I’ve been trying to catch up on these blogs.  With tonight’s four blogs I will have 4 more plus tomorrow night’s beer to blog.  Things have been calming down here around the house with summer quickly approaching.  I suspect the kids not having a “specific” bedtime next week and no real schedule will make things a bit easier for the wife and I to get a little of our own things done from time to time.  Of course, that also means the girls will probably be up a little later each night so there will be less alone / quiet time either so we’ll see how that goes.  Here at 365 we are working on our vacation schedule for July.  If nothing changes anytime this week – we are planning to head to Florida and enjoy a little sand and sun (ok a lot of sun) for a week with my wife’s aunt, uncle, and cousins that live down there.  I look forward to having a drinking buddy (Uncle Wayne) for a week to experience my beer tasting adventures together.  I can’t wait for the time off.
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5/29 – Cerveza Tona – Lager Especial – Most known for their coffee beans, Nicaragua also exports sugar, bananas, cotton and of course tobacco.  Oh, there are some exports that go, shall we say, under the radar.  And of course, there are some legal things like cerveza – Spanish for beer.  This is a Nicaraguan Beer that I’m drinking tonight.  This beer has characteristics of being light and crisp, bubbly and refreshing (to my surprise as well).  I do not think it would qualify as a “craft beer” in any sense that I can tell but on a hot day in the cotton or tobacco fields I would definitely be racing down the street to find me the first spot that sold an ice cold refreshing one of these.  It definitely had some corn sweetness to it but in general it really was not a bad beer.  Interesting factoid, I did a quick search to find “famous Nicaraguan’s” and the CLOSEST I could come to knowing was Mick Jagger’s wife – which had it not said that is who she was – I wouldn’t have even known that.  I wonder if I should get a bit more worldly educated out there or is Nicaragua just not that happening these days.

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5/30 – Yuengling Brewery – Bock Beer – I really need to stop putting these beers in the freezer first to cool down quickly.  I don’t plan my evening out nicely and usually end up not thinking about which beer to drink till about 8:30 at night.  Need to work on my basement beer fridge for better storage ability.  Anyway, I drank this beer a little later in the night.  The smell was nice and malty.  Very much like a nice bock beer should be.  I’m a fan of a good bock beer but this beer was a bit light on everything.  The body was light, the head retention was not the best, in general as a Bock beer I was not a fan of this one.  It was not “undrinkable” but just fell short of a good bock beer in my opinion.


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5/31 – Twisted Pine Brewery - Billy’s Chillies – Well the brewery’s name has Twisted in it so that tells you something.  The first “chili pepper beer” I tried that I remember was at the Wynkoop in Denver Colorado.  I haven’t really ever seen these chili beers anywhere other than Colorado though.  I’m sure they are out there.  And I am sure that they are for someone.  I remember the Wynkoop’s being a bit less powerful then this beer.   I drank this beer over at the “Final Approach Lounge” (aka my Father In Laws garage) while playing some darts with the neighbors.  The noise is HUGE pickled hot pepper from the glass.  It really came across with a huge spiced pickled jar of liquid.  It was bright yellow and bubbly in the glass with a nice white bubbly head on top.  The site talks about the beer being a wheat base; though I found it hard to notice anything resembling beer in the glass other then the yellow color with the white frosted head and carbonation brewing throughout.  It took all I could to finish this beer.  It was hugely over run with hot spicy habenero and Serrano peppery spice. 


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6/1 – Lavery Brewing Company – La Bealtaine White Fire Wheat Ale – As copied from the site, "this beer is named after the Festival of White Fire which celebrates the defeat of winter’s adversities and the anticipation of summer’s bounty".  This beer is brewed with Pilsner and Wheat malts – it was cloudy in the glass with a caramelized sugar light brown’sh yellow.  Most wheat beers I come across usually show case the wheat and yeast of the beer.  This one with the “Fire Wheat Ale” show cases a “fiery” hoppy bit to the beer.  For my own tastes it sort of came across a bit flatter then I would have liked or expected.  And for sure to me it could have been balanced with a little less hoppy bite that I assume is possibly coming from the Zythos hops.  This hop is a proprietary hop bland of Northwest’s most unique hop varieties (as mentioned on www.rebelbrewer.com).  These hops were created to lend a hand and match perfectly to an American style IPA.  These are usually the IPAs that I tend to shy away from.  I could probably drink one or two of these but I would not be able to drink many of these as it is a bit too citrusy and powerful for me.  For me, the grapefruit and citrus flavors coming from this beer were too much.