Oh my God that's good.

I exclaimed as I took a sip of Rogue's St. Rogue Red Ale. It's a red, and I'm not too fond of the malty beers, but the huge print of "DRY HOPPED" drew my attention to the bottle. I love Rogue's Santa's private reserve, which I've heard referred to as a double St. Rogue Red, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Wow. I thought Hazed and Confused had some dry hopping going on....this is delicious. Not overly bitter, the dry hops add a wonderful flavor and aroma, balancing the malty red. This beer is very good and like a darker double IPA has both body and an ample amount of hoppiness. Go get yourself some, and also look for Rogue's Brew 10,000 celebrating Maier's 10,000th brew. With IBU's at 83 and 10% alcohol it's sure to be a winner.

Beerthday

Or, that's what I call my 29th celebrated at the local BOP. What else would a birthday be with out a little brewing. I decided to celebrate a day early as to not steal the thunder of all the mothers out there, and I didn't want to share my day with anyone else. Now I know how all those people feel with late December birthdays. Anyway, I did another variation on C3PA. Same recipe, but I put in 1.9Gal extract instead of the 1.7. I boiled the first Chinook hops for 60 min instead of 30, and I used 2.5oz Cascade and 0.5oz Centennial for flavoring. Due to a wheat shortage, I had to use 5.8oz of Caramel Wheat to sub for the lack of regular wheat; don't think it'll make too much of a difference. I also used my last pouch of Pacman. We'll see how it turns out...in 30 days...and...GO!

Oregon Brewer's Festival

Occurring July 26-29 2007, this year marks the 20th annual Oregon Brewers Festival, regarded as one of the finest craft beer festivals in the nation. Each summer, the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon welcomes more than 50,000 beer lovers to the four-day event. Aficionados come from all over the country and the world to experience this hoproots festival, which began as a way to expose the public to microbrews at a time when the craft brewing industry was just getting off the ground.

All of your festival questions can be answered here.

American Brew

I just saw the beer documentary "American Brew" on A&E. I have to recommend it. You can get a copy for $5 here. While you're there, check out the rest of the Here's to Beer site. They've got a couple of original series, Fresh and Thirsty Artist.

New Features

Technology is great, and I find it helpful to be able to get as much information as you can about a certain passion. I intend to fill this blog with links to damn near everything I discuss. If I miss something please feel free to comment. Because I'm so enthraled with the wonderful interweb, I added an interactive tech related beer link section including RateBeer and Beer Mapping's lookup page.

I also put a couple beer maps on the right to show the contrast in number of beer related businesses between Miami and Portland. Thank god I'm moving to Portland.

New Beer Friday

So, I'm out of MI2PA and I'm getting to the dregs of my Sierra Nevada keg. I decided, it's payday, I should go by and check out Crown's new offerings. I picked up two new beers: St. Peter's IPA and Boulder Beer's Hazed and Infused. Hazed and Infused, is unfiltered (Hazed) and dry hopped (Infused)giving it an amber color and heavy hop aroma and flavor without being overly bitter. It's a little unbalanced with a strong hop aroma (you can really smell the citrusy Centinnial hops) and flavor (strikingly peachy with citrus as well). Good stuff. The IPA will wait for this evening.

Kinda disappointed with their websites. St. Peter's doesn't describe their individual beers and Boulder is all flash, so you can't go to a specific page...bah.

St. Peter's IPA was if nothing else, probably authentic. It tasted like an English beer that had traveled to India by ship a few hundred years ago. Most of the reviews I've seen remark about it's skunkiness and mine was no exception. Not a beer I'd recommend.