2 Foot Tex IPA – 2011 reboot

Hello punters, its finalls season almost for AFL (one day in September that will actually be in October) and for VicBrew.

Last year I got first place in the VicBrew IPA category with my 2 Foot Tex IPA recipe, a recipe heavily based on the CYBI Union Jack clone. I loved this beer, so hoppy so not crystally, so drinkable. Getting a medal was pretty nice too. Although freshness is the key to this beer (it tanked in the nationals) I did manage to find an old bottle only a month or two ago that was wonderful. The hops had dropped and more of the yeast and malt flavor had come through. I’ve said it before, but I love the flavor of aged American hops with UK yeasts.

I’ve only really entered beers in competitions like VicBrew and the Westgate Brewers Stout Extravaganza for the past couple of years, previously thinking them to be a bit like cake shows, and they are to an extent. BUT you get really good feedback (OK from some of the judges). Each beer judged receives 3 written score sheets with fully independent reviews of the beer. It’s easy for your mates to say “mate that beer is fucking awesome” as they neck their 7th for the evening but an independent unbiased perspective is, well I think welcomed by anyone who is proud of their craft. Not all the judges are awesome, but then neither are all the beers. Some people enter some really shit beers, I’m not a fan of entering something that you wouldn’t drink yourself or serve your mates.

So closing date for VicBrew 2011 is September 10. As today is August 16 that is really close, which means I need to brew this beer this weekend so I can have some hoppy entries. I have not been brewing anywhere near enough this year. It kinda sucks bit I do have some beers in the can for entering. Stout, Porter, and Tripple along with a beer or two pimped out with oak, coco nibs and there may be a bit of bourbon thrown into a beer, just for good measure. There is a old english pale ale (from Dazzapalooza) perhaps a really dark saison I have but no idea what category I’ll enter that in. Really like the beer though. Still I need some hoppy beers, and thats what I’ll brew this weekend. So on to 2 Foot Tex rebooted, or 3 Foot Tex or what ever the hell I’m calling it. Oh and I need to bottle that fucking barley wine, will be young, very young but will see how we go.

Las years beer had an OG of 1065 (bit lower than the target of 1070) for a 23litre batch with a calculated IBU of 82. This year I have a hop back, still in the box untried but it will be part of this beer. Its time to tweak things up for 2 Foot Tex Rebooted to have a crack a reclaiming the prize (or at least getting myself some good beer) 

But maybe its time for a new name? 3 Foot Tex perhaps? I’m not really sure how tall he is (Stu any help here? ). basically I’m bumping the hops up a bit and kicking in some galaxy through the hop back. Drinking Hop Zombie earlier this year just made me want to throw in more hops.

So target OG is around 1065-70, with a boil length of 70 minutes and a 20 minute whirlpool once the gas goes off. The yeast will be the same, 1098 from Wyeast with a low starting ferment temp to keep any nasty hot booze out of it. This beer probably falls in between single and double IPA. I’ll just call it an IPA. So heres the recipe, the hop back amounts may change as I dont know how much it holds?

2 Foot Tex rebooted

Malt
83% Pale Ale Malt

10% Munich

5% Carapils

2% Simpson’s Crystal

Mash at 64 for 60 minutes with a teaspoon of gypsum, and throw some in the boil too perhaps

Hops
25 gm Warrior at First Wort Hopp

20 gm Centennial at 30 min

20 gm Cascade at 30 min

55 gm Centennial at Flameout, steep 20 min

55 gm Cascade at Flameout, steep 20 min

40 gm Galaxy Hop Flowers through the hop back

Dry Hop #1 – 3 days in primary at end of fermentation

44 gm Centennial

44 gm Cascade

Dry Hop #2 – 3 days in the keg

30 gm Centennial

30 gm Cascade

14 gm Amarillo

14 gm Simcoe

I might as well brew a Pale Ale as well, got to keep the hat thrown in the ring. Just need to invent a recipe now???

