"Just... One More Thing..."

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Only a few more days/hours until my voyage back to the Frozen Land of Utah (FLU) but I’m obviously looking forward to it. I mean… as you may know, Christmas is just about my favorite holiday because it’s about families getting together, usually making lots of delicious treats, and exchanging gifts is cool for the kiddies. I’ve got some really good ones for my niece & nephew… and most everybody else will just be drinking some of my homebrews. Am I being “that guy” whose against commercialism during the Holidays? Sorta… but it’s really just why get them a bunch of crap that they’re not going to use… when I can give them something that I want them to literally turn into crap (and/or urine)? It just makes sense… and they’ll enjoy it. Then again, if my homebrews end up destroyed during the journey… then I’m kinda screwed and everybody’s getting doodles of dinosaurs or macaroni & paper plate tambourines. If it worked in 2^nd grade, why not now?

 

So this past weekend, I finally watched “The Breakfast Club” starring Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall & Ally Sheedy. I had never seen this movie before… but I’ve seen plenty of parodies over the years, most recognizably “NOT Another Teen Movie” which… is basically my kind of teen movie. For those of you who haven’t seen this movie, there are these five high school kids who spend a Saturday in detention for unknown reasons. They’re the standard horror flick mix of The Nerd, The Rich Girl, The Jock, The Weird Chick & The “Criminal” (A-hole). Over the course of the afternoon, they talk… divulge their life stories… smoke a lot of weed… swear a sh*t ton… vandalize (at one point the Jock breaks a window by screaming after doing a bunch of cartwheels high off his ass… or he may have rag bonered it, I dare not rewind to find out) and so on. I’ve heard this movie is a generational epic masterpiece… but then again, I’ve heard similar things about “Dirty Dancing” and “Napoleon Dynamite.” Basically… your sister probably loved it. Why? Not entirely sure. Maybe she personified with the weird chick. Maybe they liked odd ways of applying lipstick. Maybe she likes the a-hole type guy. I’m sure they’re all getting ridiculous amounts of muff from this movie. In fact, check on your sister. She may be getting banged by Judd Nelson this very moment. As for my opinion, I didn’t care for it. I personalized more with the Janitor than any of the kids. Is that to say I’m old? Maybe… but then again, I never really had the “NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME!” phase when I was in high school. Everybody seemed to understand me. I like to keep things simple & logical… at least on the inside.

 

Next up was “Europa Report” starring Sharlto Copley & Michal Nyqvist. Set in the fairly near future, an international crew of astronauts is sent on an epic mission to Europa, one of the many moons of Jupiter in the search of life on other planets. This 22-month mission (each way) is privately funded and based on some findings that there was water (or some liquid) under the frozen icy exterior… so there’s potentially microscopic organisms… or perhaps, something more… more DANGEROUS!!! Things get really interesting when the communications link is lost 6 months into their journey there. This movie is told kind of in a jumbled way of interviews with members of home base, found footage, interviews with the crew, etc… and it’s actually a pretty interesting movie… though there are a lot of points that are kind of predictable and what-have-you. I’d recommend it though. It’s very similar to that movie “Sunshine” that came out a few years ago from director Danny Boyle… but with a bit more of a horror twist to it. It’s on Netflix, check it out.

 

 

