taking a gravity reading, I am very bad about splashing from keg to hydrometer to keg, if you know what I mean.

So I pulled out the beers I’ve put together for the Hip Hop BIF, and there will be a nice outgoing package.

I’m a little hesitant about posting this just in case someone reads my sight and it “ruins” their surprise, but I guess if I don’t say where it is going it should really only raise the anticipation level. Actually, no one reads this thing anyway, so what the hell. These are the beers I’m sending out, I’ll list them below:

Legacy - Hoptimus Prime - 22oz
Sly Fox - Odyssey (2006) - 22oz
Victory - HopDevil - 12oz
Victory - Hop Wallop - 12oz
Dogfish Head (DFH) - 90 Minute IPA - 12oz
DFH - Burton Baton - 12oz
DFH - Old School Barleywine - 12oz
Weyerbacher - Hops Infusion - 12oz
Weyerbacher - Double Simcoe IPA - 12oz
Weyerbacher - Eleven (2006) - 12oz
Clipper City - Heavy Seas, Loose Cannon, Hop3 Ale - 12oz
Southampton - IPA - 12oz
Troegs - Nugget Nectar - 12oz
Sierra Nevada - Big Foot Barleywine (2008) - 12oz
Sierra Nevada - Big Foot Barleywine (2006) - 12oz
Stoudt’s - Double IPA - 12oz
Lancaster Brewing Company - Hop Hog - 12oz
Harpoon - 100 Barrel Series Encore Barleywine 2006) - 12oz

That’s 18 yummy beers, not all of them difficult to get, but maybe not common for everyone. Basically I have two choices left to ship to but I still won’t say which, California or Michigan. Also, I of course included some hip-hop tunes. I actually sent 8 CDs, I sent both Pain Relievaz discs burnt onto one CD and I also sent the infamous 7 volume set of Puma Sweats. Puma Sweats is one of the greatest rap mixed CDs of all times spun by my buddy Erik. Hopefully whoever receives it likes old school. Click here for a track listing for Puma Sweats.

Ugh, you shouldn’t always trust what you’re told, or you don’t always get what you don’t pay for, or something…

I sort of suppose they delivered as promised, but next time I’d rather trust myself than trust someone else. Homebrewing is not a hobby for the person who is impatient, like I am sometimes. So I got these 4 “rebuilt” kegs from MoreBeer the other day that were supposed to be cleaned inside and out and have the gaskets replaced. So in my opinion these should be ready to be sanitized and filled. Well, for an extra $30 dollars I’m not sure I was given the lack of work and piece of mind I was looking for. The first keg I opened smelt rank and had mildew along the bottom and the second keg’s pressure release valve wouldn’t continuously hold pressure. And I thought I was going to keg tonight. I was planning on cleaning (for good measure) and sanitizing the kegs prior to first use, but after those discoveries I had to do what I had to do. I was going to take apart and clean all the pieces well at that point, and then discovered I needed yet another deep socket, great… I have a 7/8 and a 3/4 which are both too big for this particular keg. Now it looks like I’ll need an 11/16 too. Anyway, I have two “clean” and “sanitized” kegs downstairs (about three hours worth of work anyway, ugh) ready to keg tomorrow. I know I am gambling a little and maybe I’ll have better vision tomorrow, but as of now I’m a little pissy. Plus I definitely want to clean-up the outsides, these 4 kegs are twice as bad as the original 4 I bought, and it makes me feel a little dirty using them. I hate this kind of dumb shit…

Early this week I received some more kegs in the mail from More Beer.

More Beer sells three different kinds of kegs, new, used, and rebuilt. I rolled the bones and went with the rebuilt kegs. Sure they were more expensive than the used kegs, but after you factor in the cost of the new gasket kit (inexpensive) and my headache and time from rebuilding them last time (expensive) it felt totally worth it to me this time to move in this direction. Plus, I’ve been sitting on a $100 gift certificate to More Beer for almost a year now (thank you Fool Circle tasting crew) so really these puppies turned out to be quite cheap.

