The Sarge brewed what I guess I’ll call a Holiday Ale if I must classify it. The beer is spicy, rich and bursting with a crisp tartness supplied by copius additions of fresh and dried cranberries. A lovely amber hue.

My beer is a Scotch Ale and, if I may be so bold, manages to both cleave faithfully to its style while boasting notes of honey, spice and a secret hobo twist I’ll never reveal. Oh… OK… the secret ingredient is… is… RIGHT BEHIND YOU! AAUUGH!!!!! GLAUAWAUGH!!!!!

*Except that “you” means “me.”

*DAMMIT! It’s not uploading. I’ll deal with this from a differnt computer. Oh yes… I’ll deal with this…

That’s right! Captain and Mrs. Beer’s Maple Porter received a score of “very good” from the professional panel of tasters from the Sam Adams Longshot homebrew contest! Not only that but as you’ll see below, one of our judges indicated they would “pay money for this beer” which is rockin! I think. Look I’m struggling with humility here.  I  swear I’m awesome trying. Anyway…

Oh, happy day! Look, some people have been brewing for decades. Some people have more time and capital than certain young men. But dammit, I gotts me some moxy! Or maple. It was maple. See here:

Now I’m not saying I’m King Brewhammer (though if there’s any justice in this world some day I will be, and you will KNEEL, dammit!), but I do direct your attention to the bottom grid. Notice any marks? No… you don’t. Because THAT is where the tasters noted flaws. So… maybe we didn’t win uber alles but… flawless? Why thank you, Mr. Koch! Anyway, they sent a letter, our detailed score sheet and a free t-shirt! The t-shirt could easily house four of me and at first I was all: “What gives!?” But then I remembered that this is A) A hombrew thing and B) in America. So the Mrs. is going to try to do some magic to make it fit, as it would be awesome to have a lovely Longshot 2008 shirt to strut around. Booya.

I think it may be time for the captain to ease back a bit…For the next 2 or 3 batches, I think I’m going to brew a brown ale, dammit. Or maybe a light porter but whatever it is, 2 batches, same ingredients, same boil times, etc etc. Then, once they both turn out just great (which they will) I’ll brew a third… this time, going apeshit on the recipe. If that turns out well, well then dammit, we patent. And then kick back smoking Dominican cigars and sipping moderately priced port—er, beer.

The first is a pile-on to the General’s comments of a few weeks ago. He remarked about how freezing a jug of (distilled) water and then dropping the ice directly in your wort to rapidly cool it worked well, but urged caution when cutting the plastic jug off the frozen water. Well, I took it a step further and used a couple of plastic cups. That way when it came time to cool the wort, I just immersed the outside of the cups in some warm water to melt the outer edge of ice, then dropped that in. Less mess, and less chance of a knife mishap, especially if you like to combine brewing with drankin, as I do. This definitely saved 15-20 min of cooling the wort in an icebath, which is the most boring part of the whole process besides waiting for the water to boil.

The second is a [possible] solution to the Sgt’s recent clogged-airlock-fermentation-explosion disaster. If you do primary fermentation in a 5-gallon plastic bucket, as I do, try setting it in a big trash bag–one with a pull-tie at the top, then pull the bag up around the bucket and pull it tight around the top, leaving the airlock unobstructed, of course. That way if the foamy goodness gets out of hand and happens to clog the airlock, when she blows the top off the bucket, the destruction will be contained. Still probably ruin the batch, but hey, there are coats in the coat closet to think of as well. Monitor that airlock well during the first 24-48 hours and this hopefully will be a no-factor.

Right then… happy brewing, and happy drinking.

I know… I know… not beer related…

But I had to share these gems. A-MAZ-ING.

If you, at the above link, entered this contest:

Then you and I are among the same ranks. Except that WE HAVEN’T MAILED OUR BEER YET BLUAAAUGH!!! Now, if I didn’t have this goddamn stupid job, I’d drive my fine braus out to the testing site here in Southern CA myself. But I do. So I guess it’s semi-legal air mail for us…

Anyway, to all of you proud homebrewers out there who entered/will-enter-today-or-tomorrow… hats off and good luck (just not quite as good luck to you as to me…). It is a fine thing to make and love beer and t’would be the finest of things to have Sam Adams make and love our beer, no? No. I mean yes! Yes. T’would.

And again, hats off again to Jim K. and Samuel Adams: great beer, giving hops to the hop deprived, homebrew enthusiasts… man, they get the elusive “it.” Now! All of you! Go have beer(s)!

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.

Those there are but three of the many refrigerators devoted to fine beer at the superlative Red Carpet Liquors. I can often be found pacing back and forth before the hundreds of bottles, muttering and plotting. Yesterday, myself and Mrs. Beer went to a stout tasting event at Red Carpet, and it was the cat’s pajamas, I tell you. The bees knees. On the menu were 10 different stouts, ranging from Guinness to Lagunitas’ Cappuccino Stout to Asahi’s take on the darkest of roasted brau and so on. Also presented were many…… off-list beers, some so off the list that I’ll never be able to find them again, some just not available around these parts.

We even brought a bottle of our homebrew stout and let me tell you, watching 15 or so strangers (and beerlovers at that) try your beer, at a stout tasting event no less, is stressful. It went pretty well, but as I addressed the crowd I explained that the beer still needed a few weeks to reach ideal, bottle-conditioned excellence. A fella whose soon opening a brewery made some nice comments. So hey, good times.

More than anything it cemented Mrs. Beer’s feelings of stout supremacy, and my deep love for stout among the whole pantheon of beer. Some of them stouts were crazy, man—syrupy, sweet, oily and wild. Some, well, mild and rather flavorless (used as examples, not hailed, of course). And one—I can’t recall the brewery for sure and am not one to kiss and tell wrong—had a stout with a higher IBU count than most IPAs. Most double IPAs, in fact. I think it was like… 111 IBUs. It was cuh-razy bitter. A bit too much, but hey. They went there.

So stout on, friends and perfect strangers. And, do have some porter. And ale. Maybe a nice copper ale?