There's nothing I hate more than bookmarking a page, checking it a few times seeing regular updates, and then watching it go dead. Sorry for the lack of recent updates on this page and cheers to the Grumpy Beer Geek for stoking the fires. Here's what's been going on in the past few months:
Met up with friends from the Bay Area Brew Crew at 10am at the Toronado for their annual Barleywine festival. We made it through about 40 of the 50 beers available. My top five were
1. Full Sail Old Boilermaker 1998
2. Bear Republic Old Scoutters 1998
3. Pizza Port Late Harvest
4. Alaskan Big Nugget 2001
5. Lagunitas Gnarlywine 1997
We left the Barleywine festival at around 3pm, stopped by Memphis Minnie's for some much-needed food, headed home for a quick nap and shower, and went to Anchor Brewery for their annual California Homebrew Club of the Year dinner. It was quite a day.
Pizza Port 12 Hour Belgian Beer Party
Tonya and I drove down to San Diego for the weekend, hung out in the city for a couple days, and headed up to Carlsbad for the Pizza Port 12 Hour Belgian Beer Party. We met up with our friends Shannon and Wendy and met a bunch of great people from RateBeer. Tomme Arthur and crew assembled a fine assortment of Belgian and Belgian-style beers, including all of the commercially available Trappist beers. Standouts for me were Pizza Port Cuvee de Tomme, New Belgium NBB Love, Grottenbier, and Dupont Avec Les Bons Voeux, as well as all the obvious choices such as Westvleteren 12, Rochefort 10, etc.
Not much to say about this festival except that it was a weekend of drunken debauchery. Tonya and I met our friends Jeff and Jenny in Boonville, set up our tents, ventured over to the festival, drank seriously for the four hours of the festival (including some HUGE 15% ABV Oggi's Colossus), returned to our campsite, continued to drink, Tonya passed out, I headed over to the Buckhorn to meet up with Jeff and Jenny, they never showed up, I continued to drink, Tonya and Jenny showed up a few hours later with news that Jeff tossed his cookies and passed out, I continued to drink, we headed back to the campsite, passed out, woke up in the middle of the night to Jenny tossing her cookies, fell back asleep, woke up in the morning with a big hangover, and drove back to San Francisco. Good weekend.
Westvleteren Abt 12 Clone Tasting
The Westy clone is aging quite nicely. I tasted it last night for the first time in a few months and the sweetness is starting to subside. Very nice and high marks all-around.
Recent Brews
I brewed an IPA, English Bitter, Barleywine, and Pilsener in the past few months. The IPA and Bitter are bottled and mostly gone. The Barleywine and Pilsener are kegged and cold-conditioning at around 32°F. Upcoming brews include a Stout, Belgian-style Strong Golden Ale, and something funky for the tubes of Pediococcus and Brettanomyces in my fridge to feed on.