Holiday Gift 12-Pack - Old Fezziwig

Noel's dad is a huge Sam Adams fan - basically that is all he drinks anymore when it comes to beer. So after seeing that Sam Adams had a holiday gift 12-pack of "winter classics" for sale, we bought him one as an improptu christmas gift idea. Of course then we found out that he had also seen the gift 12-pack and bought himself one. So not wanting to let the beers go to waste - I decided to not only drink them, but share them here as well.

There are 6 different beers in the 12-pack and 5 weeks till christmas. Since everyone should know what regular Sam Adams tastes like I am going to skip it and describe one of the remaining "winter classics" each week. Feel free to buy your own 12-pack and add your comments.

OLD FEZZIWIG ALE

Starting off dark, which I am guessing is going to be the start of a trend. This beer verges on a porter but is not quite that dark. Good body - roughish mouthfeel - sits somewhere between a traditional brown and porter for my palate - but with a creamy aftertaste. The beer toutes having orange peel, cinnamon, and ginger spices, which are just barely noticible. I think I tasted a little cinnamon. I maybe would have liked a little more spice flavor to settle my own curiosity, but would be wary of too much more. This beer has a little higher alcohol content at 5.8abv, however I would never have guessed it. A nice and filling beer that would be good for the holidays.

On a side note - I kinda wish I would have waited till later on this beer. From the description on the bottle, this beer should be very similar to the holiday ale I am currently making. Would have been curious to try them side by side (I had to drink both bottles to properly assess the Fezziwig ale), which means I may have to buy another holiday 12-pack.

Salt & Vinegar - Archer Farms

So we've been doing all our grocery shopping at SuperTarget as of late. Noel made the decision and it works for me. Target's off-brand is Archer Farms and they make some pretty decent stuff. As far as I can tell they are the only brand that still sells coffee in cans. Turns out they make a suprisingly good salt and vinegar chip too.

Flavor: Good tang - they'll make you sweat a little after the third handful

Texture: Big yet crunchy - nice combo

Overall Impression: Suprised - they are good chips. Will likely get again.

4 / 5

Salt and Vinegar - Kettle

I thought I had caught up and then realized I never did a chip for October - so here it is: Kettle Brand Chips - Sea Salt and Vinegar. If you've never had this brand of chip before - go get some. Their "Spicy Thai" are awesome and their salt & vinegar chips are pretty darn good too. I picked these up at Leon's down the street.

Flavor: Kettle Brand are all about the "sea". These chips are flavored heavily with malt vinegar. The flavor is almost creamy, but with a little bit of tang. For people who love tangy S&V chips, these might be too tame, however these chips should not be underestimated for as thick of a chip that they are - they have a lot of flavor.

Texture: Nice and thick - can be greasy at times, but usually have a good balance.

Overall Impression: Love em. Great alongside fish - these chips make me crave Joe Tess.

4.5/5

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Blowing Off

Brewed a new brew sunday. In anticipation of the holiday season I went for a holiday ale kit from Kirks. Basic recipe - throw in a ton of malt, add extra hops and toss in some spices for good measure. This stuff was thick. Like syrup. Everything went great through the boil - I even chilled it in record time. Then came the siphoning - which sucked. For some reason none of the trub settled out during the cool down, which greatly increased the viscosity and slowed the siphon way down. This effect combined with chunks of floating orange peel getting stuck in my racking cane meant I had to restart my siphon about 10 times before giving up and pouring the wort through a strainer.



The recent cold weather has dropped the temp in our basement to ~60F. I decided to leave the carboy upstairs where it is a little warmer (upper 60s). Unfortunately we don't have a real dark place upstairs as even the closet has a window, therefore I wrapped the carboy in a blanket and stuck it the back hallway.

So far so good. Last night I had to go to the blow-off tube as foam started jetting through my airlock. Apparently 1gal of head space was not enough for this beer. The incessant gurgling was quite nice to fall asleep to. The foaming continued through the night and was still going yet this morning, which really suprised me. I'm guessing I've lost half a quart of beer. I probably could have moved to the airlock this morning, but opted to leave on the blow-off tube just in case. Hopefully it is done by this evening, as I don't want to loose any more beer.

Just like finding a $20 in the coat pocket...

...it's always nice to find pictures on the camera you forgot you took. These are left over from Halloween and Noel / my 1yr Anniversary.

These were taken before / after we took Noel's Brother's Rugrats to Boo at the Zoo. Kirah was a ladybug and Salaya was a pink cat. It was a fun but tiring experience.

The pics below were taken at the Cornerstone Mansion aka The Offutt House aka the bed and breakfast located across the street from the Joslyn Castle. Noel's mom was nice enough to send us some ferns reminiscent of our center pieces from the wedding last year. Sadly these are the only pictures we thought to take.

Wedding Weekend

Man it's tough going back to work on a cold day after a long weekend. Had a good one though - went to 2 weddings. Congrats are in order for Josh / Renae and Emily / Anders. Saw a lot of family and the booze was free, so good times all around. I was DD so it was red wine for me, can't drink it fast so consequently I don't drink much. Both weddings were action packed, mostly in good ways, but in some less good ways as well. I am reminded of an old joke so I will tell tale through it.

A guy moves to a small town with one bar on the corner. He doesn't know anyone there, so bored one night he stops by the bar looking for something to do. After a few drinks he starts chatting with one of the local townies about what there is to do in town. The townies response was: "Well not much, mostly we head down to river and party."
new guy: "Oh yeah, what kind of parties do you throw?"
townie: "The typical - there's some cabins down there and we do a lot of drinkin."
new guy: "yeah..."
townie: "and then there's usually some fightin."
new guy: "huh, that sound's exicting."
townie: "and then eventually there's some fuckin - wanna come?"
new guy: "Sure - who's all gonna be there?"
townie: "Oh, just you and me."

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

It's hard to believe Halloween was one week ago. I wore my PBJT costume to work in addition to my "Old White Male" costume, which was for our friday afternoon office Presidential Debate. A co-worker was kind enough to get this footage.