30th Anniversary!

Today marks the 30th anniversary of my wife, Brenda, and I. Mrs. Lazy Brewer doesn’t read this blog, so this post isn’t really being written for her eyes. But, today is a landmark day. Many people don’t reach their 30th anniversary, even with multiple wives/husbands. We did it with just each other – and a couple of kids!

Brenda puts up with all of my quirks, obsessions and hobbies. She keeps our lives in order and is the foundation of our home. She is the glue of our family. And I love her:)

Related posts:

1. 28 Glorious Years!
2. Chillin’ in Monterey…

Brenda's Deschutes Brewing Tattoo

Brenda and I wanted to try a new beer festival this year and I’ve kind of looked at the Monterey Beer Festival for the last couple of years.  We bought tickets about six weeks before the event and they arrived just a couple days after ordering them on the web.  That was a good sign!  We booked a room at our favorite place to stay in Monterey, the Merritt House Inn, and we were good to go.  We tried to find friends to join us, who didn’t already have something going on the weekend of June 5-6, but it was a busy time for all.  That was a bad sign!

Saturday morning we jumped in the Audi TT Roadster and headed for the coast. The weather was unseasonably warm for Monterey when we arrived.  We checked into the Inn, and then drove over to the Monterey Fairgrounds.  We arrived about an hour after the festival started and were amazed to see a line to get in that was probably 2000-3000 people deep!  We followed a car into the actual fairgrounds and ended up parking in the arena – with only twenty other cars:)  We went to the end of the line, only to hear someone in front of us mention that there was another line at the main entrance that was much shorter, so we headed up to that area.

Cheap Shitty Tasting Cup!

After another fifteen minute wait, with an ID check and bag pat-down, we received out wrist bands and (incredibly cheap shitty little (no offense intended to the Solo cup folks – I use your stuff all the time.  Offense intended for the Monterey Beer Festival folks for using such an unclassy  tasting container for this event!)) plastic Solo taster cups – and were told not to lose them.  That was a bad sign!

Once we actually hit the beer fest area, the first thing we noticed was the sea of humanity, 94.3% of who were between 21 to 26 years of age.  By 1:45 pm, many were obviously well on their way to a serious hangover.  Another bad sign!  We smooshed our way through the crowd to the center corral of tables, only to discover that all of the beer in that area was being served in a frantic, non-stop manner, by MBF folks wearing “Volunteer” t-shirts – not folks from the various breweries.  There were cases of unrefrigerated beer stacked behind the poures, who were serving out of the open cases/six-pack holders that had had ice poured on top of the open cases.  Again, that was a bad sign!

MBF sea of humanity!

A couple of the breweries’ beers I specifically went to taste, most notably Goose Island, were nowhere to be found.  These best of the bunch were ales from Ninkasi Brewing and Deshutes Brewing. Additionally, I finally tasted Sierrra Nevada’s Tumbler Brown Ale, which was good, but not as great as  I had hoped. We worked our way around the booths, waited in looooooong lines, and had probably six or seven tasters of beer.  By 3:30, many of the booths were out of beer (Sierra Nevada was closing up by this time) and it just further lengthened the remaining lines as the fest goers flocked to the booths that were still pouring beer.

Peter B's IPA - Yum!

We left about 3:30 and headed back to Peter B’s Brewery, in the Portola Plaza for a quiet ale.  I had a couple of their awesome IPAs and we noticed that several other more vintage MBF attendees (not in the 21-26 year age bracket:) also stopped by to an ale.  After relaxing on Peter B’s patio, we headed over to the wharf for a quiet dinner, where I enjoyed a nice porter with my mussels and sand dabs.  It was a great way to cap off a somewhat disappointing day at the Monterey Beer Festival.

Sand Dabs for Dinner!

All in all, we probably won’t be going back to the Monterey Beer Festival.  The overly young crowd, focused on quantity, not quality, the long lines, the fact that many beer offerings were gone long before the end of the event, and the fact that the MBF folks seem to have over-sold the attendance, will probably keep us for going back in future years.  This is more of an event for those folks looking to get sloshed on mass quantities of beer, not those who are looking to taste several quality ales.  I’m sure there are thousands of people who really love this annual event, but it’s just not what I look for in a beer festival.  My BrewBuddy Stephen has mentioned the different nature of beer festivals in the past and I wasn’t really sure what he was talking about, but there is a definite difference between a Beer Festival and a Brewer’s Festival.  I’ll be attending the latter type of event in the future.

