Founders Breakfast Stout for me and Hermitage Strawberry Rhubarb Sour for Mrs. EO2K, both on tap.

 

Round 2!



Boulder Brewing Nitro Shake Chocolate Porter & Prairie Artisan Ales 4th Anniversary Sour.

 

Whoa, two rounds! Looks like someone's hoping to get lucky tonight.

 

Hey, someone has to drive us home. Plus it's a school night.



Post movie Guinnes. I must admit I enjoyed Dr. Strange.

 

^^ haha . . . I think I actually ate there once when I stayed in town for a Skip Barber School many many years ago.

 

Farmers Union is pretty cool with something like 25 specialty beers on tap, but no real food. XL Public House has some legit stuff on tap plus a super decent collection of bottles, but again, no food. Monterey Coast Brewing (brewpub) has decent food, but most of the beer is kinda 'meh' because the brewmaster/owner is a "screw you guys, I do what I want!" kind of guy and brews 5-6 beers to his own style. The Scottish Red is good and some of his seasonals are OK (marzen, octoberfest, etc) but I have a hard time telling the difference between his lager and pilsner. Dubbers on the other hand has crap beer IMO (other than the Guinness of course) and I think nearly everything on the menu is either fried or will kill you, but its on the corner across from the theater and I just needed food at that point. They occasionally have a tap loaded with something hoppy from Firestone-Walker but its not my first choice.

Damn. I just realized that with the above plus a couple of other restaurants in the area we could almost do a legit pub crawl in Oldtown.

 

Oh! I almost forgot!

I had the Fieldwork Brewing Co. Sushi Beer on Weds at Original Gravity in San Jose with lunch. Glorious Japanese style rice lager with Citra. It would have been amazing with sushi, hopefully this sees more distribution.

https://untappd.com/b/fieldwork-brew...i-beer/1802933

I also had the CHUM with lunch at Gordon Biersch in San Jose on Tuesday. It's definitely something I need to find in bottles, I do love me a red ale.

https://untappd.com/b/gordon-biersch...y-chum/1723841

 

As I recall, that was exactly how I ended up there. Wish I had known about Farmers Union.

 

Its pretty new, I think they opened earlier this year? The tap list is impressive, especially for this town. https://www.taphunter.com/location/f...83371433000960

It fills up with AG industry folks after work on most days so that's cool, but with the seasonal production shift its starting to clear out as most of those guys are moving to Yuma. Hopefully we have enough locals hooked to keep it going and they stick around.

 

Almost a perfect IPA. A little simple, but great flavor.

 

MMMMM ... I'd be all over that Evil Twin - Even More Jesus

 

I was down in socal for turkey and managed to squeeze a few locally acquired bottles into a checked bag for the return home. It just pisses me off to no end that Total Wine carries all this stuff down there, but not up here in the bay area.



BTW- I've never tried the "S.H.I.T." before, but since Black Tuesday is practically impossible to source around here, I thought I'd give its little brother a go.

.

 

Almost forgot to mention, these just came out the other day:

 

I had the Proprietor's and the Coffee on draft over the weekend. The Proprietor's was amazing, such intense flavors.

 

Starting a batch of mead with a friend of mine. We looked at a lot of different recipes but since this is the first attempt at mead for either of us, we're going to keep it simple -- a classic mead with just a few dried elderberries thrown in.

Anyone else like mead?

 

My wife is in the process of making her first batch of mead right now. It fermented for a couple months, now it's in the keg carbonating. It should be ready to try in the next few days.

 

Speaking of bourbon barrel stouts.

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I've got a couple batches of mead under my belt but I'm always willing to learn. What did you guys use for yeast?

I've still got a few bottles of the melomel I made about a year ago, but it tastes like it may have become a bit oxidized. Its not great, but its drinkable.

 

I've made a batch or two in my day. I would recommend a lighter version (7-8 pounds honey) for first batches. Full strength (12-15 pounds honey) can be a bit expensive, and it hurts to mess it up. That said, it's actually difficult to make a bad batch of mead. The lighter stuff is also much more drinkable, being like a white zinfandel wine. Full strength is much more like a brandy.

I used (mostly) the cheapest champagne yeast I could get. Yes, those little dry packets. Works a treat, as our Brit cousins would say. The expensive liquid yeasts did nothing except start faster and finish faster. What's a day or two? Both left lots of sediment (tons of sugars to eat), but the liquid seemed to do a more complete job (less sweet) on the full strength batches.

I almost always added some sort of flavorings. It's kinda boring otherwise. Fruit was always a hit, but I liked the spiced versions; ginger being the favorite.

I use a filter for the water, as mead tends to oxidize easily. At least mine did. Water filter helped immensely. Cheap under-counter setup from Sears did the trick.

 

We just tried my wife's batch last night. It fermented for about 2 months, then we kegged it last week so it has been carbonating for about a week. It was OK, but was very boozy and had a bit of a yeast flavor. I am thinking we will take it out of the kegerator and let it age in the basement for a few months. She is thinking 3-6 months.