Moving. Kinda.

First, I told myself I'd blog tomorrow. Then I told myself I'd blog when I made a new batch. Then I just got busy with other things.

Such is life. Ultimately, I've made the decision that as much as I love beer, and as fun as it is to blog about beer, it's just not fitting in to my life right now. I enjoy a lot of different things, and blogging about just one of them is...stifling. It didn't help when I realized I didn't particular enjoy writing beer review because drinking is kindof antithetical to thinking. And writing about beer every night meant drinking beer every night and I don't want everyone to think I'm an alcoholic.

So yeah, I don't expect to do too much updating around here anymore. I'm leaving the blog up for now, because it did serve as the high-tech record book for my early batches. Going forward, I'll continue to write about beer; I'll just also be writing about a lot of other things, too.

In the last month, I've developed a blog that fits my personality a little better. So I'm taking all of my beer-related musings, combining them with my interests in girly things like scrapbooking and crocheting, adding what I like to think of as my unique brand of snarkiness and wisdom, and scattering in a few cute pictures of my dog.

If any or all of this interests you, I hope you'll stop by my new little home on the internet. See you there.

www.hobbyhopping.blogspot.com

Blasphemy Easter Stout - Bottling

Brewed - April 4
Secondary Fermentation begins - April 18
Bottled - May 31

So I had that one in Secondary for 6 weeks. Hope that wasn't too long.

OG - 1.046
FG - 1.017

I messed up and took my hydrometer sample after I'd added the priming sugar, so the FG should probably be a little bit lower. As it is now, the abv of this baby is looking to be about 3.25% (is that even worth drinking?)

I'm looking forward to tasting this one. The countdown to June 14 begins.

In the mean time, I'm planning to brew a Wheat beer this week. I love a good wheat beer in the summertime, so I have some motivation to not leave this one sitting in the fermenter for way too long.

Limoncello

The drinking done in this house isn't limited to just beer. One of the great benefits of living in California is the abundance of fresh citrus.

I may have mentioned before that my husband is a bit of a citrus connoisseur. At last count we had 11 varieties of fruit trees in the back yard. I think he's acquired one or tow more since then.

Whenever we get a big harvest of fruit, we make limoncello (or kumquatcello, or Buddhacello, or whatevercitruswehavecello).

Today, we happen to be having a cooking marathon that involves several recipes calling for several lemons. Unfortunately, we didn't time our marathon to coincide with our own fruit ripening, so we had to buy lemons. It always hurts to have to buy something we normally get for free, and when we do we make an extra effort to squeeze every drop of usefulness out of it.

So, before my husband got cooking, I zested our six large lemons for a new batch. I also have two bottles that need to be finished. The buddhacello we have has been conditioning for about 4 months, and the kumquatcello about half that long.

Our recipe is adapted from Alton Brown's.

Phase 1:
About 2 lbs of the citrus of your choice
750 ml bottle of vodka. At least 80 proof, but 100 is better. Some people use Everclear.

Phase 2:
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup water

1. Drink some of the vodka. Some people buy separate jars or larger bottles for their limoncello, but we like to recycle just use the original vodka bottle. Since you're going to eventually need to add a little under a cup of simple syrup to the mix, you need to make sure there's enough room in the bottle for it. The easiest way to do this is to pour yourself a drink to enjoy while you do your zesting.

2. Zest the citrus. I use a Microplane to get a really fine zest. Some people just use a peeler.

3. Add the zest to the vodka bottle. This is easier said then done, especially if you're like us and using the thin-necked bottle for your conditioning. I find it easiest to pour the vodka out of the bottle, then put the zest into a funnel and pour the vodka back over it. The zest will flow easily with the vodka back into the bottle, and voila! You're halfway there.

4. Wait. The zest has to steep for at least 1-2 weeks, though most recipes I've seen suggest much longer. A friend of mine conditions her cellos for 6-9 months. I'm not quite that patient. We just have ours sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Any cool, darkish place will do.

5. Once you've waited long enough, make a simple syrup from the sugar and water. Some people use anywhere from 1-2 cups of sugar. Make it as sweet as you want, just use a 1:1 ratio of sugar to water. Boil the mixture until the sugar dissolves completely, then allow to cool. Pour the syrup into the bottle, shake a little to mix, then store in the freezer for at least a few hours.

6. Enjoy. Cellos keep in the freezer for basically as long as it takes to drink them which won't be long, especially in the summer time. You're going to love this stuff.

Birthday Beer

My birthday was on Saturday. My present was a box full of beer, all of which I'd enjoyed thoroughly by Monday morning. Unfortunately, what this means is I can't provide coherent reviews of any of them. I can tell you that I can't taste the apricots in Aprihop (which I consider a good thing), I still like Hop Stoopid (which I thought I had reviewed but looking back maybe I haven't. I need to get better at naming my posts), and stouts, while delicious, are not intended to be consumed in the quantity in which I consumed them.

Speaking of stouts, I've got one that's been sitting in secondary for a loooooong time. I need to get that baby bottled.

I've been in denial

about how long I've gone since posting. But I'm back now, so never fear.

Tonight I'm reviewing Hoppy Brewing Company's Liquid Sunshine Blonde Ale. Hoppy was my very first follower on Twitter, and for that I'll be ever-grateful. I'll also be grateful for the fact that they make delicious beer. They're based in Sacramento, which is only a couple hours from where I live, and I've been wanting to drive up and check out their pub. Hmm, come to think of it, my birthday is Saturday. Are you reading this, husband?

Back to the matter at hand.

This is a very pretty beer. It pours a deep gold with a slight haze, has a generous 1-finger head, and is nice and effervescent. I love watching all the tiny bubbles float up through the glass, don't you?

The aroma is well-balanced. I'm not knocked over by any single smell. It's a little floral and a little citrusy.

The flavor is definitely citrusy. Funny, because as I poured I thought the haze made it look like a very light wheat beer. The flavor does the same. So I Googled and found out this one is made with barley, rye and wheat. Then I Googled further to find out if all Blonde Ales are made with both barley and wheat, because I realized I don't actually know what a blonde ale is. From what I can tell, it's any ale that looks and/or tastes like a lager but is not a lager. So wheat is not required, though it seems to be at least a fairly common ingredient. Glad we cleared that up. Back to the issue at hand: this beer has some wheaty characteristics, but doesn't taste like a full wheat beer. For what it's worth, it doesn't necessarily taste like a lager either. Though it does have the nice crisp finish that my homebrewing research tells me comes from the lagering process (which can be done on both lagers and ales).

But crispness is more a matter of mouthfeel, which is...crisp. And carbonated. We'll call it light-to-medium bodied.

As for drinkability, I'm classifying this as a good dinner beer. At 5% abv, a glass or three won't leave you feeling too loopy. However, the sweetness and the carbonation I'm guessing wouldn't be too kind to my stomach after more than that. Quality over quantity though, right?

This is embarrassing.

I haven't drinken? dranken? drunken? had a beer a couple weeks. I'm seriously off my game.
I keep think of things to blog about, but none of them are beer related and I'm like, my blog is called The BEER Bitch, not The RANDOM THINGS THAT I THINK ABOUT Bitch.

But whatever. I'm just going to write about the random things that I think about, and one day when I start drinking again we'll get back to beer. K?

And of course now all the wonderfully random things I've thought about in the last two-ish weeks have flown right out of my head, so this post is just getting worse and worse.

I locked myself out of my house this afternoon. You know that awful feeling when you wish you could just go back to two seconds ago before you did something really stupid? If I had the ability to time travel I wouldn't waste it on seeing the future or going back to witness history. I would save my time traveling powers for emergencies when I just need to go back two fucking seconds.

I was trying to walk the dog. To be honest, I've been kindof slacking off on walking her because now that she's growing up she's a lot less hyperactive and not walking her no longer leads to things like her chasing me around the kitchen and eating my shoelaces. But today I was going to change all that. I was going to take her on a long, glorious walk so that she could be a happy and balanced dog just like Cesar Millan wants her to be. Also I didn't want her flipping out when we got to Puppy School tonight.

Unfortunately, back when I was walking her regularly, I did a little too good of a job leash training her. Now she expects treats every 5-10 steps, and if she doesn't get them she stops dead. I guess that means I actually did a horrible job leash training her. Anyway. I made sure I had my phone and my keys when I left the house. We have one of those front doors that locks automatically when you close it, so I always double and triple check that I have my keys before I close the door.

But since Herbert wouldn't walk without treats, we had to go all the way back inside so that I could supply her with a variety of delicious bribes. I grabbed a handful of bacon bits and went back out. And realized just as the door was clicking behind me that the key's I'd been so careful to take with me were on the counter, next to the bacon bits container.

I did still have my phone with me, so I called my husband. He was stuck in meetings for 2 hours. I was so despondent that I didn't even feel like walking anymore. I took Herbert around the block, and then we went and sat in the back yard. I kept thinking of things I could do to kill time, such as:

1. Take the dog to PetsSmart. Oh, except no house keys means no car keys.
2. Walk to Starbucks. Crap, my wallet is inside.
3. Use a credit card to get the door open. No wallet, no credit cards.
4. Look in my car for some sort of credit-card-like, door opening device. Fuuuuuuck no keys. 
5. Sit on the porch and feel sorry for myself. That sounds like fun. I'll do that.

