Radical Red

So, the day has come and gone.  St. Patrick's day in Utah was fun, though I still thin my last two in Vermont and Costa Rica top it.  However, this was my first St. Patrick's where I got to drink my own homebrew!

Radical Red, as I am calling it, is a dry-hopped red ale that with prominent, crisp, floral hop flavor and a malty to sweet back.  It's a red pale ale if you wish.  I tried it alongside a Hop Head Red from Green Flash not long ago, to see how mine compares.  Of course, Hop Head Red is a red IPA and was therefore much hoppier than mine.  Overall, I would say mine is more akin to a red than the HHR, but again, it's a red pale ale.

Overall, I think this beer is rivaling C.P.P.A. for my favorite beer I've brewed.  The Vanilla Nut Brown comes in a close third.  I received a few comments back on the VNB, and many of them commented on the low carbination of the beer.  I have rectified that situation here in Radical Red.  I used brown sugar rather than table sugar and it turned out quite well, there are no under carb issues in this one!  I will wait to see how this one ages before I decide if I will entire this batch of Radical Red in the Beehive Brewoff, or brew again before August.

Cheers!

Radical Red

Dry Hopped Red Ale For St. Patrick's Day

So, even though I have now lived in Salt Lake City, UT for almost three years now, I have never spent a St. Patrick's Day in the state.  No, it's not because of the alcohol laws, I have just had to be elsewhere the past two years, Costa Rica my first year and Vermont last year.  Anyway, a post on Reddit got me thinking last month, how can I make this St. Patrick's as memorable as all the others?  Why, brew beer of course!  So, I have had a recipe for a hoppy red ale for a while now, and figured now is the time.  As this is the first recipe I piecemealed together on my own I thought I'd share:

Dry-hopped Red Ale (Extract Brew):

6lbs Light LME
1lb Cara Red Malt, crushed
1/2 lb - Crystal 60L malt, crushed
2oz Black Roasted Barley malt, crushed
1oz German Perle Hops (60 mins)
1oz Crystal Hops (15 mins)
1oz Zythos Hops (5 mins)
1oz Zythos Hops (dry hop)
California Ale Yeast (White Labs California Ale Yeast WLP001)


Today, I just bottled the beer so it should be bottle conditioned and ready to go for the big day.  Though I still need to come up with a name, but I have a bit of time.  Suggestions are always welcome.

 

My set up

 

Wort with 3 of 4 hop additions

 Cooling the wort in true Utah style

 

 Bottled, now just time to wait....

On a side note, I have also gotten into m own craft projects, all of which are of course beer related.  Anyway, I recently learned how to make my own tumblers and coaster out of old beer bottles, so I thought I'd share my most recent work.  Utah doesn't have the greatest recycling program, so I decided to take matters into my own hands, and create beer accessories out of some of my favorites.

Cheers.

Summer's End Saison

So, my brewing adventures continue, or rather they continued through the summer of 2012.  Since winning my category in the 2012 Beehive Brewoff, my desire to home brew only grew.  When trying to think of the next beer to brew, Hillary was actively growing her summer plants on the porch of her apartment.  Not surprisingly, she came up with the idea to try and use her plants in our beer.  I agreed, thinking this sounded like a great idea, if we're brewing the beer, why not grow the ingredients too?  We also wanted to try out creating our own recipe rather than following a kit.  So, after some searching we found a few saison recipes and one specifically, a lime-basil recipe.  So, we modified each of the recipie into our own.  In the end we decided on a lemon basil saison.  So off we went, brewing out next beer!

A few weeks later, we bottled the very "herby" smelling beer, excited about how it might turn out.  This was around the same time Epic Brewing released their Utah Saige Saison.  As we bottled, the aroma constantly reminded us of this delicious beer, also made with local Utah herbs, from one of our favorite breweries.  As a result, we were once again overly excited about our beer and we decided, before we had even tasted it, that were were ready to enter another competition!  So, we found one in Las Vegas and sent down our newest brew "Summer's End Saison."  Once again, we won a ribbon!  This time we got second place in our catefory of spice, herb or vegetable beer.  Ironically, the first place winner this time was the second place brewer from the Beehive Brewoff.  Seems like there might be a some competition here, haha.

