beernesday

at ska brewing

just before i leave for a long weekend in portland (on the bolt bus!!) lemme leave you with these lovely pics of bridget and i taking a sneak sip of our brew "ass penny stout" its very young yet (just 10 days in the bottle), but it has potential! needs more carbonation, needs some sweetness removed and please beer gods, take away the banana flavour! happy canada day!

damn busy days at work getting in the way of my blogging! here's the rest of my seattle post (finally) sunday: elysian capitol hill: i was a little hungover from an accidental whisky episode on saturday night (the accident was forgetting i was in america and a simple shot of whisky is never just a little shot of whisky - this one had to be six ounces at least...) and just couldn't get my shit together to enjoy the pride parade and ensuing street party so we got away from it all at elysian its a great big room with high ceilings with open duct work and floor to ceiling windows overlooking the street it was just what the doctor ordered a pint of the space dust ipa and some fish tacos fixed everything that ailed me! the specialty beer menu: and the regular menu: and while in rome... i brought home a few bottles too:

well there goes the rest of grupo modelo being swallowed up by ab inbev (good thing i stopped drinking their beers a while back...)

georgia strait article about portland craft

10 great craft beer holiday destinations which includes both seattle and portland! tacofino opening a restaurant in vancouver and will be serving tofino brewing homebrewer's association top picks for beers and breweries beer iphone cases

got cancelled on last night so rather than go home and do all the stuff i should have done with a free night i went out drinking with bridget! we started at bitter where she had the flight of from left to right: lighthouse switchback, driftwood fat tug and alameda yellow wolf ipas isn't it pretty? there was another, boozey flight on offer as well but i went for a glass of the elysian prometheus ipa (still felt like i was in seattle, you know?) it was a good decision i like the prometheus! from there we went to st. augustine's for the cask of storm's masala ipa a lot like james' basil ipa, it was a pleaser! not very carbonated, not overly spiced, it was just right all in all a successful night of drinking and i made it home in time to do a load of laundry!

i had a lovely weekend in seattle a weekend is never long enough so there wasn't a whole lot of beer tourism on my part but i got in as much as i could! saturday: pike brewing: i was looking for breakfast at 11:00 but they just have a lunch and dinner menu so i made do with a pretzel and xxxxx stout mustard, with a cup of their crab chowder which were quite delightful - yay oyster crackers! (deschutes' pretzel is better though...) i started with the seasonal space needle ipa pike beat out the competition to win the rights to brew the beer for the space needle's 50th anniversary dry-hopped to heck, it features centennial, cascade, columbus, chinook and summit shockingly enough for seattle the sun disappeared and it started to torentially downpour what else to do but stay and have a few more beers?? next up, the imperial ipa which at 8% is served in a 12oz pour the space needle ipa is supposed to be golden, but i didn't really see a colour

just before i head out to seattle here's the brand spanking new portland craft blog !

why cans are taking over the craft beer world

seattle this weekend!! portland next weekend!! that means 24 bombers of american craft beer can come home with me!!

softball is wreaking havoc on my cask night schedule no cask this week for me but last thursday i managed to get to the yaletown for the vanilla mint brown ale cask not at all my thing - glad i had a sip of ryan's first! i tried the current seasonal, an esb very butterscotchy on the nose so much so that i couldn't get past that to properly give the beer a chance diacetyl doesn't float my boat, alas

hahahaha! when you're on granville street and you ask what ipas they have and they tell you alexander keith's

yay for moon under water adding veggie and celiac options to their new menu!! NEW MENU AT MOON UNDER WATER! We've kept your favourites but added some tasty new ones - including more vegetarian and celiac friendly options. Take a sneak peek at the menu and make sure to stop by to try out something new: like our new and improved (vegan and wheat free) veggie burger or our new trio of homemade and delicious dips (perfect for sharing!)

want to be r&b's new office manager? check the craigslist ad and apply! joe wiebe on central city's imperial ipa abbey beer makes a comeback in england grilled beer corn recipe beer that has gone to the dogs five things dogfish head wants you to know about aging beer just another beer blog says shut up about craft beer being expensive and lastly, ewwww, rogue to brew beer from beard yeast

i got snap'd at the #yvrbeertweetup at smiley's pub last month check it out! from the print version from the website

