1001 Beers: Pliny The Elder

Beer Number 12: Pliny The Elder



Ok, so this picture is not the one I took... I think my phone deleted it haha but it is one that Louie took and he is the one who gave me this beer... and all the others that we drank together this night. I haven't seen them in almost a year and I am glad we got to catch up before I left town again. We did a little BBQ'n, Drinkin', and fun havin'. A great night... even though we all almost passed out from sleepyness. Louie had some very interesting beers and actually one that I was looking for, which was pretty surprising being they do not release it often. I guess he has been holding onto it for some time.

Pliny is one of the best IPA's I have ever tasted. I had it before and even brought home a growler of it. This is another beer that is hard to explain. Everything about this one is just amazing. Piney, Cirtusy, very clean bitterness and flavor but not overdone in anyway. Just perfect and amazing. There were some intersting facts in the book about this beer. Things I did not know.

Vinnie Cilurzo started Blind Pig Brewing, Started the Double IPA Revolution basically to cover up any off flavors in a beer because thier equipment was not the greatest, He originally aged the beer on oak for nine months, served it on the brewery's first anniversary, took it to the GABF, continued to make the beer annually until he left to brew at Russian River, and then created a new recipe and scaled it up, then named the beer after a Roman Scholar who created the Botanical Name For Hops! Anyway though, lets get to some other brews.



Next Louie broke out the Knuckle Sandwich from Bootleggers. I have never had this one before. I just missed it when I went to the brewery. I was not a fan of anything they had on tap but their bottled beers tend to be really tasty. I am not sure how that process works... maybe the brewery is just dirty. Knuckle Sandwich was very mellow for what I was expecting... maybe not mellow, but it was malty and bitter. I was expecting a thin hop bomb. I really loved it. I will find it again someday.



Next the Imperial Black Phoenix came out. The original Black Phoenix is my favorite beer from the brewery. Again, in bottles! The Imperial version was very interesting. It was very Toasty... Check out the picture.



The Bruery released a beer called Filmishmish and I love the name of it. I loved the beer too. A very good sour brewed with apricots. You could pick them out in the beer and the sourness was very mellow. I am a fan of big sours but this one was well done and it is nice to change taste the range.

So we were looking at various things on Louies computer over the course of the night and when all the windows were closed I saw a picture of Victory At Sea Coffee Vanilla Imperial Porter and I got so excited. I have been wanting to try that beer ever since I first heard of it and I asked him if he has ever had it. Louie looked at me and was like, yeah... Hold on... He walks into the back and comes back with a bottle and throws it in the fridge! That was pretty intense, you have no idea. I know I am easily excited by beer but just the randomness of him having it blew my mind. I loved it! I love Ballast Point. He actually gave me a bottle of Sea Monster & Westvleteren 12 before I left as well. He is very good at finding amazing beers.



After this we popped open one of the bottles of my homebrew that I brought over for him. It was my Fat Bastard BarleyWine... pretty much the only beer I have left being I have not brewed in a long time. I built this beer to age and last the test of time. I am hoping that it fairs well for years to come. We will see for sure. This was my second taste of the beer since it has been bottled. The first was in December, and the second was now. It is coming along really nicely. I am going to open up a bottle for review soon but it turned out very well, I'd say.

989 Bottles Of Beer To Go!

Cheers!

Hot Tamales!

Tonight marks my first venture into cooking with beer. Going through the cabinets while packing I found a whole mess of things that I purchased in order to do something with and then it never happened. So tonight for dinner is Chicken Tamales. I do not know if this was such a great idea being I've never even made regular Tamales but Oh, well.

I homebrewed a Nut Brown Ale a while back and I thought that sounded like a good candidate to mix with the rice and I have some Bootlegger Black Phoenix, a Chipotle Stout, that I thought would go well with the chicken being this is a Mexican dish.

I started cooking the rice first. Since I am going to be putting it inside of the tamale, I did not want it to be extremely hot while I was trying to handle it. I threw it in the rice cooker because I figured it would give me the same results as if I did it in a pot... Not just because I am lazy.



1 Cup Brown & Wild rice
1 Cup L's Nut Brown Ale

I then put the chicken breast in with the rest of my bomber of the But brown in order to marinate it for an hour. I intend on cooking it with a Chipotle stout so I hope this does not throw the flavors off too much. I assume it would help, but we will find out.

To make the Tamale outters (technical term) I used 1 pint of Black Phoenix, and 1 Pint of Chicken broth. I just threw everything together in a bowl, minus the baking powder and oil, and mixed it well. After it was all mixed I added the oil and the baking powder... Lets just say this smelled bad as all hell.

4 cups of Maseca
1 pint Black Phoenix
1 pint Chicken Broth
Dash of salt
Dash of garlic powder
Dash of onion powder
1 cup of oil
1 tbsp of baking powder

After pulling the chicken out of the marinade, I threw it in a pan and just cooked it as one normally would. I began cutting into smaller pieces once it would finally give and poured 8oz of Black Phoenix over that and let it sit over heat for about 10 minutes just higher than a simmer.



Once I pulled it off of the heat, I shreded up the chicken and tossed it with the Nut Brown Rice.



I took a sample of the mixture at this point and thought it was ok, just a little bland so I added some taco seasoning that we mixed up a while back. It added a bit of spice and I quite liked it at this point.

Now since all of this was a pretty last minute decision, I did not have corn husk... not that when I was even looking for them though I could find them. So I used Aluminum foil for this next step. I spreaded the outters on the foil and added the chicken and rice mixture.



