Beer
Repent: Belgian Pent Ale
Posted on September 1st, 2005 @ 8:41 PM EST
;)
This evening I went to DuClaw Brewing Company in Hanover, MD for their exclusive Brewer’s Reserve Invitation to try their newest ale, Repent. The event kicked off at 6:00 PM and we arrived right when it started. The beer was served in a 12 oz. snifter glass and had a sweet, fruity taste with hints of caramel and toffee. It was a lot different that most of the beers that I normally drink. It tasted more like a wine than a beer. It had a nice kick to it since it has a whopping 14.6 alcohol percentage by volume. I would definitely order it again the next time I visit the brewery if it’s still available. I managed to pick up one of their limited edition glasses soon after I got there which had sold out in less than an hour.
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Dogfish Head’s 90-Minute IPA Wins Battle of the Beers 2005
Posted on April 4th, 2005 @ 8:20 PM EST
My favorite beer, Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA, has just won RealBeer.com’s Battle of the Beers 2005 for the third consecutive year with over 2,700 votes! The tournament is set up similar to NCAA Basketball’s March Madness, except they call it Märzen Madness. RealBeer.com has held the tournament since 2002 where visitors select which beer they would rather drink. It starts off with 64 different American beers that are chosen by users of RealBeer.com and only one beer per brewery is entered. The beers are paired up that are vaguely alike then they are broken down into four groups of 16. Each time a beer wins it moves to a higher bracket. It started on March 1st and the winner is crowned champion coincidentally the same day the NCAA men’s championship game is played. Way to go Dogfish!
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2004 Lighthouse Beer & Wine Microbrewery Festival
Posted on October 17th, 2004 @ 1:05 PM EST
;)
Yesterday, my wife and I went to the Lighthouse Beer & Wine Microbrewery Festival that took place at Hugh MacRae Park in Wilmington. It was a great day for the event. The weather was perfect; it was mostly sunny and the temperatures were in the low-70s. Over 35 microbreweries were there including one from Canada and another from Germany, along with a few live-bands and local restaurants. We arrived about 15 minutes before the festival started so we could get there before it got crowded.
The first brewery we went to was Dogfish Head. I hoped that they would have had more of a selection of their beers, but they only had their Shelter Pale Ale and 60 Minute IPA. One beer I was looking forward to trying was Highland Brewing Company’s Gaelic Ale. It poured a dark, amber color and had a nice caramel flavor in the malt then finished with a hoppy taste. All-in-all it was pretty good and I gave it a 4/5 rating. We learned of a new microbrewery that is opening here in Wilmington next month called the Azalea Coast Brewing Company. It’s good to know there’s another microbrewery that’s going to be in town!
Since it’s Fall, many of the breweries had their seasonal pumpkin ales which I really like. The Carolina Beer Company’s Cottonwood Pumpkin Spiced Ale was my favorite with Brooklyn Brewery’s Post Road Pumpkin Ale being a close second. I still like Dogfish Head Brewery’s Punkin’ Ale the most, but unfortunately they didn’t have it available since it’s over North Carolina’s lame 6% law that states that no beer can contain over 6% ABV (alcohol by volume).
After about three hours, the alcohol was really starting to kick in and the lines to the port-a-jons were getting long so we decided to leave. We had a great time and discovered a lot of new beers that we really liked.
Listed below are all of the beers that I sampled at the festival along with my rating for each beer on a scale of 1-5.
| Microbrewery | Beer | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Apex Brewing Company | Sir Walter Raleigh Lager | 3 |
| Azalea Coast Brewing | Helles Lager | 3.5 |
| India Pale Ale | 4 | |
| Blue Moon Brewing Company | Harvest Pumpkin | 3.5 |
| Brooklyn Brewery | East India Pale Ale | 4 |
| Post Road Pumpkin Ale | 4 | |
| Carolina Beer Company | Cottonwood Pumpkin Spiced Ale | 4.5 |
| Dogfish Head Brewery | 60 Minute IPA | 4 |
| Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery | Amber Ale | 4 |
| Edenton Brewing Company | Joseph Hewes Revolutionary Ale | 4 |
| Pumpkinhead Ale | 4 | |
| Flying Dog Brewery | Road Dog Ale | 3 |
| Front Street Brewery | River City Raspberry Wheat Ale | 4.5 |
| Green Mountain Cidery | Woodchuck Draft Cider | 3.5 |
| Highland Brewing | Gaelic Ale | 4.5 |
| Pyramid Alehouse | Hefeweizen | 4 |
| Red Oak Brewery | Red Oak | 4 |
| Redhook Brewing Company | India Pale Ale | 4.5 |
| Winterhook | 4 | |
| Samuel Adams | Boston Lager | 4.5 |
| Sierra Nevada Brewing Company | Pale Ale | 4 |
| Spaten Brewery | Franziskaner Hefe Weiss | 4 |
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Dogfish Head Brewery
Posted on October 11th, 2004 @ 10:03 PM EST
;)
Last week I went up to visit my parents and sister in Maryland for a five-day trip. On Friday we drove out to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware to have dinner at Dogfish Head Brewery. On the way there we stopped at their brewing facility, which is roughly 25 minutes northwest of Rehoboth Beach. About 35 people had shown up for the tour which was a lot more than I had expected since it’s out in the boonies. During the sampling, they let us try their Lawnmower Ale, Shelter Pale Ale, 60 Minute IPA, 90 Minute IPA, and Punkin’ Ale which didn’t really have a beer taste but tasted just like spiced pumpkin.
