Ketchup

Ok so I've pretty much been off-line since last Saturday. I went on occasionally on Mrs. LKs netbook, but the eentsy-beentsy screen was a major deterrent. A couple of reasons I was "off the net". The first being that the charger for my laptop crapped out pretty much as soon as we landed. Weak.


Immediately went on-line to find a new one locally and believe it or not there wasn't one to be found on Maui for my aging Dell E1505. It still works great so why give it up. Needless to say, well maybe not needless, but anyway I went online to Dell and ordered a new one to be delivered to the Noho. Ordered Saturday. Issues developed on Monday. Issues resolved on Tuesday. New charger delivered on Wednesday. Not bad considering I'm not on the mainland. Much surprise.


So now I'm back. Yes it's still been many days since an update. So I got lazy. Sue me. I decided reading, playing cards and actually spending time "outside" was more important. Lots has gone on. We went to Haleakala for sunrise, got rained on at our luau at Old Lahaina and beat up our feet during the 4th fireworks show. Today was supposed to be Lanai day, but it wasn't. Tomorrow. Instead today turned into Maui Brewing Co. day for lunch and hot wings day for dinner.


We walked, about 20 minutes each way, over to the Maui Brewing Co. brew pub north of our condo in Kahana. Just prior to leaving I took a quick look on-line to see when they opened and got side tracked by the reviews. The main reviews that came up were from trip advisor. There were quite a few negative reviews. I got a bit nervous. I decided to look at Yelp and that was much more encouraging. Despite all that we headed out. Walking. It was before noon and still "cool". Good walk ending at the brew pub. The place was empty with the exception of a couple couples at the bar. We sat at the bar too.


They had a chalk board with all the brews available that day. Everything was $5. For a pint with the exception of the doppel bock which was a goblet, 8.0% abv. The menu is not huge, but large enough that we took a bit to figure out what we wanted. While we were thunking Mrs. LK got the guava wheat beer to start. Very nice. Not sweet, but still refreshing with the hint of fruit in it. Very nice. I started with the Black Powder Porter. Very nice with the mild hint of coffee at the end, 7.2% abv.

After sampling a bit of our beer we decided on some lunch. Mrs. LK got the beer batter mahi mahi fish and chips and I opted for the macadamia nut pesto pizza. Before lunch arrived I was ready for another beer. I asked the bartender for a recommendation and ended up with the Smokey Rye PA. Another outstanding beer. Slight smokey flavor, kinda reminded me of a camp fire, with a bit of hops, but not like a real strong IPA. Really good. Mrs. LK went for the Lahaina Town Brown. If you've tried Newcastle Brown Ale and liked it then you'll love this and wish MBC would take over for Newcastle. Much better.

About half way through our second choices the food showed up. The pizza was super hot, think crust for the win. Mrs. LKs fish looked light and crispy and since my pizza was too molten to try I opted for a bite of hers. Good beer batter, not great, but good. Might have been better had they used a slightly stronger beer rather than the Bikini Blond Lager. Still excellent fish and fries. Once my pizza cooled a bit I tried that as well and enjoyed it a lot. It's a decent sized pizza for one person and I ended up bringing back almost half. If it was coupled with an appetizer and shared between two people it would be a great meal. Just about enough for two all by itself.

They had a Hot Blonde Lager that I wanted to try, but since it had chipotle peppers in it I was hesitant to make it a whole pint. The bartender gave us a sample and I'd have to agree with him that it would be great with tomato juice or maybe even better V8. Good, but I wouldn't want a whole pint. After that I finished off the meal with a goblet of the Red Cock Doppel Bock. We asked how it was before ordering and the bartender said it was well balanced.


Turns out he was right. Not too strong, nothing over powering. Just great tasting beer. High abv to be sure at 8.0%, but you really can't tell. Very good. Almost deadly good. I had to take a quick break and when I came back the last bit I had saved was no longer there. Someone (Mrs. LK) had finished the glass. Hmmph.

All in all it was a great few hours. A good walk, some good food and some excellent beer. Try it if you're in the area. Now it's just a matter of letting the wings "marinate" for a bit before throwing them on the grill.


Maybe a nap while they soak up the juice.

ps The plan is to go back tomorrow after Lanai and pick up a growler of the doppel bock to enjoy with dinner. Good stuff.

Convalescing

So.

We made it. Not too much of interest happened during the flight. Except maybe for this.


Just happened to open my window shade about an hour out of Kahului. Seems we were traveling a fairly well used route. Hence the picture of one of American Airlines Boeing 757s following above us to the port side. They were going just a tad faster than us and eventually left us behind. Still neat. Had never seen that before.

The condo is as expected. The view is still wonderful.


And of course it wouldn't be right not to start the morning off in a vacation standard manner.


The only bummer is that Thursday morning I felt the telltale tickle in the back of my throat that could only signal one thing. I went into instant denial though and headed off to work. By the end of the day there was no way I could deny any further that I was definitely getting sick. Of course. Got home and crawled into bed. Friday morning rolled around and I went into work for a couple of hours to finish up what needed to be finished, came home and packed and then headed for LAX. The flight was a bit uncomfortable due to my plague. Since I had originally planned on working Friday and then flying to Maui late we didn't get to the Noho until probably around 11:00 PM PDT, 9:00 Maui time. Still we had nothing in the cupboards so after a quick unpack of the single bags we each brought we hopped back in the Sebring and headed down to the ABC store for water, coffee and beer.

