Makin' Big Moves

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Sorry it's been so long... I've been really busy... and unfortunately pictures aren't downloading right so... a brief recap, picture-free... my apologies.

 

Last Wednesday night was the first test taste of our newest Torpedo Clone / India Pale Ale batch… and honestly, it’s pretty damn good. Now, it’s not super hoppy, which is good because then we’ll drink it pretty quickly… but it’s definitely hoppier than our Pale Ale that we’ve made in the past. I’m pretty impressed with ourselves. We'll see how it fares in the SFHG competition.

 

My Mom also came to town this past week due to my fast approaching birthday… and frankly I think she just misses me. We got to hang out on Friday, basically the usual trip out to the Taco Bell in Pacifica (oddly enough, her favorite spot here in the Bay Area) and then we went to the DeYoung Museum to see a bunch of dresses by Oscar de la Renta… enthralling!!! Here is where pictures would be... but they're dresses... and I'm a Man.

 

Friday night was my company’s Anniversary Dinner and it was pretty good. Izzy was my +1 and looking super hot as always… we ate prime rib, mock sushi & pork belly… we cut up the rug… and we were back before too late to hang with my mom. I don’t really have any pictures of that… but may have some later.

 

Saturday was Steve-toberfest!!! Yes, the annual celebration of my glorious birth in which friends & family from around the globe flock to the Bay Area to drink beer, enjoy great food & just have a helluva good time!!! There were about a dozen of the best people in my life that came to hang… and a great time was had by all. I’m always a little impressed with all of the wonderful people that I’ve been able to surround myself with in my truly blessed life. It humbles me… at least for a few moments… but seriously, you’re all amazing and I love & miss all of you. No pictures of this one either… the drinking started early & it involved “Exploding Kittens”.

 

Sunday, my mom FINALLY got to meet Izzy’s mom… and we hung out with her aunties for dinner… and Sunday was pretty good.

 

That is… at least until the usual roommate shenanigans started up again over the next few days this past week… and a whole bunch of other negativity that I’m just not going to delve into… but the long & the short of it is… wait for it… IZZY & I ARE FINALLY MOVING IN TOGETHER!!! Essentially, I’ve found the love of my life… we’ve basically been living together for the most part across both homes… it’ll save us a bunch of money… and I’m just f**king sick of roommates, especially when they’re catty little c*nts in their 20’s who have never lived without a parent cleaning up for them & simply cannot take care of themselves. Therefore, over the next month or so… I’m going to be moving after over five years in the latest place… but yeah, I’m done with that sh*t. On to the next one… let’s see what else is out there…

 

The new episode of the Everything I Learned From Movies podcast has posted… and we WERE going to have our FIRST SPECIAL GUEST… but unfortunately due to a lot of that negative jibber jabber, IT DIDN’T WORK OUT!!! Spoiler alert: the guest was going to be my Mom… and the movie that Izzy & I discuss on this special birthday episode is the 1986 classic from my childhood, “Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend” starring Sean Young, the Greatest American Hero, Edward the Longshanks and… BABY!!! The namesake of my 1969 Pontiac LeMans!!! Be sure to check this episode out, and of course subscribe & follow us on all the social mediums. Until then, have a great day everybody!!!

Stevetoberfest 2015

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

We’re well into my birthweek… which is like a birthday… but I’m greedy. I’m just going to say that it started Friday when my coworkers decorated my office in dinosaur attire… well, a few balloons, dinosaurs & Reese’s peanut butter cups…

 

Saturday was the 2^nd annual Steve-toberfest celebration!!! We invited friends and family to come hang out for a few hours, eat some delicious food, drink some delicious beer & just have a good time in the Presidio on a beautiful Saturday. We had about ten people actually show… and the food was quite eclectic. In the German theme, we had pretzels with beer cheese dipping sauce, kartoffelsalat (potato salad), but we also had Taco Bell tacos, brownies, Scotch eggs, chocolate covered strawberries, hummus, goat cheese, baby carrots, and other leftover baked goods from the previous week. Here are some pictures…

 

 

As far as beer on tap… we had our Strawberry Hefeweizen, Milk Stout, our Torpedo Clone, our Hoppy Red Ale, and of course… the incredibly dangerous… Steve’s Birthday Cake!!! That is our barrel aged imperial stout… and boy, it’s amazing. Big Ben also brought some Anchor Steam clone & single malt-single hop Golden Ale with hops from his backyard (he’s been growing them for a decade) and all was right with the world.

