Eating Pizza With Scissors

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Thursday night, Izzy & I watched a Sylvester Stallone movie that somehow slipped through the cracks for me in the 80’s… and that feature is 1986’s “Cobra” starring Sly & Brigitte Nielsen. Like other iconic 80’s action movies… this movie starts out in a grocery store hostage situation (“Stone Cold” is amazing) but the overall story is about a renegade cop named Marion “Cobra” Cobretti (ugh) whose part of the “Zombie Squad” which means… actually they never really explain that the squad and how they’re different from anybody… or who else is in this squad… but really, who cares? Anyway, there’s a serial killer called the Night Slasher who has over a dozen victims in the L.A. area… and the police are clueless & have no leads. There seems to be no pattern, motive, anything like that. Until one evening when a model (Nielsen) stumbles upon a murder late at night… and see the face of the Night Slasher… but he get her license plate, so now she needs protection… from Cobra. Also, the Night Stalker is just part of a whole gang of… I don’t know, subterranean axe wielding new world order punk percussion enthusiasts? I feel like that’s never really explained much either… but the important thing is that there are plenty of people in leather jackets & tattoos for Cobra to kill… all while looking like George Michael in the “Faith” video… like exactly. Also, Brigitte Nielsen is a handsome woman… but the acting, the modeling sequence, and especially the fashion (shoulders mostly) makes me question the 80’s and the amount of cocaine that was readily available in Hollywood. Now, it’s you typically 80’s action movie with lots of guns, grenades, random explosions & the final showdown is at a steel plant a la “T2: Judgment Day” so as long as you go into it with that in mind, it’s not that horrible. There are many, many questionable scenes (bobblehead as a “hot item”, being a complete asshole parking his ’50 Mercury because… somebody else dared to park near his apartment, weird food based things including cutting fridge pizza with scissors while cleaning his gun using tools in an egg carton, checking a HORRIBLE police sketch of the Night Slasher with FINGERPRINTS at his APARTMENT?, etc) and a LOT of unanswered questions & loose ends. However, after doing some IMDb research, apparently this movie was originally over 2 hours and X-rated (f**k yeah!) but they basically cut it down to 87 minutes… so there was probably a lot of stuff in there involving who/what exactly the bad guys were… or the Zombie Squad… or character development… but yeah, good for some cheap laughs. Oddly enough, this movie was also Warner Bros highest grossing opening weekend up until that point in 1986! How odd is that? Well… “Batman” destroyed all that three years later… but still, interesting bit of trivia… check it out if you like bad Sly movies…

The other night, we completed by trilogy by watching the original “The Punisher” from 1989 starring Dolph Lundgren & Louis Gossett, jr and directed by Mark Goldblatt who… well, he was editor on some LEGENDARY movies (the good “Terminators”, “Armegeddon”, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, “Last Boy Scout”, “Starship Troopers”, “Predator 2”, “Showgirls”, and the new classic “Chappie”) but he directed… well, this movie and “Dead Heat”. What’s “Dead Heat” you ask? It was an action flick from the year before (1988) that featured Treat Williams & Joe Piscopo as cops brought back to life to chase down supernatural criminals. No, it’s not RIPD, don’t be an ass! Anyway, this movie is the first big-screen adaptation of the Punisher comic books which I have elaborated on in recent posts… and the story is very similar to the “Punisher: War Zone” version where the events of the movie take place five years after the “origin story” where former cop Frank Castle (Lundgren) is throwing out vigilante justice by executing criminals… fueled by VENGEANCE after his family was killed & he too is thought to be dead. The turning point in this story is when the Yakuza come into town & start taking over the organized crime in town… and they do this by kidnapping the Mafia’s children & holding them hostage to make them do their bidding. Well… the Punisher doesn’t like when kids are brought into the fray… so he goes to save them… and that’s where I’ll let you watch the movie. It was okay… it wasn’t great… Dolph obviously takes acting lessons & speech therapy from Sylvester Stallone… the plot is fairly predictable… but it’s violent & gritty like the movie should be… but yeah, just an okay 80’s action movie. Check it out on Netflix if you can. There’s Punisher, Yakuza & lots of guns… that’s about it.

 

In beer news, our hops are growing like weeds… that bear delicious hop clusters…

 

Saturday, Izzy & I had a busy little brewday which started with a new beer batch of a little known beer type called Kentucky Common. It’s a once-popular style that was huge in the Kentucky area from the Civil War to Prohibition… but essentially it’s similar to a brown ale… but with about 20-30% of the grain bill as rye and/or corn instead of barley. This gives the beer a bit of an easy drinking but slightly sour (like sour mash whiskey) twist to it. Why are we doing a Kentucky Common? Well, first off, because I’m a big fan of rye… in bread, whiskey, bourbon or beer form… and we hadn’t tried a rye beer yet. Mostly because it’s notoriously difficult to work with & clogs equipment with relative ease… but hey, we like a challenge. However, another reason we’re doing it is because Northern California Homebrewers Festival is in September & they have a club keg competition where you can make a Kentucky Common or a Classic American Pilsner… and we may enter it depending on how the SF Homebrewers Guild decides to enter… but worst-case, then we have 4-5 gallons of it available to share at our booth that weekend. Here are some pictures of the preparation… my new roommate also joined the adventure…

 

It was also time for us to transfer our Hefeweizen into secondary fermentation… and of course add the strawberry puree to make it Strawberry Hefeweizen…

 

We also had a bit bottling day in which it was time to bottle both our future Award-winning Dunkelweizen…

 

 

Other than that, it was a pretty low key weekend where we watched more than a season of “BoJack Horsemen” which… I mean, check it out… you’ll know in the first episode or two if you’ll like it. This next week is also pretty packed with awesomeness… and it culminates with a brew day with Big Ben & his family on Saturday!!! It’s gonna be a fun time!!! See y’all next week… thanks for stopping by… have a great week everybody!!!