Luckily, the day was saved by my friend Julie, who happens to live around the corner. She noticed my pathetic tweet about being trapped outside, and called to invite me over. Shelter and human conversation! That's better than a normal afternoon safe inside my house.

I guess the moral of this story is all's well that ends well. Also, it's a good idea to live around the corner from a friend who's a teacher and whose students are on a field trip so she gets to come home early the day you lock yourself out. Also maybe when you're getting married, consider whether your husband's job will allow him to come bail you out of stupid situations, at least until you master time travel.

Slow Week

I'm going to have to start a Diet Coke blog, because that's all I've been drinking lately.

I'm going to blame my recent spring cleaning binge for the fact that I haven't been posting. This place has never been cleaner, but it means I've been spending significantly less time on my ass in front of the computer than normal.

I did rack my Irish stout to secondary last Sunday, so that should be ready to bottle in another 2-3 weeks. Now I just need to decide what my next brew will be. I've got a double IPA and a wheat waiting in the wings. I want to use the IPA to experiment with yeast starters, and that makes me nervous. So most likely I'll be brewing up the wheat beer next. Either way, there will be no brewing this weekend, as the husband and I are once again headed to the east coast for a wedding. That will be the last one until June though. Then I need to start focusing on getting a real job, or something.

Until I get out of my posting rut, I give you this. It should keep you busy, and laughing hysterically for at least a few days.

Confession

I drank really bad beer last night.

My husband and I went to see Muse at Oracle Arena with a couple friends last night. You know how at stadiums, all the beer kiosks have different selections, different sized cups, different prices, and (most importantly) different line-lengths? Well the shortest line was for the Budweiser stand, which actually surprised me. They also had the largest cups and lowest price, which didn't surprise me. So we each got a giant cup of Bud. Then another.

Then it was my turn to make the beer run, and I actively sought out the non-Budweiser stand. I ended up with Sierra Nevada, which I generally consider to be a good beer. But oh my God, not last night. After 2 Buds, my palette was thoroughly trained to expect a near flavorless, hop-free, slightly sweet and way too carbonated "beer." That first sip of the Sierra Nevada was a shock. The bitterness was nearly unbearable, and the hop flavor was too much (something I never thought I'd say about a plain old pale ale).

In my defense, the kids in the row in front of us were passing around a big old J, and the similarity in aroma and flavor to the hops made my stomach turn. The deliciously grotesque bratwurst I'd just eaten didn't help any either.

Lesson learned. Trust me kids, mass-marketed American lagers are never worth it, no matter how short the line is.

Home Again

So, while I was away, it looks like some of my rough tasting notes got published. Oops. I deleted them, and will post the actual reviews this week.

It's been a slow beer week. My brother's wedding was awesome, but if it lacked in one area it was beer selection. I spent Saturday night drinking a lot of Jack and Diet. And I mean A LOT. After that, I was ready to take a break from drinking for a few days. Maybe I'll start up again tomorrow.

I did manage to crack open a few bottles of the homebrew. I brought a bottle each of the Pils and the Cream Ale with me to the wedding, mostly because I wanted to show off to my dad.

It got a glowing review from him. I quote, "This tastes like real beer. It lacks the cinnamon and sh1t taste of most homebrews I've had."

My dad doesn't know a lot of people who homebrew, but apparently the ones he does know specialize in flavored beers. I'm going to have to whip up a batch of mint chocolate stout just to mess with him.

But seriously. The Pils, which was expected to be a major disaster, is actually drinkable. It does have a chemically aftertaste that I'm not too pleased with, but on the whole it's alright. The Cream Ale I'd rate as pretty good based on the few sips I've had. Since the bottles got passed around a fair amount, I haven't really had a chance to do a fair assessment of either. So I guess that's coming up this week too.

And I just realized this is one big post of procrastination. Such is my life, I suppose.

Lagunitas Maximus

I picked this one up figuring we needed a slight change from the usual Lagunitas IPA that I buy on a weekly basis. I figured it would be similar, but a little more hoppy and a lot more alcohol-y. I was right on both fronts. 

Appearance - Golden amber; very clear, with a strong 1-finger head that stuck around for a few minutes.

Aroma - Surprisingly mild. It was Hoppy, but with a good balance of sweet malts.There's the citrus quality that you expect with a good IPA.

Taste - Definitely citrusy, with a sweet aftertaste from the malt. Hops aren't overpowering, but they're definitely there.

Mouthfeel - Smoothness similar to carmels melting in your mouth (a little oily). Carbonated enough that there's a little tingle on the back and sides of the tongue.

Drinkability - In all fairness, this review directly followed the Runitation, so anything would taste mild in comparison. I do think this could is sessionable, and I'll definitely be adding it to the regular rotation. I swear Lagunitas isn't paying me, but at this point I want a job there.

Sorry for the quick post tonight. I'm packing up to leave for my little brother's wedding. We have quite the fun-filled weekend ahead of us. However, my brother and his soon-to-be wife aren't big beer drinkers (unless you count Bud Light), so there likely won't be much opportunity for reviewing or posting. I'll be back on Monday.

Stone Ruination IPA

This is one of the three I bought last week while I waited for the smog check to get done on my car. I drank it Sunday night while I was boiling my homebrew Stout. I chose it because the bottle said it was unbelievably hoppy (100+ IBUs!!!), and man, they were right. I'm not entirely convinced that's a good thing, though.

My thoughts:

Appearance - It's orange/amber, and quite cloudy. The head is less than a finger, and it dissapates quickly.

Aroma - It smells like hop pellets right out of the package, and I should know because I had a fresh package of hops to compare it to. There's some citrus buried in there, but it's not evident at first.

Flavor - How do I say this without incriminating myself? This sh*t tastes like marijuana. My excuses for knowing this are A) I was an RA in college and busted my fair share of potheads and B) living in California where it's practically legal anyway, I've befriended my fair share of people with medicinal marijuana licenses. But seriously, the hops are just overpowering. And I love hops, so if I'm telling you it's too much, it's too much. I couldn't pick any other flavors out. Hey, I'm new at this. And they brag right on the bottle that this beer will destroy your palette.

Mouthfeel - It burns. I will say there's more carbonation that I expected.

Drinkability - This is not a session beer. I find myself craving meat and potatoes while I drink it, and I think it would be delicious with a nice heavy meal. I split a 22 oz bottle with my husband, and that's enough for me.




So I realize this all sounds kind of negative. This isn't a bad beer, and I'm sure people who really, really love hops will enjoy it. My husband thought it was great. It's just the kind of beer that there's a time and a place for. I'd definitely drink it again, though I doubt it will ever be the first bottle I reach for on a lazy Sunday evening.

I Need A Drink

Today was the worst.

First I went to the DMV. (You know DMV stories are always good.) It was my second trip there since I've moved. The first one ended in me finding out that the California DMV website doesn't contain a shred of accurate or useful information. But this time I was all ready. I'd changed to my married name with Social Security. I'd gotten my Smog Test. I had my old driver's license. And my marriage certificate. I had my title, registration, and about 18 thousand other necessary forms. 

When I arrived, I parked 3 blocks away because God forbid the DMV actually have a parking lot that fit the capacity of their waiting room at any given time. I then attempted to remove my Maryland license plates, only to discover the screws were completely rusted to the plates. No joke, I broke a screwdriver trying to pry those suckers off. So I decided to deal with that later and went to wait in my first line of the day. When I got to the point where they were handing out numbers, I discovered that I needed a passport or birth certificate in order to apply for a new license. Thank you, DMV website, for omitting that important bit of information. Luckily, the dude at the counter told me that the wait was so long I'd have time to drive home (30 minutes each way) and get my passport.

And that's exactly what I did. I figured I could at least grab another screwdriver while I was at it. My passport was easy enough to find. I still had it out from the multiple trips I've made to the Social Security office in the last 2 weeks. The screwdriver proved more elusive. Apparently we don't own a single screwdriver capable of more than changing the tiny screws in a pair of eyeglasses. So I'm running around the house looking for something--anything--that will get my license plates off my car, and the whole time Herbert's chasing me around like it's playtime. I ended up with a bottle opener. Yeah.

So I got back to the DMV, this time parking four blocks away. After a lot of cussing I finally managed to get my license plates free (did I mention it was raining this whole time?), and I went back inside. They were nowhere close to calling my number, so I guess the bright side here is I didn't spend that hour stuck in an uncomfortable chair between two smelly old men. My number got called and I proudly presented all of my information to the one-eyed clerk. She made me sign a few things and then told me to go to Window 4 for my new plates and then to Window 17 to get my picture taken and then to Window 26 for my test.

Test? Ya'll, I haven't taken a written driver's test since I was 15 and 3/4. I would use this space to rant about how stupid and pointless written driver's tests are, but I passed, so I'm going to let it slide. I do take issue with one of the questions I got wrong, though. Apparently it's "never, under any conditions" appropriate to drive with only your fog lights on. WHAT ABOUT BROAD DAYLIGHT?

So I turn in the test, and the lady tells me I passed, then she prints out a sheet of paper and says "This is your Interim Driver's License. Your card will be mailed in 2-3 weeks. Really, California? You can't print ID cards on demand? What is this, 1956? So now I'm supposed to fold this paper into 16ths and keep it in my wallet at all times.

