BAS Bimonthly Belgian Brew - Chimay Rouge

Tonight the Belgian American Society of Omaha Nebraska will have it's inaugural bimonthly belgian beer tasting. This month is Chimay Premiere.
References:
http://www.chimay.com/
The Brewmaster's Table by Garrett Oliver

Debeardation

Fear not - this year's beard is still in full swing. Today's spring like weather and Brunoswim's MFM series reminded me of these pictures I took last spring of the beard removal process. The original plan was to sport both the mutton-chops and stache for a couple days each; however, I chickened out and went right to the stache, which lasted for a weekend.

Star Wars and those Bar Wars

Everyone at my office has been singing this little ditty today by the incredible Bill Murray.

Beer of Today - Kasteel

So I got this "Beer of the Day" desk calendar the other day from Barnes and Noble. It was on clearance for $3 and I needed a calendar for my desk at work anyways, so I figured why not. Today's the first day I've used it and found a beer I recognize from the stores but have never tried - so I decided to do some snooping.

Kasteel is a blonde beer that has all kinds of fruity / nutty / clovey flavors and packs a punch at 11%abv. It is brewed in Ingelmunster, Belgium ina castle that dates back to 1075. The castle was built on the ruins of a monastery inhabited by English monks in 640. They only started brewing in the castle in 1986, but the brewery dates back to 1900.

The thing I found most interesting about the brewery is that it's only a couple miles from the home-towns of both of my great-grandparents, Meulebeke and Oostrozebeke. Seeing as how I probably have distant relatives who drink the stuff on a regular basis, I am definately going ot have to give it a try. Check out their website!

Hop Crisis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did any of you see the hop shortage article in the Omaha World Herald yesterday? Apparently hop prices have gone up about 8-fold lately. I remember hearing there was fear the price of beer was going to go up. This was a while back though, not too long after that fire that burnt down a huge hop warehouse somewhere in the pacific northwest. After not noticing any changes I kinda forgot about it, but it looks like it's going to happen. The big boys aren't really going to be affected, but seeing as how I pretty much only drink ale's anymore, I guess I'll be forking out some extra cash.

Fortunately there hasn't been much change in price for homebrew kits yet. Kirk's kits went up a couple of bucks recently, but that only amounts to about 4cents a beer. If homebrew prices stay the same and store bought prices go up I might have to get another keg.

Milk Crisis!!!

My co-worker sent this out asking if it rang any bells - maybe some of you remember this from long ago. Supposedly it's from sesame street. I personally have no recollection of it as I think it was a little before my time. It's kinda wierd, a little creepy, and sorta makes me want to go pour a glass of nice cold milk.....

After watching the pro-milk video, I saw a link to this anti-milk video and felt compelled to watch. I've never been a fan of the whole growth hormone / faking pregnancy to increase milk production thing. I think this guy is probably full of shit and just trying to sell books. All the same Noel's been buying the organic stuff lately and I think I probably stick with that.

Let the Kegging Commence

I filled my first keg last night. The beer is a Classic Dry Stout from a recipe I got at Kirk's Brew here in Lincoln.

It's going to be tuff to go back to bottles after this. I'm letting it carbonate naturally, so all I had to do last night was add the priming suger and siphon it in over. I did have to do a little extra cleaning of the keg this first time to get all the pepsi residue out. The brunt of it was soaking it for 24hrs. I had to take the intake / outtake off (which were rusted on) and apart to get all the residue off, but again that was just a matter of soaking it. After replacing the o-rings on the dip tube and ball locks, I was good to go.

The beer turned out nice and dark. I'm curious to find out how dry it is. I forgot to give it the precarbonation taste test, so I guess I'll have to wait for it to be done to find out.

Follow Your Folly

For whatever reason beer has become my new hobby. Probably just one of those inevitable things in life. My work, on the other hand, is water resources engineering. So to kick off my new blog, which will most likely be filled with beer and environmental related info, I thought I'd do a post on my favorite brewery.

New Belgium of Fort Collins, CO makes great beer with green technology. They have a related website called Follow Your Folly, which features all kinds of grassroots stuff and is worth a gander. I joined team wonderbike, although I've been slacking of late with the icy weather.

mmmmm

testing 1.2.....1.2.1.2.3.4
feel free to ignore - just have no idea what i'm doing
more posts to come....hopefully