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Thursday, July 11, 2013

Dueling Brews

My girls all hanging together
On the Fourth of July, Bonnie and I celebrated the birth of our homeland by brewing two beer side by side... at the same time!  This momentous event was made possible by the generous trade of a pretty full tank of propane for some future beers by my buddy Ryan O! I have to tell you it was great to be able to do and nice to know have a backup tank for normal brewdays.

For her beer Bonnie went with the Petite Saison d'Ete kit from Northern Brewer that'd we'd picked up during the Buy 3 Ships Free promotion. She followed the recipe pretty straight forward but instead of brewing it with the recommended yeast we instead tossed it on the very thin yeast cake from Weiss the Hell Not.  This should give it a bready slightly sour character which will be further refined by aging it on some canned raspberries.  The name given to this beer therefore will be Petite Framboise d'Ete and it should be ready by the fall.

For my beer I decided to take the Dead Ringer kit that came in the promotion and turn it into an IPL using washed yeast from Bonnie's latest batch of Costa del Sol.  I think it's pretty cool that to ferment our beers this round we used the yeast (and bugs) harvested from each other's previous batches. The Dead Ringer kit is essentially a pretty spot on clone of Bell's Two Hearted which is a highly rated all Centennial IPA.  It also happens to be the beer that my brother Ryan B bought for Darkness Day and shared with whomever in line wanted some.  Once it is done I plan on washing the yeast once more for a second run at Bitter Sweet Symphony.

That's it, nice, short and straight forward, probably a sign of posts to come.  Recipes below

Enjoy,

-SNB

Friday, July 5, 2013

Pilgrimage for the Tao Brewers Fellowship

The pilgrims
I mentioned in my post on Societe Brewing that the Tao Fellowship (one of the many brewing groups I'm in) was planning a pilgrimage down to see them.  A couple of weekends ago a group of us (Steve C, Steve S, Greg N, Daniel F and myself) got together and headed south in a rented mini van (complete with a free screw in a tire).  Our journey south of the Orange Curtain took us to several destinations, some good, some bad and some outstanding.

We met up at the historic home of Greg Nagel (world renown beer blogger) to assemble and try a few beers.  Once Daniel and his lovely wife HsiHou (who had graciously volunteered to be our DD) arrived we loaded into our "screwed" minivan and took off to sit in traffic for nearly three hours.


Our first stop of the day was the brand new Pizza Port Bressi Ranch location which sometime this year will become their production location canning Pizza Port beers.  Hopefully one of the first through will be Poor Man's IPA but I highly doubt it.  It was a gorgeous and shiny facility, I want to say that they were still in the middle of a soft opening as I'd not seen any official grand opening announcement.  The only reason I knew it was open was cyber-stalking some of my beer buddies on Untappd.

I got two beers while I was there and split a pizza with Greg.  The first beer I had was El Toronado an IPA they brewed up for the San Diego location's 5th anniversary.  Overall it was a solid IPA loaded with pine and citrus aromas and a clean bitter taste.  The next beer up was a half pint of RuinTen from Stone.  I really enjoyed Ruination Tenth Anniversary last year, I even split a bottle with Bonnie to celebrate our Tenth Wedding Anniversary.  I therefore wanted to give RuinTen a try, however tracking down a bottle was proving tough so I was jazzed to find it on draft. Another top shelf dank IPA with even more resiny pine and citrus resin.  The pizza I paired the beers with was a brilliant jalapeno and pineapple that Greg suggested.

After filling up on pizza and beer we set out for our next destination. 


I've been using White Labs yeast almost exclusively for the last couple of years and enjoyed what I've read in the Yeast book co-authored by Chris White.  I'd also noticed on their site for their new tasting room that they were offering pours of beers brewed with different yeasts.  I thought that was a great way to really understand the effect yeast could have on a beer.  It was therefore on my recommendation that a group of homebrewers stop by... unfortunately nothing that I drank there lived up to the promise of the concept.  

The biggest problem was the quality of the base beers did little to highlight any noticeable differences produced by the different yeast strains.  Overall it tasted like mediocre homebrew that was fermented without temperature control or water profile adjustments.  While I was glad to have gone it's definitely not a place I can recommend and if I was to do the trip again I've opt to go to AleSmith or Ballast Point instead.  

Leaving disappointed we headed to our next and final destination... 


There's not much more to say on Societe outside of my previous post but once again Societe proved to be one of the highlights of our journey.  I enjoyed a glass of the latest Bachelor, which is their series of single hopped IPAs this one with Mosaic hops. I also had half pours of Pupil, Apprentice and the Widow and got two fills to send to my Minnesota buddies.

Overall it was a great trip and I would love to do it again soon.

Skål

- SNB

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