There were positives, though.  The food was excellent.  We had a couple wonderful sausage sandwiches.  There were several high quality breweries there – though I think the quality of their ales was lost on most of the attendees.  Finally, it was good to see that MoreBeer had a booth (it was good to chat very briefly with Jesse) serving some homebrew – that was well received by the attendees.  And hey, at the end of the day, I was in Monterey with my sweetie:)

Related posts:

1. California Brewers Festival
2. Chillin’ in Monterey…
3. Back from the 2008 California Brewers Festival!

New Chest Freezer for Keg Storage (and old upright fridge in the background)

Last week I picked up a 13 cu ft chest freezer, and Ranco digital temperature controller, for cold keg storage.  This opens up my existing upright refrigerator as a summer fermenting chamber.  Last Friday I brewed a batch of one of Brenda’s favorite beers I make, Colona, and it is fermenting away at appropriate lager fermentation temperatures in my brew shed’s refrigerator.

Brittannia Arms Pub in Monterey

Last weekend, Brenda and I celebrated our 29th anniversary in Monterey. We stayed at our favorite Monterey inn, The Merritt House Inn.  As always, the staff there treated us wonderfully and we enjoyed several wonderful fresh fish meals, as well as a couple sessions in one of my favorite pubs, Britannia Arms.  We escaped 109+ valley temperatures for two days and enjoyed fabulous mid-70s temps.

Tomorrow I’ll be brewing another batch of Black Widow Stout.  The keg just blew last week, so it’ll be a month or so before I have a standard stout back on tap.  I do have RIS on tap, so not all is lost, but it is far from a session ale:)  I plan on oaking five gallons of this batch of Black Widow Stout.  Several of my brew buddies have been experimenting with oaking stouts and IPAs lately, and I want to give it a go.  Steve’s oaked RIS is truly one of the best home brewed ales I’ve ever had the pleasure to enjoy, and I want to join that exclusive club.  Hopefully I can get an early start on the brew day (not Steve early!) so that I can have a glimmer of hope of chilling the batch.  Even with an iced pre-chiller, I’ve had problems using summer valley groundwater to get my wort down to suitable initial fermentation temps.  With the Colona still in the fermentation fridge (currently in the middle of a diacetyl rest), this batch will need to start out in the living room, so I do need to get it quite cool to start off well.

With the 4th of July just around the corner, we’ll be spending the day with the usual suspects!  Happy Birthday, America!

Related posts:

1. Chillin’ in Monterey…
2. Post Brew Post
3. Catching up…

The 2009 National Homebrewers Conference was without a doubt one of the best organized conferences, on any topic, I’ve ever attended – and working in the education field, I’ve attended my share of conferences.  I was really pleased with the variety of the breakout sessions, as well as the fact that everything started and ended on time.  Timeliness sounds like a given, but when it comes to conferences it is an often overlooked aspect.    The Oakland Marriott was a gracious host for NHC and they seemed to roll well with 1100 people wandering around with ale, armfulls of brewing stuff, crazy costumes and generally eccentric people.  Finally, considering that alcohol was a key component of the conference, I was very pleased to not see a single incident of stupidness or assholiness by conference attendees.  Amazing:)

Jay and Shannon from Utah

I had the opportunity to meet some really nice folks, like Jay and Shannon from Utah.  Rights like homebrewing are something that I take for granted, living in California, but I found out that Jay and Shannon were just recently legally allowed to homebrew in Utah.  They can now let the aromas of wort and boiling hops flow liberally from their brew house without fear of a visit from the local police department.  It amazes me there there are still antiquated laws on the books like prohibiting homebrewing in several states.  It’s really sad.  Jay and Shannon sat next to me at the Grand Banquet last night and I really enjoyed their company (and they put up with my jabs at Utah very graciously for most of the evening:)

Brett Glenna - my Twitter buddy!

I also got to meet up with someone I’ve been Tweeting with for a while, @BrettGlenna, and we got to visit a couple of times.  We talked about setting up a future beer exchange.  Brett has access to many east coast ales I’ll never be able to buy in California, and I found out he’s a bit of a hophead.  Boy, is he in for a treat with some of the aggressive west coast IPAs I have access to!

Stephen and I are already kicking around the idea of attending the 2010 NHC in Minneapolis.  I should be ready for a beer by then:)

Even though I previously facetiously blogged about coming home today to lovingly open arms on Fathers Day, I’m happy to report that it was indeed the case.  I had a shower of Fathers Day gifts from Brenda and DawBoy, and a nice “Happy Fathers Day” phone call from Meagan ( I drove past her apartment building, within 100 yards, leaving Oakland this morning)  this afternoon.  Brenda made a wonderful rigatoni dinner and we shared a lovely bottle of Merlot (yea, I said I was going to give my liver a break today, but Italian food screams for a glass or two of nice red wine!)