Fine, whatever. The bottom line is that now, after 7 months, I finally have California tags and I finally share my husband's last name. This is cause for celebration, yes? Except that I had to go to get lab work done (nothing serious, just a blood draw). Have I ever mentioned that I'm terrified of needles? What in the world made me think to do these two things in one day?

The TV in the waiting room of the lab was showing Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. It's like the Universe was telling me that it really felt like I needed to pass out. I didn't, but I did cry. And I have a big bruise on my arm where they took the blood. That happens when you're too tense.

Now I'm home. My puppy is restless because she didn't get a walk today and my husband won't share his iPad. I have notes from at least 3 different beers that I need to type into coherent reviews and post, but I just don't feel like it. I think I'm going to bed.

Blasphemy Easter Stout

That's what I'm calling my latest homebrew. I'm using the Dry Irish Stout kit from Northern Brewer, and I must say, I'm really looking forward to tasting this one.

A few things of note:
- While my previous two brews smelled strongly of cereal early in the process, the Irish Stout had an extremely mild aroma. The specialty grains had a nice dark roasted coffee smell to them, but once they went into the boil it all but disappeared. The malt syrup had the overpoweringly sweet aroma that I've come to expect from brew day.

- Like the cream ale, this recipe only involved 1 hop addition. I suppose this is not particularly surprising, since Irish Stouts aren't generally known for their hoppy aroma.

- I had a slight boilover before I added the malt. My husband and I got sucked into Life on the the Discovery Channel, and I may have lost track of time.

- It took a long time to bring the wort back to a boil after the malt was added. I tried to wait for the hot break before I added the hops, but I got a little impatient.

- I was much more patient with the cold break and the pitching of the yeast. Once the 60 minute boil was done, it took about 15 minutes to get the wort down to 95 degrees. It's now hovering around 80, and I'm giving it another 30 minutes or so before I pitch the yeast.

- Speaking of yeast, this will be my first brew with zero yeast malfunctions (I hope). I popped the inner pouch on my WYeast smack pack at about 4:30, and it's now gorgeously inflated. I suppose there's still time for error. We'll see how long it takes to get fermentation going.

- OG is 1.046, which is only marginally higher than the 1.042 that Northern Brewer tells me to expect.

WTF

You knew this was coming if you read my post yesterday. Lagunita's limited release Wilco Tango Foxtrot is one that you're going to want to get your hands on.

We'll ignore the mildly annoying name. I won't talk about the fact that it should have been called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Or that Wilco, while the name of an awesome band, stands for "Will Comply" in military voice procedure, not for the letter W. No, I won't talk about that. Because the truth is, the name made me chuckle, and was probably 60% responsible for my decision to purchase the beer. The other 40% of the decision was made easy by the fact that I greatly enjoy Lagunitas's products and have a lot of confidence in the quality of their beers.

Anyway. Here are my thoughts:

Appearance - A nice, clear brown with orange highlights. The head is thick and ivory, and sticks around for a little long while.

Aroma - The hops will knock you over. I'm expecting a flavor very similar to their IPA based on the scent. The weakness of my sense of smell paired with the strength of the hops leaves any other aromas undetectable for me.

Flavor - Surprisingly, not as much like the IPA as I expected. It doesn't have nearly the same bite or aftertaste. It's bitter at the front, but finishes with some malt and chocolate.

Mouth feel - Despite the fact that the head is still going strong, it doesn't taste overly-carbonated. In fact, it's very smooth--almost oily--on the tongue.

Drinkability - I shared the 22 oz bottle with my husband. Now I'm eyeing his glass and wondering if he'd notice if I took it (he would). I could easily polish the full big bottle on my own, but probably wouldn't be interested in more than that in one sitting.

Explain this to me.

Today, I went to get a smog check so I can (finally) register my car in California. Allow me to rant about that for a minute. In Maryland, the emissions inspection involves you driving your car up, having the inspector look at your dash board, and pressing on the gas and brake at the same time. The longest part of the process is waiting your turn. Here, I had to take the car to a service station. I got there at 3:45. They told me it would take 45 minutes, and to come back at 5. Hello? That's an hour and a half. They also charged me 80 bucks. Needless to say, California and I were not on very good terms by the time I got out of there.

Anyway, the only place I could go to kill time was the grocery store, but I didn't actually have any groceries to buy. So of course I hit the beer aisle. Their selection wasn't stellar (it rarely is), but I ended up with 1 bottle each of Rogue Dead Guy Ale, Lagunitas Wilco Tango Foxtrot Jobless Recovery Ale, and Stone Ruination IPA. At 4:45 I took my selections to the register, deciding I'd given the car people more than enough time to finish my inspection. That's when it got weird.

The checkout guy checked my ID and asked if I was having a nice day. I said "Yes, how about you?" He said "It's almost over. Wish I was going home with 3 beers." Okay, fine. Then he asked "Are you in the military?"

I'm not. My brother is, but that has nothing to do with anything. I said no and smiled. But I wish, oh how I wish, that I'd asked him why he asked.

Because why DID he ask? The only information he had to go on was my appearance, the fact that I'm from Maryland (he saw my ID, remember), and my beer selection. I was wearing jeans, black wedge sandals, and a floral top. I had on makeup; I carried a purple purse and pulled my credit card out of a hot pink wallet. I don't think any of that screams military. I don't think Maryland has a significantly higher percentage of soldiers than anywhere else in the country. So what was it about my beer that made him thing I was military?

Am I missing something? Was it just because one of my beers was named using the phonetic alphabet? Someone please help me out here.

My Answers

Thanks everyone for the answers to the survey! And by all means, if you haven't had a chance to respond yet, please do.

As promised, here are my answers.

1. What's in your fridge right now? (I mean beer. You don't have to list the full contents of your fridge. And no cheating. This is a scientific survey, not a contest for biggest beer snob).

I have one Red Hook Long Hammer IPA, one Mendocino Spring Seasonal Bock, and one Kona Brewing Co Pipeline Porter.  Clearly it's time for a beer run. I also have the aforementioned Mike's Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice, but those don't count because I have no intention of drinking them. Finally, I have 2 cases each of homebrewed Pilsner and Cream Ale. Those aren't in the fridge, though.

2. If money was no object, would your answer to #1 be different?
I don't think so. In my recent effort to always try something new, I've paid a lot less attention to price than I normally would.

3. For regular, weeknight, sitting-in-front-of-the-TV drinking, what's your go-to?
My husband and I usually keep Lagunitas IPA and Guinness around. I'll typically have one of those, or whatever we happen to have the most of. I'm also a fan of light, crisp lagers, especially in warmer weather. So I may start keeping Pilsner Urquells or Warsteiners around.

4. If you're going out to eat, what kind of beer do you order?
I gravitate toward imperial stouts or strong IPAs. If those aren't available I'll take whatever craft beer is on draft. If that's not available, I go with wine or liquor.

5. If you're having a big party, and are stocking large quantities of bottled beer, what do you buy?
We'll generally get a case of Sierra Nevada, a few six packs of various craft beers, and 6-8 big bottles of Duvel and Chimay.

6. If you're having a keg party, what do you buy?
Yuengling.

7. If you're having a small dinner party (say under 8 people), what kind of beer do you serve?
Same as 5, but we skip the Sierra Nevada and probably grab only 3-5 big bottles.

8. If you're at someone else's party, and their tastes run more toward Busch and Natty Light, what will you drink willingly, and what will you not touch no matter how much fun everyone else is having?
My dad and father-in-law are both Busch drinkers, though my dad's tastes have turned more toward Corona in recent years. I'll drink Corona only when there's lime available, and I'll have a Busch every now and then just for fun. I won't touch Coors Light, but I'll drink Bud or Miller in emergencies.

9. Does cost factor in your beer purchasing decisions? If so, what would you buy if it wasn't?
Brickskeller in DC has a beer on their menu that costs $148. I want it. In general though we buy what we like and not what's cheapest.

What do you drink?

There's a lot of talk (read: snobbery) among beer people about what makes a good beer and what is and isn't worth drinking.

I'm sitting on the couch tonight with a Heineken, thinking that this is a beer I would probably never buy for myself (it's a leftover from a get together we had over the weekend). I have to admit, though, it's decently refreshing. As mass-marketed lagers go, you could do far worse. And I'd choose Heineken over Sam Adams any day, because I just don't like Sam Adams.

The thing is, I have better beers sitting in the fridge. I also have Smirnoff Ice and Mike's Lemonade that have been there since Thanksgiving and will not get touched until the person who brought them over visits again. If pressed, I would definitely call myself a beer snob. (I've already gone on record saying lambics are girly.) But good beer is expensive. Some people just can't spend 10 bucks on a 6 pack twice a week. And some can, but don't want to.

And you know what? When I opened the fridge today, the Heineken just sounded good. So there.


All of this leads me to my questions:

1. What's in your fridge right now? (I mean beer. You don't have to list the full contents of your fridge. And no cheating. This is a scientific survey, not a contest for biggest beer snob).

