Salt and Vinegar - Barrel of Fun

Back by popular demand from a different web site of mine is the Guide to Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips. Once upon a time I decided to try to share my love for salt and vinegar potato chips with the world by trying as many different kinds I could find and rating them. Since my love for these tangy treats began in Minnesota I thought I'd restart my guide while here on vacation.

Barrel of Fun potato chips are made in the great town of Perham Minnesota, which is only a few miles from where my family vacations annually and are the first salt and vinegar chips I ever had. These chips fall in the thin-style category and as far as I can tell are sold only in big bags. Texture: Thin but not brittle. Hold up well and are filling by the handful.
Flavor: Noticible vinegar tang - good balance with salt. Not overly potent but ware on the tounge after a while.
Overall Impression: I may be biased given my history with these chips, but I think they hold up to their name "Barrel of Fun". Not overly expesive chips make these a great buy - if you can find them.

3.5/5

Batchin it with Hefe

Travis's party was a success and so was the beer. I made a keg of Hefeweizen for the party and it turned out well. The beer came from a kit at Kirk's and I added some wit ingredients including orange peel and corriander. I tried something new with this beer - PARTIAL MASHING.

Basically instead of steeping the grains at 150 degrees for 0.5 an hour, I steeped the grains for 1.5 hours at various temperatures. This is supposed to help round out the flavor by fully converting the starch in the specialty grains into sugar. Seemed to work. I did it all on the stove and the temps held fairly well. Afterwards I pulled the grains, which looked kinda like puffed up rice. They gave the impression of well utilization. On the other hand the gravities were the same as other wheat beers I've done without partial mashing so who knows.

The other new thing I tried was force carbonation. I cranked the pressure in the keg to 32 psi and let it set for a week. Halfway through I move the keg from my basement to my fridge after reading that it should have been in the fridge all along.

The beer was good. Well but not over carbonated. Great flavor but heavier than expected. Likely cause was that I had to cut short it's time in the fermentor. The malt flavor overpowered the citrus, but that makes sense cause I was kinda light on the wit ingredients. All in all a good beer.

Brew Crew

Looks like I joined the Brew Crew at the right time. Since joining the Brewers went from a record of 31-28 to 57-43. They are now 1 game behind the cubs and 2 over the cardinals in the NL central and have the 4th best record overall. I don't want to take all the credit, I'm sure the aquisition of C.C. Sabathia had something to do with it, but numbers don't lie.