I also picked up my new iPhone 3GS, and I’m pleased to report that the migration went smoothly.  I simply backed up my previous iPhone and then restored the backup image on the new iPhone 3GS via iTunes and everything was there – even all my apps were in their same locations on the various screens.  Bravo, Apple for making things as simple as they should be!

The upgraded camera, with spot auto-focusing and metering, and 30 fps video are incredible.  The voice dialing (that should have been included in the iPhone Day 1) works perfectly and I was able to dial 3 out of 3 contacts perfectly each time, with no training.  Amazing!

Anyway, it’s good to be home:)

Here are the last couple of pictures from NHC:

Stephen, with his second wind - after a rough bout with Club Night

Sean Paxton - the Homebrew Chef

View of Oakland from my hotel room on departure day

Related posts:

1. Off to NHC!
2. At NHC…
3. iPhone Heaven!

Columbus IPA Tap Handle

One of the things I like to experiment with in my brewing is making single hop ales.  It really allows you to see what a particular hop variety brings to an ale.  To take this one step further (and feed my background as a former science teacher:), I like to take a recipe for a single hop ale, and brew it again, changing only one thing – the variety of hop.  Basically, this means keeping the hopping schedule, individual hop charge IBU percentages and overall brew IBUs identical to the original ale.  Tomorrow, I’ll be taking my Two Hearted IPA recipe, and changing only the hop variety – from Centennial hops (my hands-down favorite, only one hop to brew with on a desert island:) to Columbus hops.

Additionally, I’ll be bottling up a few bombers of the Two Hearted IPA, since I know the second keg will be gone before the Columbus IPA is ready, to allow for side by side comparisons of the two ales.  I just finished filtering my water and milling the grain for tomorrow’s brew day.  As always, the milled grain smells wonderful:)

Here’s the recipe for tomorrow’s brew day:

Columbus IPA
14-B American IPA

Size: 10.08 gal
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 317.28 kcal per 16.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.071 (1.056 – 1.075)
Terminal Gravity: 1.018 (1.010 – 1.018)
Color: 7.27 (6.0 – 15.0)
Alcohol: 7.03% (5.5% – 7.5%)
Bitterness: 61.1 (40.0 – 60.0)

Ingredients:
20.0 lb Pale Malt(2-row)
4.0 lb Vienna Malt
10.0 oz Crystal Malt 10°L
6.0 oz Crystal Malt 40°L
1.0 lb Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt
.5 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
.75 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 45.0 min
.80 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 20.0 min
1.0 lb Corn Sugar
1.5 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1.5 oz Columbus (15.0%) – added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
2 ea Whirlfloc – added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient – added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
2000 mL White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Milling grain for Columbus IPA

One other difference in this brew from the Two Hearted IPA is the yeast.  Unfortunately, I’m out of Pacific Ale yeast, but I’ll be restocking soon since a trip to B3 is in my near future.  This ale should dry out just a bit more than Two Hearted IPA, but I can adjust for that with a slightly higher mash temperature.

Brenda is off to San Franciso in the morning to take up another load of stuff to Meagan at AAU, so I’m on my own for the brew day.  Unfortunately, Meagan is using my older PowerBook G4 at school, until the new MacBooks are released in a couple weeks, so my iTunes server is MIA. I’ll have to rely on Sirius for brew day tunes:)

Related posts:

1. On a Roll – Brewing Again!
2. Amarillo IPA Tomorrow
3. Citra IPA Tomorrow

Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker

Lately though, I’ve been hearing the call of charcoal and wood chunks – and wonderful slow cooked and smoked meats.  For the last year or so, I’ve been casually checking out smokers, but now I feel the need to move forward on a purchase.  I saw a tweet today on Twitter from a gent in Washington (hi Normskibrewer!) who uses Weber’s Smokey Mountain Cooker for his BBQ endeavors.  He highly recommends the smoker, as do several hundred people who’ve posted reviews over at Amazon.  There seem to be some manufacturing issues with same of the individual pieces of the cooker, but everyone seems to get those ironed out either with Amazon, or Weber itself.  Norm recommended checking out Virtual Weber Bullet web site for more info and it is a wealth of information for the unit itself, as well as cooking/smoking procedures and recipes for various cuts of meat.  I’m sold!  I’ll be picking up a Weber Smokey Mountain Grill this week, either from Amazon, or a local vendor.  Amazingly, a small, independent BBQ shop opened in the last couple weeks less than a mile from my home.  I don’t mind spending a few extra bucks to support local businesses, but I don’t know if they carry the Weber Smokey Mountain Grill, and how much more it may be above Amazon’s very low price.