Brewhaus Blewz

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Wednesday morning, Izzy & I met up with Big Ben for some Big League Brewing at Elevation 66… and it was just the three of us doing the brew. Well, Super Dave was there observing but… yeah, it was pretty fantastic. Before when I’ve been able to spend the whole day there, six or seven people were helping out… but here’s the thing… two of those guys are now starting jobs at other breweries (where they actually get paid) and the others have kind of feathered out… so yeah, a lot more hands on learning & I love it when I get a chance to help out.

 

How did I get away from the job to help out? Well… it was because I had to take the day off (and Thursday) for a Quick Trip to Utah… for family estate stuff involving my recently deceased father. Yes, “recently” means just over six months ago… but yeah, not going to lie… it’s been a little rough. Most of the time I’m pretty good… and then I’ll wonder if I’m being absolutely heartless by not having it be a huge deal in my daily life. Then other times, I’ll start tearing up over stupid sh*t that I see in a movie that I’ve even seen before… and then it’s like, “Where the hell is this coming from?” So yeah… fun stuff… but I’m doing fine…

 

As for the trip, I’m not going to go into details or anything… but basically there were only a few hours that weren’t completely occupied by stuff I rather wouldn’t have been doing & could’ve been resolved via email… I didn’t sleep well because the AC kept kicking on VERY LOUDLY at the hotel… and the last few hours I was in town, I got to spend some time with my brother for his birthday, C-Rock & Isaiah. They’ve been doing… not so good… but it was good to hang out with them & catch up. I also go to have gelato with my mom, niece & nephew. So yeah, for a 26 hour stay in the Beehive State, a lot was done.

 

Saturday, Izzy & I spent the day pretty much relaxing and playing video games… which may sound lame… but it really wasn’t… it was pretty awesome.

 

Saturday night, I met up with coworkers for a dinner & drinks at Roam Burger and then going to The Fillmore to see Anjelah Johnson a.k.a. Bon Qui Qui from “Mad TV” for a comedic musical performance that was actually pretty amazing. The comedy was tight… and the music with her husband’s band was pretty damn catchy and hilarious as well… I highly recommend to check them out on the Bon Qui Qui Tour… possibly coming to a town near you. Now… there’s only one picture… and it’s of us… boom…

 

Sunday morning, Izzy & I started our newest brew… the belated batch of Strawberry Hefeweizen for Clarissa & Andrew as a wedding present (married last month). This is the 3^rd time that we’ve made this fairly easy recipe so it’s been explained a little more in past entries… but basically it’s only a few pounds of wheat dry malt extract, one ounce of hops, and then strawberry puree in the secondary fermentation.

 

 

The main difference with this time… was the yeast. With every single batch that we’ve made before, we’ve used a vial of yeast from a brewshop… but this time, thanks to our FastFerment conical fermenter, we had a good batch of already active yeast from last week’s Dunkelweizen that we just pulled from its… I don’t know, “reservoir tip” at the base. Why do I mention this? Because it’s pretty awesome… previously with the vials, the reaction in the wort would take about 12 hours or something… and so it would start really doing its thing in the middle of the night & then we’d wake up to a mess of activity upon the carboy… but this time around… it was already blowing off in about two hours… pretty impressive. I think I’m really going to like this FastFerment thing…

 

So currently in our Brewhaus, we have this new batch of Strawberry Hefeweizen, Dunkelweizen in the FastFerment, our Cyser that’s probably ready to bottle soon, and we have our Chocolate Porter in the Whiskey Barrel. Not bad if I say so myself…

 

Another fun tidbit… about a month ago, a brewshop was handing out hop rhizomes that they had… and they were basically either expired or possibly diseased in all honesty… but we took some Columbus hop rhizomes to try planting in my backyard, just to see if they would work (and I had an open bucket) and… well, it’s sprouting pretty good…

Anyway, so it was a pretty busy weekend for being “quiet” but tune in next time… as there are a few movie preview screenings this week… and a trip to Tahoe this weekend coming up… so yeah, until then, have a great day everybody!!!

Brewing Up Some Fun

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Saturday, we did a Costco run and a lot of cleaning up around the apartment to make it hospitable… and we stopped by Izzy’s house to see how her pets are doing… but more importantly, see how our hops are growing…

 

but after running around the bay area, we ended up at Izzy’s Aunt’s place for a barbecue… and it was pretty fantastic. Great food, great peeps, and a few hours by the fire pit getting that camp smell all over us… good times…

 

Sunday was a busy brewday which started out with us brewing another batch of Dunkelweizen like we did a month ago. This batch is for an SFHG competition and the first batch was pretty fantastic to style… but it was also kegged… and nearly gone now due to deliciousness. We brewed the same recipe, the same way, the only difference this time around… is we’re using the FastFerment fermenter!!! We got the replacement part & it’s working just fine… so we’ll see how it does…

 

 The next morning, already foaming like crazy...

We also tried a new method of taking stickers off bottles… so now we can use most beer bottles for our own use with some cleaning. For example, we get a 12 pack of Anchor Porter… and now instead of recycling them, we can take the labels off & use them for our own brews. Heck, even label them ourselves if we so choose…

 

We also FINALLY bottled our barrel-aged Scotch Ale which had been sitting in our whiskey barrel for the past three months… it’s delicious…

 

We then immediately filled the barrel with our Chocolate Porter for a 3^rd round… and possibly the last one using the barrel that won’t be a sour ale… I’m interested to see how it turns out… but we’ve got a few months at least until it’s ready…

 

So yeah, busy little weekend… but nothing compared to the rest of this week, hence the quick update. More fun stuff coming soon though… have a great day everybody!!!