At the restaurant, I couldn’t decide which beer I wanted (they were all really good on the tour) so i ended up getting a sampler that had their 60 Minute IPA, 90 Minute IPA, Punkin’ Ale, Raison D’Etre, and Chicory Stout. I then ordered their 120 Minute IPA, which they call the Holy Grail for Hopheads. It had a whopping 20% ABV (alcohol by volume) and it was served in a snifter glass. It was definitely one of the best beers I’ve ever had.
Dogfish Head is without a doubt my favorite microbrewery. They’re very original and have a creative approach with their beers and promotional materials. I like how they have a “let’s make whatever the heck we want” mindset because they’ll just toss in whatever ingredients they want such as raisins, currants, apricots, muscat grapes, pumpkins, etc. They also brew their own spirits which is the only microbrewery that I know of who does this.
I bought a four-pack of the 90 Minute IPA and took it home so my wife could give it a try. The beer was surprisingly very good and tasted just like the beer at the brewery, even though it was out of a bottle. It turns out that Lighthouse Beer & Wine, which is located in Wrightsville Beach (30 minutes away), carries some of their beer! Unfortunately, they cannot carry the 90 Minute IPA, 120 Minute IPA, or Punkin’ Ale because of North Carolina’s 6% law but I’ll gladly settle for what I can get.
I’ve posted some photos that I took of the brewery in the photographs section. I’ve also added a new page so I can keep track of all the different microbreweries I’ve visited.
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Back From Chicago
Posted on September 7th, 2004 @ 9:30 PM EST
We had a great time while visiting Chicago. The weather was excellent and the temperatures were in the low-80s each day. The first day there we walked down to Millennium Park. My favorite attraction in the park was the Cloud Gate Sculpture. The photo above is a reflection off of the sculpture. We walked around the streets outside the hotel and stumbled upon Boston Blackies where we had dinner. They had an amazing half-pound hambuger covered with bacon and onions for only $6.50, which was voted one of the top-five burgers in the city every year for the past 15 years. That evening we saw “Show Title Deemed Indecent By FCC” at the Second City comedy theater. The theater has established itself as a Chicago landmark and treasure. It launched the careers of great comedians such as John Belushi, Chris Farley, Mike Meyers, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, and many more. The show paid homage to how radically our culture has changed and was given its name because the actors want to help increase awareness of how much the FCC is trying to censor our freedom of speech.
Caroline didn’t get back from the conference until late in the afternoon on Friday so we didn’t get a chance to do a lot of sightseeing that day. We ate dinner at Buca di Beppo which is a family-style Italian restaurant. The food was served in portions that were meant for sharing and their “small” was enough to feed two to three people.
The next day we went to the Shedd Aquarium which is the largest indoor aquarium in the world. It took us over two hours to go through all of the exhibits (Amazon Rising, Pacific Northwest, Caribbean Reef, Fishes From Around the World, and Wild Reef). We ended up eating dinner at Baja Fresh because several friends had suggested it was good and they don’t have any locations near where we live. The food was excellent and is nothing like Taco Bell. After dinner we walked down to the Navy Pier and watched the fireworks over Lake Michigan. I was kind of surprised at the number of fireworks during the show. Their weekly show certainly had a lot more than what my local town of Wilmington, NC has on the 4th of July.
The last full day we were there we went to the Art Institute of Chicago. A few of the famous paintings that we saw were A Sunday On La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, American Gothic by Grant Wood, Water Lilies by Claude Monet, Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte, and The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso. There was an exhibit set up for Seurat which displayed 40 paintings and drawings that ranged from rich yet delicate crayon studies to oil sketches on small wood panels, to nearly full-sized paintings which were all studies for A Sunday On La Grande Jatte. The exhibit also had a full-size digital reproduction print that showed how the painting looked when it was first seen by the Parisian public in 1886, before the painting darkened somewhat. After visiting the art museum we browsed through some of the shops along the “Magnificent Mile” including the Apple store that recently opened, Virgin, Pottery Barn, Burberry and several other stores. We then went to the Goose Island microbrewery and took a tour of the brewery. They were very generous with their taste testing and let us try 10 of their beers. My favorites were their India Pale Ale, Red Felt Ale, and Hefeweizen. We ended up spending around four hours at the brewery and chatted for several hours with a few other people we met on the tour.
Overall my wife and I really liked Chicago. We both agreed that it’s the city that we like the most of out of all the large cities we’ve visited. The food was amazing wherever we ate, the city was really clean, the weather was nice, and there was plenty to do and see.
