Beer of the Week: Elliot Bay Brewing Paint It Black Lager

By Iron Chef Leftovers

In looking through my beer notes, I realized that I had quite a run of dark beers in December. I guess I was either just drinking to the season or drinking what was new and interesting. Either way, a December trip to Elliot Bay Brewing yielded a beer which I had not seen before – the Paint It Black Lager. Black Lagers are a beer style that you don’t see too much these days so that appealed to me and it figured that I had to give a shot to a beer that was named after my favorite Rolling Stones song. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any details about the beer on the interwebs.

The beer pours jet black with a creamy brown head. Roasted malt dominates the beer with hints of grain and mild hops supporting on the nose. The beer starts out on the palate strong with a slightly boozy vanilla, followed quickly by a pleasant milk chocolate and grain component, before moving into light coffee and sweet roasted malt. The finish is long and pleasant with lingering notes of coffee and chocolate supported by sweet malt and just the faintest hint of hops. The beer is deep and layered, and a nice change of pace if you are looking for something dark without venturing into the world of stouts or porters.

Elliot Bay Brewing’s Paint It Black Lager strums in with 4 Red Doors out of 5.

The Mariners and Spending Money

By Blaidd Drwg

Reason #124342423 that Jack Zdurencik will be fired this season and the Mariners will continue hopelessly spinning their wheels. This is from a Jim Bowden article on ESPN.com:

Several general managers told me they don’t understand how the Seattle Mariners could give Robinson Cano almost a quarter-billion dollars and then claim not to have the money to bring back Kendrys Morales or make a run at Ervin Santana.

Seattle is emboldened by its lucrative local television deal, but many general managers are wondering what the Mariners’ plan is. How does a team spend that much money and go from fourth-best in the division to … fourth-best in the division. The Mariners haven’t really improved at all, and with so many needs they would have been better off spreading the money around.

Cano complained a few weeks back about the team not spending any money. I don’t think that he was wrong, and it appears that other MLB GM’s feel the same way. I am starting to think that the Cano signing was just to try to keep season ticket holders from defecting (I am still glad that I did not renew my tickets) and not about trying to make the team better. Unless they catch lightning in a bottle from about 5 of the guys in their lineup, this is basically a .500 team.

And for my next prediction – the Taijuan Walker shoulder tightness will end up being more serious than expected and he will need major surgery at some point before the end of the season and be out for all of 2015.

Beer of the Week: Reuben’s Brews Blimey That’s Bitter Cask

By Iron Chef Leftovers

It takes some guts to do an imperial IPA as a cask, not only because these beers are a monster to brew, but you run the risk of having something that is borderline undrinkable with all of the alcohol and hops involved. Reuben’s took a chance by putting Blimey on cask, of course adding more hops to the cask, because, you know, it wasn’t hoppy enough.

The beer pours hazy orange in color with a mind numbing amount of citrus and citrus peel – it smells like fresh orange rind with bare notes of orange blossom and grain. The beer starts out lighter than its carbonated cousin with a slightly sweet/floral component before moving into juice oranges, orange peel and orange blossom. The finish is incredibly smooth with significant hop bitterness with plays well with the citrus and a touch of resin at the very end. The alcohol isn’t perceptible in the cask version of the beer, but the resin is, giving the beer a touch of burn at the back of the throat at the very end. The fruit is definitely more pronounced in the cask version, so if you like citrus dominant IPA’s, this is the one for you.

Was the cask version better than the regular? That is a tough call since they drank like 2 very different beers. Either way they were both fantastic and worthy of the 5 hop cones out of 5 that the cask version receives.

The 2014 Cheap Seat Eats Bracket Of Peril!

by A.J. Coltrane

It’s the 2014 Cheap Seat Eats (hosted by ESPN) tournament bracket! Match wits with the CSE writers! It’s free!

Same as last year:

Up to three brackets per entry.

Bracket Name: Cheap Seat Eats

Password: TakeMeOut (As in, take me out to the ballgame, note that it’s case-sensitive, and there are no spaces.)

Link to the challenge!

The prize is absolutely nothing, which is what Sir Galahad gets in this scene from The Holy Grail:

Congratulations to last years’ winner, Annie S.!

Beer of the Week: Salish Sea Brewing Brown Porter

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I will give new breweries a shot, just because you never know what gems you might uncover. I recently had the opportunity to try the Porter from the newish Salish Sea Brewing out of Edmonds when they were on as a guest tap at Stoup Brewing. It was a cool December day and the porter seemed to be just what the doctor ordered.

From the Salish Sea website:

Not your typical porter… Our house porter is light, crisp and clean. Featuring Simcoe Hops and a clean finish. Full with flavor, light in body, with a great light coffee finish. 5.5% ABV 35 IBU

The beer pours dark brown, almost black in color with mild notes of roasted malt and hints of grain and sugar on the nose. The beer starts out dry on the palate with very little grain and malt and just hints of roasted flavors. The beer then moves on to a fairly long sweet streak before finishing faintly malty with a slight astringent burn at the very end of the palate at the back of the throat with minor hints of roasted grains making an appearance. I kept hoping for the flavors to wake up the further into the beer I got, but it never happened – if anything, the beer got sweeter as I went on. I felt like this beer would have been better served by being called a brown rather than a porter.