So now I have 8 kegs, 4 filled with beer and ready to go, 3 lined up for beers in carboys basically ready to go, and 1 still waiting. Am I going to have to order more kegs again soon? Probably not, I’m just going to have to start drinking more beer! Really, I think if I had 12 kegs I would never (or only once in a blue moon) run into a lack of keg space issue.

I received the incoming leg of a new BIF I am in yesterday, the Hip-Hop BIF.

This BIFs theme, for lack of a better term, was hoppy beers and hip-hop music. Each person was to ship at least 144oz of hoppy beer and a hip-hop mix CD. I’m all about hoppy beers and I like some hip-hop (1990 and earlier preferred), so I decided to take a gamble on the music in order to get some hoppy love, and it was totally worth it. This is the 214oz of hoppy goodness wrapped up in 13 beers I received:

Boulevard - Double-Wide IPA - 750ml
Southern Tier - Back Burner Barleywine - 22oz
Bear Republic - Hop Rod Rye - 22oz
Sierra Nevada - Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale - 24oz
Terrapin - Big Hoppy Monster 2007 - 12oz
Bell’s - HopSlam - 12oz
Samuel Adams - Hallertau Imperial Pilsner - 12oz
Troegs - Nugget Nectar - 12oz
Tyranena - Hop Whore IIPA - 12oz
Surly - Furious - 16oz
Surly - Cynicale - 16oz
Surly - Surly Fest - 16oz
Surly - Bitter Brewer - 16oz

And this is what was on the CD, named (by him) “Hip Hop BIF - PitMonkey’s Pretty Lame Hip Hop CD”:

The Gourds - Gin and Juice
The Go! Team - Grip Like a Vice
50 Cent feat Snoop Dogg, Don Magic Juan - P.I.M.P (RMX)
Sultana Erkez - Big City
Busta Rhymes - Turn It Up
Everlast - Get Down
The Go! Team and Chuck D - Flashlight Fight
Wookiefoot - Nothing
Kid Rock - Roving Ganster (rollin)
Beastie Boys - High Plains Drifter
RATM and Cypress Hill - How I Could Just Kill a Man (live)
Wookiefoot - John Henry
Big Tymers - Oh yeah
Sultana erkez - Pek Yaman
Beck - Hotwax
Wookiefoot - Can’t Get a Job

Really, for me, this isn’t all that bad of a hip-hop CD. Sure, I don’t know half the songs, but I do know half the artists and none of them really fall into the hip-hop style I don’t like. So it looks like I have some new music to listen to. I should be sending out my leg Monday or Tuesday and I’ll put up another post of what goes out.

Looks like I skipped a post about Volume II Issue III and all the other magazines I typically read, oh well, I’m sure no one was missing them.

I freakin’ love this cover this issue of BeerAdvocate magazine, headless dolls on top of tap handles with freaky lighting - shweet! This magazine actually came out like a month ago, I just refound it in the back seat of my car, so I’m really just going to hop through it more than anything else. Great 9 Steps to Beerdom article on Carol Stoudt, the “godmother of brewing” who founded Stoudt’s Brewing Company and is one one of their top brewers. Actually, I got to meet her at the Savor event I just went to, totally cool person. There was an interesting perspective in the Advocate This article claiming that there should be a standard for dating for beer freshness. Beer is essentially a food, thus should be properly dated for best freshness, like every other food. I think they concluded that the easiest would be a “packaged on date” which would then inform the consumer of how fresh/old  the product is and an informed consumed can make informed decisions. In the Beer Destinations article they focused on Washington D.C., I wish I would have remembered that before my trip last weekend, oh well. And the Last Call article written by Tony Magee owner of the Lagunitas Brewing Company was,…detached. It was actually a fun read, and way bizarre, but now I can understand even more their Frank Zappa tribute beers and the influences which exist.