2. If money was no object, would your answer to #1 be different?

3. For regular, weeknight, sitting-in-front-of-the-TV drinking, what's your go-to?

4. If you're going out to eat, what kind of beer do you order?

5. If you're having a big party, and are stocking large quantities of bottled beer, what do you buy?

6. If you're having a keg party, what do you buy?

7. If you're having a small dinner party (say under 8 people), what kind of beer do you serve?

8. If you're at someone else's party, and their tastes run more toward Busch and Natty Light, what will you drink willingly, and what will you not touch no matter how much fun everyone else is having?

9. Does cost factor in your beer purchasing decisions? If so, what would you buy if it wasn't?

Leave your answers in comments. I'll post mine later, so as not to influence responses.

...and continues

I succeeded in getting both batches bottled this weekend.

The Cream Ale had a final gravity of 1.012, making the ABV 4.9%
The Czech Pilsner had a final gravity 1.014, but since I never got an accurate OG, I have no idea what that makes the ABV. Live and learn.

I managed to get 2 full cases of each beer; specifically, 12 22oz bottles and 24 16 oz bottles of each.

Now begins the two-week countdown. I'm pretty sure I'm more excited than my soon-to-be sister-in-law is about her wedding, which happens to fall on tasting day. (Just kidding. I don't think it's physically possible to me more excited than my sister-in-law.)

The whole situation went surprisingly smoothly. I cleaned my bottles with oxyclean, then santized them in the dishwasher. The rest of the equipment was cleaned with OneStep and sanitized with Iodophor. The only equipment needed were the bottles and caps (of course), bottling bucket, auto siphon, and bottle filler.

I hit a small snag when I realized that the bottle filler I have didn't fit on the spigot of my bottling bucket. Luckily, I had a 4-foot length of extra siphon tubing that fit on both the spigot and the filler. I think for my next bottling day, I'll cut the tubing to a few inches so the filler sits right below the bucket, though it wasn't that much of a hardship to have the extra length.

With the bottling bucket positioned right above my dish washer, I was able to fill the bottles very quickly. The first batch (Cream Ale), was done with the help of my friend Julie while my husband and her fiance watched UFC. I bottled the Pilsner today with the help of my husband. Since I had (some minimal) experience, it went slightly faster this evening than it did yesterday, and I spilled considerably less beer on the floor.

Now I need to get some kind of labeling system together so I don't confuse the two brews.

The bottling adventure begins

I started the day with the lofty goal of getting at least one of my two first batches of beer into bottles. My puppy and my husband had other plans.

I got as far as washing every beer bottle in my house, and sticking almost half of them in the dishwasher to sanitize. Then Herbert decided to go insane. She dragged. her. crate. all over the kitchen. Every time I put it back she'd wrap her fangs around a corner and drag. Even peanut butter--normally puppy crack--was ineffective.

Once I thought I finally had her settled down, my husband called and asked if I wanted to meet him for dinner. I never say no to food I don't have to cook. We went to an awesome Korean restaurant; the kind of place where they fill your table with kimchi and other fermented appetizers to the point that you're stuffed by the time your entree arrives.

We had OB beer with dinner, mostly because it was our only choice. It's a pretty nondescript lager, decent for washing down spicy food. The only noteworthy thing about it was that they served me a 22 oz bottle with a tiny little 8 ouch glass. It was delightful, like drinking apple juice at grandma's house.

When we got home, Herbert had somehow managed to move her crate while she was locked inside. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the evening watching her expend energy. She's finally asleep, but it's way too late for me to start bottling. The dishwasher has not been opened, so my bottles will still be sterile in the morning.

Kona Brewing Company Pipeline Porter

We're not going to talk about Syracuse. We're not.

Instead, we're going to talk about the only thing that could soften a blow like that: beer.

I sat down to enjoy(?) the game with a Pipeline Porter. My local grocery store has a very limited selection of craft beers, and this one was by far the most interesting. It's brewed with 100% Kona Coffee, which in my opinion is some of the best coffee around. Here's what I thought:

Appearance - Very dark, nearly opaque brown, with hints of scarlet when held to the light. There's almost no head on this, which I generally consider a disappointment with dark beers.

Scent - The coffee aroma is unmistakable, and wonderful. Other than that, there's a hint of sweet maltyness and little else.

Taste - Again, lots of coffee. The flavor really hits at the back of the throat. Still, the malts come through enough that I don't feel like I'm drinking a flavored beer.

Mouthfeel - Full bodied. It's smooth, almost creamy with very little carbonation.

Drinkablility - I'll be 3 deep by the time this post publishes. It's good for relaxing in front of the TV after dinner. Not necessarily something you want to drink with a meal or in a hard-partying environment.

And We're Back

I had a fun, though not exactly relaxing weekend away. Planes, road trips, and sleeping in a different place every night can take a toll. It was also not a very good beer-drinking weekend. With the exception of one trip to 1311 in Pittsburgh, which has a very decent selection of craft beers and imports, it was a strictly mixed-drink kind of trip.

On top of that, I came home to find my husband had exhausted the limited selection we had at home. Looks like it will be a wine night for me.

The good news is that my first two brews are just about ready for bottling. The Pils has been conditioning at 35 degrees for just about a month, and the cream ale looks like it's done just about all the fermenting it can do. I have quite the bottling adventure coming up.

Serendipitously, today's post over at Mike's Brew Review is all about cleaning bottles. This is a great blog for beginning brewers. He's just gotten into brewing himself, so everything is written from the perspective of someone who's still experimenting with their process. On top of that, Mike is a web designer by day, so the site is beautiful. I love his illustrations.

I'm not gonna lie, bottling is a process that has intimidated me since I first cracked open my copy of How to Brew.  But according to Mike, it's not going to be as hard as I think. Thank God for that.

Vacation

St. Patrick's Day is a serious holiday for us beer-lovers right? So it's in that spirit that I'm taking the weekend off. Actually, I'm taking the weekend off for a trip to PA to go to a bachelorette party for my wonderful sister-in-law-to-be. I'm not sure what the internet situation is going to be out there, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the beverages of choice are going to be more of the frilly pink umbrella variety (not that there's anything wrong with that). If anything noteworthy happens in the beer-iverse, I'll try to get a post in before next Tuesday. Otherwise, never fear! I shall return.

The upside of this absence is that my sister, who will be at the party, has some actual web design skills. I'm going to see if I can guilt her into making this place look like a real website. 

Of course, this whole situation leaves me wondering about what I'll do for future vacations. After all, in a few short weeks I'll be taking off again for the actual wedding. And that will only be the first of three that my husband and I have on our radar (so far).

So, I'd like to open up the blog to guest posts. What kind of guest posts, you ask? Good ones. You can submit anything really. A beer review, a homebrew recipe, a funny story about beer, whatever you want. As long as it's original and isn't full of grammar, punctuation and spelling errors, I'll probably publish it. I'll also promote you relentlessly to my 6 blog readers and 14 twitter followers. Hey, we're growing!).

If you're interested in guest posting send an email to thebeerb1tch at gmail dot com. Otherwise, see you Tuesday!

Another Awesome Blog

Do you like food? Are you constantly on the search for fun recipes, great restaurants, and all-around interesting information about eating? My friend, Heather, runs the blog Devouring DC, which is--wait for it--a food blog based in our nation's capital. She writes about her own cooking adventures as well as area restaurants. If you happen to be living in or visiting DC, you need to check out her restaurant reviews. But even if you're not from the DC area, you'll find plenty of awesome stuff to read about over there. For example: Why do my teeth feel funny when I eat spinach?, and How can I get more bacon in my alcohol?

Heather is a fantastic cook, so when she posts a recipe, you have to try it. Believe me, I've eaten enough of her food to know you can't go wrong. And if you ask nicely, she may just start posting pictures of her adorable doggies (happy birthday, Lelu!).

Life is Too Short to Drink Cheap Beer

So on my latest trip to the liquor store, I picked up a six-pack of Warsteiner Premium Verum purely for nostalgic reasons. See, back when I was just a wee beer b1tch of 22, I worked a brief stint as a waitress in a German restaurant. The food wasn't particularly good, but the owners made it a point to stock a large variety of Bavarian beers. In this particular little suburb of Washington DC, we probably boasted the best beer list in a good 10 mile radius. And of course, the clientele, who were mainly a Bud Light kind of crowd, had a lot of questions about all the different choices.

Although the overall work experience at this restaurant was one of the worst of my life, I will credit them with being the first to inspire in me a real interest in beer. It was there that I learned the difference between ales and lagers, and I could even explain the difference in flavors between a Pilsner, a Dunkel, a Marzen and a Weizen (we always had one of each on tap, though the specific brands rotated).

I still have the pin that I wore on my apron, given to me by the distributor from Warsteiner: Life is too short to drink cheap beer. I thought it was an awesome slogan. Still do. So that's what I was thinking when I picked up that six-pack on Saturday. Warsteiner definitely lives up to it's claim of not being cheap (over 9 dollars for 6 beers), though I don't believe it's the beer I'd choose for my last meal.

So, without further ado, here is my review of Warsteiner Premium Verum:

Appearance: Clear and golden. Nice two-finger head of pure white, and it stuck around for a little while.

