Beer archive at RunawayJim.org

Archive for the 'Beer' Category

It’s Hot, but Here Goes

Published on July 8, 2008 in Review, Ale and Beer. 0 Comments

I’m continuing through my beer collection that’s too large at the moment. Last night and tonight were no different. Luckily, I have a lot of very refreshing beer, which is perfect for these ridiculously hot and humid summer nights.

Over the holiday weekend, I had a bunch of Festina Pêche. I believe I’ve written about that before. So to keep it short (and me somewhat dry), I’ll just say that it was a perfect BBQ beer. It’s refreshing, easy drinking, and well worth a try, even if you’re not into beer because it doesn’t taste like any beer you’ve ever had (unless you’re like me and are really into beer).

Last night I decided to crack open my bottle of Rock Art Jasmine Pale Ale. It sounded like a nice light beer, perfect for a hot day. I was right. It’s basically an amber ale brewed with jasmine. It’s got a nice light flavor with a little floweriness (if that’s even a word) and a nice herbal quality. It’s light, it’s not too sweet, but it hit the spot. I give it two thumbs up. Later on, I decided to try Dark and Stormy Night from Picaroons, the 5th beer from my trip to New Brunswick. The label calls it a dark wheat ale and describes it as a German dunkel crossed with an English ale, and that’s exactly what it was. It’s got a nice roasted quality with a nice wheaty/yeasty breadiness. There’s a hint of caramel as well. I was going to add it to Beer Advocate because it wasn’t there last I checked, but someone beat me to it. I reviewed it anyway. It was added as a dunkelweizen, though I was going to add it as an English brown ale because, to me, that’s what it tasted like (though the wheat and yeast obviously were what threw me off).

Tonight I started with Aprihop, which I have talked about here, but is one of my favorite summer beers (even though Dogfish Head releases it in the spring for some reason). It’s a nice fruity IPA with the apricots balancing off the hops bitterness. It’s very refreshing, even though it’s 7% ABV. With dinner, I had 1809 from Weihenstephaner, a Berliner Weissbier. It was absolutely awesome, though the first pour was a bit foamy. It pours a nice pale grassy yellow with a lot of effervescent bubbles. If I didn’t smell it, I would’ve called it a pilsener. However, I did smell it and it has a lot of sour notes to it. Basically, it’s a sour wheat beer, though quite refreshing and not quite as sour as a lambic. It’s very light and very drinkable, and absolutely perfect for a night like tonight with temps in the upper 80’s.

I need to get out of this room, it’s really hot in here (I should invest in another air conditioner for my home office).

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Rock Art, Harpoon, Rock Art

Published on July 3, 2008 in Review, Ale and Beer. 0 Comments

I’ve been drinking more. While that might sound bad, that just means I’ve been increasing my one beer per night to 2-3 beers per night. The reason for this is I just have too much beer. Since our honeymoon in Vermont, when we came home with about 3 cases of beer, we’ve kind of been on overflow. An entire shelf in the fridge is dedicated to only beer (though there are a couple bottles of the Smirnoff Twist/Ice variety in the back). I have beer that needs to get in the fridge lest it goes bad. The worst part is, Susan, who had asked me not to buy a lot of beer since returning from Vermont sent me a message yesterday asking me to pick up some more!

Anyway, last night I had 3. The first was Rock Art Whitetail Golden Ale. It’s a nice light, crisp, and refreshing ale. It has a nice sweet malty flavor with just enough hops for balance. It’s crisp and dry and makes for a great summertime beer. There’s a little fruitiness to it as well. It’s a very easy drinking, yet nicely flavorful beer.

The second was Harpoon’s Weizenbock from their 100 Barrel series. Susan and I split it with dinner. It had a lot of banana flavor to it and was very bready. It wasn’t my favorite weizenbock, that’s for sure. I almost dumped part of mine, but I finished it. I did not, however, help Susan finish her half of the bottle. I just didn’t like it that much.

The third was Rock Art’s flagship beer, Ridge Runner. It’s classified as an English Barleywine. I thought it was just okay, but it definitely got better upon warming. There were 3 in the mixed 12 pack I bought. I left one in the fridge and I put the other one down to age for a bit and see what happens. I imagine it will get a little better with age.

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Two More Beers

Published on July 1, 2008 in Review, Ale and Beer. 0 Comments

To avoid having to play catch up again, here’s tonight’s beers, since they’re out of the ordinary.

I started with Picaroons Man’s Best Friend. It’s a porter, I imagine an American Porter considering the body and bigger flavor. It’s got a nice roasted malt flavor with just enough smoke to give it another dimension, but not enough to call it a smoked porter. The beer is hopped for perfect balance, but it’s all about the malts. It’s probably one of the best porters I’ve had.