 

So the real question… “How many boots of beer did you have, $teve?” The answer is four… plus a few others… but yeah, I was pretty sleep shortly after everybody left. Great party!

 

Sunday was my actual birthday… and let me just tell you that my girlfriend Izzy is absolutely amazing. She started off the day by giving me this wonderful drawing for a gift…

 

She also fried me up a leftover hangover breakfast and then we headed to her house… and she’s growing our hops… hopefully they will have useable hops this year… but I’m told they still take a few years… and our Chinook hops are a year old but the Galena just started…

For lunch, we then headed over to Fieldwork Brewing in Berkeley, which Big Ben & his wife had been RAVING about for the past month or so… and oddly enough, they were having a beer & donut pairing special on my birthday. Fatidic? Perhaps. The brewery takes a more… I don’t know… homegrown, agricultural look at how beer is made & keeps it very simple. The atmosphere of the brewery… is basically just like the inside of a wood & tin field storage area where you might park your trailer or something… but instead there are a few 10-20 barrel systems in the back… and their décor is a lot of standard shelves with bottled samples of hops & grains, simple logos, etc. just more of a beer focus it seems. Now as for the beer, it’s also pretty good & simple. They had farmhouse ales, breakfast stouts, just good all day drinking kind of beer… except Eliza, their chicory imperial stout… that was pretty strong. The Biere de garde was no joke either… but yeah, I highly recommend going to check it out. Oh… and the donuts from Doughnut Dolly were ok… but yeah, I still prefer All Star Donuts.

 

Anyway, that was my magnificent weekend… and more news on the way… with EPIC movie reviews & fun times with others… have a great week everybody!!! Happy birthday to MEEEEEE!!!

Get Hard & Stout

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

First off, last night, Izzy, Jackie D & myself got to see a special screening of the new comedy “Get Hard” starring Will Ferrell & Kevin Hart. I’m sure you’ve seen the previews… James King (Ferrell) is found guilty of various embezzling & financial indiscretions and is sentenced to hard time in ass-packin’ prison (though having driven by San Quentin, at least the views are breathtaking) but he has 30 days until he needs to report… so during that time he hires a carwasher named Darnell (Hart) to teach him what he knows to be prepared for & survive in prison. The only problem is… Darnell doesn’t really know… as he’s never been to prison, James only assumes that he has because… well, he’s black. Now, the premise sounds pretty ridiculous… and the preview further perpetuates that ridiculousness… however, that being said… yes, it’s incredibly vulgar & I would not bring your children to see it unless they’re a very mature 13-14 years old… and yes, I absolutely judged every single person in that theatre who spent all day waiting in line for a free ticket with their goddamn children to see this movie… you know who you are… but if you can handle the subject matter, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s hilarious in a purely raunchy way… and it’s just completely entertaining. If you like Will Ferrell character-driven movies like “Old School” or “Talladega Nights” then you get all of that in droves… if you like Kevin Hart’s fast-paced standup with his almost constant state of perplexed absurdity at the twisted world going on around him, then you’ve that too… plenty of dick jokes and… well in fact, an abundance of dick jokes… a plethora if you will… but hey, it’s about prison. However, I’ve seen this setup before in a few bad comedies like “Let’s Go to Prison” but… this one is actually a little more heartfelt… and frankly, just done a whole lot better. There’s actually a pretty hilarious scene where Kevin Hart switches between 3-4 characters almost seamlessly that I was pretty astonished at. Not sure if it was part of his standup routine or clever editing… or if he’s just that talented, but whatever way, it works. There’s also some great character roles from Alison Brie, Craig T. Nelson, Paul Ben-Victor, Greg Germann, a John Mayer cameo & even rapper T.I. does a decent job of… well, being T.I. Go check it out! Well, if you’re 14 years or older… otherwise, watch a documentary or something.

