Archive for category beer

a san diego vacation and what we will put in our bellies…

ahhh…the ocean. sitting on the beach, drinking a cup of coffee and reading a magazine or just hanging with some great friends that we love and miss. we are so excited to be heading to san diego in just ONE WEEK! san diego may not seem like that big of a deal, but consider this…we haven’t been back since we moved over 3 years ago. yup.  life kept throwing stuff at us that has made us cancel numerous trips to san diego, and a certain someone (brian james barker) still doesn’t have high hopes that we are going to show up this time. i believe there is money riding on this one. well, get ready to pony up that fiddy bucks to your lovely wife, cuz we are a comin’.

as most of you know, daniel and i love us some good food. and of course half of a vacation is what you eat and drink while you are there, and since we lived there for 3 years, we have a long list of places we want to visit. now, we realize that we will only be there for 5 days, and that if we go to all these places we will be non stop eating from the time we get off that plane until they roll us back onto it on tuesday. we shall give it our best shot and squeeze as much good food as we can into our visit between lounging on the beach and doing a little shopping… wish us luck.

it goes a little somethin like this…

***Tiny’s- in OB- our favorite hangout bar. this is where we hung out most weekends and definitely on sundays for football  and breakfast..and sometimes lunch.. and then even dinner once or twice ( in the same day). and yes, there actually is a “Tiny” and yes, he’s awesome.

***Hodad’s- burger place in Ocean Beach, shirt and shoes totally optional since its a short stroll from the beach, as seen on food network, massive gut bomb but oh so delicious

***Point Loma Seafoods- best effin’ clam chowder and crab cake sandwiches around. hands down.

***Stone Brewing- great beer + food, need i say more?

***Parkhouse Eatery- yummiest breakfasts in San Diego, Hash House a Go Go is a close second

***World Curry- in PB, delicious and inexpensive curries and curry packets (curry and cream cheese in a pastry pocket and deep fried, oh my)

***Ponce’s- mexican food in Kensington which was right across the freeway from where we lived and this became our neighborhood fave. there were times that we visited this place for dinner and then the next day for lunch

***Pizza Port and Bottle Shop- mmm…pizza and beer.

***Sushi Deli II- downtown sushi, yum yum.

***Extraordinary Desserts- the most beautiful, rich, delicious, and expensive desserts in the area. what, $14 for a slice  of Tiramisu and a cup of straight-from-the-islands Kona Coffee? Yes, please.

So, for the next week until we depart, we will be eating nothing but salads and carrot sticks, and maybe a sugar packet or two, to make room in our bellies for all the good food to come.

We also want to visit Balboa Park, they have a great Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA), Botanical Gardens, and its just so pretty there. A few hours of some shopping with Mary would be great, too. We will be hanging out on the beach as much as humanly possible. We’re gonna try to get Daniel a tan. We will be staying at Chez Barker (thanks, guys!) and our friends Ryan and Lori and little Jack will be making the trek to come see us. We can’t wait to see them and meet their little guy! Great friends, great food, the ocean, cocktails…who could ask for anything more????

And there better be sunshine. Or we’re crackin’ skulls.

I’d rather have a beer

beerAs many of you know, I like beer. I’ve been homebrewing, inconsistently, for more than 2 years. I will never turn down an opportunity to hit up the Taproom at Sierra Nevada. And I’m always willing to try new beers. Unfortunately, living in a small town like Chico has its downfalls (I know! Who knew?). One such downfall is a lack of variety for certain products which, oftentimes are readily accessible in places larger than the Chico/Durham Metropolitan Area.

Variety in beer is one of those things that Chico just lacks. Sure, Mangrove Bottle Shop has a good selection. So does Raley’s. But, in comparison to places like Portland and Seattle, they just don’t cut it. Places like the ones described in this post at The Champagne Of Blogs (heh, you like that?) are a complete fantasy in Chico and I wish that wasn’t the case. There has got to be enough demand in Chico to make at least one of these types of store feasible, right? I mean, I know every single person in the Chico Homebrew Club would stand in line to visit places like those and surprisingly that amounts to more than 6 people. Half of my friends would at least try it out. Read the rest of this entry »

food, family, and cheese!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving full of too much food and too much family. We were extremely excited this year because we were able to host our very first Thanksgiving. Jackie’s parents, Julie and Glen came over and everyone brought a dish. As mentioned earlier, we were planning on deep-frying the turkey, but when we went to buy the oil to fry this bird, it was ridiculously expensive so we had to pass on frying it and decided to roast it. Holy crap was this a good turkey. We had all the other traditional fixin’s and everyone, unsurprisingly, gorged themselves on wayyy too much food. It was awesome.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we hit the road for a trip to the majestic town of Roseburg, Oregon. Oh but wait.. My car, which was supposed to have been fixed 3 times by now, began to act up just outside of Corning. Luckily, Jackie’s dad had offered up his truck in case there was crappy weather, so we had to make a pit stop in good ol’ Palo Cedro.