Cheers D

The post Dazzapalooza wrap

The kegs are all clean. The keys have been found. The shit did I do that text messages have been sent. Plenty of junk food/panadols/coffee/”insert own hangover remedies here” has been consumed. That leaves me sitting on my couch wearing ugg boots having one of my Belgian IPA’s. Its not to bad, an interesting mix of Belgian yeast and citrusy hops, not too sure what I think of it. Perhaps the 10 kegs of home brew that were consumed yesterday may be clouding my ability to properly asses beer. But then that’s what Dazzapalooza is all about.

Now to the wrap of Dazzapalooza 2011. All up there were 10 kegs of home brew, 9 beer and 1 cider, and in between the hours of midday and midnight then all became empty. So what was in those kegs?



1. Ded Red Ged – a big Hoppy American Amber, with a nice blend of crystal malt and citrusy hops. Fairly easy drinking, and at about 6.5% ABV this one caused some damage.

2. Fountain IPA – Hops, Hops and Hops. It was about 70 IBU, not sure what the dry hop’s added to this, however even though IPA’s are all about hops this has a nice malt backbone and an amber colour. I think this one’s about 6.5% ABV too. It’s had a name change thanks to the volatile nature of the beer and its desire to explode out the top of the keg.

3. Aussie Wheat – an easy drinking pale beer with a nice fresh hoppy finish thanks to the Amarillo and Simcoe dryhop. Someone please give me a better name for this beer. Someone give me a name for this beer.

4. Mannering Bitter – an English bitter/pale ale full of East Kent Goldings Hops named after a recently Australianised pom. About 5% ABV. Tasted great at ambient temp, UK style. I think there was tear in Grahams eye as he tasted his namesake beer. 

Mannering and his beer



5. “Duff wears a skirt” apple cider – When I first tasted it I thought, this one last night, tastes like cider, a bit sweet and a bit tart. Not really sure of the ABV but at least 5 I think. Very popular with the ladies (and some of the less manly men)

6. Heffervitzen – just a German wheat beer, nothing special here, ok that was what I first said but Dirk was really unhappy with this. It was a lovely soft hefff with a slight spicy flavour.

7. Titanic Black IPA – a big black hoppy beer by Hendo, over 9.3%ABV, black and hoppy with a gut load of hops (gut load is a technical brewing term meaning a lot). I was actually hoping there would be some of this left to put on tap at home.

8, 9 and 10 – Beers by Dan, there was an IPA, a nice hoppy beer, something black that was a blend of a couple of beers. I cant really remember what the other one was.

Gerard’s catering didn’t let the show down, with more or less a continuous supply of hot dogs. Sauce, cheese, bacon, onions. What more could a man want?

And now to the music, ah yes the music. Jamie and Jugga had been “jamming” in preparation. They didnt fill my request for duelling banjos or cassical gas but they did rock out hard in a kind of non rocking out hard way. Part of being rock and roll is looking rock and roll. Jugga opted to go with the Tim Rogers look. Jamie more of a long lost Oasis member. They could be the new “insert guitar duo here” really I don’t know, maybe the Proclaimers or Wham? Well played boys.

Big cheers to Gerard, Megan, Fizzy and Robbo for the use of their back yard, couldn’t have done it without them.

I wont go into the dancing, nudity, wrestling and other shenanigans that ensued later in the evening. If you were there you know all about it. The pic’s will no doubt end up somewhere like facebook. And for reference Fizzy did not set fire to himself. Also apologies for the hangovers, na not really.

So one thing is for certain, Dazzapalooza 2012 will be back bigger and better than ever.

Cheers D






what are you doing Fizzy?

  

Dazzapalooza and the beer fountain

As Dazzapalooza is only 2 sleeps away I’m just putting the finishing touches on the beers (& cider). Doing this basically involves tasting the last two beers (quality control is such a chore) to make sure that they taste OK and everything else is good, carbonation, clarity etc. so I am all good to take them to Ged and Fizz’s tomorrow. This involves taking out the dry hops from the Aussie wheat (it needs a better name than that) and the IPA. I really should have know better than to put dry hops into a carbonated beer but it needed more hops.

