Ketchup for Thanksgiving

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Well damn… it’s been a few weeks… you may be wondering what the hell has happened to me since then? Well… here are a few things:

 

IRON BREWING!!! – As briefly mentioned last entry, Izzy & I are making Extinction Fennel Event for Ferment.Drink.Repeat’s Iron Brewer event… and it’s coming along great so wish us luck next week the judging.

 

We also started a Cider, kegged the California Common from Big Ben & Lone Cicerone, made a pair of SMASH beers, and FINALLY bottled our 2^nd barrel aged Imperial Stout (and it’s very whiskey-y). Here are some pictures of those adventures…

 

We’ve also had a booth at the Treasure Island Flea Market twice and have had a little weather each time… but overall, a pretty great experience where we made some money & learned things…

 

 

… and we also had a booth at the Jack of All Trades festival in Oakland, and going to do it again in just over a week! Here are some pictures of that…

 

 

Oh, there was also Halloween (mostly spent at the Flea Market) but we had fun at the Lake Lady’s Going Away Party…

 

There was also the California State Homebrewing Competition Finals at Anchor Brewing… and I was among the top winners, even though I didn’t enter a single beer this year. How you ask? Well, here are some pictures of the event, including some of my winnings from the raffle in which I entered $100 of tickets which include:

 

 

·         $50 gift card to Oak Barrel Brewcraft

·         $25 gift card & glass from Barrelhead Brewing

·         4 bottles of Speakeasy Brewing’s Scarface barrel aged Imperial Stout

·         Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest T-shirt

·         9 bottles of Henhouse Brewing’s Saison

·         11 bottles of Freewheel Brewing’s beer (4 different kinds)

·         2 bottles of Almanac Brewing’s Peach de Brettaville

 

…and then a few things that I got in the Anchor Gift Shop… so a pretty good day!

 

What else, what else? Oh yeah, one of the worst game show hosts in American history is now the President of the United States… no pictures of that.

 

We followed that surprise up two days later by watching one of our favorite comedians in the world, Dana Gould, at Punchline SF again. He’s always a treat and an incredible performer. If you don’t listen to his podcast, The Dana Gould Hour (never an hour), then you should absolutely start downloading and listening to it now. He’s just a very interesting & funny man with many layers! He also has great taste as he loved my “I didn’t mean to offend you… that was a bonus!” T-shirt that I was wearing that night. So much so that he liked my photo of him on Instagram which… is basically fantastic.

 

There was also the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild Annual Brewery Bus Tour which included stops at Uncommon Brewers in Santa Cruz…

 

Corralitos Brewing in Watsonville

 

Highway 1 Brewing in Pescadero

  

… and ended at Beach Chalet Restaurant & Brewery at Ocean Beach. Not quite the turnout of years past but… a great bunch & a great time was had by all on an otherwise pretty dreary& rainy day (which is also awesome).

 

I also received something unexpected… a 25^th Anniversary Letter hand signed by Mr. Bill Marriott himself!!! Yes, I know, I started early… like when I was 10 years old.

 

This past weekend, Wingman Scott came to visit and spent Thanksgiving with us… and we had a lot of fun hanging out with him, also a surprise visit from C&H&KJ on Black Friday, we had the booth at the Flea Market doing some pretty good business, and then on Sunday Scott & I met up with C for some Tailgating at the Oakland Raiders game…

 

As you can see, I’ve been pretty busy… and I’m trying to keep you

Dino 13

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Monday night, Izzy & I stumbled upon a documentary called “Dinosaur 13” about the discovery of the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil ever found in the Black Hills of South Dakota… and incredibly bureaucratic sh*t storm that ensued once the United States government, Bureau of Indian Affairs & lawyers got involved. To sum it up, a few lifelong paleontologists were doing their thing one day… when they found the largest& most complete T-Rex fossil ever… and they bought the fossil from a guy for $5,000 which was by far the most ever given for a fossil & the guy agreed to it. Well, they took it back to their institute to excavate, clean up & prepare the fossil that they named “Sue” for a new museum in their hometown of Hill City, South Dakota… and then 30+ military vehicles popped up, threw them out, and confiscated all of their fossils… not just “Sue”. Well, what happens after that is borderline ridiculous… but hey, that tends to be the way when certain entities are involved. Now, the story is pretty interesting… and I ended up enjoying the movie overall… but I can’t recommend this movie from a pace standpoint. The movie is 90 minutes long… but I feel like if they had taken out a bunch of the unnecessary, super-pretentious, artsy fartsy BS that this movie would have been pretty entertaining… if only 70-75 minutes. Another major pain in the arse… was the subtitles. There were a lot… in small font… and always in white font… usually where at least a third of the subtitles were over a white image in the background… so you often have to pause the movie to see what it’s saying… or just fill in the blanks on your own… which if very frustrating and pointless to telling your story. So… if you like dinosaurs, check it out. If not, it’ll probably just frustrate the hell out of you… it’s on Netflix.

 

Friday night, Izzy, Katie & I had a booth at Zoo Lights located at the San Francisco Zoo… where they of course have thousands of Christmas lights up throughout the zoo for people to come see… and then a few booths of people selling their goods. We had a lot of super cute art and we made sure to have an emphasis on animals as the zoo clientele would hopefully appreciate some adorable sloths, pandas, and other animals… but unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of traffic on Friday night. How did we react? We went and checked out the lights. Here are some cell phone pictures…

 

BIG NEWS EVERYBODY!!! IZZY IS AN AUNT!!! Her sister gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Everett on Thursday… so Saturday we headed up to the Sacramento area with her mom & her half-sister Melanie (who I met for the first time) and we went to see the little bundle of joy… BEHOLD!!!

 

Afterwards, we stopped by The Canyon Grill & Alehouse nearby for some drinks and snacks… and then we met up with some family friends from the Jeep club that they were a part of and had dinner at a pretty unique place called Al the Wop’s… which sounds like a horribly racist name for a place… but hey… some terms get grandfathered in, I guess. It’s located in the city of Locke, which apparently is mostly abandoned… but it’s a pretty cool old Chinatown that’s been in disrepair for the most part. Again, a unique location… that I want to go check out during the day sometime. In the meantime though, here are some pictures…

 

Sunday night, we were set for another night at Zoo Lights… but it had been raining hard all day & incredibly windy, especially at Ocean Beach where the zoo is located… and with the anticipated low turnout, we decided to just stick in & watch football (also our fellow artist Katie had finals this week). However, Izzy & I also had some beer stuff to do… so we kegged our Belgian Chocolate Stout…

 

…and bottled our Barrel Aged Cider.

Only a few more days until yet another EPIC Utah Christmas vacation to see the family… and I’m pretty grossly unprepared… but hey, it’ll be fun. Unfortunately I’ve had some issues with my credit card at the perfect time for present shopping… but hey, you do what you can do. Absolute worst-case scenario… I’ll be back in Utah where my bank is for almost two weeks, so I can just take care of my finances directly. Anyway, I’m digressing… probably one more post later in the week… but don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from the blog for a bit while I’m in Utah. I have no idea where I’ll be or what I’m doing most of the time… but I promise that it’ll be full of entertaining anecdotes& probably some brewery tours. So if I don’t see you before then, have a fantastic holiday season everybody!!!