The second beer of the night was less impressive. I had Rock Art American Red Ale. It looks as though it’d be a great red ale, but it’s a bit light in flavor. Everything else is spot on. However, as it warmed, the flavor picked up quite a bit. It’s very drinkable, but nothing special. I have 2 more in the fridge, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy drinking them.

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Dogfish Head Dinner

Published on July 1, 2008 in Review, Beer Dinner, Ale, Providence, Food and Beer. 0 Comments

As I previously posted, Sunday night was the Dogfish Head Beer Dinner at Julian’s on Broadway in Providence. We arrived a little before 6 and found a couple of Nikki’s regulars already there drinking. We went inside and waited for them to start (which we were told would be promptly at 6). We got our first beer, Festina Pêche and the first course, almond-mint pesto stuffed mission figs with pickled jalapeno pepper. The beer was pumped through the Randall, a device that’s basically just a pipe filled with stuff (usually hops), that had strawberries and oranges in it. It added a nice fruity dimension to an already awesome beer. The fruit served to balance some of the tartness. I was very impressed. It was served in Dogfish Head snifters which ended up being given back to us as a gift to take home at the end of the night.

The next course was a champagne-poached pear, preserved lemon, and baby arugula salad with celery root chips and a green tea vinagarette. It was served with Black & Blue. The salad was really good, though, obviously, the lemons were super sour. The root chips were awesome, as were the pears. I’m not normally a Black & Blue fan, but the beer paired perfectly with the salad.

The third course was cucumber stuffed curried sticky rice balls golden beet carpaccio, and curled jicima. This was paired with Chateau Jiahu, another beer I’m not overly crazy about, but was perfect with the appetizer. The rice balls were awesome. It’s a purple sticky rice, which I have only previously seen at Julian’s. The only thing I wish is that the curry was a bit more predominant as I couldn’t taste it at all.

There was a palate cleansing intermezzo course. For this, they gave us a ginger ice cream float made with 3 year old Pangaea with a ginger lace cookie. It was really good, but we all wanted to actually try the aged Pangaea on its own, so they gave everyone a small glass of it. I was impressed. I wasn’t overly crazy about this beer fresh when I tried it at Nikki’s the night before, but it was awesome aged.

The entree came next. We had a choice of brown sugar and soy marinated flank steak or seitan (a vegan steak) with pomegranate smashed carrots, herb dressed watercress, and meyer lemon coulis served with Immort Ale or pink peppercorn rubbed escolar with bruleed summer vegetables, butter braised frisee, and rhubarb Raison d’Etre reduction served with Palo Santo Marron. I chose the steak and Susan got the escolar (which we later found out can cause some not so fun digestive issues). They were both absolutely awesome and the pairings were spot on.

Finally, we had dessert. There was also a choice for this course. I had the vegan peach cheesecake with peanut butter drizzled over the top and raspberries served with World Wide Stout. Susan got the quince, which sounded better and was served with Raison d’Extra. My whole dessert was actually better, and while the pairing didn’t sound like it would work, it was perfect.

Brian, the bar manager at Julian’s, told us that they’ll be doing a beer dinner the last Sunday of every month. July’s will be a Belgian beer dinner. I haven’t made a reservation yet, but hopefully they’ll announce a menu soon and then I’ll make my reservation. It should be good.

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Playing Catch Up

Published on July 1, 2008 in Review, Ale and Beer. 0 Comments

I’ve had a lot of beers that I haven’t written about. You can always check my beer list if you’re curious as to what I’ve been drinking. I keep that more up-to-date than my posts about beers I’ve had. Anyway, here’s some of the beers I’ve had since I stopped writing about them.

As I posted previously, I picked up a bunch of beer from Rock Art in Vermont. I have since tried their Midnight Madness Smoked Porter and their IPA. The Midnight Madness was awesome. It was nicely smoked and a great all around porter. The IPA, however, was pretty bland. It was light in color, flavor, and body. It didn’t have the hops flavors I’ve come to love in my IPA’s, but it wasn’t really an English-style IPA either. I probably wouldn’t bother with this one again.

One beer I picked up in Vermont that I thought was really solid was Peak Organic’s Maple Oat Ale. This one has a nice hint of maple and the smoothness of the oats. It’s a really great amber ale that I will likely buy again and again (perhaps they’ll find their way down to RI soon).

I rarely give a beer a drain pour. However, I tried the bomber of McNeill’s Summer IPA. It was easily the worst IPA I have ever tried (and being an IPA fan, I’ve had a lot). I drank a full glass, but poured the rest. It was just an unbalanced mess of hops and malt that didn’t make for a drinkable beer.

