So, life has been catching up with me - and this website not "saving nicely for me" is frustrating.  So I had a couple things on here about things - but I'm just going to get right to the beers cause I lost all that on a non-save event.  UGH.  Anyway - so here goes:

3/26/12 - Breckenridge Brewery - Pandoras Bock.  I love this style of beer.  I did a little poking and found this site Madison Dining that talks about Bocks being Lent beers.  I wish I could get to the link to show you more - maybe you can.  Looked like it was going to be a nice read.  Anyway, this is a Jan-March Beer.  I always love this season of beer.  It is right up my alley - and always a refreshing change from all the dark stouts and porters that came from Christmas.  This beers are crisp and a bit spicey.  They are fully of thick malty goodness in the glass.  There was light head retention in the glass.  I really really enjoyed this beer.  I love the brewery in general and the style of beer so there is no surprise I would love this beer.  I hope to get a few more of these before the season is completely out (as it already may be gone).  I didn't really notice anything to revealing about the smell but I'm never great with this anyway.  In general - I love Bock Beers and I think if you've never tried one - GO OUT NOW AND TRY IT!  Don't wait till next year... find one and drink one and fall in love like I have!

3/25/12 - Samuel Adams - Irish Red.  This beer poured a nice dark red pour in the glass.  A nice aggressive pour left a pillowy dirty white 2 finger head on top of this beer.  The malt stuck around and clung to the sides of the glass the whole way down the drink.  In general this was a nice beer.  It gave out nice caramel notes.  It had a nice light spicy note to it that I believe came from the hops in the glass.  It had a nice silky texture to the drink as comes with these styles of beers.  This beer was the day after a large drink so I drank this a little later in the evening and enjoyed it slowly.  It was probably just a bit warmer then it needed to be but all told was a nice beer.  As I've found with Sam Adams in general - I have found it hard to say anything bad about their beers.  They make a great beer for every style.  They may not always make the best of the best nor do they often make the most exciting.  But they do make a great quality beer to sit around and drink.  Thank you for a consistent quality in your beer Sam.

3/24/12 - Troegs Brewery - Troegenator DoupleBock Beer.  At 8.2% alcohol this beer brings A LOT to the table.  The definition as per German Beer Institute Site states a DoppelBock as:
Definition:  Doppelbock (literally "double bock") is a stronger and usually darker version of the Bavarian Bockbier. It is exceptionally malty, with very little bitterness. Standard Doppelbocks may have as much as 7% alcohol by volume. In the strongest versions (around 10 to 13%), you can actually taste the alcohol.
So, it is no surprise this is right up my avenue.  There is not a great head retention on this beer.  But the flavor and the malts SHINE through.  The bitterness levels are low and the beer is smooth.  I do get some nice malty notes of smell from the glass (maybe even some hints of cherry).  In general this is a great beer.  I had to cheat and drink this beer once again tonight as the beer from the picture from Saturday is later in the evening after several others and well, lets just say I knew my notes would not be great.  As I said, my best friend was in from out of town and we received a surprise visit from another one of my friends that lives close by.  All 3 of us had some GREAT catch up time Saturday night.  Good times.

3/23/12 - Flying Dog Ales - Road Dog Porter.  This was a great beer.  This beer ways in at a nice 6.0% alcohol.  I didn't save great notes from this Friday night - so going by memory.  I remember I liked this beer.  It was a nice roasty malt flavor.  I don't remember to dark and burnt of a flavor but a nice medium roast.  I remember the head retention stayed with the glass nicely and it drank smooth.  I think the one thing I remember for a porter it was a very light beer in texture.  This lightness really made this a drinkable beer.  Made it nice and enjoyable.  A friend of mine recommended this one and though it was good - it wasn't one of my favorites.  Again, I'm not really a porter or dark stout type drinker so this shouldn't surprise.  All told it was a nice drinkable beer.  And the beer was enjoyed as the kickoff to a great weekend with my best man/best friend/buddy from high school.  It was a good time, Friday night was even another Wine Cupcake making session for my wife and a friend of hers.  So the lightness of this beer when really well with the winey goodness of her cupcakes.  Text me if you want her recipes and/or more information on those cupcakes.

Wow, so this was a long post - I'm going to hold of posting today's beer (blogging this on 3/27/12) till at least tomorrow.  But I had an enjoyable weekend and am glad I stayed with the challenge.  I am excited about tomorrow as I am checking out the call from last Friday - again - if the news works out I'll talk more about this later.  There is a lot to be considered and discussed.  In the end if it works out and I move forward with it.  This blog will be the FIRST (well second as my wife will probably be the first ;) ahah) to know!  Thanks for listening and until the next blog!

