"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

Would it be wise to open the bottle?

... or so alleges Captured by Porches on the label of this the most recent of their Beers that I discovered while searching the shadowy corners of the Hollywood Whole Foods Beer Aisle.

     I like trying out all the Rye Beers that Captured by Porches makes (My favorite so far being the Schwarz Roggen.) Their Undead Porter was great and had one of my favorite labels of the year. Now this unexpected offering I found lurking nonchalantly next to their Invasive Species IPA and Undead Porter... and, well, It's called Miskatonic Dark Rye and "dedicated to Howard."

     I want to open it now! Alas, it would be unwise of me to drink it all and save none for me other half, who I think will also be delighted by this find! Dude.

     Meanwhile, It may yet be some time before Guillermo Del Toro brings his Lovecraft vision to the big screen, but the HP Lovecraft Film Festival will continue its annual screening of HPL-inspired films to Portland, OR in the spring of 2012.

     Now, go read a book & have a Beer.

     Cheers!

ESB to Awaken, Pumpkin Ale Brewday Forthcoming.

     So tomorrow will be the day my first Homebrew will be "officially drinkable" (you can guess, right, that I've already had a few of them along the way in the name of testing/monitoring progress?) I'm eager to share this thing with friends and family, hopefully no one will be too disappointed with the results! The "Old Druid", as I've dubbed it, wasn't just my first brew but my first attempt at an original recipe. Fairly ambitious, admittedly, for a novice- but what the hell, I'm having fun.

     I've gathered all the ingredients for my next challenge... a Pumpkin Ale. I researched a lot of pumpkin recipes for this and never found any satisfying results because the homebrewing resources online can get a little muddled when it comes to consistency and reliability of recipe styles. Once again I had to gather up as much relevant info as I could and proceed with making my best judgement... and now I will brew my first Spiced Holiday Beer according to my own recipe. (Mental Finger-Crossing Engaged.)

     The Pumpkin Ale Project (which I have dubbed "Grinning Jack") will make use of 4 different specialty grains (and they smell wonderful) on top of the light extract, 3 types of hops (including the homegrown, of course), Spiced Roasted Pumpkin, and Oregon Oak soaked in Spiced Rum(!). The Oak will go into the secondary fermentation stage along with cinnamon sticks to accompany the dry hopping. The hops have been selected not for bitterness and citrusy pungency, but to accommodate a more earthy, spicy balance and allow the spicy, pumpkiny goodness to (hopefully) shine through! (And the Rum and Oak!) I'm reasonably confident I can pull this off... with that small reserve of doubt I always keep in check as a reminder not to get too cocky!

     Ingredients-wise, this has been a spendy project... new Oak chips, the Rum, The Pumpkin and Spices, all the Grain and I almost forgot to get the necessary new steeping bags (ant those are not cheap, either!) I think it is all worth it. This is a hobby I have been wanting to participate in for a long time and the experience of creating a unique Holiday Ale is immensely enjoyable. I've been an avid Beer drinker since the days that a can of  Lucky Lager and Flav-O-Rite Cheese Flavored Snack Crackers constituted breakfast, but now I'm enjoying a whole new realm of great Beer and the thrill of creating my own! (That's got to be worth at least enough XP to get me close to leveling...)

     Cheers!

We Have Slain The Hop Monster!

     When first we set eyes on our new Portland residence, we thought "what a dump, but with potential..." and as we discovered all sorts of odd and bizarre quirks, we noticed this old, limbless trunk with wire fencing around it. It wasn't the only odd, cordoned off section of terrain with indiscernible purpose, and we figured what the hell, lets wait 'em out and see what happens. Well, this one particular tree along the back fence eventually started becoming the ladder for some kind of vine that we couldn't identify. So we continued to do all of our other home and garden activities and ignored it for a long time.
   
     Then, my partner noticed that the leaves had a familiar shape that she had suspicions about... and a session via web browser later we were convinced that we may just have a hop vine growing in our yard (time for a bit of giddy delight). What we could not yet know, however, was the sex of the plant... yes, if it had been a female, there would be no story to tell here because it would have shown off some blossoms and been otherwise useless to the telling of this tale.

     We went to Portland Nursery (we love it) and checked out the hop varieties they had to match up our leaves. It was without a doubt a hop vine, and by our best leaf comparison it looked to be a Magnum variety, which would make an good primary alpha hop when used in the making of potpourri, (wHAt?!?) sorry, I meant BEER. We went home and started thinking "Okay, now what?" I decided in my heart, right then and there, or sometime in that general time period, at least, that if it produced any cones, we were going to use them to make Beer (we'd been planning to start homebrewing for a while, but hadn't yet committed to the supplies to do so yet.) We still weren't so sure about the sex of the plant, so we asked the representative from Seven Dees Nursery (when we went to OMSI After Dark) about what we should look for, and he assured us that if someone went to the trouble of planting hops in the yard, it would most assuredly be a male.

