What I've been up to

From a few days before Christmas til a day or so after the new year, Hayden was off school.  Since I no longer have a real job, I loaded my Dropbox account with a handful of files I needed from the office and stayed home with the little boy.  With the exception of an hour or two a day while I was doing shit for work, I was on Christmas break.  I took two weeks off from going into the office, from running on the dreadmill, and from watching my girlish figure.

To say I ate and drank well would be an understatement.  For the most part, I kept my beer consumption to the evenings, but generally speaking, I was eating something most of the time I was awake.  Popcorn, crackers, chips, cakes, cookies, some sort of toffee stuff, Chex mix and pies made up a good portion of my diet and that's just the stuff off the top of my head that I remember.

I was down to 179 pounds before my reprieve and figured I'd see the 190s after.  I was ok with that.

While I emptied more bottles than I care to count, the following are the new beers I tried.

My first came in one of my favorite bottles.

Chatoe Rogue Pumpkin Patch Ale...Rogue is an Oregon brewery that controls almost every ingredient that goes into the beers.  From their own hop yards to their own pumpkin patch, they oversee it all.  It's really dark for a pumpkin beer and lacks much pumpkin flavor, focusing mostly on the pumpkin spices of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.  It's got a wicked good smell, but it's a bit spicy.  Maybe too much so.  I'd call the spices aggressive, but it was a good beer.

Next up was a Belgian Saison (a saison is a just a funky kind of beer, an acquired taste, but one I really like) called To Ol Snowball Saison Ale.  I have no idea what the 'To Ol' means because I don't speak Belgiumese, so you're on your own as to what the hell that means or stands for.

I was mostly disappointed in this, particularly for $14 a bottle.  Saisons usually have a funky (fucky is hard to define, but once you've smelled and tasted it, you'll agree it's funky), sweet-ish smell and taste, like a bunch of different kinds of fruit thrown into a bucket.  This one had some of the smell, but not the taste or feel.  It was very peppery and that overwhelmed everything else.  The only other feeling was bitter, not something I'm looking for in this kind of beer.

Then I tried a Samuel Smith (No, not Sam Adams) Organic Chocoate Stout.

I don't always care for English beers, but that's mostly because not everyone makes them like Sam Smith.  Just look at that glass, that's what a beer should look like.  Pitch black beer with an off brown head.  You could smell the chocolate from across the room and it tasted like a chocolate milk shake.  The alcohol content is only 5% so you can enjoy these all night long.  Good stuff.

My fourth new beer of the holiday was something I've been waiting to get my hands on for a long, long time.

Pliny The Elder (yes, the label sucks) from Russian River Brewing Co out in Santa Rosa, CA.  Their beers are somewhat mythical because their distribution sucks.  They tend to stay out on the left coast and the only place away from the ocean where you can get it is Philly.  So, you either travel to get it or you find a retailer who will ship it.  Or, you have your wife's new contact from out west send it to you.  Merry Christmas to me from my wife.

This beer is rated as one of the best in the world, though most haters don't like it because of Russian River's shitty decision not to expand their distributing.  While I was dying to try it, I was really hoping I'd hate it.  Loving a beer that you can't easily buy is a pain in the ass.  However, the second I popped the top, I knew it was trouble.

On my beer forum place (BeerAdvocate.com), I scored the look of the beer a 4.0 out of 5.0.  The color looks like it's supposed to for the style (an Imperial, or Double IPA [IPA is India Pale Ale]), nothing out of this world.  However, the rest of the scores were 5s.  It's stunning and for me to even write about it won't do it justice.  Haters gonna hate, but the beer is amazing.

As it turns out, my wife's contact actually orders the beer from one of the retailers who will ship and they ship Pliny The Elder with a second Russian River beer called Damnation.

I received two orders, so I got two bottles of Pliny and two bottles of Damnation.  A while back, my friend Boston who lives out in Washington just north of Portland (yes, that's how I explain my friend) sent me a box full of beers and included a Damnation, so I've had it before, but damn, it's good too...smells and tastes like honey, grass, pear, lemon and pepper.  It's high-ish in alcohol so a couple bottles is all you need.

