Blue Mountain Brewery hosted a fantastic beer dinner last night. The menu was outstanding and the beers were paired perfectly. The surprise pairing of the evening for me was the Belgian Ale steamed mussels with Evil 8. Though the pork tenderloin and Apricot & Almond Strudel were both amazing, the mussels and Evil 8 were the best match, I thought.
Thanks to Mandi, Taylor and Matt as well as all the kitchen and service staff for another awesome beer dinner!
Here are some photos from the evening.
Last weekend we taste tested a 2011 Bell’s Hopslam and compared it to a 2012 Hopslam. Over the course of a year the 2011 lost most of the strong, piney, resinous hops character as well as a significant portion of hoppy flavor. The two beers couldn’t have been more different. The 2011 was purchased in April of 2011 in Indianapolis, the 2012 purchased a couple weeks ago from Beer Run.
Last week I also sat in on a webinar from the American Chemical Society and the guest speaker was Charlie Bamforth. Definitely check out the webinar if you have time, it should be available here. Charlie mentioned that he thinks ALL beer should be consumed fresh. Now I can’t say I agree with that in regards to all beers. Our higher gravity beers often benefit from a few months of aging to say the least.
But, in regards to heavily hopped (especially wet/fresh hopped) beers, I couldn’t agree more. The loss of those volatile hop oils and alpha acids definitely give up the ghost after a short time, even with constant refrigeration.
So, don’t save that Pliny for a special occasion. Always drink fresh when large amounts of wet or fresh hop additions are present!
Beer Run was rockin last night with tons of great Blue Mountain brews on tap.
My personal favorites were the Dark Lager and the Blue Reserve Hoppy Belgian Ale. Thanks to Beer Run and Blue Mountain for a great night!
Sorry for the phone photo, didn’t have the fancy camera with me
Just a couple shots from our American Pale Ale brewing session.
Before we got to brewing our American Pale Ale we had to bottle our Pliney the Elder clone. 16 oz. of hop pellets in this one!
Then is was time to get rolling on the pale ale. Always sterilize your hands or anything else that comes close to your homebrew! A big bucket of StarSan is always handy to have.
If you’re a home brewer chances are you’ve considered making your own bottle labels. For some of us photoshopping up a label is no big chore. But, for the Photoshop imapared (or the lazy) Labeley.com does most of the work for you.
I gave it a shot and the interface is straight forward and easy to use. You can choose from a number of pre-loaded label shapes and backgrounds or upload your own images. You can also add text and manipulate the alignment, font and color of said text. I had a few problems uploading the background images unless the image had been sized to the listed minimum of 1200 X 1350 pixels. And under the text and upload tab I’d also like to see a way to scale the size of the user uploaded images to fit a bit better into the overall label design. But otherwise the free service was a snap. Here’s an example of a label I whipped up for our Australian Ale:
Labeley let’s you download the final image as a high res PNG file or share a link on Facebook or Twitter, etc. All for free and that ain’t not bad.
Typically we don’t make labels for our home brews as it’s a pain to soak and remove labels every time we bottle…and we’re lazy. But these labels are great for denoting which brew is on what tap in the ol’ kegerator. Give it a try!**
**Full disclosure: Labeley.com contacted me and asked for my honest opinion about their application. So, this is it.