There are probably plenty of explanations as to why the keg became a fountain. I’ll give you my ideas as to what happened. Adding the dry hops added a bunch of nucleation sites, these are spots that bubbles start from. Perhaps I had the keg a tad over carbonated. So when I tried to vent the keg so I could remove the bag full of hops I struck a problem, the nucleation sites kicked the bubbles into gear which shot a bunch of beer and a bit of the mesh bag holding the dry hops into the relief valve. This resulted in a beer fountain that actually shot high pressure beer into my face.

Luckily I had a feeling about this keg and the wholeprocedure took place in my bathroom, which needed mopping anyway. I also needed to wash my face with beer, this is something that I usually do every night so no big deal. Good thing it tasted OK.

Anyway I’m tasting the German wheat beer right now, its all good, and the dry hops are out of Aussie wheat keg. All that is left to do is some keg transportation tomorrow and some drinking on Saturday.

Also I need to name the Aussie wheat. you have until tomorrow night to name the beer. Sugestions people?

I need a shower now.

Cheers D

Good Beer Week wrap, entry 4 I think, or is it 5??

Hello there trendsetters,

I’m back from the wild west. OK the cold west where I have been attending to matters of great importance otherwise known as my job. There seems to be an increasing trend of me having to spend more time in rural Victoria. Not a bad thing in its self but so far it has failed to include any good beer destinations, plenty of pub parma’s but little good beer. That’s probably my own fault but after good beer week I think I needed a relaxing non good beer week.

So now I need to round off my good beer week experience write up which will be confined to last Fridays beer tasting at Purvis Beer. I didn’t make it to the Australian international Beer Awards tasting on Saturday as my tickets arrived on Monday (bugger) and there was a few beers with Dave but that doesn’t really count so now for my review of the Purvis Beer tasting session.

Purvis Beer is on Bridge Rd in Richmond, so getting there from work wasn’t a big deal. However I had never been there and had no idea that they had an odd numbering system where the numbers didn’t match on both sides of the road. Interesting. So for the beer tasting, this is what they said about it;

While the awards for 2011 are being handed out at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, how about tucking into some of last year’s top drops – plus a few that are fancied to do well this time around? Purvis Beer Richmond is offering beer lovers the chance to do just that. They’ve arranged a fancy lineup that includes some of the gold medal winners from 2010 plus a few of the potential challengers for the gongs in 2011.
This is the list of beer they had listed but I think there may have been a few different ones there, bit hard to remember but I’ll write some comments on the beers they listed anyway. I do need to stress that I don’t really think that the tasting session is the best way to fully get an idea of a beer. For that you need a pint. All we got was a taste in a wine tasting glass, giving enough to get an idea of the beer and if you think its worth further investigation or not. Now I should also note that buy no means were they stingy with the beer, to the contrary actually i had more than a few refills on more than one beer.
Bridge Road Saison – I always enjoy this beer even though I think it varies a bit. I enjoy it most when its drier.

Feral Hop Hog – nice beer, good hoppy IPA, I hadn’t had this one before but I’m looking forward to having a pint.

Mountain Goat Surefoot Stout – yup go get some.

Nogne O Imperial Stout – yup go get some times 2.

Weltenburger Asam Bock – I don’t remember this one.

Weihenstephaner Vitus – this one was not so outstanding as i recall, a bit disappointing as i usually like their beers.

Schneider Weisse Tap 6 Aventinus – did I have this one??

Lined up in the Challengers corner are:
8 Wired Hop Wired – have had it before, a nice beer but I still have a not sure policy when it comes to NZ hops in IPA’s???

Estella Damm Inedit – this beer is one for the ladies, not for me. It was apparently designed to go with

Orkney Dark Island Reserve – I really liked this beer, boozy, okay, perhaps a bit short on body but I’d definitley like a pint of it.

Amager Hr. Frederiksen – I really cant remember this one

Gouden Carolus Cuvee Kaiser – I think this one was a golden strong and a good example of the style at that.

Holgate Beelzebub’s Jewels – quite enjoyed this one, nice backbone from the time it spends in oak. I think I need to find a pint of it to really get to know it but that may be difficult as its a rare drop.

