To celebrate week 385 of #beersaturday, I am again brewing but also drinking outside brews!
I have come to find, being The Blockchain Beerologist definitely has its perks, including but not limited to getting paid to tour breweries and sample new beers! When I am not globetrotting or brewing my own beer, my fridge looks like a colorful mosaic of regional craft beer I enjoy sharing with the #beersaturday alliance of #beer bloggers on #hive.
Hitting the next gear in #beerology, we are brewing quite regularly but making sore to visit other breweries to study the craft in this region.
The Pint of the Week is a popular feature as I can share a social pint, which is probably the optimal way to enjoy a beer. This is a little foreshadowing for plenty of social pints as we brew a few batches for the upcoming Christmas party season. 220 litres of beers fermenting including a couple of Ambers, New England IPA, a Black Marzen, and a Chocolate Cherry Stout. Should be some fun coming as winter eventually sets in.
Brewing is very social if you are doing it properly and our group had a good laugh at the yeast we propagated and reused for 4 batches of IPA. Made for a consistent taste between changes in hop combinations, cheaper yeast as you are using half, and a big mess to be washed down the driveway as we started the next batch with all new yeast.
Bad Apple
As a treat while brewing, we sampled a beer from Bad Apple Brewing that was brought back from the bottle shop during a recent visit. I am usually an IPA guy but I can appreciate a nice, clean but flavourful lager. Especially when we are brewing in the middle of the afternoon where lighter beer means for a more productive day. I do love a good skull in a logo and this is a pretty solid one.
As if loquacious wasn't a pretentious enough word, the whole bottom of the label gets even preachier. The beer? Oh it was actually quite nice, tasty and well done. For a split second, I thought about brewing a lager of our own but lagering is such a pain in the ass for little return in my opinion. Extra stages of cooling in tightly controlled temperatures and the 2 weeks longer we would have to wait than just brewing a delicious ale. Not worth it! Nice beer though!
Royal City
Having brewed so much beer for ourselves lately, I have not really visited the shelves of the beer store much to look for new beers to share. The good news is that we have spent more time visiting regional craft breweries to study the craft and raid the bottle shops for new beers! Here is another one from Royal City Brewing
Having enjoyed their Riverside and Exhibition IPAs, I was looking forward to this session ale. Suffolk St Session Ale was tagged as an ESB (English Special Bitter) which I generally love as well. This one, however, was grainy and unfinished tasting. Biscuits and bread are not supposed to taste grassy and it wasn't even bitter enough to make it worthwhile. I choked down glugs hoping my palate would adjust or it would simply be finished quicker and it got no better. Not a fan personally but glad to have sampled another in the long line of new beers from this region.
Back to Brewing
As a Hive #Beerologist, evolution and progression are the keys. Though I visit the retail shelves less as I have grown to appreciate our IPA more, especially when we get to control the process and choose the combination of ingredients. Still, it is much better to tour the regional breweries in person where the beer is the freshest. We have a 6 brewery tour with a couple dozen other #beerologists coming up which should get me access to some pretty unique beers and the stories behind them.
Good time to give me a follow if you want to be taken along with us for "Chugs on the Run"
Join me, @detlev , and the other beerologists because there is always room for more beer bloggers at this week's Beer Saturday gathering... @detlev/beersaturday-385
Cheers to our global family of beer drinkers!!
Can't wait to run brewery tours for #beersaturday when $Hive gets to $10!