 

Saturday night, Izzy & I went to a most spectacular event… for a good cause… and it was called the Sea Slug Soiree, held at the Randall Museum (he said with pinky in air). Okay, so there were more people wearing Birkenstocks than ties, but still it was pretty awesome. The Randall Museum is a little-known gem of a children’s museum located at the peak of a hill in the Haight-Ashbury part of town (basically just follow Masonic until you see the signs) and it has a lot of great animals, activity areas, and a great host of various teachers there to help kids learn a lot about nature, animals & the environment. I definitely want to take Kairi & Vinny there the next time that they come to visit. Here are some pictures of the exhibits…

 

As for the Sea Slug Soiree, this event was a little bit of a fundraiser (less than $20 a head) where they included two drink tickets (kegs of Stone IPA & Anchor Saison or wine selection) and a host of special guest speakers about the vastly mysterious nudibranchs (sea slugs) and activities like making your own nudibranch out of clay, printmaking, painting, all sorts of things… and the exhibits were open to take drunken photos… observe…

 

So yeah, go check out the Randall Museum as soon as possible… because apparently they’re going to close down for a year for renovations fairly soon (they’ve been around for over sixty years) but definitely take the kids with you. It’s great family fun!

 

Sunday, we brewed a Cactus Milk Stout clone recipe that we found online. Now, apparently this is a clone of a milk stout recipe from some famous brewery in Arizona or something (hence the name, no cactus were used) but I couldn’t find anything about that online so.. there you go. You may be wondering, “What makes a Milk Stout different from a regular Stout?” Shockingly, the main difference… is milk. I know… didn’t see that one coming, right? More specifically though, the difference is the use of maltose a.k.a. milk sugar. How is it different? Well… typically the sugars taken from the malts are what is transformed by the yeast into alcohol, basically taking super sweet barley sugar water & adding alcohol while reducing the sweetness. However, because of its chemical makeup, maltose isn’t broken down by the yeast, so it makes a sweeter, more malt forward stout than normal. With this recipe though, it should come out kind of like a chocolaty milk stout… and that just sounds dangerously delicious. Here are some pictures of the process…

 

 

 

We also kegged our Strawberry Hefeweizen and it went pretty smoothly of course. The strawberry puree gave it some great color & flavors… in fact, Izzy believes that it may be “our best ever” which… in all humility… is a pretty amazing thing to say! We’ll get it all carbed up & let you know but… yeah, the sample was pretty damn good. Pictures…

 

We also transferred our Scotch Ale & our Cyser to secondary fermentation…

 

… and repitched the yeast in our Apple Cider from a while back as there wasn’t any real activity… it’s still tastes like apple juice with brown sugar added, no real signs of carbonation at all… but we should get some activity on this gallon small batch…

 

Now for big announcements concerning beer activities… first off, Izzy & I will be hosting another Learn to Homebrew Day (like we did back in November) and we invite anybody who’s interested in learning & seeing the process of homebrewing firsthand (as opposed through beautiful pictures on this blog) and of course it’ll just be a good time with potluck style food, homebrew, games, all that stuff. Since I think only 3-4 people read this thing, there will also be Facebook invites and postings on the various SF Homebrewers Guild & Meetup pages… but yeah, right now it looks like Saturday, April 18^th will be the big day. Stay tuned…

 

Also coming soon is the 34^th anniversary of my glorious birth… and so then comes with it, the glorious event known as STEVE-TOBERFEST!!! Yes, on Saturday, April 25^th, there shall be a great feast in my honor at my humble abode… and there shall be great beer throughout the land! Music & merriment, a submarine sandwich taller than even me, and plenty of fine homemade ale… including the release of our long awaited barrel aged imperial stout… also known as $teve’s Birthday Cake! It shall be an amazing occasion! Clear your calendars immediately and make way to the Presidio for this joyous day!

 

Anyway, that’ll do it for today. My mom’s coming to town tomorrow for the weekend so there should be some awesome stuff going down… but until then, have a great weekend everybody!!!