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I’m Home!
Posted on August 29th, 2004 @ 11:42 PM EST
;)
Yesterday evening I returned home from my trip to Washington State. I had a wonderful time and enjoyed spending time with my parents and sister who I only get to see a few times per year. The forecast called for rain every day we were there, but we got lucky and it only rained on two of the days.
We left Baltimore around 5:30 PM EST on Friday and arrived in Seattle at 1:00 AM EST. After a short night’s rest, we drove down to Mount St. Helens. I was amazed to see that even though the volcano had erupted over 24 years ago, it looked as though it happened just a few months ago. On the way up to the lava dome, we drove up many mountains that had nothing but trees (around two - three feet in diameter) which had been knocked over or snapped in half as a result of the 450 MPH blast. In many areas there was very little vegetation growing and the ground was extremely barren.
After visiting Mount St. Helens, we went to Mount Rainier, which is the highest mountain in the United States and is 14,410 feet in elevation. We drove up to Paradise, which is the highest point that you can drive to and is roughly 5,400 feet in elevation. Along the way we passed many waterfalls that cascade over lava flows, including one that was 168 feet high.
The following day we drove up to Port Townsend, a Victorian Seaport on the Olympic Peninsula, and went to Fort Worden. The fort was established in 1902 and served as the first line of defense to guard Puget Sound cities and the naval shipyard at Bremerton. It was also the fort that was used in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman which starred Richard Gere and Debra Winger. The navy closed down the fort in 1965 since coastal artillery forts were no longer necessary.
Later that day we went to Hurricane Ridge, which is located in the Olympic National Park, just south of Port Angeles. We parked at the Visitor Center then walked to the end of the mile long trail at the top of the mountain. Here we saw an incredible view of Port Angeles with the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the background.
The next day we took a ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca over to Victoria, Canada, the capital of British Columbia. After getting off the ferry, we got on a double-decker bus that took us to Butchart Gardens. The gardens were 16 miles from where our ferry docked so our driver gave us a guided tour of the city. The bus had been used in England in the 1970’s and to make the tour even better, our driver was originally from Nottingham, England so he had a strong British accent. After visiting the Butchart Gardens, we went to Crystal Gardens which had a large variety of tropical animals and plants.
The day after we got back from Victoria, we drove out to Rialto Beach, which is located on the Pacific Ocean and is one of the most popular beaches on the Olympic Peninsula. I thought the sea stacks (steep pillars of rock with trees) that were out in the ocean were interesting since I’m used to seeing nothing but flat land and sandy beaches here along the Carolina coast. We then drove down to the Hoh Rain Forest, which averages around 150 inches of rain per year and is the only temperate rain forest in the United States. It was pouring down rain when we got there, which was quite appropriate for a rain forest. We ended up taking the Hall of Mosses trail which just under a mile long. It was neat to see all of the moss that was on the trees. Many of the trees were close to 1,000 year old Sitka spruce trees and were over 200 feet high and 12 feet in diameter.
We spent the last full day of our trip in Seattle. After getting off the ferry from Bremerton, we went to the Redhook Brewing Company in Woodinville, which is about 20 miles east of Seattle. I was really excited about visiting the brewery since they make one of my favorite beers that I regularly drink, Redhook India Pale Ale. This was the largest microbrewery that I had ever visited. It was modern, beautiful, and located in a nice rural area. My Dad and I went on the hour long tour of the brewery and we tried all of their beers and saw where the beer is mixed, brewed, and bottled. After we left the brewery, we went to Pike Place Market. The variety of fish and vegetables was out of this world. Just about all of the vegetables and fruit that I saw were perfect. There were many vendors selling flowers for around $4 which would have easily been around $25 back home. We walked around the Waterfront for a while then headed to Pyramid Alehouse which is located next to where the Mariners and Seahawks play. This is another beer that I frequently drink and when I looked at their beer menu, I was surprised to see so many different beers that I thought I would like since many of them are not available where I live. I usually see three or four different beers that I like at a microbrewery, but I saw nine that I liked at Pyramid so it was tough to pick which ones to order. Their Apricot Ale, which is one that I drink a lot at home tasted much better on draft and had a much stronger apricot taste than it does when it’s from a bottle.
I ended up taking 270 digital photos and 2 rolls of film. It was cloudy the entire time we were in Washington, but we were fortunate to have sunny skies in Victoria, Canada. Because of the gray skies, it wasn’t ideal for taking pictures on most of the trip. I still have to go through the photos and resize, retouch, and crop the images, but I will post them to the site within the next few days.
One thing that I am really going to miss is Alaskan Amber, my new favorite microbrew. It’s available on tap at just about all of the restaurants or bars in Northwest Washington and I ordered whenever it was available. I could always have it shipped to me, but unfortunately their bottled beer doesn’t taste anywhere near as good as when it’s from a tap.
My favorite part of the trip was definitely Mount St. Helens. It was surreal to see the devastation of a natural phenomenon that was equivalent to 1500 atomic bombs going off simultaneously.
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