Salish Sea Brown Porter limps into port and offloads with just 2 cargo crates out of 5.

Overwintered

by A.J. Coltrane

I had tried planting some winter-hardy vegetables in late November as an experiment. Here’s a pic from right before Christmas:

New growth in December. [L-R - Pac Choi, Parsley, Cilantro, Spinanch]. The new leaves look happier than the leaves that were on the plants at the time of transplanting. — New growth in December. [L-R – Pac Choi, Parsley, Cilantro, Spinanch]. The new leaves look happier than the leaves that were on the plants at the time of transplanting.

And March 17:

(L-R) Spinach, Parsley, Cilantro, Pak Choi

I think to some degree the Pak Choi smothered the Parsley in the crowded confines of the mini green house. (The three mostly empty cells.) Also, Thanksgiving was too late to start — September would have been better. Next year we’ll probably try hoop houses and cold frames for plant protection — the mini green house worked just “ok”. Overall it was too cramped and too wet inside. The Pak Choi was attacked by slugs all winter. The Spinach received some slug abuse too, though to a much lesser degree. Still, the overwintered veg are *way* ahead of the Mache and Radishes in the front yard:

On the far left is Mache, planted January 5. On the right are Cherry Belle Radishes, planted February 10. The tiny plants in the middle are French Breakfast Radishes (March 7.)

Next winter we’ll try to focus on stuff that the slugs don’t love to eat.

Wine Reviews On CSE

By Iron Chef Leftovers

After much negative feedback and just a general lack of qualities in the reviews, we have decided to fire Larry LeCroc and have taken appropriate action to sack the parties responsible for hiring him in the first place.

They haav bean replaced weeth a noo stav to doo win revoos.

The staff responsible for sacking the wine reviews have been sacked. As it turns out, they were the same people responsible for the great credit fiasco a number of years ago. I need to do a better job of vetting our employees and I can assure you that this should never happen again.

Yes – I went a long way for this joke.

Beer of the Week: Stoup Brewing Winter Warmer

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I both love and hate seasonal beers – I love them because it means that I have something new to look forward to when I go to a brewery and I hate them because when I decide I really like a beer, I know that it will only be there for a limited time. This winter, I went on a winter warmer kick and basically went out of my way to try a bunch of them from various breweries around town. I was happy to see that Stoup made one and was excited to try their version of what is becoming one of my favorite styles. The Stoup version clocks in at 7% ABV and 30 IBU.

The beer pours deep brown in color with hints of amber. Roasted malt dominates with notes of spice and chocolate interspersed. The beer starts out slightly sweet on the initial sip with significant amounts of malt character, followed by a slightly fruity middle of dried cherries and apricots coupled with hints of figs before finishing with a touch of warming alcohol joined with a mild spice (cardamom and cloves) enhanced with more dried fruit in a significantly long finish. The alcohol disappears the further you get into the beer and the sweetness less pronounced. The beer has fine balance and rich character and would be nice next to a fire on a cold winter day.

Stoup Winter Warmer grabs a blanket and a chair and cozies in with 4 roaring fires out of 5.

On a sad note, this is the last review of a beer from my 2013 note book. The book is getting retired to the CSE Archives for posterity. Although you have been reading many reviews from beers that I have had in 2014, this marks the last one that I consumed in 2013. Not bad – this review is making onto the site just shy of 4 months after I actually had the beer.

Neeext Wine Revoo

Bie Larry LeCroc

Me drunk too much.

From Pearls Before Swine on 2/8/14.

Beer of the Week: Stoup Brewing Porter

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I feel terrible. With my backlog of beer reviews and that I have generally been putting them on the site in chronological order; this is the first time that I am reviewing a beer by Stoup Brewing. That normally wouldn’t be an issue, but they have been opened for 5 months, I am a member of their founders club and they are the closest brewery to my house – a scant 5 blocks away. While this is long delayed in getting posted, I can assure you this won’t be the last time you see these guys getting a write up in this space. The first beer on tap from Stoup is their Porter.

From the Stoup website:

ABV: 6.5%, IBU: 45, Lovibond: 34

Rich in color and character, our robust porter conjures up memories of decadent chocolate treats dipped in coffee. Hints of dark chocolate, roasted coffee and light malty sweetness are the result of a complex malt profile including chocolate malt, roasted barley, roasted wheat and roasted rye.

The beer pours jet black with a coffee colored head and pleasant notes of chocolate and malt with hints of coffee and vanilla faintly in the background of the nose. The beer starts out on the palate with light notes of coffee before moving into a very pleasant grain middle and finishing long with strong notes of chocolate and malt with hints of vanilla, coffee and toffee. Balanced and flavorful with enough alcohol to warm you up on a cold day, but not so much as it interferes with the pleasant drinking experience that is the porter. As an added bonus, touches of hop character start to show up on the finish as the beer warms, adding another layer of complexity to the beer.

Stoup Brewing Porter cozy’s up to the fire with a strong 3 warm fires out of 5.