Author: AJ

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Experimental Sour Brown Porter

By Iron Chef Leftovers

imagesCAAR87MMA few months back, Populuxe brewed a small batch of their Brown Porter as a sour beer. I tried it and thought that it was one of the better sours available and, for a while, thought it was the best beer that Populuxe brewed. It somehow got buried in my notebook and did not make it onto the blog as a result. It is time to correct that and oh, did I mention that the beer might be available on tap soon?

The beer pours medium brown in color with notes of chocolate and roasted malt dominating the nose with hints of light sour in the background. The first sip produces medium notes of chocolate and coffee at the front of the palate, yielding to malt and light English yeast in the middle before finishing off with a mildly sour/sweet malt finish. The sour lingers, not in a lip puckering way, but in a light and pleasant experience, almost like a sourball candy. The sour and chocolate flavors become slightly more pronounced as the beer warms, but neither ever become too heavy and dominate the beer. This isn’t a Flanders Ale – it has a great richness and complexity that you would expect in a porter and just enough sour to let you know that there is something beyond the porter going on here. The sourness integrates well with the malt character of the porter, leaving you with a complex and interesting drinking experience. The Experimental Brown Porter would be a good way to get someone who doesn’t like sours to try one – a number of friends who fall into this category tried this beer and liked it.

Populuxe Experimental Sour Brown Porter bellies up to the counter with a stellar 5 penny candies out of 5.

Tossing a Ball to the Fans

By Blaidd Drwg

The River City Rascals of the independent Frontier League, instituted and then reversed a rather interesting policy concerning players and coaches tossing balls into the stands.

From ESPN.com (this is the entire piece):

A unique policy devised by a baseball club in the independent Frontier League was quickly reversed after commenters on social media panned the move.

The club, the River City Rascals, which plays in O’Fallon, Missouri, posted a sign in its home dugout that said that, as of yesterday, players and coaches would be charged for throwing balls into the stands.

“Players and coaches will now be fined $5 for each ball that is tossed into the stands,” the sign read. “We ask that you return every ball back to the dugout, including at the end of innings and games.”

The notice warned team personnel that the $5 would be taken directly out of their paycheck and that it was ownership’s wishes that this was not discussed with fans.

But after negative reaction over taking away a common fan friendly practice filled Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday night, a club official acknowledged it reversed course by the morning.

“We have reversed it, but won’t be discussing it any further at ownership’s request,” said the team’s general manager Dan Dial.

The 14 Teams in the Frontier League have a $75,000 salary cap for a 24-man roster, which means players are earning as little as $600 and as much as $1,600 a month. They are subsidized with meal money and free housing.

I know that independent teams operate on a shoestring budget, but that is beyond silly. Did they think that this was the 1910’s, not the 2010’s, where games would routinely use the same ball for the whole game?

GNOIF: Building A Better Tomorrow — The Recap

by A.J. Coltrane

GNOIF #9 recap — Building A Better Tomorrow (Building themes and Future themes)

092113 gnoif

Games That Got Played:  Agricola, Dominion, Guillotine, Rocketville, Stone Age, Ticket to Ride – Europe

Games That Didn’t Get Played:  Carcassonne – The Castle, Settlers of Catan, Citadels, Eco Fluxx, Gardens of Alhambra, King of the Elves, Ticket to Ride Card Game

We’ve gotten to the point now that people show up, grab a game, and get started with little or no help from the hosts. This time that game was Rocketville, which has been played every time we’ve offered it lately. Three experienced players taught a fourth how to play. The table then transitioned over to Guillotine.

While that was going on the Dominion and Agricola games got started. Always have a *lot* of children when you play Agricola! It seems like the first player to produce offspring has a big advantage. The “breeder” won the game of Agricola handily. That table then evolved into a big game of Ticket To Ride Europe. The winner wasn’t the player with the longest train, which seems to me to be the key to victory. Not this time though.

I’ve been playing Card Hunter lately, and it’s put me in a CCG frame of mind. Dominion is a good fix with real cards and deckbuilding. I did well the first game, then got trounced in the second. I think we got in five or six games total, and they were all different despite using the same basic cards.

Good times! Thanks to everyone who played!

 

Beer of the Week: Rogue Voodoo Donuts Bacon Maple Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Every once in a while I can make a trip into a place like Chuck’s Hop Shop and not see anything in the under $10 range that I am in the mood for/haven’t had/want to try, and that is a dangerous thing. That means that I start looking at beers that are getting up there in prices, which means that I end up taking a risk on something that may or not be good. The Rogue Voodoo Donut Bacon Maple Ale was one of those risks (ed note: this was the beer released in 2012, the 2013 beer has bananas added to it).  The beer ran $13.59 for a 22 oz. bottle.