Another recommendation from BeerRiot was Clipper City’s Loose Cannon from the Heavy Seas lineup. It was good, but nothing special. I’d consider it just an average IPA.

Another disappointment was Founders Devil Dancer. I use the term “disappointment” lightly as the beer was good. It just wasn’t what I expected. They call it a “Triple IPA”. That’s not a true style (not yet at least), but the beer tasted like a slightly hoppy barleywine. It was good and definitely worth trying (and maybe I’ll buy it again), but I wanted a DIPA at the time.

I tried a different Victory beer (and I think I’m just about through with their whole lineup aside from the bigger bottles, like V-12 and V-Saison). I had the Moonglow Weizenbock. It had a nice banana and spice flavor to it, but it wasn’t overly complex. I’ve had better weizenbocks, but this one is still a great weizenbock from a great American brewery.

Finally, the beers I brought back from Canada… I had Picaroons Blonde Ale and Picaroons Yippee IPA. The Blonde Ale was simply fantastic. It was a nice light ale. It was very refreshing, but still had a lot of flavor. The IPA wasn’t quite as good, but it was still a good English IPA. It had this other flavor to it that I couldn’t figure out. The only thing I can liken it to is a slight whisky flavor (perhaps it was aged in barrels). Other than that other flavor, which did make it good, it was a very solid beer. The label made it sound like they were playing around with the recipe with each new batch. I’ll have to look over their Brewer’s Log to see if I can find it. Picaroons is turning out to be a totally awesome brewery. I can’t wait to try the others I bought. I had to add the Blonde and the IPA to BeerAdvocate because they weren’t listed (new styles, perhaps?).

That ends my catching up. I’ll post about the Dogfish Head dinner in a little bit. Right now, I think I need some Mr. Lemon.

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Dogfish Head Beer Dinner at Julian’s

Published on June 27, 2008 in Beer Dinner, Providence, Food and Beer. 0 Comments

I know it’s a little late, but this coming Sunday is a Dogfish Head beer dinner at Julian’s on Broadway in Providence. It’s sold out (which is why this is a little late). I imagine they’ll be open after it’s over and still have some great Dogfish Head beer on tap, like a keg of aged Pangaea, World Wide Stout, Raison d’Extra, Immort Ale, and Palo Santo Marron (among others). The menu looks to be pretty unique (as with everything at Julian’s and Dogfish Head). I’m looking forward to it and I will most definitely report back.

If you don’t have reservations and still want a great dining and beer experience, you must get over to Julian’s. They currently have some great beers on tap, including Left Hand Imperial Stout, Ommegang Hennepin, and Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale (which is not part of the beer dinner).

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ResNet 2008: Final Days

Published on June 26, 2008 in Travel, Web 2.0, Internet, Food, Technology and Beer. 0 Comments

I last left off with resting from my seven mile walk around Fredericton. Following that, we headed back downtown for dinner because we were on our own that night. Sean and I met up with Dustin from Stanford who said he was meeting a bunch of people at Brewbakers. Since we hadn’t eaten there yet and since the bill would be expensed, we joined them. I ordered a wonderful Maple Curry Chicken Penne dish that was very flavorful, yet not too filling. It was a little on the pricey side, but the quality was worth it. I tried Picaroons Irish Red there. It was the best Irish Red Ale I’ve had. Following that, we ended up at the Rogue again (which will end up being a theme for the conference). While there, I tried St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout, Gritstone Ale, and more of the Picaroons Best Bitter. I also decided to try Poutine. It was different. I wasn’t all that into the soggy gravy fries, but the cheese curds were good.

The next day I skipped the first session to try to catch up on sleep. The late nights coupled with a bed that made prison cots look enticing were getting to me. The thing about New Brunswick is that it’s in the Atlantic timezone, which is an hour later than Eastern Time, but Fredericton is north of the Eastern timezone. This made for long days (sunrise around 5:30 and sunset around 10), which also aided in the sleep deprivation (the curtains in the room were not very helpful). The good news about skipping was that I didn’t miss anything I was interested in (which was decided before I decided to sleep in) and I got to sleep an extra hour. The last session I attended was about Facebook. I was going to go to another session on hiring/training/managing students, but I figured I’ve gone to enough of those. So I tried something different. It was worth it. I learned a bit about what students think of Facebook versus “real world” communication (it seems that real world communication is still more important).

