brewing talk: siphoning

so, my friend eric and i are making some amber ale. this was the simplest kit available to us, and since we'd never done it before, we figured it was a good starting point. all the boiling of wort and such went off pretty much without a hitch. we had some beer in a big bucket for like a week, which we then needed to transfer to a glass carboy.

this ended up being, surprisingly, the hardest part.

this may have something to do with the fact that we did it completely wrong. the thing we thought was for filtering sediment was in fact an airlock; this resulted in us having to restart the transfer of beer like ten times, and eventually we thought we were doing something wrong (we were), but the way in which we tried to fix it resulted in worse transfer, and eventually spilling a bunch of beer all over the floor.

protip: if you plan on brewing beer, use the internet to watch someone do it first.

beer talk: taras bouba

right, so, the first couple of times i had this beer, i was all, 'what's the deal with taras boulba? everyone is talking all kinds of wonder about it, i don't get it.' i don't know what was wrong with me. maybe i'd ruined my tastebuds temporarily on big beers? i'm not sure. i've since done a complete one eighty on this guy, with the locable barrel holding father throwing a barrel at his son for marrying a jew. true story. there's a film with the same name.

so, this is a low alchohol belgian that really you can't find anywhere unless you are maybe having a deal with dan shelton of the shelton brothers where you go to his house and clean the place up and maybe on occasion throw in a hand job or something like that. it has a slight bitter smell, maybe there's some wood in there? or vinegar? or maybe i'm just making up smells to sound like i know what i'm talking about.

the taste is something else. it's really light and smooth, but with a big hop bite on the front. but not in the way you normally think of it, because most joe beer fags like myself probably associate big hops with big abvs. this is a much crisper kind of hop taste to it; it's like maybe you're trying to feature hops in a way which is not overpowering. and, like i said, it's low abv, so you could sit around and drink it all day if you could find someplace that won't charge you a billion dollars for a bottle.

beer talk: dogfish head 90 minute

so, for the longest time, this was one of my standbys. all sorts of hops everyplace. well balances, all that other good stuff. then the hop shortage hit, and for like six months, it was completley undrinkable. it tasted like way too much sour malt. did they have a bad batch? did they tweak the recipe too hard? i don't know, but it wasn't just me.

but now i'm having a draft of it, and the fond memories i once had have returned. it's got a nice wood smell to it. i think it's still heavier on malt than it used to be, but the distinctive hop bite has come back, alebit subdued.

so, if you have been avoiding this one for a bit (and i know some people have), they managed to mostly fix it. not what it was, but still a really nice double ipa. good job, sam. i will not yell at you if i see you again.