Back on the road, we drove to Ashland and went to lunch at Standing Stone Brewery. The food and beer were decent; nothing spectacular but it was worth the $5 for the sampler and it gave us a good idea for the trip back (more on that in a bit).

We got back on the road and finally arrived at my mom’s (after a minor detour thanks to Google Maps). Holy crap my nephew is huge! He just turned 3 and looks like he could easily be 4. He is just about the cutest kid ever, even if he does look just like my brother (heh.. Hi Branden!).

It was a lot of fun spending time with my mom, Branden and Noah. It had been way too long since we’ve spent that much time together and I can’t even remember when the last time we enjoyed each other’s company for a holiday.

We had an early Christmas this year and were extremely thankful that we were able to enjoy watching Noah rip open presents and even though it was the first weekend of December, we all felt that the day was very “Christmas-y”.

We packed up and left Tuesday morning and were excited for small pit-stop for the trip back. From our lunch at Standing Stone Brewery we noticed that the cheese on our burgers was from just up the road at Rogue Creamery. After getting directions online, we drove to the creamery.

I’ve never been to a creamery but I do love me some cheese. As soon as you walk in there is a big window into the room where all the magic happens: Cheese! I wasn’t familiar with Rogue Creamery and didn’t know that they specialize in blue (or is it bleu?) cheeses. The had some samples set out and they were all really tasty. I especially liked the Smoky Blue (cold-smoked over hazelnut shells) and the Pesto curds (un-aged cheese mixed with pesto).

We then moved on to the case of cheese. We tried the newly crowned “World’s Best Blue Cheese” and hot-damn was that good.. We had some other extremely tasty cheeses, and even nibbled on some sort of “stinky” cheese that tasted like a foot and some goat cheese that did not.

Unfortunately we arrived there before the winery and chocolate shops, located just next door, were open and had to hit the road. And it’s a good thing they weren’t open, otherwise we may have needed to stay the night to take full advantage of all of their tasty treats.

We finally made it back to Chico and unpacked our bags, exhausted. We ended the long weekend of good food and family with some Pasta-Roni and frozen corn, too pooped to exert any effort of going to the store for groceries.

All in all, it was a great extended Thanksgiving weekend. Jackie and I both enjoyed hanging out with our families, cooking and eating really good food, and all of the stops in between. Personally, I’m just thankful I had such a great partner-in-crime to enjoy every moment of it.

eff yeah! turkey day is here!

Holy crap guys! You’re totally jealous! Turkey day is Thursday and I’m deep-frying the turkey!!!

That’s right.. I’m frying the turkey. The beautiful thing about getting toys to brew beer is that I bought a turkey fryer setup so I can boil large quantities of liquid, and as it just so happens, deep-fry turkey!

Don’t worry though. Because Jackie is starting a daycare, we’ve got a first-aid kit and a fire extinguisher handy and she’s up-to-date on her CPR training. We’re in good hands, folks.

In addition to deep-frying the turkey, we’re also going to brine it. That means we’re going to soak it overnight in a salty-sugary-flavory water solution. This is supposed to help keep the turkey moist and flavorful when cooking. You can brine your turkey even if you’re not frying it. Its not too late! Just look on Epicurious or FoodNetwork for “turkey brine” recipes and you’ll have a bunch to choose from. I chose one of Alton Browns brine recipes which include honey and vegetable broth which should be pretty simple. All you need is a big bucket or ice-chest to let the turkey soak overnight. Rinse it off and pat it dry on Thursday and cook it however you want to cook it. Did I mention I’m deep-frying ours?

I’m sure Jackie will enlighten you to the rest of our Thanksgiving Day menu but I was so excited I wanted to let you guys know right away.

Oh yeah, we’re also going to crack open my Hopburst Ale that I brewed recently with Josh and Scott. I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes as well as how kick-ass the turkey is (cross your fingers I don’t eff it).

