Author: AJ

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Kyes Kolsch

By Iron Chef Leftovers

We are into October, which usually means Fresh Hop and Pumpkin beers, but there are still a few straggling summerish brews out there, one of which is still on tap at NW Peaks – their Kyes Kolsch. I am not a huge fan of kolsch, it is fine, but it is rarely my “go to” style of beer as it lacks much of what I love about beer – bold flavors and complexity.  Would NW Peaks change my mind, we shall see.

From the NW Peaks website:

The name. The mountain. Kyes Peak is a lesser known peak located in the Monte Cristo group. It is rises from one of my favorite lakes in the North Cascades: Blanca lake. Blanca lake offers a wonderful day hike on nice trail with Kyes and the other mountains in the Monte Cristo group offering some nice scrambles of varying difficulties and exposures.

The beer. Like the mountain, the kolsch style is lesser known amongst the US audience, but gaining popularity. Our interpretation is light, refreshing, and contains some fruity notes from the yeast fermentation on top of a very bready backbone. Compared to other examples of the style, Kyes is slightly lower in alcohol and strength, and hence the lighter fruity notes from the yeast. This is a light, refreshing, crisp, straw colored beer, perfect for quenching the thirst on a hot summer afternoon. Original gravity: 1.043. Finishing gravity: 1.008.

ABV 4.5%. Malts: pils, wheat. Hops: Hallertau.

 

untitle8dThe beer pours very pale yellow in color, almost clear but with a heady amount of yeast and grain on the nose interspersed with touches of lemon. The beer is surprisingly bold for such a light beer – plenty of yeast and grain at the beginning before transitioning to a slightly fruity middle and finishing off with light hops and a slightly sweet/bitter slide of bread, yeast and hops. The finish is long and delicious and slightly Belgian as the beer warms – there were very light notes of cloves and banana that were barely detectable. The beer has a great deal of complexity and layered flavors and could stand up on its own on either a warm summer day or a chilly rainy one.

NW Peaks Kyes Kolsch alters my perceptions of the style with a strong 4 mindbenders out of 5.

When Steve Carlton was the Strikeout King

By Blaidd Drwg

Really Goosh? How?
Really Goosh? How?

I recently decided to buy back a small piece of my youth and purchased a 1984 Topps complete set. It was fun reliving the memories of the 1983 season and my 10 year old self putting together the set. Living in NJ in 1983, there was excitement over the big rookie in NY that took the league by storm – Darryl Strawberry. His rookie card is in that set, along with another NY rookie who wouldn’t really make an impact until the next season – Don Mattingly. There are also cards of a very young Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg, a very old Pete Rose and my all-time favorite name Doug Gwosdz (pronounced GOOSH, had the nickname “Eyechart”).

One of the cards that caught my eye was a highlights card that had Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan and Gaylord Perry on it. I had forgotten this, but 1983 was the year that Walter Johnson’s 55+ year old record for strikeouts in a career fell, and 3 pitchers managed to pass the total of 3,509. Here is the way things stacked up going into the 1983 season:

Player Age Strikeouts
Walter Johnson n/a 3,509
Nolan Ryan 36 3,494
Gaylord Perry 44 3,452
Steve Carlton 38 3,434
The card that inspired the post.
The card that inspired the post.

Obviously Nolan Ryan was the one who was going to break the record first give he was just 15 behind Johnson going into the season. Ryan was starting to look like it might be near the end for him – he had been good but not great for a couple of seasons, so 4,000 strikeouts looked like it might be his upper limit. Perry was a bit of a longshot to catch Johnson because of his age and general ineffectiveness over the previous few seasons. Carlton, despite 1983 being his 38 year old season, had come off this 1982 season:

  • Cy Young Award
  • 295 IP
  • 23 Wins
  • 19 CG
  • 286 K
  • 5.5 WAR

Ryan passed Johnson first and then Carlton and then Perry. Something strange then happened at the end of 1983. Here is how Ryan and Carlton pitched that season:

W-L ERA IP SO
Carlton 15-16 3.11 283.2 275
Ryan 14-9 2.98 196.1 183

Carlton again led the league in IP AND SO, at age 38! So despite being the first pitcher to pass Walter Johnson, Nolan Ryan was not the all-time strikeout leader at the end of 1983:

Player Age Strikeouts
Steve Carlton 38 3,709
Nolan Ryan 36 3,677
Gaylord Perry 44 3,534
Walter Johnson n/a 3,509

Carlton was not nearly as good at age 39 in 1984 (nor for the rest of his career) and Ryan was about as good as he had been the previous 4 seasons, allowing Ryan to finish up 1984 as the all-time strikeout leader, a spot from which he never looked back, adding 1840 strikeouts to his career total after age 37. Since Johnson’s record was initially broken, 5 other pitchers passed the 3,509 total. For one brief season, Steve Carlton was baseball’s all-time strikeout king.