Cantillon Rosé de Gambrinus – an absolutely gorgeous beer. Its a sour beer but had a number of people who had ever had a sour beer (and the name sour turns them off it) really getting into what is perhaps the holly grail of beer geek beers. Have a bottle not a pint.

All in all a good session by the guys at Purvis Beer, especially to Damian, as he’s the only person at Purvis I know, and he sent me the invite on Facebook.

Looking forward to good beer week for next year. There is a strong chance however that my liver isn’t.

Cheers D

PS its Dazzapalooza this weekend!!

Brother Thelonious, Beer V’s Jazz

Image via Wikipedia

First of all I’m not sure that I’ve ever listened to Jazz unless you count watching the Cosby show. I know that Bill Cosby loved his Jazz as much as bad knitted jumpers and pudding. That is about all I know about Jazz other than people who play and listen to Jazz think they are cool, wear skivvies and berets, and smoke their cigarettes through those long holder things. They may also look like the Pink Panther.

So that’s me on Jazz.

But wait why then was I listening to it this evening as I kegged up a batch of bitter and some cider? Well its all thanks to Good beer Week, Beer Deluxe and North Coast Brewing Co. For my lucky door prize last night I received “The Brother Thelonious Quintet” on CD. This CD features many people who play good Jazz, I think. Anyway as background music and noise is a preferred environment for me this stuff works. I have to say I don’t really get it. The shit is all over the shop. Perhaps that’s why Bill Cosby liked the stuff, I mean he had to be off his head to wear those jumpers so maybe it makes sense. For me it will probably just stay background music.

And so my preference will probably go to the beer rather than the music, especially the Brother Thelonious beer which I tasted last night at Beer Deluxe. I only had a small pour, and I still stick by my rule of don’t judge a beer unless you’ve had a pint but this Belgian Dark Strong beer is one that I would look to find a full pint of. It has plenty of those plum pudding flavours, rum, raisins, kind of like a Chimay Red. Anyway I like it. It shares little with the Jazz, except for teh name and the picture on the lable (look at my previous post).

As for my beers scheduled for Dazzapalooza, the British pale/bitter – “Mannering Bitter”, tastes OK, needs a little time in the keg and perhaps some dry hops. The cider, well it tastes like cider, apples with a bit of a sweet tart thing going on. I don’t know under carbonated cider so really don’t know where this will end up. The Ded Red Ged and the IPA are also both sitting well. Just the Aussie wheat and the Heff to finish off now. Only about 10 days until Dazzapalooza is go, fingers crossed no balls up.

a little clarification part 2

Ok so I’m back from a trip that took me to Warrnambool, Hamilton and back again with a stop at the Mortlake Roadhouse for what I believe are the best potato cakes in the world. We also had to make short stop to help the bloke on the yellow Ducatti who hit a puddle and ended up in the table drain just a few km out of Mortlake. His waterproofs were worse for ware and there was a bit of damage to his helmet and bike but he seemed ok. We gave him a push, got him back on the road and I’m guessing now he’s sitting in a pub in Mortlake waiting for repairs to happen.

Anyway I digress, back to the beer. Right now I’m having a Coopers Sparkling, a beer that has to be listed in any reference to the best beers in Aus. Its an oldie and a goodie. I prefer to have it poured into a glass un rolled, some people may disagree with that but it is a sparkling ale, so get it off the yeast and give it a chance to sparkle!. I love its slightly fruity nose, and the alcohol forward flavor of the beer. Yes be warned its a falling down beer, but a favorite all the same.

OK this is more digressing, to what I had intended to write about, clearing up a few things, mainly that Dazzapalooza is not Pig-a-palooza 2, and that while Good Beer Week has no connection to Dazzapalooza officially, I am going to claim that it is a warm up event for Dazzapalooza. How could it not be?  Also an update on the brewing session from the weekend. It was so uneventful and to plan that there is little other to do than post the recipes. As Hanibal from the A Team says “I love it when a plan comes together”

Pig-a-palooza 2
This sounds like a celebration of pig and beer. Throw in a BBQ and we have what I call a good thing. I know nothing else about this event and it is in no way affiliated with Dazzapalooza. Sounds good though.