(savor) an american craft beer & food experience, may 16-17, 2008, andrew w. mellon auditorium, washington d.c.

So this past weekend (May 16 & 17, 2008) was the first ever Savor beer and food event presented by the Brewers Association. Robert and I attended the Saturday evening event (6:30-10:00PM) held at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington D.C. To say this event was unique is not enough. To say this event was unlike anything I have ever attended is at least the truth. To say that this event was a great time, well, that’s what I’m going to say.

I had heard about this event like six months ago or so and really started to try and find a partner in crime about two months ago. It took until about two weeks before the event for me to convince someone to go, and I bet Robert doesn’t regret it one bit. This event was to my knowledge the largest craft beer and food pairing event of its kind. They paired approximately 48 different foods with 96 different beers. The idea was to show that not only is beer as good as wine for food pairings, but it may be actually better with all of the diversity that has arisen in the past 20 years or so in the craft beer movement. Actually, it was more than that, there was more of a ’shock and awe’ factor involved: dress was business casual, the location was an old auditorium with many steps and columns, much like the Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy album, the decor was dazzling, the representatives were top-notch, owners, head-brewers, Brewer Association top members, the food was way more gourmet than pretzels and waffles, and the beers were only the best in all of America. It was one of those ‘Wow’ moments when you first walked in and it never really got dull.

Throughout the weekend during the event the Brewers Association put together small (100 people) demonstrations and seminars on the different attributes that the craft beer community is making. We were able to attend the He Said Beer, She Said Wine: A Debate on Food Pairings with Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head and Marnie Olds a well established sommelier. It was actually a very fun and well thought out discussion, they offered us three small food selections each paired with a beer and a wine. First was chips and spicy salsa which was paired with Stone Smoked Porter and Riesling Loosen “Dr. L”, the beer won this round by crowd vote. Second was aged farmhouse cheddar cheese which was paired with Rogue Morimoto Soba Ale and Cabernet Sauvignon Concha Y Toro “Marques de Casa Concha”, the wine won this round. And third and finally was Askinosie dark chocolate which was paired with Dogfish Head World Wide Stout and Banfi “Rosa Regale” Brachetto d’Acqui, the beer won this round giving the night to beer. Sam and Marnie have done similar beer and wine pairing/competitions 22 times, and now beer has won 11 and wine 11, interesting. They both really had a lot to say on the subject, and have a great book available too.

Some of my favorite beers, and/or foods from the night that I can remember were: New Holland Brewing Company’s Dragon Milk Oak Aged Ale paired with Maytag Blue Cheese, New Albanian Brewing Company’s Thunderfoot Oak Aged Cherry Imperial Stout, Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey’s Judgment Day Abbey Ale and Veritas 003, Avery Brewing Company’s Fifteen (a farmhouse ale brewed with Brett) paired with Christopher Elbow Venezuelan Spiced Artisan Chocolates, Deschutes Brewer’s Obsidian Stout paired with Blue Cheese and Walnut Shortbread Rounds, Foothills Brewing’s Hoppyum IPA and Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout paired with Crostini of Figs and Prosciutto, Russian River Brewing Company’s Pliny the Elder and Supplication, Stone Brewing Co.’s Ruination IPA paired with Peking Duck Purses, and of course Dogfish Head Craft Brewery’s Palo Santo Marron and two versions of World Wide Stout (’06 &’07). The biggest disappointment was 21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat paired with Strawberry Chicken Salad, the beer was underwhelming and the salad almost made me sick, but really the only disappointment I can remember. To say that it was generally overwhelming in the best way possible isn’t saying enough.

My brother Dave also helped me start a really useful Google Map which helped me pin-point all of the local beer spots we may want to check out while we were in the area and their relationship from our hotel and the event. In addition to Savor we also stopped at RFD (a beer bar) and Capitol City Brewing Company (a brewpub), both were pretty cool and very close to the hotel.