Beer of the Week: Speakeasy Double Daddy IPA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Living on the west coast means an abundance of double and imperial IPA’s tend to be available and it also means that I want to try any new ones that enter into the market. When Speakeasy became available in Seattle and one of the available beers was their Double Daddy IPA, a beer which I have tried and liked in previous trips to SF, I figured it was time for a review. The beer was from a 22oz. bottle.

 

From the Speakeasy website:

Doubling down on malt & hops, Double Daddy raises the stakes. With its good looks and no-limit style, DD takes the pot every time.

Style: Imperial India Pale Ale

Release Date: January, 2003

Alcohol Content: 8.5% by volume

Malts: Pale malted barley, English Munich Malts

Hops: 4 Varieties of Pacific Northwest Hops, 3 hop additions, including dry hopping

Yeast: Speakeasy Ale Yeast

Tasting Notes: Copper color. Huge hop aroma. Bitter, hoppy and warming alcohol on the palate. Finishes incredibly dry and clean for such a big beer.

DoubleDaddy-1-22-oz-372x1024The beer pours amber in color with a white head. Lots of citrus and grapefruit on the nose with grain and some floral notes hiding in the background. This beer is a major hop bomb – slightly bitter with juicy grapefruit and orange peel dominate with a long finish that contains hints of grain in addition to the hop character. Some green hops and resin become present in the middle of the finish as the beer warms, which was surprising but not unpleasant and an nice addition to balance out the citrus a bit more. The alcohol is well integrated and not noticeable, making this an easy drinking beer for any hop head.

Double Big Daddy is a find double IPA, and one that will hold up in the crowded NW beer market.

Speakeasy Double Daddy IPA slides into the party with a solid 4 zoot suits out of 5.

Son of a….

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Rene Redzepi is coming to Seattle on November 18th and will be hosted at a meal cooked by Matt Dillon and Blaine Wetzel.

In case you aren’t aware – Redzepi is the chef at the #1 restaurant in the world Noma in Copenhagen.

Dillon is one of the best chefs in the Northwest and is a James Beard Award winner.

Wetzel cooks at the Willow’s Inn on Lummi Island, used to cook at Noma and is considered by many to be one of the most underrated chefs in North America.

Details aren’t available, but the info is here if you want it.

EarthBox Update — October 7, 2013

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

I harvested all of the remaining peppers after work tonight. It came to eighteen pounds — fourteen pounds of sweet peppers and four pounds of hot peppers. The six sweet pepper plants had a box to themselves this year. The three hot peppers were less than half as productive — they wound up sharing a box with the lemongrass and shiso, each of which got monstrous. To make it even tougher, they were planted on the shadier end of that box. The hot peppers and bell pepper would have done a ton better in their own box, or with short, less “sun demanding” stuff. (The bell pepper was shaded by the lemon cucumber, we got one bell pepper out of that plant.) Live and learn. I’ve been saying that a lot this year.

Did you know earwigs will eat holes into Jalapenos? Who knew? Jalapenos of all things…

 

Today’s pepper harvest. The hot peppers are in the sheet tray. The six sweet peppers are arranged as they were in the box, with the best sun hitting the right side, then the bottom row in the late afternoons:

Left column, bottom to top – Gypsy, Tequila, Banana (yellow, was trapped under the shiso), Anaheim.

Center column – Gourmet, Lipstick (an apt name), Jalapeno

Right column – Cute Stuff, King of the North

100713 peppers

The King of the North before harvest:

Continue reading “EarthBox Update — October 7, 2013” →

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Ate2Four Plum Porter

By Iron Chef Leftovers

imagesCAAR87MMA few months back, Populuxe brewed a plum porter which I was very much enamored with. Since it was just about plum season, I offered them up the plums off my trees, which they took me up on. In exchange for the plums, the kind folks at Populuxe let me name the beer. I bounced around the names for a while and I finally decided to name it after my house number – 824. Being the deranged mind that I have, I couldn’t just use the number, so I decided to engage in a bit of word play – hence Ate2Four. Hey, it may not be the best name, but I get a kick out of it, and my goal in life is to crack myself up, so tough.

The beer pars dark black with strong notes of chocolate and coffee on the nose. The beer starts out with some bold but not overpowering flavors of chocolate and coffee on the initial taste with a strong malt character. Those flavors linger before finishing with mild balancing notes of dried fruit and raisins that linger for quite a long time. Those notes are there but are not dominating the beer, so you may not recognize them unless you knew they were there. This beer is very well balanced and is not your typical fruit beer – the plums compliment the roasted coffee and chocolate notes of the beer, acting as a balancing flavor rather than a dominant one in the beer.  Think of this one as a really nice brown porter with a supporting plum flavor instead of a plum beer that is porter based.