Good Beer Week
An excellent sounding week that runs from May 16 to 22, its a celebration of beer that lasts for 7 days. The only thing I see wrong with this festivus of beer is that it only goes for 7 days. I really must book myself in for some events, so far I have an invite from Damien at Purvis Beer to some tasting type events. As I have never been to Purvis Beer I really must get there, apparently they have plenty of good beer. Also I’ve had a beer with Damien and he was a top bloke. Will have to look into some other events also, tastings, pub nights, beer launches. All good stuff.

My Weekend brewing

I did two batches on the weekend, both for Dazzapalooza, they are as follows;

British Pale Ale/Premium Bitter (it’ll be served on tap so I guess its a bitter?) This recipe is based on the “Brewing Classic Styles” by Jamil Z and John P recipe for the same style (page 119 if you have the book).
OG: 1.045
Batch Size: 23.00 L

Boil Size: 29.00 L
Boil Time: 60 min Equipment: My Equipment
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00
Notes: the mash was a bit cool I think, more like 62, bugger

Ingredients
4.50 kg Crisps Marris Otter Pale (5.9 EBC) Grain 82.57 %
0.40 kg Raw Wheat 7.34 %
0.22 kg Aromatic Malt (51.2 EBC) Grain 4.04 %
0.22 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (236.4 EBC) Grain 4.04 %
0.11 kg Special Roast (98.5 EBC) Grain 2.02 %
35.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (60 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 25.0 IBU
14.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (20 min) Hops 3.1 IBU
20.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (1 min) Hops 2.2 IBU
Wyeast Labs #1098 British Yeast-Ale

Aussie Wheat (I’m calling it this for want of a better style descriptor). I got the idea for this beer from “Brewing with Wheat” by Stan Hieronymus, and is a further adaptation of a beer I did last year with a witt wort and an English yeast. This is kind of round 2 at this beer.
OG: 1.052
Batch Size: 24.00 L
Brewer: Darren Keating
Boil Size: 30 L
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00
Notes: 2kg crisps pale ale, 2 kg JW pills, 1.9 torrefied wheat, mashed at 55 for 15, 62 for 30 and 67 for 15

Ingredients2.00 kg Crisps Pale Ale Malt (2 Row) US (3.9 EBC) Grain 33.90 %
2.00 kg Joe White Pilsner (2 Row) UK (2.0 EBC) Grain 33.90 %
1.90 kg Wheat, Torrified (3.3 EBC) Grain 32.20 %
15.00 gm Magnum [14.00 %] (60 min) Hops 26.2 IBU
British Ale Wyeast Labs #1098
I’ll be dry hopping this beer with a bunch of Amarillo and Simcoe, not sure how much yet, will do it to taste in the keg.

All rather simple really, no running out of gas, no spilling stuff or other catastrophes. All I have taken from this brew session is that my mill is not working to full efficiency. I think I have it running too fast and am chewing up the barley husk too much, this gives me a floury grist and I think its hurting my efficiency. I’m not all that worried about efficiency on my home brew setup but it would be nice to get the same results from grain I’ve milled myself as grain milled at Grain and Grape. I’ve put an email through to the guy at Mash Master (where I got my mill from) and am after some advice. It does work and I love the build quality on the mill but I think I could get it to run better.
Time for some dinner now, by the way fuck its cold. Anyone else noticing this?

Cheers D

Dazzapalooza beers so far….

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

So Dazzapalooza draws near (May 28) and therefore I need to be cracking on with the beers. So where am I up to??

The music is apparently going well, Jamie and Jugga have been “jamming”. I have put in a request for dueling banjos, and classical gas but I’m guessing they may not be on the play list. Apparently the practice has been going well, to the extent where the fellas wondered if it was in them playing. I’m liking the sound of this. They could be the new “insert guitar duo here” (really I don’t know).

The catering is set. Gerard is right now working on his gourmet hot dogs. OK he will be going to the supermarket the day before and getting some hot dogs. There is also a chance of some form of hot dog eating contest late in the day, as per a precedent set at a previous party. That will not be pretty. Also please note that the term gourmet means there will be more than 3 options for sauce.