Then you fold it, etc, etc, I've had tamales before so I knew what they looked like which made things easier.

The only thing left to do after this was to steam them. So, I got a pot of boiling water and steamed them for 75 minutes. YAY! Bored! So I decided to make something else. This had no beer in it.


Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup masa harina
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 cups frozen whole-kernel corn, thawed
1/4 cup cornmeal
1/3 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Directions
1. In a medium bowl beat butter until it is creamy. Add the Mexican corn flour and water and beat until well mixed.
2. Using a food processor, process thawed corn, but leave chunky. Stir into the butter mixture.
3. In a separate bowl, mix cornmeal, sugar, cream, salt, and baking powder. Add to corn flour mixture and stir to combine. Pour batter into an ungreased 8x8 inch baking pan. Smooth batter and cover with aluminum foil. Place pan into a 9x13 inch baking dish that is filled a third of the way with water.
4. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven F (175 degrees C) oven for 50 to 60 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes. Use an ice cream scoop for easy removal from pan.


It was an overly complicated process and I found the recipe at allrecipes dot com or something or another. It is damn good, but... well, I won't get into that.

Here is the final outcome.



I thought it looked really good, but there was only one way to tell...

I was not impressed. HAH! The inside was the best part. I've had tamales before so I know I like them. These ones just seemed to have a strange flavor. It could have been the beer or it could have been my base recipe. I mean, they were edible but I ended up removing a lot of the outters and only eating the chicken and rice. Maybe, I made them too thick as well. They were kind of bready and not enough stuffing. O well, I wanted to do it and I ate it. Case closed. That corn stuff was really good though.

Brewery Weekend

This weekend was a crazy one. I went to Stone, The Lost Abbey/Port, Bootlegger, The Bruery, and 38 Degrees Ale House (ok, so I know this one is not a brewery, but they have a damn good selection of beer and know what they are doing).

First off, I would like to say that Stone is an AMAZING brewery. They are kind of what I imagined every brewery would be like but... as I found out... I was wrong.



Their tour guides are amazing. Jessica Wilson, did a great job with literally everything. Nikkee thought she may have been pregnant with the way she was "nursing" her beer and stuff but what do I know. I was more excited to be inside the actual brewery. I was literally having "beergasms" apparently... but what do I care? I saw pallets upon pallets of beer, grain, a whole closet full of hops, a test batch of 11-11-11 (I was spying), and the bottling line in motion. I was in heaven.



The best part of the tour, was the tasting at the end. The free beer was totally amazing. I have never tasted an Arrogant Bastard that was that damn good. I wish I would have gotten a growler of that, but I guess that is why they are refillable :D



Note: Do not order the Spud Buds. We did not like them at all, the waitress said no body liked them at all, and she did not like them at all. I guess some people must like them but you have been warned...


(sign meant for my mouth)

Here is a video of the bottling line. The first part is cool, but we were rushed at the end.



After leaving Stone, we went to The Lost Abbey/Port Brewing.


Apparently I was talking to The Owner of the Brewery... I wish I would have known that while I was there. I loved talking to him but I just thought he was a bartender (at this point I was NOT drunk, but we had just left Stone literally 5 minutes prior and I began drinking immediately). He was a really cool guy and had great beer suggestions. I did not like his female replacements that came just about as we were leaving... though, one was totally in fish nets... I love fish nets...

I wish I would have picked up on his clues that he ran the place. There were some good little conversations, but I would have went further if I knew who the hell I was talking to.

This place had a really nice environment. Not really a family place, like I thought Stone was, but a really cool place nonetheless. We were sitting on sand bags. Someone told me that this was the old location of Stone's brewery. I honestly cannot imagine that but I guess everyone has to get started somewhere.

This was the first location that I realized that a brewery did not have to be a fancy, "corporation" type of location in order to make a great product. It really opened my eyes to the world of brewers and the making of craft beer.

I left here with a Growler of 2009 Santa's Little Helper.


It was at this point that Nikkee wanted to go to Bootleggers... I did not want to go.. I know my limits and I know I would have passed them... Let me just say I did...

So I don't really want to talk bad about a place but there was only one brew here I liked... and that was Black Phoenix. I knew I liked that one before going, and that is the only one I liked after going...

This night did not end well. I will just leave you with that for now...

A Growler Hunting I Will Go...

I just want to start off by saying, "Happy Anniversary To Me!!!!!!!!!!!"


Anyway, Now that that is over with, Since I guess this anniversay is about me. I want to go get a few Growlers. One from Stone, The Lost Abbey, Bootleggers, and The Bruery. There are others I want but I guess that will have to come another day. Actually thinking about it, trying to get to all of those locations in one day is pretty ambitious... So, why not turn this weekend into a BEER WEEKEND!

I kind of have this Bucket list of things I want to do/places I want to go before I ship off to BCT and since I got all dorky into beer this past year they all pretty much revolve around that.

1. Go To Eagle Rock Brewing Co.
2. Go To LadyFace Ale & Brassier
3. Go To Stone Brewing Co.
4. Watch Ghost Busters.
5. Eat A 12 Egg Omlette
6. Go to Sierra Nevada (hopefully for beer camp)
7. Go to Deschutes... etc, etc.

There are several other breweries and events on there that I want to go to but that list can go on forever. I only have a couple of months left so I have to pick and choose... though, I am doing some that didn't even make the original cut.

Details later.