Following the session, there was a Program Committee BoF, which I attended and volunteered to help out next year. I like where ResNet is going and want to do whatever I can to help it continue and sustain itself. Following that I had lunch and an Information Resources Committee meeting, during which we discussed where things are going with the ResNet websites and communication tools. Following that, I went to the vendor fair, got some information and picked up some documentation from the doc fair. After that was a break and then the closing reception and raffles and then we headed downtown for our lobster dinner and kitchen party, which was followed by more time at the Rogue (I tried Picaroons Dooryard Ale and Pump House Fire Chief Red Ale, which was good, though I thought it tasted more like a Brown Ale, and Innis and Gunn, an oak aged English Pale Ale) and a long walk up the hill to pack, sleep, and head home the next day.

The trip home was smooth (had a Creemore Springs Premium Lager in Toronto), except that my checked suitcase was left in Canada because the plane was too heavy. Next time I fly to Canada, it will be out of Boston because I don’t want to deal with the crappity 18 seat plane and the possibility of my bag not coming with me. I just got word that my bag has arrived in RI and should be delivered to me sometime after 2:00.

I have pictures of it on my gallery or at Flickr.

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ResNet 2008: Last 2-3 Days

Published on June 23, 2008 in Open Source, Travel, Internet, Software, Music, Technology and Beer. 0 Comments

I’m not good with titles, but that really sums up what this is about. I wrote about Friday already, now here’s Saturday through today (at least so far).

Saturday was the PDS sessions. I learned about my DISC profile, which was a very worthwhile session. It actually gave me some insight into what kind of person I am and what kind of manager I am. It should help me quite a bit at work, once I go through and read the information more closely of course. The second session wasn’t quite what I thought it would be and I wish I had signed up for the session on dealing with difficult people (since my job is 90% dealing with difficult people). It was about balancing your life, which is something I think I do pretty well already. While I might check my work email quite a bit at home when I’m not on vacation, it never gets in the way of enjoying my time away from the office. So that session wasn’t really worth my time. I was thinking it was more about balancing everything at work, which is something I could use some help with. Maybe next year they’ll have something like that (I should suggest it).

Saturday night began the conference. There was an opening reception with a lot of appetizers that were all really good. There were some desserts and some really good juices, a lemonade made with some kind of mint and an iced tea with something in it that I just couldn’t figure out. There was also a large spider, which I can’t include a pic of because I used my phone to take it and I can’t send picture messages from it up here. During the reception, they had arranged for an Irish dance school to give us a little show. The kids were young, but they could dance. It was like a little Michael Flatley dancing with his people. It was fun, but I forgot my camera and my phone camera just couldn’t cut it.

Following the reception, I went downtown with a bunch of people to a bar called Dolan’s Pub. They had a live band called Barnacle and some pretty good local beer from Pump House in Moncton, NB. The band played all covers, but it was a great mix of everything, including Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Great Big Sea (a Canadian band from Newfoundland), Sublime, Steve Miller, and a bunch of American 80’s music. People were dancing. Now there was a bachelorette party there and they wanted the bachelorette to do some crazy things. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say there was some undergarment removal and a table dance involved… at our table. I didn’t get back until 1:30 or so.

The next day was the keynote. Stephen Downes gave the speech. It was a great speech. The guy looks just like David Crosby crossed with Arlo Guthrie. He was a riot… at least for the first half. He had this neat comment system on his website that he showed us. It would display comments for 10 seconds and then move to the next one. We had some fun with it, but some people were a little mean. The best comment was “Did you play in a band with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash?” The second portion of his speech was about Web 2.0. I have already been to 2 or 3 sessions on that alone and this just wasn’t necessary for a bunch of people who are likely intimately familiar with it. The first portion was about new ways of using the web and what young people expect of the web and internet services nowadays.

There were also 2 presentation sessions. I attended one which was ultimately about a re-org of the department, but really hit on some good points on how to make the department great, including losing the various groups within a department and getting it to work more as a single entity than as a bunch of smaller groups. The second one I attended was about making the Helpdesk better, but again was more about a Helpdesk re-org than what I thought it would entail, as the description mentioned a discussion of hiring and training and those were only minor points.

That was followed by the Geek Olympics. I ended up on a team again this year and our team won (I did it last year and we came in second by just a hair)! We had people from Stony Brook University on Long Island, Cal State in Chico, and NC State on our team.

This morning was the presentation I was working on with Sean Ward of Bowling Green State University in Ohio. It was called “The Pros and Cons of Computer Requirements (or lack thereof)”. It started out as a panel of 4 and ended up just being the 2 of us. We went through our presentation in about half an hour or so, but there was a lot of discussion, which we hoped would happen. It ended up being a pretty good presentation if you ask me. I then went to a presentation about ConPortal, an open source web-based scheduling and time clock system originally created at Pomona College, but added to by Bucknell University. It’s something I hope to implement, perhaps this year, though maybe next after I start requiring training (unless I require training towards the end of Winter Break).