UPDATE
Okay so deep-frying the turkey is a no-go. Trying to buy the damn peanut oil the day before Thanksgiving costs more than the effin turkey itself. And because we’re trying to “save the erf” we paid a pretty penny for our free-range, organic, twig & berries, hippy turkey. Sorry to disappoint you guys but ever since then I’ve been like, “eff deep-frying turkeys”.

mmm.. beery

I bottled my most recent beer on Sunday. I’m not sure what to call it though. The style is what is called a “Hop-Burst Ale”. Normally, when you make beer you put hops in near the beginning, the middle and the end of boiling all of the ingredients. The hops that are added at the beginning of the boil add most of the yummy bitter flavor in beer, but with the Hop-Burst Ale, you only add hops from about the middle of the boil onward. So you get a very hoppy flavor and aroma, but less bittering.

I just had to have a taste of this beer when I bottled and boy-oh-boy is it hoppy. It turned out just like I planned, lots of hop flavor and aroma, not-so-much bitterness. The hops flavor still needs to mellow out for a few weeks while it sits in the bottle to carbonate but come Thanksgiving I think it will be a kick-ass beer. And if there’s still some left by Christmas time, look out man cuz its gonna be the kick-assiest.

I should also note a couple things on this batch of beer. Scott and Josh helped me out big time. I love being able to have some friends over when making beer. Not only does it take some of the stress off me having to do everything myself, but spending some QT with friends is what life is all about (yes, I said QT). I think from start to finish it took just about 3.5hrs to make this batch of beer. Good times.

Also to note is that I love having cool gadgets to make my life easier. Mr. Cervantes himself was so kind as to donate his little box-freezer to me when he came up in August. And with the oodles of gift certificates for the Home Brew Shop that I received for my birthday, I was able to buy a temperature controller for the freezer. This allows me to manually set a constant temperature for the freezer to anywhere between 20 and 80 degrees. So once my batch of beer is ready to ferment, I just plug the thing in and the freezer stays at whatever temperature I want (in this case, 65 degrees). Gone are the days of leaving my beer in the bathtub or the closet to weather the temperature swings of the house. This isn’t so much of a problem now that the weather is cooler, but come summertime, this is going to be the best gift ever. Thanks Matt!

So now, once again, I need to figure out what I want to make next. If I can get my ass in gear, I just might be able to get another beer ready to drink for Christmas.

we’ve got some drinking to do

I just ran across this article (via Brookston Beer Bulletin) – click on the “Slide show” link a little ways down for the actual list. It looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us. Who’s coming with me?

Who really works on a Friday anyways?

Because its Friday and my brain is telling me its Happy Hour, I’ll provide you guys with a little afternoon reprieve from those last few, and seemingly long, hours of work.

Here’s a list of some movies, books, music and websites I’ve been checking out recently. Enjoy.

Happy Friday Everyone!

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Hot-Lanta, here I come

So after tirelessly researching all there is to do in Atlanta, I’ve decided that there is nothing to do in Atlanta. Which is weird because why would millions of people live in an place with nothing to do? Anyhoo. So unless somebody can convince me otherwise, there are 2 places I’m going to visit while I’m in good ole Hot-lanta.

  1. Fat Matt’s Rib Shack
  2. 5 Seasons Brewery

There’s also Sweetwater Brewery that I wanted to check out, but apparently its just a brewery and not a restaurant or brewpub, so that’s out, though I will try to get some of their beer.

And I guess since there’s nothing to do besides checking out these 2 places, I’ll just drive really slow from one to the other then call it a day. Okay, maybe I’ll drive downtown, and I still might take that Segway tour, but we’ll see.

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Bullets, yet again

Alrighty folks.. let us get started.

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Oh Heineken..Must you tease?

This is the coolest invention ever.. EVER!

Let me start by saying that the 5-Liter DraughtKeg is freaking sweet. Heineken seems to be “thinking outside the box” when it comes to packaging their wares and I applaud that. The Heini-Can, DraughtKeg and now this are completely innovative and, unfortunately, I don’t see any breweries doing that. I tip my cap to you Heineken.

Unfortunately, Heineken blows. Which may be why they continue to come out with these things. Their beer sucks and they need a way to stay “hip” and/or “cool” with “the kids”. The last time I drank Heineken was after Ryan & Lori’s wedding in a hotel room and I was completely plastered, and even then I remember thinking, “Man, this tastes like butt.” Every other brewery spends their time perfecting their beer (sounds crazy huh?) to which re-inventing the wheel, or the bottle in this case, seems rather pointless.

For those of you keeping score at home, here’s the breakdown:

Heineken Innovation? Good
Heineken Beer? Bad