Here are the stats from the Rogue website:

13 Ingredients:

Malts: Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt, Weyermann Beechwood Smoked Malt, House-smoked Hickory Malt, Great Western 2 Row, Munich, C15, C75 Malts

Speciality: Applewood-Smoked Bacon, Pure Maple Flavoring

Hops: Perle, Sterling

Yeast & Water: Pacman Yeast, Free Range Coastal Water

 

Specs:

14º PLATO

30 IBU

76 AA

30º Lovibond

 

At least the bottle is nice and I really could go for a bacon maple bar.
At least the bottle is nice and I really could go for a bacon maple bar.

The beer pours golden brown in color, almost exactly maple syrup like. The nose presents itself with a very strong maple smell (You can smell it from 6 feet away), hints of smoke and malt – it smells like breakfast at a campfire. The beer starts off pleasantly with notes of maple but it is quickly overpowered by smoke in the middle (more of a campfire than smoked bacon) with hints of bacon (yes, you can actually taste the bacon in this), but the smoke overpowers just about every other flavor in the beer and just lingers well after you have taken a sip, like you have been chewing on a log that has been left in a fire. I really had high hopes for this beer since bacon and maple are two of my favorite flavors, but the smoke kills it and everything that you might want to drink afterwards. I kept going on the bottle, hoping that the smoke dissipated, but it did not and it made for a somewhat unpleasant experience.

I am willing to admit that I am not a huge fan of rauchbeer, 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. This beer did none of that, killing your palate almost immediately with the smoke. That, coupled with the high price tag made this one of the worst beers I have had in a long time.

That being said, Rogue’s Voodoo Donuts Bacon Maple Ale gets smoked with a ruined 1 burning ember out of 5.

EarthBox Update — September 22, 2013

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

21 pounds of produce today, a new single-day record. That brings us up over 180 pounds for the season, including 65 pounds of cucumbers and 70 pounds of tomatoes.

The wind was picking up as I was taking this picture and preparing to bring everything inside. It’s now raining really hard. It looks like I got outside (and back in the house)  just in time today.

092213 harvest

The Roma tomatoes seem to have hit their “timer”. Here’s a picture “before” the big pile above:

Continue reading “EarthBox Update — September 22, 2013” →

Beer of the Week: Reuben’s Brews Roggenbier

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Until about a year ago, I had no idea what a Roggenbier even was, let alone what it really tasted like. Reuben’s changed all of that by putting Roggenbier on the menu and even making it one of the beers they initially bottled. The review is for the beer on tap, which clocks in at 5.3% ABV and 19 IBU. What is a Roggenbier you ask, well, the short version is a rye based hefeweizen. A much longer answer comes courtesy of the German Beer Institute:

Roggenbier is a medieval ale usually made from a grain bill of about half barley malt and equal portions of wheat and rye malts. Today, a Roggenbier may be either an ale or a lager. Modern renditions of the brew have about 5 to 5.5% alcohol by volume. Rye ales are mildly hopped, which allows the grain flavors to be dominant. Filtration appears to be optional in a rye ale and many, such as the Paulaner (depicted right) are “naturtrüb,” meaning naturally turbid. A yeast-turbid Roggenbier is more authentic, considering that the style had been around long before beer filtration was invented in 1878.

Being ancient brews, Roggenbiers can have a faint whiff of earthiness in the nose that is reminiscent of rye bread. The up-front sensation is one of mild fruitiness. There is a slight to extreme yeastiness and breadiness in the middle, and an almost smoky, spicy, faintly sour and very dry finish—clearly the effects of the rye malt. Effervescence ranges from medium to spritzy like a Hefeweizen. The body is substantial, almost reminiscent of a Bockbier. The brew has a pleasant, rich, off-white head when poured.

For the most part, Roggenbiers are tart, refeshing summer quaffing beers, a nice alternative to a Hefeweizen. They go extremely well with a succulent slice of barbequed roast pork.

untitled2Roggenbier pours dark amber in color with notes of rye, bananas, cloves and coriander on the nose. Slightly sweet when you first take a sip with notes of banana and wheat. The sweetness quickly drops off into light citrus and cloves before dropping the hammer with a rye finish = intense rye notes with hints of cinnamon with a dry mouth feel which lingers for a fairly short period of time before mellowing out and hanging around the palate with a background malt/rye/banana finish, noticeable well after you have taken a sip. For some strange reason, this beer seems like a liquid pretzel and that is a good thing. Incredibly well balanced and complex, you should try this beer if you have not done so already.