The other day, this beer was poured at Brew at the Zoo. The keg kicked in about 1 hour 15 minutes – helped along by it being the most interesting beer being poured at the list and was one of a small handful of dark beers being poured. For those who did not get to try this beer, it may be making a comeback in the fall. Check out the Populuxe Facebook site for their current tap list.

I am very happy to have contributed to the success of this beer and yes, I am biased, but the Ate2Four version of the Plum Porter was every bit as good as the original, copying its brother with a perfect 5 Xerox out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Reuben’s Brews Cask Conditioned Imperial IPA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

untitled2I have called Reuben’s Brews on of the 5 best breweries in the state in this space and that is not an exaggeration. They make some of the best hoppy beers in the state and they elevate those when they are on cask, a true treat for any hophead. The only unfortunate thing about the casks is that they tend of be a one-time deal. In the early days of their cask program, they gave the cask treatment to their Imperial IPA, a beer which I thought was outstanding to begin with. The cask version clocks in at 9.4% ABV and 100+ IBU.

The beer pours hazy orange in color with a touch of a fizzy white head. The beer is a major hop bomb on the nose with lots of citrus and grapefruit, which are much more pronounced then the regular version of the beer, and a slight resin hop character in the background. Drinking the beer brings a major flavor explosion – heavy on the grapefruit and citrus with a very long finish – a very mild, almost barely there bitterness plays hide and seek on the palate with the citrus and peel notes, adding a nice balancing contrast to the citrus flavors. The beer drinks like a much lighter beer with incredible balance – much smoother and more subtle flavors than the regular version of the beer, it is double dry hopped with Simcoe. Probably one of the 5 best beers that Reuben’s has put out.

Reuben’s Cask Conditioned Imperial IPA rolls in with a spectacular 5 barrels out of 5.

Robinson Cano and Free Agency

By Blaidd Drwg

I saw this piece on espn.com and my reaction was 3 words:

AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN!

Here are the details:

The gap between second baseman Robinson Cano and the New York Yankees on a new contract is enormous, with sources telling ESPN’s Buster Olney that the soon-to-be free agent is seeking approximately $305 million over 10 years.

Cano is going to be 31(ish) next season and, while he has been durible and excellent, he is on the wrong side of 30 and is more likely to get, at best, a 7 year $150 million dollar deal, and that is probably only if the Yankees bid on his services. He is due to decline, and I just don’t see any team willing to pay 30 million a year for a guy over 40, including the Yankees. It just won’t happen.

Beers of the Week: Anacortes Brewing/North Sound Brewing Maple and Smoke

By Iron Chef Leftovers

You may remember last week when I posted a terribly disappointing review of the Rogue Voodoo Maple Beer and I said the following:

I am willing to admit that I am not a huge fan of rauchbier, but I can appreciate the subtle flavors that smoke can add to a beer, lifting it up to a different plain. Stay tuned to next Tuesday where I actually review a beer that does this.

Well, lucky for you, I am going to keep my word and take it one step further, I am going to give you 2 beers that use maple and smoke well.

Back during Seattle Beer Week, Beveridge Place Pub in West Seattle held an Iron Brewer event. Basically a pair of breweries are given an ingredient that they have to use in a beer and then the two are put up head to head in a blind tasting with the winner receiving the most votes. In this case, North Sound Brewing and Anacortes Brewing were paired up together in this smack down. Here is what they turned out:

Anacortes Maple and Smoke – Amber in color with hints of brown depending on how the light catches it. Strong notes of maple and smoke on the nose, covering any other scents in the beer. Tasting it was a different experience; the beer was not as big as I was expecting, starting out slightly sweet with notes of nuts and malt and finishing up with a long maple syrup ending. There is very little smoke on this beer and it tasted like drinking a lightly smoked, maple glazed almond – all that was really missing was the salt. The beer was well balanced and easy to drink but I found myself wanting just a hint more smoke flavor to add more complexity.

The Anacortes beer fanned the flames with 3 roasters out of 5.

North Sound Maple and Smoke – tan/orange in color with light smoke and hops dominating the nose on this beer and maple in the background if you go looking for it. Slightly sweet on the initial taste before yielding to some resin hops and grain and then finally finishing with a long, slow transition to light smoke and hints of maple – reminded me of smoking fish over maple but being some distance from the fire. Incredibly restrained with the use of maple and smoke – they are there and in balance with the other flavors, but don’t completely overwhelm the other notes in the beer. North Sound made a maple and smoke IPA.

The North Sound beer torched the competition with 4 bonfires out of 5.

A few things about this event – there were 6 beers (3 pairs of beers with different ingredients) and I thought the North Sound was the best of the 6. I was absolutely convinced the North Sound beer was brewed by Anacortes – North Sound is not known for their IPA and Kevin at Anacortes brews what I feel is the best one in the state. These beers go to show that you can brew something with smoke and not have it taste like you are eating a smoldering log.