For his latest photo shoot, the label of a big ol’ Scottish-style beer, he had to put on some weight to play the notorious Fat Bastard – Dr. Evil’s morbidly obese Scottish henchman (originally played by Mike Myers):

His inspiration for bulking up was Robert De Niro in Raging Bull.

Allagash… And Others

One of the best beers I’ve tried in the past month is “Les Deux Brasseurs” – a collaboration between Allagash and De Proef. The label described it as 100% brett fermentation, and this beer did not disappoint. It was very funky with earthy and acidic qualities – very intriguing. It was an awesome brew from start to finish.

Another Allagash creation I tried recently was a cask-conditioned version of their Curieux at The Porter. I found the bottled version of this brew to be absolutely awesome, so I was a bit disappointed when I tried this interesting-sounding variety. Unfortunately, the cask did little for this beer. The low carbonation and slightly warmer serving temperature made the beer taste too sweet and too alcoholic. I think the lack of suds was the worst. Slightly warmer serving temperatures usually do great things for a beer, but the whiskey quality in this brew is strong enough (from its aging in bourbon barrels) that the warmer temperature mainly accentuates the strong taste of ethanol.

Two other really nice finds this past month include Struise Black Albert – a complex and dry “Belgian” imperial stout – and Victory Wild Devil – an absolutely amazing version of their Hop Devil that is fermented with brett (wild yeast). The Black Albert is good but is probably not really worth the exorbitant price ($13 for a 33cl bottle). The Wild Devil, on the other hand, is worth every single penny I dropped for it. I would (will?) buy another.

I still have some other great brews to get to: Stone 13^th Anniversary Ale, Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale, Great Divide 15^th Anniversary Ale, and Smuttynose Baltic Porter among others.

The Fellow Homebrewer

This past week, my family was treated by a visit from a friend of mine from high school. He and his wife came over for Thai food and beer. I had him taste the three brews I currently have on tap, and he in return brought some of his own homebrew to taste.

His brews were really good. First up was a Belgian IPA that was very smooth. It didn’t have the harsh bitterness or clashing combo of licorice esters and over-the-top perfumey hops that I’ve found in some examples of this growing niche style. He brought two bottles – the same batch but dispensed from the keg a few months apart. Interestingly enough, the “older” bottle was a little softer with hop flavor and much stronger in peachy esters. Both were good.

The second brew he brought was an amber ale – like a strong and extra rich Irish Red or “80 Shilling” Scottish Ale. I think it was big enough to perhaps be most at home in the style of American Amber, but that style is so broad that it can include some serious west-coast style hop-bomb interpretations… It had an amazingly rich malt character that I’d love to emulate (I asked him for the recipe).

His third brew was another beauty: an 18-month-old Raspberry Imperial Porter. Even after 18 months, it had an intense raspberry aroma and strong flavor, too. The combo of raspberry on the front with bitter chocolate in the finish was really marvelous.

Hump’s Farmhouse Table Beer

Yesterday, some friends came over to brew some beer. We cooked up a low gravity Belgian-style table beer. I actually got wicked efficiency (no doubt because it was such a small amount of grain compared to all of my other recent brews – the weakest of which has been 6.2%), so the beer should end up around 4.0%abv (whereas I originally planned for less than 4). I may “water” it down a little with an orange and lemon peel tea. I meant to add fresh orange and lemon peels to the boil but completely forgot (doh!). After sampling some later this week (once fermentation is complete), I’ll decide if that sort of citrus character would complement/improve the beer.

Hump’s Old Humperdink Barleywine

Next month I will cook up a big, bad-ass American Barleywine. I’ve got a ton of Zeus leaf hops, nearly 20 pounds of malt, and some dry malt extract (to fortify the mash and insure a silly gravity brew – and to use as a yeast starter since I’ll need a really big population of the little boogers to thoroughly attenuate this monster). I’m hoping that this big brew will be drinkable in time for Christmas.

Actually, I only mention it because from now on I have an excuse (albeit perhaps a weak one for a few years) to celebrate the 420 fest: our newest son, Ewan James Strider Humphries, was born on 4/20 (2009).

This great article describes the issue pretty well. As it turns out, public facilities are in short supply in areas, and public venues that are open late, like pubs, don’t allow non-customers to walk in and use toilets. So the casual pub-crawler may get stuck in a situation where the only way to relieve themselves without making a mess of their outfit is to meander to the nearest unlit alley, doorstop, etc…

Amusingly, in the comments of that article lies a link to this genius idea: the Urilift. From the brief article, it sounds like it is a big urinal (like found in sports venues) that is open to the air, discretely located behind a wall (so as not to be public), and coming up out of the ground (so it can be “stowed away” under the street when not in use). I think I might be intimidated by a public bathroom like this, but less so than by a porta-john.

Interestingly, if you search for the title of this post, “piss drunk”, in Google, the first link is to a demented little Flash game. It isn’t quite as addictive as this one, but is still kind of fun.

The latter game, Home Run 2004, circled via e-mail around my office for a bit. Someone told me the record was 82 meters. I found that hard to believe as it only took a couple of casual tries for me to reach 87 (which means someone out there has probably gotten 8000…).

Look for new posts in the near future. I still haven’t updated the Brews page with the last couple of batches, but I will soon.

Thanks to SliceHost for providing such a great plan for virtual server hosting.

I’ll be moving over some content from my other blog – posts that were mostly about beer and my geeking out over beer. I also hope to have info about all of the beers I’ve made, including comments, tasting notes, and bottle labels of my own design.

Note: This post is the first one made to this site. All posts that are timestamped older than this one were moved over from the other blog.

If you homebrew, then hopefully you will enjoy reading about my travails in the hobby. Please feel free to e-mail me. Be warned that I get a lot of junk-mail at this address, so I may not see your message. Make sure to put something in the subject that I won’t confuse as junk mail (otherwise, I tend to just delete messages from names I don’t recognize).