And as usual there is a better than 60% chance the Fizzy will set fire to himself. Awesome.

Now to the beers. I’ve just kegged up and IPA and a hoppy amber ale (both in the 6% ball park). I also have a cider fermenting away following requests, mainly from people who wear skirts (and Duff). I’ll be brewing some more beer this weekend to fill the remainder of my kegs.

In addition there are also two guest brewers scheduled to be rocking up with beer, I’ll happily drink most anything either produce and as they are both in the making beer for a living end of the world (or soon to be) there may be a bit or market research going on with their beers. So who are they?

Dan, he’s in Japan right now and I don’t really know what he’s going to have in the keg but it’ll be good. To check out his blog click here Dainton Brewing

Hendo – I did the res school at beer school with Hendo, a good man. He’s currently at a vic brewery but I wont plug that unless he’s OK with it. I expect whatever he brings in the keg will be in the ballpark of 10%ABV. It will be good but pain inducing.

So that’s about it. invitation is by invite from me (yea and bring a friend etc.) so message or email me or if you were there last year you’ll get the invite with all the details.

Cheers D

Mystery wardrobe keg beer

Last night I was cleaning some kegs in preparation for Dazzapalooza and found half a keg of beer in the back of my wardrobe. I have no idea what it is but its probably been there since about Christmas. I thought it was a keg of sanitiser but when I went to tip it out it was amber. Not sanitiser at all. So as the fridge was empty I resealed the keg, chilled it down and am having a pint of it right now.

Again I have no idea what it is, I think it may have been a pale ale or a wheat beer but all the hops have dropped out of it. Its not sour and way past its prime but its not terrible. There is a funny fruit tingle type taste to it that I cant quite put my finger on.

So Mystery Wardrobe Keg Beer? not sure if I’ll keep drinking this or not so leave a comment if you have any ideas on what to do with this random beer. I think I’ll at least keep it until I need the keg space, so a week or so perhaps.

Also if you are reading this (and like it I guess) could you please see your self clear to follow my blog (if you arnt already) I am currently losing in the race for followers against Mark Dapin and his blog by the same name. While I do like his writing and think he would be a top bloke to have a beer with, he has a regular spot in The Age Good Weekend magazine. This gives him an unfair advantage so please follow my blog and tell your friends!

OK enough begging for followers, more mystery wardrobe keg beer for me.

Cheers D

PS – was a bit sad to see some people get hurt by the cyclone in Auckland, all a bit close to home as I was there on Sunday. Hope not to many people are hurt.

PPS – more info on Dazzapalooza to follow soon!

IPA – Yesterdays brewday

I brewed yesterday. Any day that I brew is generally a good one, I get to my Zen space. It was a good thing I found my Zen space yesterday as I had a few fuckups throughout the day, some I can clearly identify, some I am still scratching my head over.

The day started with breakfast out, followed by a trip to Grain and Grape to pick up my malt bill. The shop was mental, as busy as I’ve seen it for a non sale day. But that was ok, Zen. Did a few other jobs (got my new pocket wifi and a t-shirt) and hit the road.

I brewed the following recipe, kind of based on a Stone IPA recipe from Brew Your Own Magazine, changed the bittering hops, shortened the boil time and added some wheat malt. This beer is intended for Dazzapalooza.

Dazzapalooza IPA (to receive a better name once I think of it)

7.50 kg Crisps Pale Malt 88.24 %
0.50 kg Joe White Crystal 5.88 %
0.50 kg JW White Wheat Malt 5.88 %
30.00 gm Centennial [8.90 %] (Dry Hop 3 days) Hops –
15.00 gm Chinook [13.00 %] (Dry Hop 3 days) Hops –
30.00 gm Millenium [14.40 %] (60 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 47.6 IBU
60.00 gm Centennial [10.00 %] (15 min) Hops 16.0 IBU
1 Pkgs British Ale (Wyeast Labs #1098) [Starter 125 ml] Yeast-Ale

Mashed at 64deg C, intended to be a 25 litre batch at about 1.072, instead I ended up with a 29 litre batch at 1.065. I’m not 100% what happened here, guessing I transferred too much wort from the mash tun (1 bucket too many??).
 