Smell: The first thing I thought was "this is what beer smells like," by which I mean, "this is what mass-marketed American light beers smell like." It had a bready smell that I assume came from yeast, and some hoppiness to it. Otherwise it's pretty generic. To keep with the nostalgia theme, it will bring you back to frat parties and family reunions.

Taste: A little sweet, almost no bitterness. There's a floral flavor that sets it apart from other pilsners.

Mouthfeel: Very carbonated, which I like. Light and crisp, but with very little bite and almost no aftertaste.

Drinkability: Very. It's got a very low alcohol content, and the general flavor of the kind of beer you drink by the case. If you're trying to wean yourself off the aforementioned mass market American lagers, this is a good place to start. If you can't stand the mass market American lagers, you'll probably want to stay far away from this. I'll put it this way. You probably don't want to serve this at your next cocktail party, but if you've got the cash you can easily replace your Bud Light with this at your next beer-pong tournament. Your players still won't puke and you can feel all nice and beer-snobby.

Brew Weekend!

Note: My camera and computer are on the fritz, so while I planned for this to be a pretty post with pictures, it's going to have to wait. Hoping to update later in the week.

So my kits from Northern Brewer arrived on Friday, and I was champing at the bit to get started. I ordered an American Wheat Beer, Cream Ale and Irish Stout. I also have a Double IPA kit waiting in the wings.

Initially, I wanted to start with the Irish Stout. It has great reviews over on the Northern Brewer website, and, as I've already documented, it's one of my favorite types of beer. However, that particular brew takes about 6 weeks to be drinkable, while the Ale and Wheat would be ready in 4. I'm traveling east to see the family in 4 weeks for my little brother's wedding, and I kinda wanted to bring a bottle or two to show off, so the stout was out of the running. (The IPA is a 3-month-er, so that one's not even in the running at the moment.)

Lo and behold, I found my decision made for me when I opened the brew kits. 2 of my yeast smack packs were nice and flat, and one was already inflated. It looked like the Cream Ale yeast had gotten knocked around a little in transit, so I had a limited amount of time until the yeast was no longer viable (or so I thought...)

So, Saturday morning I set out to brew a nice Cream Ale. The day started with a trip to Beer and Winemakers for a new airlock (mine had an unfortunate mishap with the garbage disposal) and some more Iodophor. I cannot say enough good things about this shop. If you're a brewer in the SF Bay Area, you've got to give these guys your business. I mentioned my yeast woes to them, and they told me if I had any problems to give them a call and they'd open up (they're closed Sundays and Mondays) to get me a vial of yeast if what I had didn't work out.

So, confident that this brew would be more successful than my last (which is still conditioning in secondary, btw), I headed home and got started.

I learned 2 important lessons with my first brew:
1. Make sure you have plenty of boiled and chilled water.
2. You can never have too much ice.

So my first step was to boil 4 gallons of water. That sat on the counter with a lid covered in plastic wrap (can we say obsessive about sanitation?) until it was cool enough to pour into the carboy.

My next step was cleaning and sanitizing all my equipment. Once the carboy was ready to go, I poured 2.5 gallons of the boiled water into it. The water was still hotter than it needed to be, but not hot enough melt the carboy. The extra water went in the fridge, and the carboy got sealed and stuck in the chest freezer until it was time to add the wort.

Next, I set 2.5 more gallons of water to boil. While the water was heating, I crushed the pound of specialty grains included in my kit, put them into a mesh bag, and steeped them for about 20 minutes. By the time I pulled the grains out, the water was at 170 degrees, and had turned a dark carmel color. By this point, the whole house smelled of cereal.

Once the water came to a full boil, I removed it from the heat, stirred in the 6 lbs of LME, then returned it to boil. The hot break took about 20 minutes, though the foam never completely disappeared. It was only covering about 2 square inches of the wort when I added the hops.

This kit only contained 1 hop addition, so I set the timer for 60 minutes and walked away. I know I'm supposed to watch the pot for boilovers, but I gambled that if nothing happened during the hop addition then I'd probably be fine--and I won. I'm not saying you should leave a pot of boiling wort unattended, but I like to live dangerously.

About 5 minutes before the end of the hour, I started to prepare my ice bath. We have a gloriously large sink, which I filled with cold water and about half of a 20lb bag of ice. As soon as the timer went off, I grabbed the pot and dunked it in. I added the rest of the ice as the original melted off and stirred the wort vigorously. I had the temperature under 100 degrees in less than 10 minutes, and down to 78 in another 15. This was a major improvement over my first attempt. The secret is in the stirring. You have to be careful not to splash any of the unsanitized ice or water into the pot, but as long as you keep the water level a good 2 inches from the lip of the kettle you should be fine.

I poured the wort into the kettle slowly, trying to keep as much sediment as possible out. The one downfall of stirring during the cold break is the patience it takes to wait for everything to settle before you pour. I confess that I wasn't too patient, and my ale is looking pretty cloudy.

After adding all the wort, I was still about a half gallon short. I used the reserve water that I'd stored in the fridge to top off the carboy. I took a sample for the hydrometer, and got a reading of 1.050, which appears to be reasonable for this brew. Finally, I shook the carboy up real nice and got ready to pitch the yeast.

Then, disaster struck. I swear, I have the worst luck with yeast. You'll remember, at the top of this post I mentioned that my yeast pack for this particular brew was already inflated when it arrived. I snipped off the corner, dumped the yeast in the carboy, and then felt the unmistakably intact nutrient pack still inside the pouch. I don't know how the pack inflated without the nutrients being released, but at this point I figured it was curtains for my poor cream ale.

Determined not to panic, I cut open the nutrient pack, poured that into the carboy, and gave the whole thing a good shake. The instructions on the pack said that it was possible to pitch the yeast immediately after popping the nutrient pack, though this method isn't recommended by most brewers I've talked to. I crossed my fingers and hoped that adding the yeast and nutrients separately would somehow magically work.

By the time I went to bed, about 3 hours later, there was no activity in the carboy. I sighed and figured I'd be putting in a call to Beer and Winemakers this morning. But when I woke up, there was a beautiful 2-inch krausen on my beer and it was bubbling away. Now, about 24 hours since pitching the yeast, fermentation is still going strong.

This is very exciting for me.

Welcome!

My guest review on Lost In the Beer Aisle seems to have brought me a couple-few new readers. As you can see, the blog is still very much in its infancy, but I have lots of big improvements planned (such as getting rid of the canned blogger template).

I hope you stick around and enjoy yourselves. If there's anything you'd like to see from this site (topics to cover, beers to review, more puppy pictures, etc.), let me know in comments and I'll be happy to oblige! In the mean time, bear with me as I figure out how to brew, how to review, and how to blog.

Made with Beer

I've recently become aware of the fact that some crazy people make soap with beer. Um, ew. Who wants to step out of the shower smelling like Sunday morning at the frat house? This is completely outside my realm of understanding. Why would you ruin perfectly good soap with perfectly good beer? Huh?

I'm all for using beer in cooking and even in mixed drinks. I am not for using beer in anything that can't be consumed. But this whole soap thing got me thinking. What other products out there are manufactured by misguided souls who don't realize that beer is for drinking?

Lucky for everyone, the Google tells me that there aren't many. Here's what I did find:

Perfume
At first, this sounds worse than beer-scented soap, but according to this article, the beer isn't being used to create the perfume's aroma. Instead, a company has found a way to use the waste products of beer making (barley, bacteria, etc) in place of petroleum in the perfume oil. So it's green perfume. Huh. Pretty cool, I guess.

Clothing
Crazy Shirt sells t-shirts dyed in beer. But scientists in Australia have taken that idea one step further. By converting the bacteria in fermenting wine to a film of "scum," they've developed a fabric that could potentially be used to make clothing. The only roadblock is that the fabric falls apart when the scum is dry...so, bathing suits maybe? I know that this one is technically made of wine, but the article does state that the same effect can be had with fermenting beer.

So that's all great, but I think I'm going to stick to drinking my beer. And I think you should too.

Pyramid Thunderhead IPA

While grocery shopping today I picked up a couple six-packs of beers I've never tried. Since the selection at Safeway isn't nearly as good as the one at BevMo, I didn't have much to go with.

My first pick was Pyramid Thunderhead IPA, because I like IPAs. They've got a brewery in Berkeley (along with Seattle and Portland), so I'm in keeping with my recent local beer theme.

To be honest, I don't have a whole lot to say about this beer. It's mild, and drinkable in that it doesn't have any of the strong flavors that might turn you off. But overall I find it fairly lackluster, and I've definitely had better IPAs.

My detailed thoughts:

Appearance - It poured a pretty light amber, with just a slight haze. A small but steady stream of bubbles rose to a 1-finger head, but that narrowed to a very thin cap within 2 minutes.

Smell - Very light. I asked my husband for help on this one given my well-documented problems with this category. He detected a little fruityness, and something herbal. All I smelled was beer.

Flavor - It's like a toned down IPA. There's very little bite and no complexity. There's flavor there, it's just very muted.

Mouth Feel - There's enough carbonation to leave a tingle on your tongue. I won't call it light-bodied, but it's definitely lighter than expected.

Drinkability - As stated before, this is drinkable the way Bud Light is drinkable. There just isn't enough flavor there to slow you down.

Guest Review!

UPDATE: link added below!

