Barbara's at the Brewery

The Pilsnerd and the Hopster found themselves perched at the bar of this charming little nook of a cafe. We drank a pint of Craftsman Saison and a pint of Stone Sublimely Self Righteous Ale, sparred delightfully with James the bartender, and drove home happy.

We'll Drink to That!

http://jezebel.com/5505372/well-drink-to-that-beer-was-invented-by-women

Beer Review: Simpler Times

Lest you think Beer Committee are snobs who only drink microbrews you've never heard of, we are here today to discuss Trader Joe's Simper Times. At 6.2% alcohol and $2.99 a pack, it's no surprise that Simper Times is a staple of the Beer Committee diet. This friendly and portable lager can be picked up in can form at any Trader Joes. Simpler Times is ready to join you at a BBQ, the beach, a pool party, or while playing a rowdy game of Cranium. But what IS the taste of a Simper Time? Have we really ever though of what this beer tastes like as we consume can after can? Let us, just for a moment, truly examine the flavor of Simpler Times.

....................

It tastes like nothing. It's just beer. It's neither malty nor hoppy, no bouquet or aroma hits me, there's no complication to it at all. I can't tell the color because it's being consumed out of a can like it should be. The most I can tell is that it's carbonated and boozy. Simpler Times has truly achieved simplicity and I for one appreciate the honesty in advertising.

But we all know that Simpler Times is not about the taste, it's about the proximity. The familiarity it has with all things fun. It tastes like Sunday. It tastes like the desert. It tastes...not unlike licking a battery. In other words, it tastes like Los Angeles. My home.

Beer Score:

Taste: 1.5

Comfort: 10

Plusses: cheap as dirt and gets you drunk

Minuses: "Seriously, you guys. I have stuff I need to get done this afternoon."

Home Brewing!

So I have been homebrewing for over a year now, and I know some of y'all are interested in it as well. It has become my absolute favorite hobby, even though it can be time consuming and a pain in the ass. But even a shitty home brew is a thousand times better than a Budweiser.

Homebrewing itself is really simple - you need the right equipment and ingredients, but once you are set up, it takes about four hours to brew a 5 gallon batch.

Jessica bought me a pretty sweet set up last year for Christmas - two glass carboys, a bottling bucket, and all of the various bits you need:
I don't have the set up to do all-grain, so I use extract recipes - instead of getting the sugar from the grains by mashing, I dump in either dry or liquid malt extract.

The basic ingredients you need for any beer are crushed grains, malt extract, hops and yeast:


Starting by steeping some grains for color, you mix what is called the pre-boil tea with the extract into a giant kettle and bring to a boil. This is the wort:

Now you add the hops - each recipe comes with a "hopping schedule" which details at what time in the 60 minute boil you add the different kind of hops:


This looks gross but it smells amazing!!

Once you are done with the boil, you kill the heat. This is where you can add the fancy ingredients - my last batch was a kiwi wit, and at this point I dumped 4 pounds of kiwi in:


Once the boil is done, you need to cool down the wort as fast as possible to prevent spoiling and keep bacteria and stuff from growing in it. They sell fancy chillers and other things to drop the temperature, but I keep it old school (aka I'm poor) and give it a water bath in the tub:


Once the temperature is down to about 80 degrees, you can now move the wort to a carboy:

You fill the carboy with chilled water up to the 5 gallon mark, pitch the yeast into the carboy, and seal it up with an airlock, so the CO2 from fermentation can escape but nothing can go in:


And now you wait. Most beers take 2 weeks in the primary carboy, 2-3 weeks in a secondary carboy (you move the beer to to a clean carboy to clarify the taste) and then two weeks of bottle conditioning before it is ready to drink. When I keg a beer I can force carbonate and it is ready in about 4 days.

What I left out of this description is all of the sanitization you need to do - anything that touches the been after the boil needs to be sanitized - the carboy, spoon, funnel, anything. There is nothing like soaking and drying 50 bottles before you get started bottling and capping (a big reason I moved to kegging!).

YAY HOMEBREW!

(omg I look awful in this picture but it is the only one I have of my kegerator)

Beer Review: Trois Pistoles

I'm not going to lie. I bought this beer because of the label. It’s a Pegasus running in the sky over a chapel! How could I resist!

This is a handsome, Canadian beer. A dark, carmely, malty offering from our brothers to the North. For the record, I don’t like malty things, but Trois Pistoles is not overpoweringly malty. It’s a good malty. I’m ok with this level of malty. Not a very complex beer (which is fine), but it does have a dash of fruity hue in the background. Actually, more like if you could taste a still-life portrait of fruit painted by a community college student. Aww, man. Once I though of that, that is EXACTLY what this beer tastes like. I know it sounds bad, but really some of those students are very talented. They’re just trying to save money and get their GE credits out of the way before transferring to a university. Don’t judge.

That being said, this beer wins on scent. It has a warm, manly scent. I would prefer something with less malt, but hey, who am I to argue with this mysterious foreign stranger. Trois Pistoles does what he wants and I am not the woman to change him.

Beer score: 6.5 out of 10

Plusses: Handsome

Minuses: Malty. Lost his syllabus in the first week of the semester and keeps asking you how much the final is worth.

i don't drink bud light, but this is awesome

Stout

The Beerbrarian and Brewologist soak it up.

BC caught wind of this new beer & burger bar last November and decided to meet here for a Sunday beer & burger brunch. They'd only been open for 4 days, so in light of that I say not too shabby, but there are some things to work on.

I like to learn about new beers every time I drink. This afternoon we sampled Kilt Lifter, Old Speckled Hen, Racer 5, and our B-E.M.T. added some espresso to her Old Rasputin stout (this was a classy alternative to Sparks?).

The chef/owner came out and chatted with us for a while; he was super cute and genial. He told us he lured his brewmaster away from Portland and will soon be serving housemade brews under their new Hollywood Brewing Co. I'm keeping my eye out for the "Director's Cut," an IPA that promises to be nice and snappy.

There are two quinoa-based veggie burgers on the menu and we tried them both. I had The Charlie, which was topped with an asian peanut slaw - soggy, salty and ill-fitting IMHO, but I still ate the whole thing. The Beerbrarian had better luck with the Bollywood, which included arugula and sharp cheddar. 'Twas super tasty so I kept stealing bites, and though I didn't find it to have any Indian flavors it did make me want to get up and dance in an epic romantic comedy musical number (what?).

Fellow BC members raved about the Six Weeker (a real meat burg with fig jam and carmelized onions) and the side of bread pudding was decadent and amazing, melt-in-your-mouth vanilla-chocolate-almost- butterscotchy. The other sides were a notch above meh - some decent onion rings and yam chips - especially since they were $4 a pop and the portions were borderline share-able.

We were bummed that the Sweet Potato Tots we had heard about through the foodie blogosphere were not on the menu, and told them as much. The chef explained that they were very labor-intensive to make and lack consistency unless he personally hand-rolled them, so he discontinued them after the soft open. Bring back the tots as a special, Stout! Now that the burger bar trend is fading, it'll set you apart from the rest.

This is our spirit animal

Welcome, classy ladies

Ya'll want this party started, right?