Speaking of my friend Boston, my next two beers were my Christmas present from him this year.  First up was Oatis, from Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer, or Beer Bitch as I like to call her.

He was a bit concerned about sending this beer.  He knows I like weird shit in my beer, but he wasn't sure about oatmeal.  Little did he know oatmeal stouts are one of my favorites.  First off, just look at the sucker in the glass...it's hard to improve upon that.

Oatmeal gives the beer some body so it's a bit more filling and it gives it a creaminess which makes you just want to keep drinking it.  Most of the time oatmeal stouts are slightly sweeter than regular stouts, but this was the opposite, being slightly more bitter.  It kept my palate guessing the whole time.

My second bottle from my friend Boston was from the same Beer Bitch, Ninkasi Tricerahops.  Hops are used in beer as a preservative, for smell and for bitterness.  Hops come from various parts of the world.  The best German hops are known as Noble hops and usually impart a savory quality in beer, while hops from the Pacific Northwest where Boston lives, are now known as American hops and usually have a piney, citrus smell and flavor.  The smell and flavor of Tricerahops can best be described as a grapefruit and a Christmas tree stuffed into a glass of ale.  It was terribly yummy and had really high alcohol so I slept well that night.

Next in line was Sam Adams White Christmas.

To me, Sam Adams is the most over-rated brewer ever.  They are very popular here because most people go from drinking Bud Light to having one of Sam Adams' 200 different beers and thinking it's world class.  Not so much.

That said, this wasn't awful.  White Christmas is a take on a Belgian style that simply means white.  The picture here doesn't really show how milky white the beer is (it's cloudy more than anything, like Blue Moon, which is the same style).  The spices in this were really good, and like I said, the beer didn't suck.  It wasn't great, but it didn't suck.

From there, I tried a beer from one of my favorite brewers, Three Floyds, from up north in Munster, IN.

It's called Gorch Fock, named after an old German ship.  I'm not sure why the name, but the beer is a German style lager, which means it's average at best.  I don't usually care for German lagers.  There are a handful I like, but I generally don't care for them.  This was ok, probably a good beer for a warm day, as it provided a nice crisp finish.  Just not much more to say about it...not a bad beer, but not my style at all.

After the German beer, I went to an extreme and tried Dragon's Milk from New Holland Brewing.

This is as manly a beer as I've ever had.  I've had beers that had more alcohol or more hops or more whatever, but I obviously wasn't wearing my big boy pants for this.  It was black and chewy, just like I like my beer, but it was too extreme, almost hard to drink.  It tasted more like a liqueur.  I can still feel this in my mouth.

My next stop was for a wet-hopped beer.  I'll explain more about wet-hopping later.  This was from Sierra Nevada, another favorite of mine.  Estate Homegrown Wet Hop Ale, yes, it's a mouthful to say.

This beer rivals Pliny The Elder, only I can get it locally.  It looks amazing, it tastes amazing.  It's an India Pale Ale, which means it's more bitter than most beers, but I could still feel my tongue in the morning, as it had a smoothness not usually found in IPAs.  Can't wait to have another one of these.

The final beer of my holiday was Christmas Ale from Great Lakes.

Many people have raved about this beer and it's damned good.  The biggest problem I had (and it's more personal preference than anything) is that it had ginger.  I don't care for ginger in beer and it was fairly prevalent in the smell and taste.  The other things in the beer, honey (another thing I don't normally like in beer) and cinnamon, did a good job of helping mask the ginger taste, but I could still pick it up.  Regardless, it's a pretty good beer and I can see why people like it.

With my beercation coming to a close, I got on the scale yesterday morning.  I was at peace with seeing whatever number it showed, but was a bit shocked to see it top out at 185.  It's amazing to eat and drink like I did (and at all hours of the day and night) and only gain 6 pounds over two weeks.

Last night I was back to limited snacking and this morning I got back on the dreadmill for the first time since December 22 (I track every job I make).  It wasn't as much fun as I remembered, but I made it.  After a shower, I hopped on the scale and smiled when I saw 183 pounds.  I think weight is scared of me.