Sorry folks, its been awhile since I’ve had the time (or, probably more accurately, the energy) to update this blog. Considering I’m getting married in a little over a month (very excited!), it probably won’t come as a surprise to any of you that I probably won’t have many posts in any sort of consistent frequency until December. However, I figured I needed to throw a post up here to at least attempt to update you all on my life the last month or so.
Life in General:
Wedding plans have been coming together well, and we are getting closer to the big day. I’m extraordinarily excited to get married to my incredible fiancée Theresa! I can’t wait to finally tie the knot and go on our honeymoon to San Fran! We have heard lots of great things about San Fran, and can’t wait to get away for 10 nights just the two of us! :-)
Other than activities for the wedding, my life has also stayed busy from work. We just got through a “go-live” where we switched a lot of business units onto the new SAP system we have been configuring and testing. This is always a hectic time for any IT professional. However, overall, it has gone pretty smoothly for my team. Last week I was down at a major plant of ours in Texas to support the users as we switched over to the new system. Although we did have some issues, there were certainly no more than a typical go-live. Just enough issues to keep me busy enough to not really be able to do much in Texas other than work-related activities, but not so busy that I was working crazy hours. It was definitely nice to get through this milestone.
Homebrewing:
So I haven’t really provided much of an update on my oatmeal stout or the pair of single-hop pale ales that I did a while back. The end results of all three beers were very good. The two pales gave me a good idea on how the two hops that I was trying out would work. Of the two, I like the Calypso Pale Ale better (a nose of pear and apple with solid bittering and flavor capabilities while the Sonnet gave a profile more like a UK Golding). I will probably not use either of these hops again in a single-hop beer, but I think they would both play well with others. In fact, I am planning on using the Calypso again in a rye amber I am planning on brewing this weekend. In the future, I will most likely use the Calypso for bittering and dry-hopping, and the Sonnet mostly for finishing and dry-hopping.
I was very pleased with the way the Fork ‘N Knife stout came out for a first iteration of a house oatmeal stout recipe. The roast flavor and aroma came through very nicely, the appearance is exactly the opaque black I was looking for, the head retention is great, and the mouth feel is solid. Definitely some room for improvement though. I would like to see it have a bit more body with a little bit more chocolate flavor rather than the coffee-dominated roast profile that it has now. It also seems to be missing something in the middle of the taste. The roasty finish is about what I want but there isn’t as much of a presence in the middle of the palate. Overall, I am very pleased with this iteration, but I think it would be even better with a little tweaking to the grain bill.
Although I haven’t had all that much time to brew lately, I have been working on several recipes. In fact, I will be brewing my first crack at my house rye amber this weekend (named Bulldog Brew). I’m really excited to brew this one because I’ve been craving a solid amber ale to have on hand for awhile now and this will be the first time I will be brewing with malted rye. Should be a very tasty brew.
By piecing together spare bits of free time at home, on train rides, and on flights, I’ve also managed to develop several new recipes and concepts that are all ready to brew when I get back from the honeymoon. I’m basically planning on doing a whole lot of brewing this winter to test out a bunch of these recipes. Among these recipes, I am also putting together a couple new series of beers that I am very excited about. One of these will be an annual installment series, while the other will probably be a themed release every few months. More on those later, but for now, here are the beers that I’m most excited about that are coming up in the next few months:
· Ruination Clone – I originally did a clone of Stone Brewery’s Ruination IPA last December. My version of Ruination and Theresa’s Ale are the two beers that I am most proud of the outcomes. These beers are also the ones that got the best feedback from friends and family that tasted them – by far. I figure, that pretty much means its time to re-brew this clone and try to improve on it with new techniques and equipment that I have acquired in the last dozen or so brews that I have done since I brewed Ruination last winter. This time around, I am also planning on doing a double dry-hopped version (probably in a Party Pig), similar to Stone’s very limited double-dry hopped releases that they have done recently.
