Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Peak 6522

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I was cleaning off my iPhone and I happened to stumble across notes for a beer that I had not previously published – NW Peaks Peak 6522. It was a one-off experimental beer that they produced back in 2013 and I don’t really know much of the details on what the style was or the stats because they just are not in my notes (I don’t know why). So you get to enjoy the notes for what they are, just a flat out description of a beer (After reading what I wrote, I can tell you it is a dark beer and I believe it had the inclusion of almond fondant, or at least that is what my spotty memory is recalling).

The beer pours jet black with a pale white head. Notes of cola, nuts and sesame dominate the beer with hints of caramel – kind of reminds me of a jack and coke. The beer drinks lighter than expected, starting out with hints of caramel before progressing to light roast and mild almonds and finishing slightly sweet with a very long background almond finish. Very well balanced and subtle with amazingly well integrated alcohol. The roasted flavors are a bit more prevalent as it warms, but it is still subtle and balanced.

NW Peaks Peak 6522 reaches the summit and catches 5 sunrises out of 5.

Container Garden Update — June 7, 2014

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous Update here.

For reference, the May 16 picture:

And today, Brussels Sprouts in the foreground:

The basil and tomatoes, the tall plants on the back right are the tomatillos:

The Tromboncino zucchini are starting to latch onto the trellis:

From the deck:

The pea plants are done, pictured is today’s harvest. In total we got around 3 pounds of peas, much of which was eaten right off of the vines. I’m thinking a pea pesto may be on the way:

Bonus pic of the blooming oaxalis:

And the boy cat laying in the sun, inviting ear scratches:

Recommended Game — Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign

by A.J. Coltrane

Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign uses Bejeweled-style tile matching and skins it as a superhero combat game.

To put it another way, you match (say) red tiles. After you’ve matched enough red tiles you can power a superhero ability, such as Iron Man’s Repulsor Blast — doing a great deal of damage to one target. Match a bunch of blue tiles and Black Widow will be able to heal allies. Spider Man can stun the opponent for a few turns given enough green matches. Other abilities include things like board manipulation, or placing counters on the field that blow up after a few turns, or… it’s a long list.

And it’s fairly addictive.

Heroes can get more powerful over time. Most of the loot rewards are either ISO-8 (experience points, basically), which is spent to level up the heroes,

“Covers”, which grant new heroes, or improve existing hero abilities. Naturally, the better covers are also more rare. Basic Iron Man is common, but somebody like Spider Man is pretty rare. To some degree you have to do the best that you can with what you have.

There’s a fairly long “story quest”, and each story “node” offers 3 or 4 potential loot drops, so to maximize the payout it’s a good idea to replay the nodes with the phat loot (or those that reward good covers). There also seems to be a never-ending deluge of new PvE and PvP content — In contrast to many other forms of online PvP, Marvel Puzzle Quest has you fight another player’s team, but not the players themselves. This is nice because you don’t have to wait on your opponent to move, and there’s none of the usual smacktalk. I can always do without the waiting and the smacktalk, so I like the way they’ve implemented PvP.

——

This was an “automatic download” for me. We’d gotten a ton of hours out of the original Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords and Puzzle Quest: Galactrix on the PSP. Challenge of the Warlords worked much the same way, except that it was skinned as a high-fantasy (swords and sorcery) questing game. Puzzle Quest: Galactrix was hexigonal, and featured starship combat.

I threw a little bit of money at this one to unlock additional slots for heroes ($20). It’s possible to pay without playing, but it will take a while to unlock a bunch of slots and have a good stable of heroes. I decided I liked the game enough that the devs deserved some money for a product that I enjoy. I’m ok with that on a limited basis.

Having said that here are two tips if you’re dead-set on not spending a dime:

1) ONLY spend Hero Points (coins) on additional hero slots. Important tip!

2) In Bold — Heroes I’d Keep If I Didn’t Want To Spend Money And Roster Space Is Tight:

1-Star Heroes (common): Iron Man, Storm, Black Widow. I got good mileage out of Juggernaut too. Every 1-star hero will get outgrown eventually. After a month of frequent gameplay I’m only using 2-stars.

2-Star Heroes (uncommon): Thor, Storm, Black Widow. (Storm and Black Widow are more powerful versions than the 1-stars.) If you have extra room then Ares, Wolverine, and Magneto are supposed to be solid. I think most casual players are using some combination of these six 2-star heroes.

3-Star Heroes (rare): Ragnarok is supposed to be good, as are Spider Man, Thor, Black Widow, and Magneto. I only have a couple of these covers, it’s going to be a while before they’re actually powerful enough to be playable.

4-Star Heroes: None, it’ll take too long to get the covers to be worthwhile.

Here’s a link I’m using for recommended builds. It predates the last big nerf, but a good starting point to minimize “wasted” covers.

Highly Recommended.

