Beer Tasting and Power Outage

Last Wednesday we had a beer tasting. Myself and my friend Clay had 4 of our beers on hand at my place, and our friends Tom and Steve brought over 3 of their own. We even bought a few cheeses to go with the different styles of beer, and grilled some hot dogs and burgers as well.

It went over really well, I was pretty impressed with their beers. They have been brewing for about 6 months (probably a year for Clay and I). They've had some struggles and almost quit a few times, but I really enjoyed their beers. Their stout was very flavorful and chocolaty. Their grapefruit ale tasted like it should have, and though I don't enjoy grapefruit, I did enjoy this beer. And finally, their maple syrup golden ale didn't really turn out as good as expected. They had some carbonating problems that hurt this beer, and despite 3 separate injections of maple syrup, it had no maple syrup flavor evident at all.

On our end of the tasting, we served our "dark witbier." It's kind of a new thing going on in Montreal/Quebec right now, based on some old recipes. We looked at a base recipe for this Belgian beer in a magazine and boosted the abv to 6.5%, changed the amount of coriander, dried licorice root and star anise as well as the time we added it to the boil. We also added our own little touch, using honey tangerine peels in the boil. This really made the beer, it is so refreshing and has a great Belgian yeast taste. The small amount of hops we used are just for balance. Very happy with how it turned out.

Our second beer was our hoppy red ale, or "Indiana Red Ale" IRA. Kind of a long story about the naming of that beer, so I'll skip it for now. This is a pretty solid red ale, very flowery aromas and pungent, almost smooth hopping, though it is very hoppy. Really good, off hand I think it's 6% abv.

We then went with our Imperial Stout. This was 8% abv, boosted by a little late sugar addition bc we weren't efficient enough with our grains. Vanilla lactose and coffee were added, the former at the flameout, the latter after the second ferment right before kegging. It's a very good beer, the coffee amount was very key this time. We added a little less lactose than our last stout, at the same time as the coffee. It wasn't very evident in the beer, however. I was pretty happy with our latest stout, I think we're only one or two batches away from our "ideal" stout. I think we're going to boost the chocolate malt, lactose and alcohol in the next batch and add some orange peels to make a little "orange chocolate dessert stout." 11% ABV sounds about right for a nightwarmer.

Our last beer was our previous "milk/coffee stout" that was 6%. It's very roasty and the coffee is really evident. There are strong hints of vanilla and perhaps some sort of dark fruit in it. Good beer, but more of a specialty beer for us rather than our "holy grail stout."

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So as you might recall, I have a 150 games a week requirement for myself.

Well, I had 10 games in by early Saturday afternoon, then went to pick up my mom's car at the auto shop and bring to her house. Turns out a huge line of storms were hitting and I ended up staying there for like 3-4 hours. An F1-F2 tornado swept through the area, damaging a lot of neighboring towns along the path, also knocking out the power in my town. We saw the huge funnel pass right over my mom's neighborhood, I was out back watching it with my brother. Leaves were falling from the sky, as well as the occasional stick.

The point is, I fell a little short with my games. I ended up at about 130 I believe, and would've had my goal if I wasn't screwed by our power problem. My town wasn't even hit with high winds or really much lightning, our power just goes out way too much.

I ended up spending the night on our deck. We picked up some firestarters and put them in our little tiny grill and made a fire. My buddy and I got a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label and just bullshitted out there all night. Two guys from a few houses away that I know from high school came by as well to hang out for a bit. All in all the night was somewhat salvaged.

Our power was restored sometime between 3-5am, but went out this afternoon again for a few hours. We didn't even have storms today.

I went golfing this afternoon after a little bit of a rain delay, and on the 6th hole about 30 minutes south/west of my house we could see huge damage from the tornado. It touched down about 100 yards from the golf course, leveling a house, a barn, power lines and trees. It was pretty crazy.

I shot a rough 111, but this is a much harder course than we usually play. Still, I think I had 3 drives over 150 yards, I was just all over the place with my drives today. Nubbed a few, got under a few others and popped em up, just couldn't get it right until the last 3 holes. On the last hole I cracked the ball about 230-240 down the middle through a choke in the fairway. I always manage to hit a good drive on this hole, but this one was probably my best drive of the year. I've been using a 3 wood to drive the last few times out, my driver is messed up and I need to get a new driver head.

I also sunk an 80 foot or so putt from the fringe today, if it weren't for the fact that I was on the fringe and the ball hit the pin and went in I'd of probably been off the green. My speed was just way too fast but my line was pretty good for the speed. That saved me a bogie, ha.

Back to poker, I'm going to try to add the games that I missed due to the storm to the rest of my 3 weeks of the month. I realize I've only accounted for 28 days in my "150 per 7 days" goal for June, so I should also have a few extra days of play. Topping 600 games would be huge for me.

I'll have some other stuff coming up to talk about soon as well.