I want to break in the new smoker over the Labor Day weekend, so I need to get my ducks in a row tomorrow before I head out of town with Stephen on my Summer of Music Tour to see Dave Matthews at Raley Field, in Sacramento.  The show may be a bit of a somber event as one of DMB’s founding members died last week from complications from an ATV accident in late June.  Hopefully, before I have my first Hop Sauce at Rubicon Brewing Company about 4:30 tomorrow afternoon, I’ll have purchased the new smoker.

Related posts:

1. Mystery Date
2. Looking Back at Sac
3. Century Post!

We went back to the hotel, checked in and than headed over to Old Sacramento, to have a beer on the Delta King.  The Delta King is a permanently moored river paddle wheel boat that has been converted into a floating hotel and restaurant/bar.  Brenda and I stayed overnight on the Delta King about four years ago.  It was very nice and the restaurant was wonderful.  Their bar had nothing on draft, so I had a Newcastle brown ale and we watched the boats go by on the Sacramento River (man – there are really a lot of stupid twenty-somethings with boats…)

Next it was back to River City Brewing for an ale on the patio.  They were out of their Kolsch, so Brenda had a wit and I had a Woodenhead.  I tasted their cask ale again, but found it to be watery and flavorless.  We watched the world go by at the head of the mall and I made dinner reservations for 7:45.  We went back to the hotel and chilled until dinner time.

We shared a Brewmaster’s pizza and a Caesar salad for dinner.  The food was very good – so good to forgot to take a picture:)  We had originally planned on seeing a move, but decided to head back to the hotel after dinner, since there were no movies playing that we really wanted to see.

We slept in the next morning, and headed over to Johnny Rockets for lunch, before heading out of town.  All in all, it was a very relaxing trip.

Related posts:

1. 28 Glorious Years!
2. Exploratory Amtrak Pub Crawl
3. Mystery Date

I got to visit with Daniel for about twenty minutes and really enoyed how he could multi-task.  We chatted about homebrewing and running a homebrew shop, and he never missed a beat keeping his happy seven month old daughter smiling the whole time:)  I left a couple of my hoppy IPA homebrews for Daniel and a German Hefeweizen for Julie.

Related posts:

1. Happy Birthday to the Lazy Brewer!
2. Quiet. Too Quiet…

Since Brenda was off learning new ways to teach writing to middle school students, DawBoy and I took the trolly down to the aquarium and spent four hours looking at the exhibits and taking in the presentations in the theaters. DawBoy took a bunch of pictures of fish and had a great time.

After Brenda was finished for the day, we headed down to Britannia Arms for a couple pints and dinner. I had a couple nitro Murphy’s Stout and a local Dragon Slayer IPA. All good stuff.  The ales are always properly poured at Britannia Arms.  Either a Guinness or a Murphy’s on nitro takes time to pour, so I always order my next stout when my current one is about half empty.

The food at Britannia Arms is also excellent.  I’ve tried a range of their offerings over the years and have always been pleased.  This time, Brenda and DawBoy shared a Fish ‘n Chips meal and I had beer battered prawns.

Related posts:

1. Century Post!
2. Monterey Beer Festival
3. Looking Back at Sac

Turtle Juice

• 1 shot Amaretto
• 1 shot Stolichnaya Vodka
• 1 shot of coconut rum
• 1 shot of 1Barrel Rum
• 3 shots of cranberry juice
• 3 shots of pineapple juice

Put all ingredients in a cocktail shaker, shake like hell, and pour over crushed ice in a pint glass. Drink!

We bought two bottles of 1Barrel Rum at the duty free store at Philip S.W. Goldson International Airport in Belize City, for $10 US apiece, and brought them home so we could make Turtle Juice. We rationed the bottles and still have about a quarter bottle left three years later. I recently went looking for more 1Barrel Rum on the Internet. I discovered that a wine shop in San Francisco, K&L Wines, carries 1Barrel Rum. Better yet, it was only $13.99!

I ordered four bottles and two days later, FedEx showed up with my package. It had a label that said it required an adult signature, so I knew what was in the box. Inside were four wonderful bottles of liquid amber! Now that I know I can get more 1Barrel Rum, I’ll be more willing to try it in other traditional rum-based drinks.

You can view a photo gallery of our trip to Belize here.

