Two Parter

Right, so I'm bad about updating. But I swear, it's all about how busy life is!

For example, a perfectly boring wednesday evening turned into a several hour long baseball games followed by celebratory beers with friends. Specifically, I was lured into buying a cheap seat for the last of the O's games against the A's - which turned out to be a good call.

We walked into the stadium and right up the seats in lower right field, and sat down to enjoy the game. Note that our lack of nervousness and sketchiness can probably be credited for the ushers not harassing us. Also, for whatever reason the lower level ushers are waaaaaay less anal about leaving people alone than upper level seat nazi ushers. How odd.

Anyway, it turned out to be a good game - Mark Reynolds acted like a real baseball player, Zach Britton pitched 6 solid innings, and the O's swept the A's for a 3 game series. Also, the opponents had such players as Dr. Jesus (dejesus but whatever) and Coco Crisp. Seriously. How the fuck is he named Coco Crisp?

Anyway, in the wake of our excellent victory, me, Metal Chef and Metal Chef's brother decided we needed excellent beers. Lucky for us, Alewife is just a few short blocks from Camden Yards, and welcomes us from the heat with AC and good beers. Imagine my thrill at seeing Heavy Seas limited release Plank 1 on tap! As my reader will know, I love wood aged beers, and here is one specifically made to showcase the flavor of wood aging (Poplar in this case).

The smell is dark and roasty, and the first sip reminds me of an amber or a nut brown. However, you're soon whisked away by the rich flavor of poplar, complemented by sweet malts and hints of caramel. Really an excellent beer, this needs to be sipped by itself to appreciate it, but I definitely recommend it as an interesting and challenging beer.

And then of course, we come to part II. A nice relaxing weekend is such a silly idea - so of course it ends up jam packed. Friday starts at 6:30am where I'm awoken and whisked off to the girlfriend's farm, for a day's labor in the hundred plus degree heat. Watering, weeding, shooting bbs at birds, and picking rhubarb are a good digest of the day, aside from hanging lines for some netting we were putting up. Sadly, it had been inelegantly cut and served mostly to piss us all off for several long hours. And oh they were long. Despite drinking multiple bottles of water, I felt like I was in the desert.

Anyway, my torture eventually ceases, and I make my way home for beers with the family. Nothing terribly interesting there, other than: avoid anderson valley's cream ale unless you really want super sweet butterscotch beer. Anyway, this evening transitioned into saturday morning, for which was planned a day of paintball! I love paintball. It's the best. But that didn't sound like enough effort, so of course CAPS LOCK and I went for a four mile run. Woooo!

The actual paintball was pretty fun - it started slow with some less than excellent courses, but got better throughout the day. I prefer more open-ended courses, while they did a lot of linear stuff, but it was still challenging and fun. Sadly, as weekend warriors we were ill-equipped to deal with the automatic weapon toting paintball pros we were up against, but fun was still had, and welts gained, by all.

The beer that capped this little adventure (as well as way too much driving and a lot of Popeyes food) was Great Divide's Colette - a farmhouse ale or saison. I'm a pretty big fan of saisons, and this was an interesting take. Light and refreshing, it refrained from a lot of the spice that most versions go fairly heavy one. Instead, the flavors had an enjoyable clarity, allowing me to pick out some nice lemon zest, as well as some yeasty notes, resulting in a lightly tart and extremely tasty beer. This goes on the list of excellent summer beers that don't skimp on flavor.

Anyway, hope your days are exciting and your beers delicious - til next time!

Back in the swing of things

Oh man. I'm always so excited to come back home and try the bevvy of new beers. I've been settled in for a few weeks, but it still feels all new as I just finished moving into a new house.

And with new houses comes new beer. This time we've got two delicious Dogfish head beers, and one from a new brewery, Great Divide.

Great Divide is a Colorado brewery that I've heard a lot about, but never had the pleasure of getting to try. Specifically, I've heard about their Yeti stout - and what was awaiting me at my favorite local boozery? A big ol' bomber of Espresso Oak Aged Yeti.

It pours a viscous black - damn close to molasses. The smell is all coffee. Hooo boy, and then some - the coffee flavor comes from them adding local espresso to the beer itself. The flavor has all my favorite notes - oak, chocolate, roasted malts, espresso beans, mmmmm. It tasted a little like a chocolate covered espresso bean actually, which was delicious. It was a little heavy for summer, but this is a beer I'd go after in any weather.

Namaste, from Dogfish head, is basically the opposite. A take on the Belgian Wit beer, it is extremely light and refreshing, and is a very tasty summer beer. Rather than a bland wit though, it is full of orange and lemongrass flavors. As is typical with wit beers, there is also some wheat flavor. There is also a light citrus hop, but nothing to make the beer anything more than a clean, clear, refreshing beer.

Third, and not last by any means, is dogfish head's festina peche. Now, this is classified as Berliner Weissbier. I'm not wholly certain what that is, but I'm not complaining. The beer pours a nice golden orange, with little to no head but plenty of carbonation. It's easy to confuse this beer for cider or sparkling wine on first taste, but after a few sips you can taste the malty undertones. The flavor is all sour peach, which is delicious in my opinion. Folks seem split on this beer, but it is an absolutely perfect summer beer in my opinion - light, bubbly, and full of fruit flavors without being overly sweet.

I should also note that I got to visit the Dogfish head brewpub in Rehoboth, which was pretty cool. The food was very tasty, and everything was woodgrilled, which was tasty. I also got to sample a few of their beers that I hadn't had in a while. The best of the bunch might actually have been the 60 minute IPA, which is weird because I despise IPAs. However, it was pleasantly cirtusy and very drinkable. All of the beers tasted were good though, so it was sort of the tallest NBA player sort of thing.

Anyway, more beer to come no doubt. Cheers!