I also had some boil issues. I ran out of gas. Twice. This gave me a somewhat interrupted boil but the beer shouldn’t suffer from that. I doubt I could make this beer again with any sort of consistency though.
 
The other “issue” I have with this beer is the colour. Its too dark. When I last made this beer I didn’t specify which JW crystal malt I used in my notes but I remember the beer being much lighter than this wort. When I ordered it I also didn’t specify, so I’m thinking I have the dark crystal (maybe) but definitely not the pale crystal. None of this will really matter, just not quite what I was after, the beer however will be nice and hoppy, just a little dark for style. Must pay more attention. If you look to have a crack at this recipe go with a pale coloured crystal malt.
 
So the upside? on the white board list on my fridge is a list of stuff that I said I would do this year. One of them is “interesting beer”. Accordingly I have taken 4 litres of wort from this batch and pitched a Belgian Witt Yeast into it. Interesting beer, check.
 
So the result of yesterdays brew day, more beer than I was aiming for, nice day out of town, trialing a new recipe for a darker than style IPA(unintentionally) and a Belgian IPA fermenting. That’s not quite what I was after but by no means a bad effort.

Oh I also had a KFC Double Down, the breadless sandwich. This is not a good thing. Let it lie in the KFC fryer. Back to my self imposed no KFC unless drunk ruling. Nuf said.

Cheers D
 

a good day – soft shell crab, lamb, stout and David O’Doherty

Image by Zena C via Flickr

From starting of as a pretty dull day in the office with a toasty cheese sandwich for lunch and no fresh air between the 10AM coffee and the 5.45 PM escape from the office my day ended pretty well. So what did I do to make that dull lot end well?

Started with some emails about going to the comedy festival. And if we are going out we needed some food. So tickets were booked and then dinner discussed. Luckily the suggestions were all in my neck of the woods, the Paris End of Collins St. We ended up at Cumulus Inc. an easy walk from my office. I’ve never eaten there, just had a beer or two at the bar (usually a Kooinda Pale – good local beer) however that would change tonight. We needed to be in and out fairly quick so asked the waitress what our odds were of a speedy service. All good she said and recommended the slow roasted lamb shoulder and a couple of sides. Throw in some soft shell mud crab and who could be happier? not me. Two thumbs up to Cumulus In. and the helpful waitress (she had a bunch of tats, was very helpful and not pretentious at all).

Next to the show, David O’Doherty at the Forum. Funny Irishman who wears a cape and plays an electric piano (a Casio I think) among other things he made a joke involving an upside down calculator and the number 58008 (if you get it you are cool). Highly recommend going and seeing him. I am now thinking about getting a cape, but not a gold one, that would be copying. Must try and jam in another comedy festival show or two while its still here, I always mean to go to more shows each year but so often fail for no reason.

Now to the beer, Deschutes Brewery Obsidian Stout. I picked this up at Slow Beer a couple of weeks ago but haven’t gotten around to it yet. Its black black with a tan head, a roasty nose and a really smooth taste. This beer is silk, its 6.4% ABV, but soft and smooth. The best way of describing it is as an American stout, it reminds me of Rouge Shakespeare stout, and is more in the league of an Export rather than a Dry stout or Guinness.

Drinking this stout puts me in the mood for more stout, which means I should have brewed some stout by now. It always happens this way, about the time I would like a stout I should have made some about a month ago. Brewing for Dazzapalooza and the Belgian/buggy  beers I have planned may delay a stout for a while but I’ll get to them ASAP. I think there may be a CYBI Jamil Show (from the Brewing Network)recipe for this beer. If there is I’ll be having a crack at it.

That’s enough for now. Go have yourself a good night.

Cheers D

Related articles

• David O’Doherty – My Beefs 2010 (metousiosis.com)
• The Physics of Stout Foam (neatorama.com)
• Beer Blogger Gives Up Food, Lives on Beer and Water for Lent (shoppingblog.com)