     He was right, soon we had little tendrils with tiny budding cones appearing all up and down that rapidly growing vine. Within a month that 20 foot tall Cedar trunk was entirely enveloped by what we started to dub "The Hop Monster". We watched, waited, and shared big smiles as we watched those tiny little buds start growing from spiky little balls into green petaled balls and then into bright pale green cones! I started doing research into when the right time to harvest would be... and that was actually more difficult than I thought it would be, because I found a ton of conflicting opinions and advice. I decided to take a laid-back approach and sort of took the aggregate view of let them get full and pick 'em before they dry-up.

     Once the cones stated showing a browning trend I started to accelerate the harvest preparation. The race was on to build or buy a food dehydrator (we bought) and pick a good day to start pulling all those vines! As I saw a whole shoot go brown in one day I started to get rather worried and anxious that they would all go without warning and all that anticipation would have been unfruitful.

     So as the day came, we got out the gloves and started pulling, but we had no ladder, no good means of climbing that trunk, and no pole pruner. Yeah, we put a lot of effort in preparing for this harvest operation, can you tell? so we had out our little step-stool, our shrub rake, pruners, and the hoe, and we pulled and cut and unraveled as best we could but we could only get the vines about halfway up. Then our friends showed up. We had offered to give them some of our harvest for making a wet-hopped Beer and fortunately David is a little taller than the rest of us and was invaluable in helping get all but the very top of the trunk cleared! Suddenly we were swimming in hop cones with enough to load up a bag to send as a thank-you and still have loads left over!

     We got a little scratched up and a wee bit warm out in the sun, but we left that thing almost as bare as how we first found it (we will get those other cones down, I swear it.) now the drying process has begun and I'll tell you how they turn out. Next week: we plunge into the Craft of Homebrewing with a heap-ton of homegrown hops... this had better work!

Tri-met forced me to drink Sour Beers.

Really. I finally made it to Cascade Brewing's Barrel House to sample some of their delicious sour Beer. I'm glad I got to stop in and try it, but I really had no intention of going there yesterday. I had no intention of going out for a drink, driving anywhere near the area, killing the battery in the truck because the headlight reminder didn't activate, walking a mile from where I parked (on the North end of the "Goat Field Lot") to get to a volunteer shift at Free Geek, or waiting 40+ minutes for a 15 minute interval Tri-met bus service that told me I could catch the bus a block from my house some 40+minutes earlier than when I walked back home with my son and drove us down so we would be on time and not lose our shift to some walk-in. Hmm, does that adequately address the situation we found ourselves in yesterday?

Source: Oregonian article, October 2010

After the volunteer shift my son and I put in, we discovered the battery in the truck had died because I had left the lights on (my bad, but I have a valid excuse.) I tried calling and texting my spouse repeatedly for quite some time, but to no avail, because she had the sound turned off. I had also tried to contact one of my siblings, who I hoped to catch before he was back over the river from his job in PDX... too late, he got back to me after he arrived home. However, he did offer to head over and help anyway, and after a number of miscommunications he arrived after my other half  was already finally on the way. It was kind of amusing, actually, to see the VW bus parked on the sidewalk with the jumper cables from its passenger side battery passing through the driver's side window to the battery under the hood of the F-150.

We also just happened to be a block away from the Cascade Brewing Barrel House which, since we all had ended up near, seemed like a good place to grab a Beer and a bite to eat after the various frustrating and complicated events of the afternoon.

I had the Spring Gose which had a subtle sour quality and a mellow, yet sturdy backbone with a touch of sea salt that really tied the whole thing together well. I also got to try the darker, tarter Sang Rouge and Sang Royal and they were very tasty, too. You know I'll be heading back. The quesadilla plates were well made also and I will have to indulge in the Black Bean and Hummus Quesadilla Sandwich more fully! I've been meaning to get down to this place for quite some time now and I'm glad to have tried it. This is definitely worth repeating (the Beer and the food, not the driving around to find a parking place where you can kill your vehicle battery and discover that fact multiple hours later.)

So, no thanks to Tri-met. Even though I enjoyed going over to Cascade Brewing after "the Ordeal", I'm still rather pissed about the fucked-up service from my local mass-transit provider (here let me put a "Bird" on that.) I'm also kind of peeved about the faulty headlamp switch in the truck, too, which led to the other half of the cause yesterday. We made it home, though, and enjoyed some relaxation and my son got to set up his "project computer" with a new wireless adapter so he can has connected to teh internets.