Next up was “Robot & Frank” starring Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, James Marsden & Liv Tyler. Also set in the fairly near future, Frank (Langella) is a former cat burglar… but he’s losing his mind a little bit in his older years. So his kids (Marsden & Tyler) get him a healthcare robot to help out around the house. At first, he’s obviously opposed to having a damn talking tin can there to pester him, but over time… he begins to form a bit of a kinship with the robot… and then when he realizes that he can convince the robot to help him pull off heists, then the cat burglar is back up to his old tricks… but with him being a little old & forgetful, will the law catch up to him? Throw in an attractive librarian of a certain age (Sarandon) that he has the hots for… and boom, you’ve got a movie. I REALLY liked this movie. Basically it starts out as a piece about how to care for the elderly in the future since we’re all apparently going to live to be well into our hundreds unless there’s a major catastrophe… and how robots as healthcare workers can be a controversial solution to certain things when the technology is ready. It also touches on how one of the best things to help a person suffering from some mental setbacks is to keep their minds occupied & stimulated… but at the same time, if what stimulates them is larceny then there may be an issue there. Aside from that background, it’s a pretty funny & entertaining little flick that I highly recommend. Frank Langella does a nice job as the “everyday grandpa” type since he’s obviously most famous for being the only actor to successfully portray the Holy Quartet of Evil (Dracula, Satan, Skeletor & Nixon), it’s a nice change of pace for a very underrated actor. Also, it's been a LONG time since I mentioned updates on "Sexbots". This particular movies doesn't dive into that subject but... just a thought that I had.

 

Well, that’ll do it for tonight. Just a quick movie updated really before I’m off for a few weeks. I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas time with your family, even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, but sure just to let your Loved ones know that you Love them. Happy Holidays y’all!!!

Brewery Tours & BB Porter

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Last weekend, Dizzy & I watched “The Sapphires” starring Chris O’Dowd which was about the real life story of a girl band composed of Aborigines who toured the USO circuit during the Vietnam War. Basically these three strong-willed sisters from Cummeragunja (just fun to say), an Aboriginal reservation, cross paths with a down-on-his-luck musician (O’Dowd) at a local talent show… and he offers to manage them when tryouts arise for the Vietnam entertainment circuit. Though the girls sing mostly country-western (somehow), the manager convinces them that due to their… complexion, that soul singing is the way to go… and it works… and then enters a fair-skinned Aborigine who is resented by one of the sisters… and conflict… but the important thing is the music played throughout as you might expect from this flick. Is it based on a true story? Yeah, sorta. Is there a point that racism is bad? That kinda seems to be the central theme… but luckily Chris O’Dowd is there for comic relief because… yeah, otherwise I feel like they took a LOT of liberties with the real story… seeing as the writer & director was the son of one of the sisters (spoiler alert). Still a pretty good flick… and it’s on Netflix. Check it out.

  

We also watched “Grabbers” which is about a pub in a small Irish town during an alien invasion… but the catch is… the aliens won’t eat them as long as they’re REALLY drunk. That’s basically the premise of the movie. Now, unlike most drunken Irish movies, this one didn’t really need subtitles most of the time… and it was funny & kinda predictable… but yeah, just a good time… and you can make a drinking game out of it or something if you wanted. Other than that… eh… it was okay.

 

Saturday, we set out with some members of the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild on a whirlwind bus tour of three local breweries for tours, tastings, and of course getting to know fellow homebrewers over the course of the eight hour trip. Our first stop was FreeWheel Brewing in Redwood City, basically located in a strip mall. This brewer though has partnered with English craft brewers Iron Bridge & Green Jack to make some distinct English style ales here in California… and are also famous for their cask-conditioned ales. Here are some pictures...

 

Next was Drake’s Brewing in San Leandro who pride themselves on making great barrel-aged brews (Jolly Rodger series) and are EXTREMELY well regarded in the beer community with a Beer Advocate score of 95 and you can find them in pretty much every bar in Northern California... but with their great brews, they've continued to expand and they mentioned that they'll be opening a new brewing & bottling facility in Chicago soon. Here are some pictures of their digs...

 

This food truck had some pretty legit burgers...

and garlic fries... and tater tots.

Last was Linden Street Brewing located in an 1890’s brick warehouse in Oakland… who pride themselves on keeping “Old California” Gold Rush style traditions in their brewing, being proud of their city & heritage as a pretty prominent player in the beer industry at the time, yet still keep it real. With brew names like Urban Peoples’ Common Lager, Deep Roots Red Lager and others… they’re holdin’ it down for The ‘Town. Despite being located near the West Oakland BART stop, they definitely have a nice cool down-to-Earth feeling. Here are the pics...