So, I'm made the jump - I've decided to use home brew as a beer of the day.  Why not right?  I brew it (or a friend does) and I enjoy it - why not include it in here.  I will make it a point to add the recipe to this link so that you have some idea of what was done with it.  I'm not the most organized home brewer.  I also have not entered any of my beers in any competitions though I've thought about it.  Anyway, I brewed this beer a few months back in October 2011 and everyone loved it.  I have yet to do a "repeat" beer so I thought why not try to duplicate my process.  I'm still awaiting some feed back from my fans but I'm not sure I succeed in "duplicating" that October brew.  It is GOOD but definitely for some reason not the same.  My organization is horrible so I'm not sure if I made any major differences between this brew and the one from October.  Here is the recipe:

6.5 lbs of Dry Malt Extract - light
6 oz Roasted Malt
6 Oz Crystal 40L
6 Oz Crystal 120L

.5 oz Northern Brewer hops for 60 minutes
1 oz East Kent Golding Hops for 30 minutes

Irish Ale Yeast WLP004.

In 2011 my original gravity was 1.054 and it was final at 1.011 where I kegged it on 11/13/11 (made it around 5.5% alcohol).  I brewed it on 10/22/11, transferred to secondary on 11/1/11 and then kegged it on 11/13/11.  Put about 25 lbs of C02 on the tank for 3 days (shaking the keg every day at least once) and it was good to go.  The beer I had in 2011 poured a nice brownish red pour.  The head was HUGE in the glass and it was awesome to watch the carbonation settle up from the bottom of the glass and settle on the top almost like a "fine" Guiness Stout type pour.  I don't remember the taste well enough to explain but everyone loved it.

This time I used the SAME recipe as above to the best of my knowledge.  I brewed it on 1/14/12 and the O.G. started at 1.056 (so very close to original).  Transferred to secondary on 1/29/12 at a gravity of 1.015 and kegged on 2/8/12 with a final of 1.013.  The final is about .002 higher then I like but I decided to keg away (I'm impatient).  This beer pours a very DARK brown almost black.  I do not see much "red" in the glass with the exception of the glass getting a bit empty at the bottom and able to see through it a bit.  Maybe this is just a bit more 'unfiltered' then its predecessor.  There is a huge malty flavor to this beer for sure.  The sweet/sugary goodness comes through.  I almost get a 'honey' like sweetness to this beer.  The hops are very mild and in the background and you don't get much from them but a balanced beer.  Over all, I'm happy with this beer but it is a bit "darker" from the one I had before.  I have not had many people try it as it was ONLY ready to drink as of last night.  The future of this one is unclear till a few of my friends let me know their thoughts.

I thought I would be able to give a bit of a description on how beer is brewed and this blog is already getting long.  I'll keep it short and simple for now and get more in depth later if possible.  The bottom line is that you get some malts.  These malts are then 'cracked' through a grinder very lightly then steeped in a bath of water roughly 155 degrees.  There is a ton of science here (a few degrees higher and lower causes different things to happen.  Which is good on certain levels).  You are steeping these grains to convert them to a sugar.  There are different kinds of sugars and at the proper temps you can get those different sugars out for fermentables and flavoring.  I will not get into the "all grain" versus Dry Malt Extract (which I am still using DME) here, but suffice to say, ALL GRAIN - you do this 155 bath for 2-3 hours with a lot more grain.  If using DME you will remove the grain bag from the water and add the DME and bring water to a boil.  From there, you will start adding hops.  Once again, you add hops at "different times" of the boil to extract different needs like bittering, flavoring, and smell, these typically get added at the beginning (60 minutes of boil), some where in the middle (30 minute boil), and end like 10-15 minute boil.  Take this off the stove and CHILL as quickly as possible to roughly 68-70 degrees for Ale Yeast and colder (usually 40-55 degrees) for Lager Yeasts.  Once at that temp - add yeast, put an airlock on and allow the YEAST to eat the fermentable sugars till their heart is content.  This is another incredibly scientific process.  The bottom line here though is - Yeast eats sugar and farts CO2 and produces the glorious Alcohol of the beer.  In general, it is a beautiful process.  There is much much much more to it but this is a very high level look at it.

Cheers!