Hope your days are going smoother and less frustratingly than mine, Cheers!

OMSI After Dark hosts a Beerfest

OMSI After Dark presents Science is Brewing, a look at and taste of the science behind Beer. $25 purchased admission, a souvenir glass, and 10 tokens for Beer (1 token for a sample up to the line, 4 for a full Pint.) I've been looking forward to this for quite a while and had already purchased the tickets/glass/tokens online.

The premise of Adults Only access to OMSI + Beer from a lot of great breweries + Beer Science Geekery sounded great, however in execution it kind of fell a little short of my expectations. There were some enjoyable Beers being offered (Ft. George's Spank Stout [brewed with chili peppers] and Natian Brewery's Big Block IPA) alongside quite a few familiar Beers (Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Overcast Espresso Stout, Avatar Jasmine IPA.) Most of the Beer selection was made up of worthy but familiar offerings which I did not feel a strong desire to wade the crowd for... which leads to one of my two major complaints.

This is Pre-"OMG it's crowded in here!"

This was a crowded event made even more uncomfortable by the arrangement of the tasting booths crammed into the main lower hallway. It was impossible to navigate from one end to the other without shoving people in line for Deschutes Brewing into the line for Widmer Brewing so that you could have a face-to-face collision with someone coming from the other direction as they were pushing someone from the Oakshire Brewing line out of their way. It started out heavy and seemed to stay at it's peak between 8-10pm. It didn't help that the large exhibit hall on the main floor was closed (in prep for a new exhibit) leaving more people mulling about in the hallway with their Beer rather than moving on to less congested areas (like the Turbine Hall, which at least had space to breathe.)

The second issue I had with the event was that the Beer Science Geekery wasn't as cool as I had hoped it could be. There were some "cute" or interesting presentations here and there throughout the halls, but I didn't need my hair did by the Paul Mitchell students nor did I need a Key Bank logo key chain bottle opener. FH Steinbart and Seven Dees Nursery shared a row of tables that were worth stopping at, and the Walnut Studios folks had some neat Beer transport accessories for show. There was an Ag-Science Prof from OSU discussing Hops and some "Beer-Goggles" you could try in the lobby. The Beer Pong Physics was banal and rather uninteresting. Overall I felt it lacked some of the real nerdiness I was hoping for - more demonstrations and interactivity with something other than lines for the Firestone Walker or Burnside Brewing Tables.  At least the Narnia Exhibit was open and offered a reprieve from the sweaty masses downstairs.

Fortunately, the event offered plenty of quality Beer and the opportunity to wander the aisles of the Science Store with a Beer in hand and no crying children within hearing distance. You didn't have to feel bad about pushing little kids out of the way to play with the brain-teasers or the bottle launchers, either. I did enjoy the Taiko Drummers, they were fun to listen to and observe. The pint glass even has a cute commemorative logo on it. I enjoyed going to the Science is Brewing night, but I hope that in the future iterations of this event a little more emphasis is placed on easing crowd flow and adding a little more thought-provocation to the "Brewing Science" part of the program.

So, What Beer Does Morrissey Prefer?

It started as a mere curiosity, so I Googled it. Ignoring all the hits for Morrissey-Fox Blonde Ale, which has nothing to do with the singer, I pretty much found jack-shit. I don't care for hundreds of reiterations of Morrissey's stage exit after the Beer-throwing incident. I wasn't wanting to speculate on how much Vodka (or Tizer, yeesh!) he consumed before or after a show... I was just curious, does he have a favorite Beer?

http://www.morrissey-solo.com

According to one article Mexican-Americans love Morrissey ... because his favorite Beer is Corona? Now, the only references I've found to support this claim are this interview in which a bottle of Corona is imbibed and a picture of Moz sitting  by the gravesite of Johnny Ramone near an open bottle of Corona. Coincidence?

Doing a little more digging I did find a reference to someone, upon buying Morrissey a beer, being told by bandmate Boz Boorer to just order him a Dark Ale. Then, while perusing a GQ interview, I found this:  ""Bollocks," says Morrissey, setting down his fourth pint of Newcastle Brown Ale." This, to me, seems more like getting somewhere. This is, as yet, the most concrete evidence I have of what Morrissey's Beer preference may be. No one else has really asked: "What is your Favorite Beer?" Maybe that's what I should do... write him a letter or an e-mail asking the man directly.

All I can say with any certainty is that Morrissey is not afraid of the bottle, whatever the contents therein may be, and that ale with dark characteristics has made it into his glass more than once over the course of his lifetime. Now, how's that for investigative journalism? Not good, eh? I agree but sitting here musing over what the former-singer of The Smiths prefers isn't an all-consuming passion or something I get paid to do. So there you have it. Cheers!