· Smoked Porter and Hopbursted American Pale Ale – I am planning on doing a pair of ales for one of the themed series that I mentioned earlier. I am planning on doing a smoked porter and a hopbursted (a technique where most of the hops get packed in towards the end of the boil) American pale ale. These beers will be meant to be themed together and, as such, I am also planning on taking half of each batch and creating a blended beer in the secondary. The result will be each beer alone and a blended beer. Much more on these beers to come in a couple months.
· Imperial Stout – Imperial stout is one of my favorite styles of beer and I figure its about time I take a crack at one. Wait, I’m doing two? Kind of. I’m planning on brewing a full batch of imperial stout and splitting the batch in half during the secondary fermentation. I will ferment one half out as a standard imperial stout, and the other half will get an alternative treatment. I haven’t landed on a specific treatment yet but I am getting closer.
· Chipotle Ale – I have been meaning to do a beer with hot peppers for quite some time now but just haven’t had the right timing to do it yet. This summer I managed to let some of my homegrown jalapeños stay on the plant until they were red and grilled them up to get them nice and smokey and roasty. I have four or five of these babies in my freezer right now just waiting for a malty home. I have a recipe together that is rough clone of Rogue’s Chipotle Ale. I’m very interested to do this beer and can’t wait to see how it turns out. This is definitely one of those beers that has a chance of either being great, or really terrible.
Other Beer-Related Matters
As always, I have had some great beers over the last few weeks, but the craft beer highlight for me since my last post was definitely a Stone Brewing Company event that Pinocchio’s hosted in late September. For the event they had a bunch of Stone kegs on tap, including a couple very limited edition kegs – a double-dry hopped Ruination, and their 15th Anniversary Ale (both of which were incredible!). In addition to the tap take over, they had a great special where you could buy a limited edition Stone Brewing/Pinocchio’s swing-top growler filled with any of the Stone beers for $25 (except the rarities which were a little more)! Given the quality of the growler (which on a normal day would retail for $20 empty) and the quality of the beer, this was a great deal! I also picked up a couple bottles of the Anniversary Ale.
To go along with these great Stone beers, I also recently got a copy of Stone’s new book The Craft of Stone Brewing Company, which was co-authored by the two main founders of Stone and one of their PR guys to celebrate their first fifteen years. The book contains four main sections: beer basics, the history of Stone including a beerography (pretty sure that’s not a real word, but oh well) of their releases from the last fifteen years, food recipes from their bistro, and a bunch of clone recipes for some of their beers, including some limited releases and collaborations. I am through about half of the book and am about to get into the food recipes section. The book is very interesting and entertaining and I am very excited to read through the recipes section and give a few of the dishes a shot (the ones that I have peaked at so far sound really good!) and try out a couple of the clone recipes. This book is definitely a must for any Stone fan – especially if you like to cook and brew.
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| Perfect drinking and reading pairing - both in celebration of 15 years of brewing excellance from Stone Brewing Company. |
Video Games:
I have also managed to piece together some time to spend on my other major hobby – video games. I finally finished up Mass Effect 2 just in time to start playing Gears of War 3. I just beat the single-player campaign a week and a half ago and I was very impressed with the game. This is easily the best of the Gears of War trilogy and is a great conclusion to the series. The story has a great pace to it and the gameplay mechanics are very smooth. Additionally, the multiplayer modes are all a lot of fun. Horde mode (where you and your buddies have fend off increasingly difficult waves of Locust) makes a triumphant return, as well as a new mode called Beast mode (basically Horde mode in reverse where the player is the Locust). Even the Versus mode (their version of standard matchmaking which I was not a big fan of in the first two games) is a lot of fun in this installment. All in all, Epic created an incredible capstone to one of the Xbox 360’s flagship game franchises.
Well folks, that’s basically the abbreviated version of the highlights of the last few weeks in the world of John Maynard. I don’t really expect things to slow down until about December. So, until next time, cheers!
Song of the Day: “Good People” by Jack Johnson
Beer of the Day: Stone Brewery’s 15th Anniversary Escondidian Imperial Black IPA