The rest of today was left to do whatever. I went for a walk with Sean and other guy from BGSU downtown, over a cool foot bridge that goes over the St. John river (it used to be a railroad bridge), and to a liquor store to buy some beer. I didn’t find Péché Mortel as I had hoped, but they did have the whole Picaroons lineup. I bought a bottle of each of the six beers they had from Picaroons and will be taking them back home with me. The walk totaled about 7 miles, including 1.6 miles carrying the beer (I’m not going to try to put that in kilometers, even though that’s the official measurement here in Canada).

Now is time for rest and relaxation. As we’re on our own for dinner, I’ll be headed back downtown, but my feet hurt and I need a break.

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First Try of Local Canadian Beer

Published on June 20, 2008 in Travel, Review, Ale, Food and Beer. 1 Comment

I’m in New Brunswick at the University of New Brunswick for the next few days for ResNet 2008. After arriving, which was an interesting trip through customs and on a tiny 18 seat plane with propellers, I went out to dinner with some people (at 10pm, though it was really 9pm my time). We ended up at this bar and I just told the waiter to give me something local and good. He goes “Picaroons is good, which do you want?” and listed off the various beers they have. I told him to pick. He came back with their Best Bitter, what BA calls an American Pale Ale, but what I understood (and after seeing, smelling, and tasting it) to be an ESB. It was an absolutely fantastic beer, and it’s brewed right here in Fredericton, NB, making it very local. I’ll have to check out more of the local beer and see about bringing some home with me. Mike from Nikki’s wanted me to try to come back with Péché Mortel. We’ll see if I can find that. The town is at the bottom of a big hill, so it’s quite a walk if I’m carrying beer. Hopefully, I’ll hook up with someone that drove or rented a car and I can get in and out of town much easier. We’ll see though.

Anyway, the bar we were at was the Lunar Rogue. The food was also good (we all got the fish and chips because they were on a limited late night menu). And I just looked it up and it’s the top rated beer bar in Fredericton. Go figure. No wonder it was packed.

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Honeymoon Day 5: Hiking, Rock Art, Culinary Classic

Published on June 20, 2008 in Travel, Food and Beer. 1 Comment

Day 5 was Friday. We spent the day doing everything else that we had wanted to do. We started the day with a light hike to see the falls. It ended up turning into a serious descent down a bunch of tiny stone steps, but it was worth it. The water was unbelievably clean and clear (I wanted to drink it). The falls were beautiful and the way the water cut into the rocks was just awesome. Unfortunately, and I didn’t realize this until we started walking, it was all downhill… meaning the return was all uphill. Who would’ve thought that a hike in the mountains would start downhill.

After the hike, we went back and changed because we were now hotter than we had planned. Then we headed to Morrisville to visit Rock Art Brewery. Luckily, Fridays are tour days at Rock Art, not that there’s a big planned out tour. We were the only ones there aside from the 3 employees cleaning the tanks (Friday is also clean up day). One of them gave us a nice tour, which didn’t involve a lot of walking because the brewery is small. However, it was the best brewery visit I’ve had out of the 4 breweries I’ve visited (Long Trail and Magic Hat on this trip and Victory when Susan was living in Philly). The woman who gave us the tour knew her stuff, and she was really fun to chat with at the end in their “store”. Unfortunately, their tasting room hadn’t been completed and we didn’t get to try anything. We did buy a ton of beer from them and so far it’s awesome.

Following Rock Art, we decided to try to find their one beer that’s 10% ABV, The Vermonster. Now, just recently, VT passed a law that allows the sale of beer up to 16% ABV. Previously, the cap was at 8% and anything above that had to be sold as liquor in a liquor store. The new law, however, does not take effect until July 1. We ended up grabbing a sandwich and heading back to Stowe after not having any luck in the nearby liquor store.

Before our trip up, Susan had read about the Vermont Culinary Classic. They had a kick off event on Friday night at the Stowe Country Club. It was advertised as a local food and craft beer tasting. We decided to check it out since we’re suckers for craft beer tastings. Unfortunately, the only craft beer was on tap at the bar and you had to pay extra for it. The food was excellent, especially the strawberry crepes, but the poor advertising had me expecting more.

It was a great trip. I fell in love with Burlington and maybe someday we’ll move, though being that far from our family and friends might be a bit difficult. I want to go back there again. I love Vermont and all it has to offer. It’s really one of that best states in the country.

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