its true! stop the presses! we finally bottled our first batch of homebrew! after doing almost everything either wrong or the hard way, our brew turned out quite well a little bottle conditioning and it should be very drinkable thank the beer gods! we're calling it "ass penny stout" after the story matt told us when we put pennies into the boil to prevent boil-overs, and the fact that we just kept pulling stuff out of our asses to make this brew actually happen its a pretty brew - dark as night the bottles of ass penny stout it took us all day saturday, but we got the bottles sterilized and sanitized, the bung out of the carboy, the dextrose into the beer and the beer from carboy into bottles and capped 'em. cleanliness is next to godliness in beer-making bridget puts a bottle in the pot to boil the bejesus out of it! checking to make sure the bejesus has in fact been boiled out! me, i was in charge of putting the sterilized bottles in

the freshly transplanted (yet again) hops are not doing very well one bine is dead the other has seen perkier days... at least the rest of the plants seem to be happy in their new home 

apparently the best combination since peanut butter and chocolate (but not on this vegetarian's list of things to bake) beer and bacon cupcake recipe (it says that its a "skinny" recipe, so i suppose putting bacon on top won't actually kill you...)

cheers! photo credit: chris singh for camra vancouver

strong and strange:

things are getting interesting over at elysian this is what they posted on facebook today: Time for a game of CLUE. Or CSI. Not sure, but the July Apocalypse beer just got more interesting. and this month's beer of the apocalypse:

this should make it a whole lot easier to get from vancouver to portland for some yummy craft beer bolt bus vancouver-seattle-portland or to seattle, where i am headed next weekend don't know how many breweries i will be able to hit as its just a quick trip... but imma do my best to get in as much craft beer as possible both into my belly and into the car to bring home with me!

local joe wiebe's take on navigating b.c.'s ale trail a run-down of b.c.'s newest breweries and what it takes to open one and he's got two books in the works:   Craft Beer Revolution: An Insider's Guide to BC Breweries (Douglas & McIntyre, Spring 2013) Tales from Brewery Creek (Anvil Press, Fall 2013)

beer infused pickles? with hops? i'm in!!! dogfish head collaborates with pickle company

okay, ball was fun last night i'm just a lazy ass for wishing it had been rained out... and if we didn't have our finals tournament on july 21st, you know that i'd be hopping on a ferry over to victoria to attend hopoxia It's back!! Our 2nd annual BC Celebration of Hops is going down in our back lot on July 21st from 3pm-7pm . It's a beer tasting festival that proudly lends its weight to the hoppier side of the scale. This year is sure to be bitter and better than ever with the following brewers descending on our back lot armed with their favourite hop-infused brews: Hoyne Brewing Co. Driftwood Brewing Co. Canoe Club Brewpub Vancouver Island Brewing Co. Moon Under Water Brewpub Lighthouse Brewing Co. Spinnakers Brewpub Salt Spring Island Brewing Co. Tofino Brewing Co. Wolf Brewing Co. Whistler Brewing Co. Howe Sound Brewing Co. Central City Brewing Co. Granville Island Brewing Co. Tree Brewing Co. Coal Harbour

i don't wanna play ball tonight no excuse this time (no cask i can't live without trying...) just not feeling it but the weather, while far from delightful, does not look like it is bad enough to call games i feel like its still winter no motivation at all these days blech

the finger crossing worked my softball game got rained out last thursday however... i wasn't specific enough with the universe in my wishing i ended up having to work some overtime which meant i missed out on the basil esb cask at the yaletown afterall doh! i rescued my lousy evening by heading off to the alibi room for some tofino brewing spruce tip ipa cask and dave varga's taylor's crossing is dead ipa, and quality time with my personal viking i tell ya, everyone needs to get themselves a personal viking - they rock!! i found the spruce tip ipa cask a bit thin maybe it aged a little too long?  or too little? i dunno, i just recall the one at hoppapalooza being the nectar of the gods and this one wasn't quite there tofino brewing spruce tip ipa cask dave varga's taylor's crossing is dead, long live taylor's crossing ipa was delightful too bad taylor's crossing is dead and this brew isn't going to be a regular one taylor's

the poor beleagured hops we're growing in bridget's back yard got moved again! these poor little troopers have been moved three times now (rhizomes culled from an east van garden, planted at bridget's by the fence a week before the neighbours tell her they're going to put in a new fence, moved to the garden patch where they spent a year before being moved to their current home in the new raised bed) the hops had a hard time growing last year - crappy soil, not enough sun so a major work party happened this weekend to fix that situation! woo hoo, i got to drill! we built a raised garden bed and filled it with 2 yards of stinky soil (i used power tools!! bridget and the viking did the heavy work) the garden frame filled to the brim with stinky soil the hops in their new home and what did we drink while doing all this yard work? central city ipa and pale ale it does a body good! what did we drink after doing all the yard work and resting on ou