Brewing

Weekend Tastings

01 October 2008 By BrianFending 2

I met up with a couple of college buddies this weekend in Rochester for what we called a Beer Tasting. What it was in reality was three guys splitting eight beers evenly while eating greasy food and playing Star Wars Battlefront II. For six hours. In any event, it was the kind of fun I don't often have and the beer selections (I only brought numbers 1 and 7) were predominantly Dogfish Head seasonals and limited releases with some really surprising variety - and, on average, high ABV. In recollecting over the last day or so by email, slots 5 and 6 were a little blurry for us but here's the rundown of a really, really fun lineup.

  1. Southern Tier Unearthly Imperial IPA
    My second-favorite IPA ever - lots of hoppy body and soapiness
  2. Lagunitas IPA
    A really nice change-up; certainly not an Imperial, but not too light on the tongue, either.
  3. Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA
    The standard. Wow.
  4. Dogfish Head Midas Touch Golden Elixir
    They bill it as the, "oldest-known fermented beverage in the world!," featuring ingredients found in King Midas' tomb: barley, white Muscat grapes, honey, and saffron. It. Is. Amazing.
  5. Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre
    A bit heavier, very malty to my pallet after the Elixir.
  6. Dogfish Head Immort Ale
    This May seasonal has peat-smoked barley and is brewed with juniper berries and vanilla. It is a flavor explosion.
  7. Southern Tier Crème Brûlée Imperial Milk Stout
    Wow. I've had another since. Wow. Need to try it with vanilla ice cream. SOON.
  8. Dogfish Head Raison D'Extra
    ABV: 18%+. We MAYBE should have had this before the dessert beer, but t seemed fitting that the rarest should be last on the tongue. This is a limited release and MAN can you taste the raisins. Good pick!

I cannot WAIT to do this again. The carpal tunnel symptoms will have subsided by then, I hope. :)

Wireless NAS, Baby Eye Glue, Hefeweizen, and related tales

20 July 2008 By BrianFending 1

This was one action-packed weekend, with excitement ranging from geeky to terrified-parent and back to geekdom all before 12:30pm.

Wireless NAS

I picked up a network attached storage (NAS) device this week, and implemented it Friday night into Saturday morning. The revolutionary part (for me, anyway), is that it's only physically attached to my wireless router... by an ethernet cable. What this means is that I have an energy-efficient device (using "green" 500GB drives in each drive enclosure bay) for storing all of our music, movies, and pictures, along with automated backups of our laptops.

Baby Eye Glue

Around the time that my iTunes library was finishing its migration, I was cleaning up in the kitchen and getting ready to take Norah (age: 19 months) for a little toddler walk around the block. The phone rang, so I answered while Norah tooled around and watched some of the construction across the street from the couch at the front window. The coffee table next to the couch was, apparently, too close. She slipped on a pillow, I'm pretty sure, and toppled face first. In short, the proclamation of "TRACTOR!" followed by "<BIFF>" was then followed by a trip to the ER at Childrens' Hospital in Buffalo.

Did you know that not only prize fighters use glue these days? As opposed to stitches on her left eyelid (yes: eyelid... 1/2in across and 1/8in spread), a medical-grade adhesive was used. The details of its application much to Norah's terror and fast emotional recovery will be family lore for ages.

Sitting in the last treatment room in the hallway right next to the ambulance arrival door, we felt lucky to have gotten off so easily. A couple of hours after arriving, we strolled out of there making promises of ice cream, and quickly (though not as quickly as we'd gone in the other direction - Rachel is now a Double-0-certified emergency driver) went home for nap time.

Hefeweizen

As nap time expired without a lot of sleeping, Yvonne & Gene arrived for the brewing of a Hefeweizen, currently fermenting in a large, sealed food-grade bucket at my house. It was one long process. The longest brew time I've ever done, and everybody pitched in A LOT to make it happen. I'll do a dedicated post on the subject soon with all of the steps taken and problems encountered, but probably only after we've done the bottling and are waiting a few long weeks for the results. Needless to say, it's nice to brew with another hack who is into doing variations on a theme to produce a truly unique product. (Thanks, Gene!)