When Real Life Imitates a Video Game

By Blaidd Drwg

Back in late November, Fresno State was on a roll – they were undefeated and there was talk of a BCS birth. They had just 2 games left, against the then 5-6 San Jose State Spartans, and then the Mountain West Championship game. In case you are not familiar with Fresno State, they run a very high octane offense, finishing 2013 ranked #1 in FBS Passing Yards (at almost 400 a game) and #6 in points scored (at 43 a game). Defense, however was not their strong point and they gave up about 30 points a game.

Rewind back to November 29^th and the San Jose State game. San Jose State is another high-powered offense; ranking #6 is Passing and averaging 32 points a game, coupled with a terrible defense (giving up 35). The game had the making of a video game shootout, which it ended up being. Here are the HALFTIME stats for the game:


	FRES	SJSU
1st Downs	22	23
3rd down efficiency	3-5	5-6
4th down efficiency	0-0	0-0
Total Yards	469	537
Passing	354	481
Comp-Att	22-30	28-33
Yards per pass	11.8	14.6
Rushing	115	56
Rushing Attempts	12	17
Yards per rush	9.6	3.3
Penalties	2-27	3-35
Turnovers	0	2
Fumbles lost	0	2
Interceptions thrown	0	0
Possession	11:33	18:27

The score at the half was 42-41 San Jose State. Combined, both teams managed to rack up just over 1000 yards total offense in just 30 minutes of play. Amazingly, every score in the first half was a touchdown and they were all scored by the offense, so that means that Fresno managed to put up 41 points and 469 yards in just 11 and half minutes of holding the ball. SJSU eventually pulled away and won the game 62-52, ruining Fresno’s BCS hopes, and the teams managed “just” 376 yards of combined offense the rest of the way.

Some other game tidbits:

Three of the 4 punts in the game occurred in the first half
Neither team started any drive in their opponent’s territory until the last drive of the game when SJSU recovered an onside kick at the Fresno 46 and ran the clock out.
The first half had only one drive lasting more than 3 minutes – a 7 play, 77 yard drive by SJSU that took 3:27.
Fresno State only had 1 receiver reach 100 yards despite having 516 team passing yards (SJSU had 3 guys reach that total)

It is fun when an actual football game plays out like a video game one.

The Winter Gardening Catalog Has Arrived

by A.J. Coltrane

The Territorial Seed Co. 2014 Fall & Winter Gardening Catalog arrived in the mail today.

Gah! All of the summer vegetables are just now kicking into gear! It feels like we just got a Christmas catalog or something..

Really though, it makes sense. There are longer season vegetables that will be ready for a Fall/Winter harvest if planted today, or real soon. The catalog includes this nifty Winter Gardening Chart. It includes days to maturity and freeze out temperatures, as well as optimum storage temps and humidities. The chart is exactly a kind of thing I’d been looking for when I started gardening. Handy Charts That I Don’t Have To Compile Myself make me feel organized!

REAL SOON! (The reference starts at the :50 mark.)

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Smoked Rye Saison

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Smoked beers can be pleasant and roasty with notes of smoked salmon or BBQ that really compliment the other flavors in the beer when they are done well. When they are not, the beers tend to be roughly the equivalent of chewing on a campfire log. I was excited when Populuxe brewing partnered with Bitterroot BBQ to produce the Smoked Rye Saison. I love the Populuxe Saison, I love rye beers and I was very intrigued over what the combination of smoked rye and saison would end up tasting like. The beer clocked in at 6.8% ABV.

The beer pours deep red in color with a white head. Strong notes of roasted caramel with hints of smoke and rye dominate the nose with just minor notes of grass in the background. The beer has a significant amount of smoky sweet malt up front on the palate before quickly moving into light notes of lemon and grass with hints of Belgian character before finishing with layers of rye and very light smoke coupled with lemon and Belgian yeast that lingers pleasantly for a long time. The beer reminds me of smoked salmon with lemon and dill, with the dill (in a very light way) either coming from the grassy notes or my mind inserting it because of the smoke and lemon flavors. This beer is very well balanced and layered and is very easy to drink for a smoked beer. It would pair fantastically with just about anything grilled.

Populuxe Smoked Rye Saison grabs the blue ribbon with 5 low and slows out of 5.

A Few Thoughts On “00” Flour

by A.J. Coltrane

Iron Chef Leftovers gave me ten kilos of “00” flour over the holidays. I’ve gradually been working through it. I initially tried some high-hydration pizzas with a small amount of oil, just like I’ve been doing with AP and bread flour. The results were waayy too extensible (stretchy) — extensible to the point of nearly disintegrating in my hands while shaping the dough. Last night’s pizza had a very modest 61% hydration and no oil at all. Even with that adjustment the dough was still very, very extensible.

April 28: Oven baked pepperoni. Medium hydration dough with oil.

