Friends, it was a lovely time. A tasty time! A Belgian Beer tasting time! Sergeant Stout, Admiral Ale and Brigadier Bock gathered around with 'ol Captain Beer and we strode over to the superlative Red Carpet Liquors---one of Mrs. Beer's and my favorite haunts!---and reveled in good beer, wisdom and revelry! Yes we... we reveled in revelry. Well, see here, smartass! We did: What tales have I to tell! I mean... what tales have I to tell? Why don't you read on!?!?

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BELGIAN WIT ROUND III, KIDS! DAMN RIGHT!* That's right, we brewed us another Belgian Wit, and this one's going to rule. It's been a brewy week, beervolk. The Mrs and I bottled our Blackberry Wheat two nights ago, and then last night we brewed us some Belgian Wit, baby! We're talkin' sweet dried orange peel, cloves, cinnamon, fresh squeezed tangerine juice and 4 other flavor ingredients that are SECRET... and no, I don't mean water, hops, grains and yeast. Those are not the secrets. So wait there... on the very edge of your chair... whimpering and hoping no one notices you forgot to put on deodorant (again) and we'll see you in, oh, 4 weeks. *or so we hope... more on that in uh... a month.

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To begin this post, I would like to quote a stanza from the Byrds' 1965 song Turn Turn Turn:

• To everything, turn, turn, turn
• There is a season, turn turn turn
• And a time for every purpose, under heaven
• A time to be born, a time to die;
• A time to clean up exploded beers, a time to finally find Hoegaarden in Vegas.

And so on. This afternoon I rolled over to Lee's Discount Liquor (the last word is pronounced "Lic'ah") for some of the Ayinger Brau-Weisse I had planned to review today (great hefe BTW, I'll do it next). As I have done the past 69 trips to Lee's, I forlornly scanned the shelves for a hint of that elusive Belgian Wit I came to love last spring in Florida, and have been unable to find in Nevada thus far. And what to my wandering eyes did appear, but four six-packs of the sweet sweet Hoeg, which I instantly snatched up and absconded with like Gary Sinise kidnapping Mel Gibson's son in Ransom. On that note... what the hell, Mel? Seriously, what the hell?

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I am actually posting again. Yes, the prodigal son returns. You know, whenever I hear of the "prodigal" son I always think of the word "prodigy," which is totally not what that parable is all about. Because if your son was a prodigy and came home, you'd be all like "Sweet! OK then, Mr. Smartypants, how bout you use that genius brain to unclog the downstairs sink!?!" When really the parable is all about accepting someone even after they go out and squander your fortune but then you forgive them, yadda yadda. I'm just saying that sometimes you can get off on the wrong tangent. Which, in a sense, is what this post is all about.

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Friends, you see those 'lil bubbles in that thar airlock? That's this Captain's second batch of Belgian Wit brewing. Our first go round, complete with peels of orange, spice of cloves and cinnamon and uh... spice, and some secret hobo ingredients was, in a word, shweet. We're almost out of our 2 case batch of Belgian, so we rushed to get more into the primary fermenter. Good timing too, as our stout was done in the secondary last night, and we bottled it. That's some of the stout batch in the bottles back there. Now, I know I've been rambling on about our stout in a few posts lately, but let me tell you somethin'... I accidentally slurped up a bit of it last night while siphoning it into the priming/bottling cask... and it was delicious. We're talking uncarbonated, un-primed... not finished, and still---delicious. So stand by for two more weeks; I'll try to get my mind and my posts off of it until its ready and then BAM!... Capn's Stout hit the streets. Then more Belgian. Homebrew uber alles. Bam.