So, unsurprisingly, there's a pretty strong community of beer lovers hanging out on Twitter. Since I started this blog, I've found and started to follow several prominent beer bloggers and tweeters.

One of my favorites is Lost in the Beer Aisle (www.lostinthebeeraisle.com, @Lost_in_beer).* Here you can find great reviews of all kinds of beer, all from the perspective of a casual enjoyer. Lost is funny and knowledgeable, but not at all snobby.

So, when I saw a tweet asking for guest reviewers, I jumped at the opportunity to both hone my skills and start really connecting with all the beer lovers out there. I submitted a review of Lagunitas IPA (preview: I love it), that you can see here. This guy deserves lots of credit, and all my readers (both of you!) should check him out.


*I have many other favorites as well, all of whom I will showcase and link to in the coming weeks.

Nothing Better

...than a good beer and a romance novel: two of my (many) weaknesses.

The beer in question is Anchor Porter. Can you tell I was on a local beer kick on my last trip to Bev Mo? The San Francisco brewing company has a pretty good selection, and between the Steam, Liberty Ale, and Porter I had a very nice weekend.

You've seen my thoughts on Anchor Steam and Liberty Ale. I didn't include a review of the Porter before because it's such a completely different beer. It's also my favorite of the three.

I drink it straight from the bottle, because it's less to clean up. Much easier to toss a bottle in the recycling than to hand wash another glass, right? I can tell you this is a very dark, nearly opaque black color, with hints of red when held to the light. (I poured one of them, okay?) The smell is nice and strong, (which is good for my weak little scent receptors), and includes molasses, hints of coffee and something fruity. The flavor is as close to perfection as you can get in a dark beer. It's not too weak, and not overly bitter. You can taste the fruitiness--maybe raisins or some other kind of sun-withered deliciousness--along with the coffee. The internets tell me it's thin-bodied, whatever that means. I find it smooth, with a similar creaminess to a Guinness, but more flavor. Bottom line, this is a beer I could drink anytime, anywhere and be perfectly happy. 

This evening, I happen to be pairing it with Daring to Dream, by Nora Roberts. For the uninitiated, Nora Roberts is a Goddess among romance novelists. Her stories have more heart than any other romances I've read. And I've read a lot. A whole lot. Daring to Dream is the first in the Dream Trilogy. I have read the series no fewer than 5 times, and it continues to be a go-to when I'm in the mood for a little escapism or between trips to the library. The story is about Margo Sullivan, the disgraced former-supermodel who returns home to rebuild her life, only to find that love and family are far more important than the material possessions she's been chasing after for a decade.

Margo grew up the daughter of a housekeeper on the Templeton Estate, home to the proprietors of a global hotel empire. Her best friends were Laura, the Templeton heiress, and Kate Powell, the Templetons' orphaned niece. Laura's older brother, Josh, always seemed to be getting the girls into or out of trouble. When he first came to Margo's rescue after scandal struck, she looked at it as an annoyance. By now, you know where this is going.

To save herself from financial ruin, Margo opens a boutique in which she sells all her old designer clothes and trinkets. Her friends go into business with her, and so solidify the foundation of love and support they'd been building since childhood. Love between Margo and Josh blossoms, but not without it's complications, of course.


So we've established a fairly typical romance novel plot. What makes the story great is, as I said earlier, the heart. I think the mid-90s represent the best of Robert's books. The Enchanted Series, the MacGregors, The Stanislaskis, I could go on. The key to these stories is the importance that Roberts gives to each character. In so many romances, supporting characters are boring and one-dimensional. For Roberts, it's not just the love interests who matter. The stories are about families, however traditional or non-traditional they may be. These are books where the sex scenes, however steamy and plentiful they may be, are not front and center. The real memorable moments are the quick banter between old friends, the periods of insanity that lead to major turning points, and the way romance smolders between the main characters for nearly half the book before anything, ahem, significant happens.


Bottom line, the entire Dream Trilogy is highly enjoyable. My favorite is the third, where Laura Templeton's story is told. But it's absolutely no hardship to read the first two before I get there.



Huh. Beer and Books is fun. I might make this a new thing.

Double Fisting

I'm trying to train my palette to understand beer better. I'm not the best of tasters (or maybe I'm just an honest beer taster), because when I'm drinking anything less similar than a Bud Light and a Guinness, I can't really tell the difference.

So tonight, I decided to try two similar beers side-by-side, so the differences would be more discernible. What I learned from the experience is that this only works for the first few sips. Because once you're about half-way through, the alcohol starts to take a toll on your senses. Please note that I finished both beers before writing this entry, and they may not have been the first drinks of the evening. So take what comes with a grain of salt...

The two beers I tried were Anchor Brewing Company's Anchor Steam and Anchor Liberty Ale. I purposely chose beers from the same brewery, that were close to the same style, thinking that would give me fewer variables in the flavor. This may have been a mistake: as I said, before I was half-way through, they really did start to taste the same.

The easiest way to tell the difference between these beers was appearance. I poured each from the bottle into a tall pilsner glass. Anchor Steam is a nice medium-amber color. The head was thick and frothy, but only lasted about 2 minutes, and was wildly inconsistent in bubble size. The Liberty Ale was a lighter gold color, and slightly cloudy. The head lasted slightly longer than the Anchor Steam, and the bubbles were much more consistent.

As far as aroma, I'm not going to get into all that crap about fruity notes and whatnot. Mostly because what I smelled was beer. The Anchor Steam had a stronger, breadier scent, and the Liberty Ale was more hoppy, but otherwise fairly bland smelling*.

The Anchor steam had a stronger taste than Liberty Ale. I don't mean stronger alcohol-wise. I mean the Anchor Steam was more bitter, and the aftertaste lasted longer than the Liberty Ale. Liberty was lighter, but crisp and still very flavorful. It didn't have as long or as strong an aftertaste as the Anchor Steam either. 

I will admit that I just don't "get" mouthfeel. It all falls under flavor for me. I can't tell you which beer is light bodied and which is medium bodied. I can tell you the Anchor Steam seemed slightly more carbonated, and the flavor seemed to fill my mouth more than the Liberty Ale. Is that what I'm supposed to be looking for?

Finally, as far as drinkability, I think they were both very good beers. The stronger, more bitter flavor of the Anchor Steam might make it less enjoyable for the uninitiated. But while I think Liberty Ale is a better "beginner" beer, I by no means find it bland. Obviously, I was able to drink both of these in tandem, so they've got to be pretty drinkable.** Bottom line, I've tasted better beers, but I wouldn't kick either of these out of bed.

*Full disclosure: I have a really bad sense of smell. Really bad. For this reason, I'm usually the one in our house that gets stuck with the task of cleaning up after the dog.

**Let's be honest, I don't let alcohol go to waste. Even if these were unpalatable I'd have finished them. But I would have complained about it, and I'm not; so you can rest assured that they're okay. 

Guinness Ice Cream Review

So, I had a chance to taste my ice cream, and I have to say the recipe needs some work. Flavor-wise, there is much too much molasses. Half of the called-for amount would probably still be more than enough. As it is, you wouldn't know the ice cream was supposed to be Guinness Flavored unless you were told.

I knew from the outset that I probably hadn't reduced the Guinness enough, and I was very right. The ice cream had a very icy texture, thanks mostly to the extra water in the beer. Next time around I think I'll use two bottles, and reduce them much further (just like the original recipe suggests). I'm hoping this will also help to intensify the beer flavor. Most of the alcohol will be cooked out during the reduction process, but it's the roasted barley flavor that I really want to preserve. That's what I get for cutting corners.

Also, while this particular recipe didn't call for heating the entire mixture, I think I may do that as well next time. Many ice cream recipes include this step, and I think it helps with the consistency. The ingredients separated slightly in the freezer, resulting in a bottom layer that was much more icy and beer-y than the top layer.

So, batch two will be attempted just as soon as I can procure myself a few spare bottles of the Good Stuff. I'll keep you posted.

Guinness Ice Cream

I confess, Guinness is one of my favorite beers. I know, there are plenty of other great stouts out there, but Guinness is my go-to favorite. I prefer the milder flavor of Irish stouts over more bitter imperials. Also I met my husband over a Guinness. And, Guinness brings back hilarious and fun memories of two crazy trips to Ireland. So I love Guinness, and I'm not apologizing for it.

But what do you do when you have one lonely bottle of it left in the fridge? It's not enough to drink (I go through Guinness like water...delicious, life-giving water), but you obviously can't throw it out.

That's the dilemma I faced this afternoon. Some would say, "go buy more Guinness," but I just stocked the fridge with a bunch of new stuff, and I'm just not in the mood for another trip to BevMo today. So, I hit the internet and found myself a recipe for Guinness Ice Cream. OhmyGodIcan'twait.

I adapted the recipe from here.

Ingredients:
1 bottle Guinness Draught
1 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup sugar
3 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons molasses

Directions:
Simmer Guinness until slightly reduced*. Whisk together egg yolks and sugar, add milk. Slowly add warm Guinness a few tablespoons at a time, while rapidly whisking the milk, egg and sugar mixture. Once about half of the Guinness is incorporated, you can stir the rest in a little faster. Add molasses and heavy cream.