Anyway, we were quite happy with second place.  Since then we have also brewed "Crimson Stout," a sour cherry Irish Stout and my newest beer that is still unnamed as of now, but it is a Vanilla Nut Brown.  i go t the inspiration after having a vanilla hazelnut coffee at work, thinking "hey, I could totally turn this into a beer!"  So, I went and did just that.  They just finished bottle conditioning earlier this month and since then a few people have tried them out.  Glowing reviews from all.  Hopefully, they actually are enjoying the beer and not just being nice, haha.

Anyway, now I am in the process of entering yet another home brew comp, this one in Colorado.  I think I'll enter the C.P.P.A., in hopes it has aged well, definitely the VNB, and am debating entering the sour cherry stout.  Though I like Crimson Stout, I am not sure it's a competition winner.

At this point I am just going to consider myself caught up, as clearly I'm not doing so well with that, Sundance ended this week and I didn't post once.  So, I will just consider this my second beginning to this blog, that nobody reads anyway.

C.P.P.A. Bue Ribbon Winner, Eat Your Heart Out Pabst

So, it's clearly been a while since I have last posted anything on this blog.  I have found myself overwhelmingly busy working my new full-time job, working in film and photography, and most exiting, lots and lots of traveling.  Anyway, more on all of those things to come.

For now, I want to focus on a bit of old news.  Back in August of 2012 I entered my second beer C.P.P.A. into my first homebrew competition, and it took first place in it's category!  The competition was open to anyone interested, but attracted mostly entries from Utah, Nevada and California (I believe) and had over 500 entries.

I was extatic to learn my beer was not only delicious according to me and my friends, but apparently so does the beer community of Salt Lake City.  Th head brewer of Red rock brewing was one of the judges on my beer, and he gave it many positive accolades.

A quick note about the name, C.P.P.A. as the beer is technically a Jalpeno Pale Ale.  It is named after the department where I earned my Master's degree, the Center for Public policy and Administration, or CPPA, for short.  However, the acronym also easily stands for Chilli Pepper Pale Ale, as such I named my beer C.P.P.A.!

Unfortunately this was so long ago and I am so behind, I only have about six of these left, hot commodities now.  This is however, one of those rare instances where I am proud enough of what I create I want to share it with others, so i probably ont hoard them all to myself.  i am also saving three for entry into a homebrew competition in my home state of Vermont, hopefully they;ll hold up till then.

Well, the next few days will hopefully be filled with a bunch of new posts in trying to catch up to date.  Hopefully I will be ready and up to date by the time I rejoin the Sunadnace Film Festival up in park City in two weeks.

N.E.S.B. - Northern Extra Special Bitter

So here it is, my first beer I ever brewed.  I call it the Northern E.S.B. or N.E.S.B. for short.  As this was my first, I it brewed from a kit I bought form local brew suppliers The Beer Nut and tried my hardest to follow the directions.  I veared off here and there as I got excited and rush through a step or two.  I also took some advice from some brewing blog videos I watched while brewing.  Most importantly however, was that it turned out great for brewing without a thermometer.

When poured from the bottle into the glass its clear to see its a lighter beer, almost like an unfiltered pale ale, which is good, because that's close to what it is.  After the first sip, it's clear the beer didn't quite come out as an ESB as it came too sweet and not as bittery as a beer lover might like.  However, due to this it found many fine compliments from my friends who aren't as into beer as I am.  They appreciated the sweetness and lack of overwhelming bitterness.

Over time however, as it has been close to three weeks since I opened the first bottle, the beer has aged a little more.  Though everywhere I have read, ESBs are typically best right after bottle conditioning, I think this one has gotten better.  Some of the sweetness has been lost and therefore the beer flavor has come through a little more.  Though still not quite an ESB.