Related posts:

1. 28 Glorious Years!
2. Chillin’ in Monterey…
3. Three Sheets…

We killed some time shopping and then picked up the Jag. Traffic was light (spring break?) and we got to Redwood City with plenty of time for dinner. We had Mexican food for dinner, at a place called Margaritas, about a block from the Fox Theater. As we were finishing dinner, Paul Thorn and the band walked by the restaurant, presumably heading out for dinner before the show. I waited in line at the box office to pick up our tickets, while Brenda got in the main line to enter the Little Fox.

There was open seating, so we were hoping to get good seats. There were only a dozen or so people in line in front of us, so we weren’t too worried:) Unfortunately, there were having sound board problems, so we had to wait an additional half hour, out in the cold, before we were let into the theater. At 7:30 p.m., they let us in and we grabbed two seats, literally in front of the center-left side of the stage. We were so close I rested my feet on the stage for most of the show! I grabbed a couple of beers for us (I had a Sierra Nevada Pale). We kicked back waited for the show to start. It was a older crowd, and many of the folks had Paul Thorn stories to tell. Paul and the band came out exactly at 8:00 (I love people that are on time:) and he immediately apologized for wearing an ugly shirt.

He said he’d gone out for a run that afternoon, come back to the Little Fox, and was bummed that there was no shower – so he’d taken what he called a “whore bath,” where you clean yourself with paper towels and water. Then he discovered that the venue didn’t have an iron to press his shirt for the show, so he had to wear a shirt that he could pull directly out of his suitcase, and didn’t need ironing. It was an interesting shirt…

He played almost all of the new CD, but the cuts sounded polished, like they’d been playing them for years. Paul sang an acoustic set in the middle of the show, to spell the band, and he played one of my favorite unrecorded tunes, “Might as Well Stay Married.” One of the lines goes “I couldn’t get laid when I was single, if you threw me in a women’s prison, so I might as well stay married.”

All in all, the band played for two solid hours, without a break, and it was the best show I’ve seen Paul put on. After the show, Paul met with crowd to sign CDs and take pictures. He is a gracious guy and took the time to chat individually with everyone who wanted to meet him.

Me and Paul. Aren’t you glad I Photoshopped out the bloody eye?

Brenda and Paul

My autographed CD

We were on the road by 10:15 p.m. and home a little after midnight:)

Related posts:

1. Paul Thorn in Nacasio
2. Sold Out!
3. Paul Thorn at the Little Fox Theater

On a completely different note, when I woke up Saturday morning, eager to brew the Belgian Strong, I noticed that one of my eyes was red – like a small blood vessel had burst, but it didn’t look too bad. My eyes are often pretty funky looking and red after taking a shower, so I didn’t think a whole lot about it. But within an hour or so it kinda blossomed (if you look carefully at Saturday’s pictures you can see it:) and over the next day it started looking pretty bad. Brenda suggested that if it didn’t get better I ought to call the optometrist’s office and see what they had to say. By Sunday, it looked bad and I had pretty well decided to call the eye Doc on Monday morning.

I called this morning and they reassured me that the burst blood vessel wasn’t dangerous, or even that urgent, but I could come in if I was worried. A strange coincidence, I’d planned on getting an appointment for a regular check-up this week since I’m on spring break. Of course, they had no last minute appointments available, but put me on the “call list.” Well, I got a call about 3:00 p.m. today saying that they had a cancellation for 4:00 p.m., so I jumped at the opportunity:)

The doctor looked at it, laughed (he’s an old family friend:), and said I had a good one indeed!

It may take as long as a month for all the blood to drain out and make the eye look normal again. Great…

Tomorrow is a full day. We drop Brenda’s Jag off in Livermore to get worked on, I have a leather jacket to return to Wilsons in Pleasanton, then it’s off to EJ Phair (they currently have Drakes IPA and Schooners IPA as guest handles – yum!) in Concord – and a quick trip to MoreBeer. Once we pick up Brenda’s car, we’re heading down to Redwood City and the Paul Thorn show. Life is good!

Related posts:

1. Next up – Belgian Strong Golden Ale
2. Strong Golden Showers…
3. Off and Running…

Back to homebrewing! I pulled the two 1388 smack packs out of the fridge this morning, broke open the nutrient pack and left them on the counter all day. They bloated up the best I’ve ever seen Wyeast smack packs perform. I made the starter, pitched both of the smack packs, oxygenated the starter wort, and set it off on the stir plate. I’m expecting this starter to take off like crazy, and still give me time to feed it a couple times before Saturday’s brew day.

And yea, that’s a bottle of Meantime IPA

Related posts:

1. Paul Thorn in Nacasio
2. The Day After…
3. Paul Thorn at the Little Fox Theater