Filed under: Bikes | Tags: Bike, bike polo, Bikes, legit bike polo, mallets, polo mallets
I have recently become infatuated with the sport of Bike polo. Although my schedule has limited any actual playing of the sport to one game, I plan on playing many more in the upcoming months.
For those of you who are not familiar with the sport, a really good place to learn is at Legit Bike Polo. The site is run by a friend of mine, Gus, who introduced me to the sport. Basically, two teams of bikers try to get a small ball through the opposing team’s goal using mallets to move the ball. If you’ll notice, the sport requires three pieces of equipment: a ball, a bike, and a mallet. Up until today I had no ball, a non-functioning polo bike, and two ski poles. Now, I have no ball, a non-functioning polo bike, and two polo mallets! (more…)
Filed under: Tasting | Tags: beer, harvest ale, jw lees, lagavulin, oak aged, Tasting
A while back, I made my first (and so far only) trip to the Four Firkins. Amongst the many excellent and rare beers available I found a bottle of JW Lees Harvet ale. What did I find sitting next them? A row of each of the four barrel aged varieties: sherry, port, laguvulin whisky, and calvados. I picked up a bottle of the 2000 vintage standard Harvest ale and one of the 2008 Laguvulin cask aged bottles. A couple months ago I tried them side by side and took the following notes:
Appearance: Harvest- Deep, dark amber color. A thin lacing, from a dark head whichgrows large when agitated. Lagavulin- Deep golden color. Almost not visible carbonation. Huge chunks of particulate in beer.
Smell: Harvest- Dark molasses scent, slightly musky undertones. Lagavulin- Holy wood! Smells like a bait shop… or whisky barrels. Maybe it’s wet wood that it reminds me of.
Taste: Harvest- Sweet molasses, syrup-like taste followed by a slight roasted malt flavor. Lagavulin- Sickly sweet sugary front followed by some odd sour tang. A slight charred character from whisky barrel.
Mouthfeel: Harvest- Very heavy, viscous, and thick. Sticks on the tongue long after after the sip. Lagavulin- Thin and dissipates quickly. Almost no carbonation.
Drinkability: Harvest- Delicious, but very rich. I could drink this after most meals, especially on cold dark nights. Lagavulin- I can’t even finish this bottle. I should try decanting another bottle or an older vintage.
The Harvest ale was tasty, although, not the best I have had. The lagavulin was not good, but I’m reserving judgement for the time being. Either I got a bottle with an inordinate amount of particlulate, or I did a terrible job decanting it. It’s much more likely that the latter is causing the off flavors. The beer recieved and A- from reviewers on Beeradvocate, so that bottle probably wasn’t representative of the beer. I’ll repeat this tasting experiment in the future, but with better technique.
So the move happened, and I am securely in my new home. It’s pretty quite and my roomates are mostly gone while I am there. It’s an average southside minneapolis house, but it has an above average awesome kitchen.
There is a sweet stove: digital temperature setting with thermostat, a huge main burner with a “quick boil” setting, and a long burner for a griddle. There is also TONS of counter space. Brewing the “Peace Coffee Stout Porter Kit” was a blast– minus the boil over– and I expect future batches will be similar.
This is a huge panorama of the “brewery.” The seams are pretty bad because I did a terrible job of keeping the lense in the same position (a tripod would help)… skew can only do so much.
Last night, while I brewed the “Peace Coffee Stout Porter Kit,” from Northern Brewer, I had the opportunity to have one of the greatest beers of my life. As I have said before,my two favorites styles of beer are Old Ales and coffee beers. But, imagine if a beer existed that we’re some sort of amalgamation of the two… what 
would it be? It probably wouldn’t be exactly like Mikkeller’s Black Hole, a coffee infused Russian Imperial Stout, but it would be damn close. Throw some black and chocolate malt into the bill and it is probably exactly what you would get.
Black Hole is as thick as it is delicious. The beer was black as tar with an unnervingly dark head. The smell was sweet with a subtle touch of coffee and a decent spot of roasted/burnt malt. The taste was ecstatic; huge roasted character with coffee undertones from first touch to last swallow. There was a decent alcohol note that warmed my throat and dizzied my head. This is probably the thickest beer I have ever imbibed. It was like syrup, but lively due to the carbonation.
Mikkeller seems to be a rather odd brewing operation. According to their website, it is run by a single Dannish fellow, who contracts breweries to allow him to brew on their equipment. The site lists quite a number of beers, but I have seen very few on local shelves, none on bar lists. Maybe a brewery spotlight would be a good addition to the blog line-up… Anyway, here is how Mikkeller describes the beer themselves:
Black Hole
Brewed at De Proef Brouwerij, Lochristi-Hijfte, Belgium
Finally……! Black Hole is what Mikkeller is all about. Daring, vulgar and extreme. From the very beginning Mikkellers goal has been to push the limit and with this warming, intense imperial stout, a new chapter in the Danish beer history has been written. The high bitterness from the hops and the sweetness from the malt and alcohol, creates a good balance which makes Black Hole an explosion of nuances, but also leaves a feeling of a perfect and complex beer – in the heavyweight category.
Ingredients :
Water, malt, roasted barley, flaked oats, dark cassanade, honey, hops, coffee, vanilla and ale yeast.Alc : 13,1% vol. Volume : 375 ml / 12.7 FL OZ
For more info on Mikkeller visit his website. For my full review, and BeerAdvocate’s reviews, visit the BA page.
Also, imagine the above picture has been rotated and photoshopped to not look so bad…
Filed under: Misc
I just returned from the BigTen tourney in Indianapolis. The Gophers played well, and will hopefully be announced as playing in the NCAA tourney during the selection special later today. In the meantime, I will be holding true to my promise and am heading over to NB to get supplies for some beer. I need to replace the yeast and hops from the kits I bought a while back, so they actually taste good when I brew them.
I need to get 1 oz of Kent Goldings and Wyeat #1768 English Special Bitter for the Peace Coffee Stout Porter Kit that I plan on brewing this afternoon. I also need 1 oz of Glacier, 1 oz of Kent Goldings, and Wyeast #1099 Whitebread for the English Pale Ale Kit that I plan on brewing next weekend.
I will update with progress on these brews, the gophers, and I will do some overdue updates for the site as well.