Roggenbier is a great alternative to a hefe or any other light beer if you are looking for something that isn’t terribly hoppy, is fairly low in alcohol and is refreshing, but still has a complex character.

Reuben’s Brews Roggenbier twists in with 4 Rolled Golds out of 5.

“I picked the wrong week…”

By Blaidd Drwg

I moved to Seattle from Boston 10 years ago today. With my beloved Red Sox playing well and looking like the front runners for winning the World Series, I came to the realization that if they pull it off again this year, it will be 3 World Series Championships in my lifetime, all of which occurred AFTER I left Boston.  It isn’t like the Sox weren’t good when I was living there, it is just that they were getting caught behind the Yankee dynasty and couldn’t overcome it. I will count 2003 as a year in Boston, since I was there for most of the time, but here is how the team fared in my time back east vs. my time in the land of salmon and rain:

 

Years W-L PCT World Series Playoffs Winning Seasons
1991-2003 1081-959 .530 0 4 9
2004-Current 898-702 .561 2 6 9

 

Not really a point to this, just marking the 10th anniversary of my move to Seattle with something vaguely sports related.

Oh, and this:


 

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Tinkham Berliner Weisse

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I have a love/hate relationship with sour beers. When I am in the mood for one, I love them; otherwise, I really want nothing to do with them. They also tend to be very polarizing, people either love them or hate them, there is no middle ground. NW Peaks recently released a Berliner Weisse as part of their Mountainbeers series. What is a Berliner Weisse you ask, well, here is what NW Peaks had to say:

 

The name. The mountain. As close as its mountainBeer counterpart is to Steven’s pass, Tinkham Mtn is just as close to Snoqualmie pass. Again, just off the PCT, it’s a great place for a good, light summer excursion. The climb is ~ 1,000 feet of easy scrambling (NE route), or a more straight forward, albeit longer, boot pack (SE route). The summit offers great views of the ever popular summits peppering the Snoqualmie area and serves as part of the boundary that surrounds one of Seattle’s 2 major watersheds (the Cedar River watershed).

The Beer. The Berliner Weisse style is even lesser known than the dunkelweiss. Berliner Weisse is a very low ABV, cloudy, sour wheat beer traditionally brewed in Berlin. In many cases, it is served with fruit syrups, cutting some of the sourness with fruity sweetness. Our first sour beer at NW Peaks, we kept the Tinkham Berliner Weisse recipe simple using only Pilsner and Wheat Malts and Hallertau hops. With a slight fruitiness and a charmingly sour aroma, the beer has a light and refreshing body and a tart finish. A great introduction to sours, Tinkham is perfect for sipping on a spring evening or on top of a raspberry syrup/puree.

Malts: Pilsner and Wheat. Hops: Hallertau. ABV: ~2.75%

 

untitle8dThe beer pours pale yellow in color with notes of lemon and grain dominant on the nose and light sour notes interspersed (kind of reminded me of sour patch kids). Crisp and clean on the initial taste followed by notes of lemon and grain before transitioning into a slightly funky sour finish, not overpowering and pickle-like, but more subtle like a light citric acid. This beer was much easier to drink than most sours and the sour flavor are mild and balanced with the grain, with the mild sour finish being the best part – just enough to let you know this is a sour beer but not so much that you feel like you need to scrape your tongue afterwards. Definitely not a beer that everyone is going to love, but it is a good introduction to sour beers and it also pairs very well with a bit of fruit puree (I personally preferred the beer on its own).

A wonderful first attempt at a sour, NW Peaks Tinkham Berliner Weisse cuts through the blockade and drops in 4 airlifts out of 5.

Hiroshi Yamauchi

By Blaidd Drwg

You probably don’t know the name Hiroshi Yamauchi, but you should if you live in Seattle. He is the former president of Nintendo and the majority owner of the Mariners and probably the person single handedly responsible for keeping major league baseball in the Northwest when he bought the team in 1994.

Yamauchi passed away at age 85 yesterday. By all accounts, everything the team did got run through him, so I have no idea what kind of impact this will end up having on the Mariners. My guess though is that the team is sold to a bunch of non-local investors for somewhere north of 1 billion dollars and the house cleaning will begin shortly thereafter.