A little poking around the internet gives this comparison of different flours at SeriousEats.

The fact is, the label Tipo “00” has nothing to do with protein content. Rather, it refers to the fineness of the milling. Tipo “00” is the finest grade of flour milled in Italy, and it has a consistency similar to baby powder. It’s available with several different levels of protein intended for different baking projects, just like American flours (which we’ll get to in a moment). The ones you’ll most commonly see in pizzerias are the redRinforzato bag, which features pictures of pizzas and bread, the bluePizzeria bag, which pictures a single pizza, and — the most common in the U.S. — the red The Chef’s Flour bags, which, in fact, contain the exact same flour as the Rinforzato. All three bags of flour have the exact same protein content: 12.5%

Because of the fineness of their milling, they don’t need quite as much water as an equivalent American flour (try making a 65% hydrated dough with “00” and American bread flour side-by-side and you’ll find that the “00” is much runnier).

To quote the Mythbusters guys: “Well there’s your problem!”

June 2: Grilled crab rangoon pizza. — June 2: Grilled Crab Rangoon pizza. Finished with cilantro.

One nice thing about using the grill when experimenting is that it forces me to create a dough that is *not* a total, sloppy mess. “How can I get this onto the grill” can become a real issue. In this case, using the grill pushed me to use a lower hydration dough than I might normally have tried, and it led to a small breakthrough.

A note about oil: Normally, the addition of oil promotes browning and flavor at the expense of “lift”. I *like* browning and flavor, so the next “no oil” attempt will have something along the lines of 58-60% hydration, minimal kneading, and an 8 hour+ rise. In theory the longer rise (and short kneading) should give back some of the browning and flavor that would be lost by the absence of oil. It may be that adding a small amount of salt would help too — it should improve the structure and tie up some of the water, making the dough more manageable.

In theory anyway. It’s a process.

For the record – I was informed that this was the better of the two Crab Rangoon pizzas. Last night’s topping was cream cheese, crab, lime juice, honey, Sriracha, and cilantro. I liked both of them about equally.

Beer of the Week: Hoppin’ Frog Hop Dam Triple IPA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Along with the Hoppin’ Frog Double IPA came their Hop Dam Triple IPA. This thing was a monster at 10% ABV and an indeterminate amount of IBU in a 22 oz. bottle that ran about $16. Give the nutty numbers on the double, I had no idea what to expect from this beer.

From Hoppin’ Frog:

Some say “bigger is better!”. At Hoppin’ Frog, we built a massive hop dam to handle the enormous amount of hops added to this colossal American Triple I.P.A. An intense experience of citrus and piney hop character is complemented by layers of rich malt flavor. Behold our new standard for hoppy beers.

The beer pours hazy orange in color with a significant amount of sediment in the glass. Boozy and floral with strong notes of citrus and orange blossom and not much else on the nose. A very tea like quality on the first sip – tannic and bitter, so much so to the point of overwhelming everything at first. Once your palate has a chance to adjust and settle in, the beer becomes rich and full of citrus with a significant but pleasant bitterness. The finish is long with plenty juicy citrus and black tea that just lingers (there was one other flavor component on the description, but I can’t read my own writing – it looks like dilberness, whatever the hell that means). The beer surprisingly has no discernable alcohol burn making it surprisingly easy to drink from that respect, but the balance could have been a bit better, bringing out some of the more subtle notes in the beer. In all, this beer reminds me of where West Coast IPA’s made on the West Coast were about 10 years ago when it was a race to see how many hops they could fire into a beer. It might be the new standard for hoppy beers, but give me a Pliny or a Blimey any day.

Hoppin’ Frog Hop Dam Triple IPA crosses the road with 3 Froggers out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Bad Jimmy’s India Red

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I couple of weeks back, I posted my notes on Bad Jimmy’s Habanero Amber, which I called, “…one of the least enjoyable beers I have had in a long time.” It really was not drinkable, although I know people who love it. In the interest of fairness, I feel like I should now post my notes on the best beer that I had at Bad Jimmy’s, the India Red. The beer clocked in at 67 IBU and 6.9% ABV, both at the upper range for a Red Ale.

The beer pours ruby red in color with notes of roasted malt and caramel on the nose and hints of grain in the background. The beer starts out on the palate with a lightly sweet caramel hit before bringing a tinge of bitterness which fades quickly before finishing with a very pilsner like character and crispness which lingers for quite a while. The beer seems slightly off balance with a big hit of hops that fade quickly and a touch of alcohol burn, but it was enjoyable enough to drink that I might have ordered a full pint.

Bad Jimmy’s India Red hops the train and scores 3 Darjeeling Expresses out of 5.

Did Thou Blaspheme?

By Iron Chef Leftovers

As Coltrane is fond of saying, “Nobody expectes the Spanish Inquisition!” From Pearls Before Swine on 4/25.