Chill in fridge, then process according to the instructions on your ice cream maker. Once set, pour into an airtight container and chill in freezer for several hours.


Right now, mine is waiting in the fridge. The full mixture is over four cups, and my ice cream maker is only 1.5 quart capacity, so I might have to split it into 2 batches.

*Note that the original recipe called for one and a half cans of Guinness, reduced to 1 and a half cups. Since I only had one bottle on hand, I just reduced it less. We'll see if this has any implications on the flavor or the freezing process.  

Not My Fault

Yesterday we had a mini-power outage at the house. I say mini, because only about 2 rooms were hit. Unfortunately, one of those rooms holds all of our internet wiring, so blogging was not an option. I managed to fix it this morning, and we're back in business.

Note: This was NOT a simple matter of a tripped circuit breaker. I know I'm a girl, but I'm not too stupid to flip a switch. It's disconcerting how many people on facebook seem to think I'm completely helpless.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. While absent of the distractions of The Internet, I used my spare time to read How to Brew by John Palmer. I'm working on a full review of this book, which I'll post when I've actually finished reading it.

I will say that so far I've found it to be a fantastic resource. The chapter on lagering, which I perhaps should have read before I started my pilsner, tells me that my brew may not be quite as far-gone as I'd originally thought. This is heartening, and I'm back to looking forward to tasting it.

That said, I've decided that this is the week to try something new, and I'm going simpler (and faster) this time. I'm thinking of trying an Irish Stout, as it's one of my favorite types of beers, and I've seen recipes that can be brewed in 4-6 weeks. At that rate, it would be ready at about the same time as my Pilsner. That could be fun.

Curses

I seem to have cursed myself with yesterday's braggy post about how great I've been at blogging regularly. Today was busy enough that I didn't get a chance to do anything beer-related. The good news is that the house is clean, my husband made a fantastic beer-can chicken dinner (I guess we did do something beer related), I caught up on some reading, and spent some QT with the puppy (who's looking a lot more like a regular dog now).

The Pilsner is safely conditioning at 35 degrees, and I'm planning a trip to the brew store this week to grab the ingredients for my next brew. What should I make?

9 Days, B1tches!

I've surpassed a full week of blogging by 2 whole days. This is by far the longest I have ever maintained a blog.

I can't really effectively write about beer tonight, given that I've spent the greater part of the evening effectively consuming beer. I do have 2 things I want to note however:

1. GO 'CUSE. Fantastic win against Nova tonight. We. Are. Number. One.
2. Follow me on Twitter. That's right, now that we've surpassed the 1 week milestone, I figure I need to start actually letting people know this blog exists. So check me out at www.twitter.com/thebeerb1tch.

Now I'm off to finish my beer.

Oh Boy! Oh Boy!

You will remember that I've been having trouble keeping my Czech Pilsner at the proper temperature for lagering. Well, that's all about to change because my freezer thermostat arrived today! It will henceforth be called the beermostat.

I haven't hooked it up yet, because I'm afraid of the garage. Or rather, I'm afraid of the mice that my husband says may or may not be living in the garage. But as soon as he gets home tonight, we're going for it.

So how does this thing work, you ask? Well, it's basically a box with a power outlet and a temperature gauge. There's a thermometer coming out of one end, and a power cord out of the other. So you anchor the thermometer to the inside of the freezer, plug the freezer into the box, and plug the box into the wall. When you set the temperature gauge to the desired temperature (Between 20 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit), it monitors the temperature of the freezer and cuts the power when it goes more than 4 degrees below your set temperature. Then, when the temperature is a few degrees higher than your desired temperature it turns the power back on again. Since air temperature changes faster than liquid temperature, the beer should hold relatively steady within it's optimum fermenting or conditioning range.

I'll be setting it to about 37 degrees, so that it hovers right between the 35-40 that I want. Mind you, this particular beer has been sitting in temperatures between 30 and 70 degrees for the past week (damn you San Jose and your crazy temperature fluctuations!), so I'm guessing the damage has already been done and that cold conditioning at this point isn't going to make a huge difference in the flavor of the beer. But I want to make sure I at least attempt to follow all the steps of the process. And I'll have something to compare to my next batch, which I plan to do right.

Stuff

Anyone who knows me will tell you, I've never met a project I couldn't start. Finishing? Well that's another story.*

In general, my favorite part of starting new projects is getting all the required "stuff" that goes with them. I'm the girl who joined a gym so I could get new sneakers and cute sweatpants. My collection of scrapbooking supplies is almost infinitely disproportionate to the number of scrapbooks I've made. 

So let me tell you, beer making is an excellent hobby to take up if you enjoy collecting stuff. Even just the basics are enough to make you want to devote an entire room of your house to the craft. (They take up a lot of space, too...so an extra room isn't actually a bad idea).

"What kind of stuff do I need?" You ask? Read on.

A large pot - Most people have this already. Any spaghetti pot or stock pot will do. Mine is 3 gallons, which is probably the minimum volume you want to work with. You can get them much larger, of course, but remember that the more you're boiling at once, the more time it's going to take to get the boil going and to cool the wort. For my beginner brews, 3 gallons is really all the capacity I need. My husband is not wild about me putting his All Clad through the ice bath step of the process, as rapidly cooling a hot pot can cause it to warp. So for long term use it probably makes sense to get a pot you can use exclusively for beer. I covet these awesome pots with thermometers and spouts, but can't really justify that purchase until I'm at least few more brews in.

Measuring cup and measuring spoons - you just always need to have this kind of thing around.

A large spoon - for stirring the wort during the boil.

Glass or plastic carboys - These are the big bottles that go in watercoolers. Mine are plastic (I have a 6 gallon for primary fermentation and a 5 gallon for secondary). Glass are generally considered better because they're impermeable to oxygen, but they're heavier and (obviously) more breakable. I went with the Better Bottle carboys from Northern Brewer, which are made with PET plastic, which is also very impermeable to oxygen--so basically these are the best of both worlds. 

Carboy Bungs - Just a plastic stopper that forms an air-tight seal on the top of the carboy. They have holes in them to hold the

Airlock - A funny little do-dad that allows air to exit the fermentation bucket without letting any air in. I have the one-piece bubbler version that you fill with sanitized water or vodka.

Thermometer - When you're doing the cold break and pitching the yeast, you want to have an accurate read on the temperature of your wort.

Funnel - How else are you going to get the wort from the pot to the carboy?

Hydrometer - This is a device that measures the potential alcohol content of your wort. I'll write more about it once I understand it better. I've read that beginning brewers can skip this, which given my challenges with getting readings is probably a good idea.

Equipment cleaner - I use OneStep no rinse cleaner. Regular dish detergents are apparently no good because the added scents can cause off-flavors, and some of them contain chemicals that are bad for head retention (snicker).

Bottle brushes - I have a straight one for bottles and an angled one for the carboys.

Sanitizing solution - I use Iodophor. A tablespoon in 5 gallons of water is all you need to soak all of your equipment.

An Auto-Siphon - I've said it before. This thing is fun. Siphoning is apparently not an enjoyable process without it. I wouldn't know, because I've never tried it. All I can say, is that this is a pump that quickly and quietly moves the beer from one carboy to the next. There's very little agitation or aeration (which is good), and it's incredibly easy to use. 

A chest freezer - Yeah, this sounds ridiculous and expensive. And it kindof is. It didn't stop me from buying one, though. If you're lagering (or cold-conditioning) your beer, you want to keep it between 35 and 40 degrees. If you're like me and you live in an area where it's 65 degrees in the dead of winter and earthquakes prevent anyone from having basements, then the two most common storage options are not options for you.

A freezer thermostat - Of course, the purpose of a chest freezer is to keep things frozen, and 35-40 degrees is not frozen. So, this little device expands the range of temperature settings your freezer is capable of. I could set it at 80 degrees if I wanted (not sure why I would, though).

A food-grade plastic bottling bucket - Once secondary fermentation is done, you move the beer once more to the bottling bucket. These things look like 5-gallon paint buckets with a spigot on the side. 

Bottles - Duh. Most people recycle empties. Just make sure they're pry-off bottles and not twist-offs. Also remember that 5 gallons is roughly 2 cases, so you need to drink a lot of beer to collect enough bottles.

Bottle caps - Duh x2.

A Bottle capper - looks like fun, I can't wait to try it.

A whole bunch of other tubes and such - since I've never bottled before I'm not 100% sure how I'll be using everything. I'll update once I get to that part of the process.








* At this point, you're thinking "Well then, I probably shouldn't get too attached to this blog, should I?" But beer is different. I always finish my beer.

Czech Pilsner - Part 2

Primary Fermentation:
By the next evening, nothing had happened, and still nothing by mid-afternoon on day 3. I figured the yeast had probably been killed by the too-hot wort. Unfortunately, I couldn't get back to Beer and Winemakers because I was on my way out of town for the weekend. I asked Husband to keep an eye on the beer while I was on my trip, and luckily fermentation started on day 3. But it was done by the time I got home.

Everything I'd read until that point had said that fermentation lasted about 2 weeks. I clearly hadn't read much, because I've since read that 3-5 days isn't uncommon. Anyway, I let the beer sit for 2 weeks in the garage, hoping something else would happen. Then I moved it inside for a few days before moving it to the secondary fermentation tank.