 

Again, D.O.G. food truck was legit...

Frito pie... basically fritos with chili, handmade hot

dogs, sour cream, cilantro, onions, etc.

On the drive home, we saw the robot dinosaurs off the Bay Bridge...

Bourbon Barrel Porter

 

Sunday, we started up our first all-grain recipe with a fresh new grain mill, mash-tun, wort chiller, and a whole lotta grains & hot water. Now the process for all-grain recipes is a little different than our previous recipes. With the malt extract kits, we basically took the malt extract (almost like syrup) and pour it into the boil… maybe steep a few specialty grains in for some distinct flavors… and then do our hour-long boil adding hops, etc. With the all-grain recipes, we basically have to make our own malt extract. We do that by taking about 8-15 pounds of various grains (depending on the recipe) and we have to pull the malt out of them. There are a few extra steps involved…

 

First up, we run the grains through the mill… not to pulverize like a coffee mill or something… but hopefully to just crack the outer shell so that the grain’s innards are exposed… the thing we found out is that the particular kit that we got was all-grain recipe... but they already cracked & crushed the grains for us... so our mill will get used another time...

 

While doing that, we heat up some water to fairly hot, but not quite boiling. Typically we want it to be in the 180-190 degree range…

 

Once everything is ready, we mix the hot water with the cracked grains so that the overall temperature will keep around 160-170 (again depending on the recipe).

 

This causes the grain’s innards to release the malt sugars that we need to make the beer. Too cold & it doesn’t really work… too hot & it doesn’t really work. We also want to keep the grains evenly saturated with water so that we can maximize the amount of malt sugars that we pull… so the colander helps a little with that. Also, the insulated cooler helps keep the temperature in the best possible range without losing heat. We keep this for about an hour… checking periodically to make sure that everything is good…

 

Next, we extract the wort (the malt sugars mixed with the hot water). How do we do this? In the bottom of the cooler, there is a false bottom that helps separate the liquid wort from the grains… you know, all the husks & stuff that you don’t really want to drink. There’s some technical “recycling” of the water involved to make sure that you get the most out of the wort, but you can read the specifics on that in a book if it interests you. Basically when we’re done, we have the wort ready for the hour-long hop boil in the pot…

 

We had a few hiccups along the way this first time...

and this is what happens... HULK SQUEEZE!!!

And then we have the leftover husks from the grains in the cooler that we can then… I don’t know… throw away… give to cows, chickens & pigs… use for compost… make doggy biscuits… apparently there are also recipes online for these now “spent grains” so Dizzy made some bread...

 

And we also decided to share some with the neighborhood birds too... so we'll see how that turns out.

 

As mentioned, we have the wort ready now, so we do the hour-long boil adding the hops… and put it in the primary fermenter the same way as our previous batches. The only twist is this time, after the boil, we have a snazzy new stainless steel wort chiller to help cool the wort as quick as possible for the fermenter…

 

Alright! Now we’ve got our Porter wort sitting in the fermenter… we’ve added the yeast… and now we wait a few weeks…

 

“BUT WAIT!!! I thought this was supposed to be a BOURBON BARREL PORTER!!! I see NO BARREL and certainly NO BOURBON!!! What the French, toast? BLASPHEMY!!!” AH, you are quiet right… we have not reached that part of the recipe yet… but for that, you’ll just have to wait until next time… all the way in 2014.

 

Anyway, we had a LOT of fun doing this… so hopefully you had a LOT of fun reading about it. Please patronize FreeWheel, Drake’s & Linden Street Breweries if you’re in the Bay Area… and if you’re not… I know you can get some Drake’s beverages at BevMo… and probably the other two if you’re lucky. Also, if you like what you see, let us know… I’m still not 100% that anybody at all is reading this besides me & maybe Dizzy. Have a happy holiday season everybody!!! See you in 2014!!!