Back from Vegas beer report...

Got back in from Vegas Monday night. Had a great long weekend, got to surprise my wife's grandmother for her 80th birthday. I did decently well playing craps and blackjack. I even won a round of Bingo much to the dismay of the regulars in the room. Not much doing on the beer front in Vegas. I didn't make it back to the Burger Bar for beer by the boot. The only random beer I got to try while out in Vegas was at the Hofbrau House. This place is supposed to simulate at German beer hall and beer garden. They had a nice Octoberfest on tap that was nothing like the dark OCtoberfests you get here in the states. It was a much lighter beer, more like a Helles than a Marzen style. Very smooth but it packed a wollop. They didn't have the exact abv published, only stated it was over 6%. I would put it in the 6.5 to 7% range. Of course I ordered the 1 liter mug and labored through the first, ordered a 2nd and only got 2/3 of the way through. Just too much beer and food. It was funny to see my wife's cousin (life time Budweiser drinker) go after the Octoberfest. I don't think he realized it was about double the abv of his standard brew! Anyways, that is it for now.

Gone for the weekend, again...

but this time it's inVEGAS Baby!

Michigan Beer Reviews.....

Headed up Michigan way this past weekend to visit a good college friend of mine. We spent the weekend watching football, drinking beer and pigging out on some good home cooked food. Even got a few hours to brew up some Coffee Porter on Sunday. Tried a few new beers and an old favorite while there. Had some sort of local brew IPA Friday night at dinner, wasn't bad but didn't blow my head off or really have a truly unique taste. My buddies Heffe homebrew that he had on tap was quite nice. A good balanced taste, perfect amount of yeast floating around, a nice malty note up front but not too sweet, good carbonation and a nice mouth feel. A well done brew, hope my first foray into large batch homebrewing/kegging turns out as good.

In anticipation of eating lots of BBQ and watching football on Saturday we picked up some random beers at the local package store. I about fell over when I noticed they had Dogfish Head 120 on sale. Had to pick up a bottle, pretty well priced too at $10.67 per bottle (I paid $10 even at the brewery). Also picked up a sixer of Dogfish Punkin. A nice fall brew, I liked it better than any Oktoberfest I've had this year. I find most Oktoberfest beer to be way too malty for my taste, I usually get excited to buy a 12 pack then get 2 beers in and realize how much I really don't like the style. The Dogfish Punkin had just the right amount of malt sweetness, brown sugar note, a tad of cinnamon spice to it to make it an extremely smooth and drinkable ale. Hides the 7% abv very nicely as well. Better than any other Pumpkin Ale that I have tried, most are way too over the top.

Ended the Saturday evening festivities chowing down on some wonderfully smoked pulled pork, baked beans, corn bread and a wicked Guinness Chocolate cake that someone brought. Wow, good meal, good beer and good friends. Cant' beat that, well except that my buddies fiance decided to cook southern style biscuits and gravy (big fluffy buttermilk biscuits and white sausage gravy) for breakfast the next morning, double wow. The perfect hangover cure! And to think, she grew up in Michigan....

Last thing I got a chance to do before having to hop a plane back to the ATL was help out brew up some more beer. The heffe pretty much got killed at the party Saturday. It was nice to kind of walk through all the steps of brewing a big batch before I give it a go myself. I can't wait to give it a try, just need to do a little inventory and make sure I have a few of the little things to make everything go smoothly!

Too sick to drink?

Question: Can you be too sick to drink?

Answer: Ohh yeah.

Spent the weekend at my first completely sober Georgia Tech football game since....well I'm actually not sure if I have ever attended a GT game and not had at least 2 or 3 beers. I think I made it through about half of a Magic Hat Hocus Pocus before I tapped out. Picked up a wicked head cold flu thing on Thursday and had no energy what so ever. Picked a heck of a game not to drink either. Sitting through the torture that was GT's 10-7 win over Gardner-Webb was unbearable. At least we won.

Hopefully I will be on the mend and my sense of taste will have returned by this coming weekend. I will be spending it in the scenic hamlet of Ann Arbor, MI. Visiting a good college buddy of mine. The plan at the moment is to brew beer, drink beer, eat pulled pork and watch football. A taxing schedule I know. Hopefully I can review some of his homebrew and maybe get my hands on some unknown Northern beers...

Happy Drinking!