at least it's an ethos...

had an old friend on town this week and he brought be a couple of cans of austin beerworks pils. very classic german style - lightly hopped & super crisp.

i just finished mowing the lawn and couldn’t think of a better beverage.

new glarus snowshoe beer & sharp cheddar soup topped with fresh air popped corn.

jessica greeted me at the door with this amazing treat. best wife ever.

doing a new brewpub with the father-in-law @ john g’s tap room in washington, mo.

here’s the haul (left to right):

- lost abbey devotion ale

- ballast point sculpin ipa

- north coast scrimshaw pilsner

- hair of the dog ruth apa

spent an hour this afternoon at bottlecraft on india in san diego.

dig this - they have a killer selection of craft & import beers to take home. but, you can also have a hard-to-find tap brew while perusing their wares. or you can crack a bottle of whatever you like to drink on the premises. killer business model.

also, having a brew while browsing totally removed that choice anxiety. kind of analogous to never grocery shipping hungry.

this is what beer taps at a ballpark should look like - 9 local craft brews on tap.

camp set - we’re sleeping under the stars tonight @ tyranena brewery for great taste tickets in the morning.

Anyone from Milwaukee wanna join me in Lake Mills this Sunday to stand in line for Great Taste of the Midwest tickets?  A friend and I plan on going to Tyranena around 10 or 11pm Saturday night and camping out until noon the next day.  Should be fun - they will begin selling beer again at 9am, so look for an early-buzz-then-napping kind of day.  Details here.

is there a tumblr buddies for craft brews? if no, can we form one right now? if so, can i play too?

Thinking of coffee in beer-making terms, I realized that using a French press is like batch sparging and using a drip machine is like continuous sparging. Could I batch sparge the coffee grounds in my drip machine? Hell yes! For coffee to flow out of my coffeemaker, the pot needs to be on its warming plate. By just brewing the coffee without the pot, I can let the beans steep in the brewing water for as long as I like. Once the grounds are steeped, I quickly slide the pot onto the warming plate and wait for it to fill. Because the filter housing needs to hold all of the water in addition to the beans, batch sparging cuts my brewing capacity in half. Luckily, I rarely drink more than one mug a day.

After some trial and error, I found that grinding the beans coarsely and letting them steep for four minutes (starting when all of the water is in the filter housing) works really well. The coffee is much better than what my drip machine would normally produce, but it’s not quite as good as the first 3/4 of a mug that comes out of my French press. At some point, I’ll throw some money at the problem and make it go away. In the meantime, knowing how to make beer is improving my coffee.