Secondary Fermentation (2.15.10):
And this is where I made my second big mistake. Secondary fermentation for lagers should be done at between 35-40 degrees. My extensive internet research (read: one google search) told me that many people accomplish this with a chest freezer. So Husband and I bought a chest freezer. We'd been intending to get one anyway, and found we a good deal. But it took a few days longer to get delivered than we'd expected, so the Diacetyl Rest lasted close to a week.

The day the freezer arrived, I transferred my beer from the primary fermentation tank to the secondary. This, again, required a whole lot of sanitizing of random equipment, but was overall a smooth process. One thing I will tell you: the auto siphons is FUN.

I tested the gravity of the beer with my hydrometer, and got a 1.000 reading, which I think means there is zero alcohol. Again, I must be doing something wrong (well, I know I'm doing something wrong). I've read a lot about hydrometers and gravity, but so far most of it has gone over my head. I'm going to have to research this more closely before I start my next batch.

I set the freezer on low to prevent the beer from freezing. But it wasn't low enough. By the next day my beer was sludgy and there were ice crystals in the top of the carboy. So now my beer is sitting in the garage next to the freezer while I wait for my freezer thermostat to arrive from Amazon. I'm pretty sure there is no chance that my beer will have the crisp, cold-conditioned flavor of a good lager, and there's also a pretty good chance it will be 0% alcohol.

I'm going to keep going, because at least I'm figuring out what things I need to learn more about, and what I definitely need to change before I start another batch. I will condition this at about 37 degrees for a full month once the thermostat comes, but I'm pretty sure the damage is already done. At this point all we can do is wait and see.

Czech Pilsner - Part 1

In addition to all the fun beer making equipment that Husband got me for Christmas, he gave me two extract kits from NorthernBrewer.com. I decided to start with the Czech Pilsner.

The extract kits from NorthernBrewer are great. They include everything you need, and the instructions are clear and easy to follow. My only worry was that I hadn't refrigerated the yeast in time. I let the kits sit under our Christmas tree for a couple weeks before I actually opened them up, and when I did I realized the instructions called for the yeast to be refrigerated as soon as the kit was delivered. Not knowing how long the kits had been sitting at Husband's office before Christmas, I figured it safe to assume the yeast was bad. And of course, by the time I opened the kit, I was ready to start the brew. No way did I want to have to wait for NorthernBrewer to send replacement yeast (though according to the included instructions, they would).

So I headed to my local homebrew store. I love this place, by the way. I'll do a full post on them in the near future. This is where I learned that apparently Pilsners are not a typical beer for a beginning homebrewers. Lagers typically take longer than ales, and require refrigeration for 1-2 months before bottling. Oops. My other kit was a Double IPA, which the guys at Beer and Winemakers said was basically an equal difficulty.

But, they encouraged me to dive in and try it, saying that would make my next batch go that much easier. So off I went, with 3 vials of fresh yeast.

Brew Day (1.25.09):
The hardest part of homebrewing is cleaning all the equipment. Even the tiniest amount of wild yeast or bacteria can ruin a batch, so absolutely everything that touches the beer needs to be cleaned and sanitized. To make matters worse, our kitchen sink decided to start having water pressure trouble, and our waterflow was at about a half-trickle. Try filling a 5 gallon bucket with that.

While I was sanitizing, I had 2.5 gallons of water boiling on the stove. When that cooled to a non-plastic melting temperature, I poured it into the fermentation tank and set another 2.5 gallons to boil.

After that, I followed the kit instructions pretty much to the letter. If you have any experience with homebrewing, you know what I did. If you're more new to this than I am, I'll do a more step-by-step post for my second brew, that way it's more accurate.

Everything went well during the boil. There were no boilovers, and I made sure to time the hop and extract additions perfectly. Then came the cold break. I knew I had to cool the wort from boiling to about 58 degrees, but I grossly underestimated the amount of ice it would take to do this. I set up an ice bath in the sink, but all my ice melted within about 10 minutes, and the wort was still over 100 degrees. After an hour and 23 minutes of cycling cold water through the sink, the wort was finally down to 62, and I was ready to give up. I added it to the fermentation tank, and found that thanks to steam I was still about a half gallon away from 5 gallons. Planning: I did it wrong.

At this point, a normal person would have poured in a half gallon of water from the sink. But I was so nervous about contamination, that I really felt the need to boil the water before I added it. Of course, I had no way to cool it, so I had to wait another 20ish minutes before it was cool enough to pour in the carboy.

I tested the Original Gravity of the beer with a hydrometer, but I got a reading of 1.100. This didn't seem right at all. I know that the hydrometer is supposed to read at 60 degrees, and I was slightly higher than that, so there's probably a conversion that I'm missing somewhere. 

Finally, I was ready to pitch the yeast. The wort was hovering between 62 and 64 degrees, which I knew was slightly too warm, but I hoped that a few degrees wouldn't make a huge difference. I'd bought 3 vials of White Labs Czech Budejovice Lager Yeast WLP802, so I pitched them all. Having all that yeast prevented me from having to make a starter, which was good, because I'm still not sure how to start one. Finally, at about 2 am I sealed up the carboy, added the airlock, and stored it in the garage.

Totally off-topic

I know, I know. This is a blog about beer, and I should be writing about beer. But if I stayed on topic all the time, I'd be depriving you of pictures of my Absolutely Adorable Puppy. And we can't have that, can we?

This is Herbert. She was born on November 5, 2009.

 

Yes, I know that Herbert is a boy's name. And yes, I assure you that Herbert is a girl dog. But listen, there are people out there naming their children Kynidee and Kachina. Shouldn't we be more worried about that?

Anyway. Herbert is a blue pit bull. 

 

As you can see, she is a ferocious beast. 

Her Momma, Tilly,

  

was unceremoniously abandoned in my friend's backyard. Once they realized Tilly was in the family way, my husband and I jumped on the opportunity to adopt one of her puppies. 

We had 11 to choose from.

  

Are you dying of cute yet?

We picked Herbert up on December 26. She was just under 8 weeks, and already turning into a GIANT.

 

She was awfully snuggly though.

We've had her at home for 2 months now, where she continues to grow like a weed. She likes it here, except for when we put in her jail.

So we let her sit in the living room with us, but she's not very ladylike.

As I said, ferocious beast. 

(Apologies for the low quality pics. Most were taken with an iphone. Once I figure out how to use the real camera I'll get some bigger shots. She'll probably weigh 60 pounds by then though, so I figured the cute was worth it.)

Everything I Don't Know

Since starting this blog, I've been on a never-ending search for post topics. I ended up spending most of my afternoon perusing beeradvocate.com, absolutely shocked by the amount of stuff I don't know about beer. But hey, that's why we're here, right?

Probably the most interesting aspect of today's research was on how to write tasting notes and how to review a beer. I've always wanted to get into beer tasting, so I'm excited to start practicing (read: drinking more). You'll know I'm at a loss for things to write about when I start posting beer reviews every afternoon.

Other subjects that caught my interest were:
Glassware - Did you know that in Belgium, almost every beer has its own glass?
Food Pairings - Was the hefeweizen I enjoyed with my ribs tonight the right choice, or should I have gone with an imperial stout?
Drinking Local - There are some great microwbreweries and brewpubs in our area, and I must try them all.
Yeast - Yes, I find this oddly fascinating.
Headaches and hangovers - This goes way beyond dehydration and drunkenness.
All-Grain Brewing - I'm a long way off from this (a year at least), but I can't wait to try it.

What other beer-related topics do you find interesting? Is there anything you'd like to see covered in the blog? Leave questions and suggestions in comments. 

Girls (Should) Like Beer, Too.

Why is it that so many women say they don't like beer? And why do basically all men assume that women don't like beer? Somewhere along the line, beer got stuck in the same category as wrestling and car racing: consumed by meat-head guys; marketed by hot chicks in bikinis. I'll take a good beer over wine any day. Liquor is reserved for airplanes and places where the beer selection completely sucks. Brightly-colored cocktails have their place...at bridal showers and sorority parties.

It's my feeling that if you need your alcohol to taste like candy you're too young to be drinking alcohol. I don't care if you're over 21. So with that, I say it's time for women to start drinking beer. It won't be an easy process. Beer is an acquired taste. It took me a good 5 years to really appreciate beer. The first time I tasted a Guinness I thought it was undrinkable. Now, it's almost too light for me.

If you're new to beer drinking, and really don't think you like the taste, I suggest starting with one of the candy flavored ones (ha!). I find that fruit lambics, especially Kriek and Framboise (cherry and raspberry, respectively) are highly enjoyed by even the most adamant of beer-hating girly-girls. If you want a little more beer flavor, a good hefeweizen is the place to start. These beers are already rather sweet, and adding a slice of orange or lemon will cut the bitterness.* And if you really want to impress the dudes you're hanging out with, Delirium Tremens is still one of my favorite beers. It's a Belgian Pale Ale with lots of character, but the hints of fruit and bubblegum aftertaste make it palatable for most beginning beer drinkers.

So go! Try something new, then tell me what you think. If you have any suggestions for good "starter beers," leave them in the comments.


* Of course, you're not actually supposed to put citrus in hefeweizens, but that's a post for another day.