Some opinions vary nonetheless.  My partner in crime, Hillary Galvin, has often said the beers are tasting worse the longer they sit in the bottles.  Yet, she is still unable to quite pin point the reason to words yet.  The closest we have got has been it tastes like a beer that has lost carbonation.  Either way, we are both happy with our result and continue to drink them to this day!

Overall, there are many, many reasons as to why this beer came out the way it did, from lack of proper sanitization, use of SLC tap-water, to over sugaring the yeast (honestly this is my best guess for off flavors).  Either way, I know own a thermometer and have one brewed beer under my belt.

Next up is my Jalapeno Pale Ale which was bottled just this past Sunday and I am about to start a Cherry Irish Stout tonight.

Stay thirsty my friends, and make sure to grab a delicious beer for your next "movie date" with that cute girl from class.

Where My Degree Has Got Me Now...Brewing Beer!

So, as I'm sure anyone who has tried to check for a new post recently, I haven't post a review in a while.  That's because this past school year kept me too busy for me to follow up, even as I attended Sundance this past year.  I have was very busy with snowboarding, traveling, internships, jobs, etc.  Though if you are at all interested definitely check out the Bones brigade Documentary and John Dies at the End as those were my two favorites by far.

As far as this blog, I will now be turning it into a more random assortment of posts about my life as I navigate this economy post graduate school.  The next pot to look forward to will be about another interest of mine, beer.  I recently got into homebrewing and am in the process now of fermenting my first full (5-gallon batch).  It will be a E.S.B., rating at about 4.7% ABV (measured by my first attempt at measuring the Gravity of beer using a hydrometer).

Insidious. It Sucks.

So, I put the entirety of this film review in the title above.  Simply put, the 2010 horror flick Insidious, directed by James Wan, is one of the worst movies I have seen of late.  I'll even dare to say I'd rather watch The Hangover 2 again before watching this film.  The only other Wan film I have ever seen is Saw, but if this film is any indication of his work, I wish he had stopped there.

Knowing absolutely nothing about this film, I happened to walk into the theater on a whim one Sunday afternoon.  Luckily it was at the local "cheap seats," or second run theater and the two tickets purchased cost a grand total of $3.  This is important as I have never walked out of a theater and asked for my money back, a trend that saw a recent spike in popularity with the release of Terrence Malik's The Tree of Life, which I have still yet to see.  This film was almost my first.

It certainly doesn't help that in watching this film every one of my sense was attacked.  Beyond the poor excuse for a horror film happening in front of me, I was forced to watch a teen couple fondle themselves in the seats in front of me, listen to two crying babies, gag on the dollar store perfume of a lay sitting somewhere in my vicinity, and was afraid to even slip off my flip flops for fear of a sticky floor.  Nonetheless, the content of Insidious beyond my terrible movie experience also left me disappointing and annoyed.  The story was bleak and predictable, and my intelligence was even insulted when at the end, surprise surprise, Patrick Wilson's character Josh doe world of blacknesssn't return to his body and I am left with a wannabe cliff hanger ending.

The lack of a gripping plot was only heightened by a lack of acting talent and emotionless characters.  Not even Rose Byrne was able to give me a believable performance, not to mention the lack of a character ark and emotion from Patrick Wilson.  If I had a son in an unexplainable comma and a stay at home wife going insane in a haunted house, I wouldn't sit in a classroom staring at the camera with an emotionless expression for an hour and a half.  The simple lack of character expression and connection between each other, and the audience, is enough to turn me off of the movie.  Yet, still the worst part is the complete lack of imagination in the story.  I knew nothing about astral projection going into this film, and now I have no desire to ever learn anymore because it leads to 103 minute movies of people sitting around talking very unscientifically about walking through a dark "insidious" world of blackness.  Not even the imaginary world of astral projection was visually appealing enough to entertain me.  I mean Koyaanisqatsi is boring too, but at least it looks good.

Overall, this film offers nothing new to the art of film or world of entertainment.  Sadly, the writing team of James Wan and Leigh Whannell seems unable to provide the audience with a visually entertaining or intellectually creative film as they did with the first trend setting Saw.  The scariest part of this film is that one day, I may have to sit through it again.

Insidious