I ain't drunk, I'm just drinkin'

I've been sadly neglecting beer, both online and off.

It got hot in LA, and I was afraid of our beer getting funny sitting in the closet. I put a bunch in the fridge, which I think stops the bottle conditioning, but it seemed like the lesser of two evils. We'll wait a while and taste the ones in the fridge compared to the ones that stayed in the closet.

Some of the beer seems to have *lost* carbonation since the ones we sampled at the club meeting. Hmm. Different part of the bottling process? Did the smaller 12 oz bottle size make a difference over 22 oz? Hmm.

One of these days, I'll have time and money, and will take a college chemistry class to make me a better brewer. Due to being (erroneously, I think) tracked into the "regular" science classes in high school -- where they don't bother to teach you anything because they assume you're not going to a good college -- all I remember from chemistry is being "taught" by the basketball coach, the for-some-reason intimidating junior who sat behind me and whistled to get my attention when she needed to pass dittoes forward, and the one time I spectacularly and appropos of nothing passed out in lab, taking a desk down with me. I need a beer just thinking about my sophomore year :P

We took our homebrew to the club meeting last Thursday for feedback. There were some good suggestions on how to improve it, including the very easy one of "Let it bottle-condition for a few more weeks." Okey dokey! I don't think people were bullshitting us, though, when they said it was good (for a first batch). I didn't see anyone pour it out, anyway ;)

Sunday, we met a friend from Boston at Rock Bottom in Long Beach. Rock Bottom continues to be good brewpub chain. They may not pull out anything experimental, ever, and the left side of the menu is usually pretty wimpy, but their stronger stuff is quality and each location's brewmaster can do their own thing, within reason. Rick had a vanilla stout that was actually nicely balanced (not too much vanilla) and I had the Angry Dragon, a Belgian-style (tripel? It's hard to tell when American brewers try Belgians) (hey, I wasn't driving). I followed with their regular stout, a silver GABF winner in the oatmeal stout category, and Rick had the brown, which was not as good as Brooklyn Brown -- what is? -- but, of course, better than Newcastle.

In sad news out of Boston, the Concorde Brewery, formerly known as Concord Brewers and as Concord Junction before that, is closing its doors. That doesn't mean no more Rapscallion, but they're going to have to find another place to brew. Boo hoo! And I know they worked hard to move to their new facility earlier this year, too. :(

We snuck a preview of our porter last night, after only a week of bottle conditioning. Another week (or more!) will be cool, but this brew already tastes good. The bottle conditioning and subsequent carbonation really helped with the body.

It's almost Guinness-y. Guinness isn't my favorite stout (despite the frequency with which it's come up on this website lately) but damn, good start for beginner brewers!

In commercial beer news, the last new beer we tried (a couple weeks ago) was Full Sail Rip Curl, a nice copper ale from Oregon. Mmm, Oregon. As if I didn't have enough reasons to pine for the Columbia River Gorge, here's another. Tasty and beautiful.

Last weekend we celebrated our anniversary by cracking open our bottle of Three Philosophers, which can only be purchased at the brewery. After sampling it after a brewery tour, we imported our bottle in the backseat of our car all the way from Cooperstown, NY! We were sad to open it (but carpe diem) until I checked Brewery Ommegang's website and noticed that Three Philosophers is being slowly but surely rolled out commercially. Hell yeah.

What it takes to deliver Guinness in Cameroon. Not really about beer, but an interesting capsule of lousy infrastructure and absurd corruption in one West African country.

We bottled our homebrew yesterday, and only made somewhat of a mess in the process. It's a little tight bottling in the wet bar area of our one-bedroom, but mission accomplished. The beer, a porter, is quite nice: good aroma, appearance, and flavor, though the mouthfeel is a little wussy. We expect that will be helped by the extra carbonation it will gain during the next couple of weeks of bottle conditioning. If not, that's what the homebrew club is for...to answer our newbie questions. (By the way, they said not to worry about the low starting gravity, saying the problem was probably with our measurement, not the specific gravity itself. SG's can appear too low if you don't mix everything up well enough before measuring).

I forgot to mention that we bought our plane tickets to Oregon for the Eugene Beer Summit. Northwest microbrew, yum yum yum. Plus we get to see Josh and the rest of the Beer Summit Family.

One of the Mexican dudes at one of my jobs (you still with me?) talked with me about beer recently. (He doesn't know what a big nerd I am, it just happened to come up). You hear a lot about Dos Equis but he says the best, strongest Mexican beer is Bohemia. I recently had one at a UCLA open bar, and I did like it. It's not craft brew, but it's certainly the best Mexcian beer I've had.

I asked him if Mexicans put a lime in their Corona, or if that was something Americans made up. It's the latter. But what he said Mexicans do add to their beer is a little bit of salt. He said the only beer that needs a lemon or lime is Tecate in a can.

Salt. Hmm.

"A man who was expected to plead guilty yesterday to having sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral will have to answer to a higher authority. Brian Florence, 38, died of a heart attack Thursday." This was the "Sex for Sam" publicity stunt that got those idiots Opie & Anthony fired (finally!) Another example of how beer panders to frat boys while ignoring women, or even mature adults!

RIP Brian Florence, though. At least his short life had some excitement in it ;)