I couldn't hit the sack last night without popping open at least one beer before bed which I did and even finished. The one for breakfast this morning was almost as nice as the one last night. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Aloha!

Accomplishments

So I'm a lazy bum most of the time. <-- Qualification complete.

Yesterday I got up at the ass crack of dawn and proceeded to the lavanderia down the street to take care of over THREE weeks of dirty clothes. Needless to say both Mrs. LK and myself were just about out of clothes. Luckily you can turn undies inside out. Anyway six large loads and 2 1/2 hours later and I was done. Woohoo!

The change oil message has been flashing on my car for the past 1100 miles so I figured it was about time to take care of that as well. Headed to the dealer and one oil change, tire rotation, alignment, a "complimentary" car wash and another 2 hours later and that was taken care of as well. Double woohoo!

Feeling pretty good about my productive morning I decided to stop at the corner liquor store for some liquid reward for all my hard work. Now this liquor store is your standard carry a little bit of everything house goods wise place. Cereal, soup, sponges, etc. You know the type. They don't generally carry much in the way of a selection of good beer. They have the basics. All the "lites", Corona, Coors, Budweiser. Standard cheap beers. They do usually carry the Modelos, Negra and Especial as well as Sam Adams. I went in for the Sam. Much to my surprise they had six packs of what you see below. I had to reward them for carrying it. It wasn't cheap, in fact it was definitely expensive, but what the hell.


It was complete when I bought it, but being the lazy fuck that I am and after having accomplished so much yesterday, well, pictures didn't happen before consumation.

I saw these and immediately thought of the Cheeselover and picked up two.


While there I also noticed six packs of this from Costa Rica. Always interested in trying new beers I picked up a six pack of this as well. Haven't tried it yet seeing as the Dead Guys were calling my name, but we'll give it a go today.


All in all yesterday was a pretty good day. We ended it with a cheese plate for starters and then grilled steaks and baked potatoes with the Warden. Cheers everyone! Hope your weekend is as good as mine.

Still Taking It Easy

Haven't looked at my phone so I don't know if there are any messages there. Don't wanna know. If you've left a message and I haven't gotten back to you well then call the hotel. :)

In other news this was the scene outside my window this morning. Velly nize.



It's essentially the same right now with the sun to the right instead of to the left. Still velly nize. Until I noticed what some darn avian critter left for me. Been here a month with nothing and now that right in the middle of the window. Heh.


Not quite so nize.

Since I've been here I've had a few Presidentes, but down at the bar the selection is limited and I've been mixing it up between Sam Adams and Stella Artois. All very satisfactory. Last Thursday while at the Pubix grocery store with a coworker I noticed they had this for sale in six packs. So I grabbed some.


Oh man! I finally popped one open today and to quote Cinderella, yes Cinderella, the band, "You don't know what you've got until it's gone." Oh baby was it nice to put down some nice hoppy IPA. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Viva le hops!

Damn It Jim I'm A Beer Drinker, Not A Doctor!

So I felt a bout of unwellness coming on yesterday at work and decided to try some over the counter remedies when I got home. I started out with three Deschutes Inversion IPAs and followed that up with two Dogfish Head 90 Minute Imperial IPAs. Felt great last night for sure. Felt pretty good this morning too. Just don't think it took care of the bit of sickness taking hold. We'll see how the rest of the day goes, but I may be hunkering down in bed for the remainder of the weekend. Pbbbbbt.

Little Kenny Says....

Deschutes Inversion IP..A followed by Dogfish Hea d IP A does not make fo r cohenrent posting by lllllllliiiiiiittle kennyl. No more. done go to bed. oi my.

Potent

Well based on the glowing review by the Cheeselover on the above "brew" I headed out this week determined to get some to sample before our beer pairing dinner in Scottsdale Friday night. Amazingly enough it wasn't hard to find. I went googling it and stumbled on a local guys blog who had sampled another variety. I emailed him and, heh, his suggestion was BevMo. I hadn't even thought they'd have it. They did and I picked up a 4 pack today after work. It's not cheap that's for sure. BevMo isn't cheap in the first place. They do have a large variety and they're close so they get my business.

Anyway, it went in the fridge as soon as I got home and I popped the first one open about two hours later. I wasn't sure what to expect. I had a feeling it wasn't going to taste like anything I'd ever had before. I was right and my first impressions of it were mixed. As the ingredients listed on the front of the bottle suggest it is sweet. I wasn't as ready for that as I thought. There's also a hint of bitter in there too, but just a little. I've been drinking it out of the bottles so I'm not sure what it looks like or what type of head it might have.

I paired it up with some Stouffer's five cheese, white sauce, french bread pizzas. These have a creamy white sauce as the base, with five different cheeses and a bit of red chili pepper thrown in for good measure. I figured this would go as well as anything with this beer and it turned out I was right. The creamy spicyness of the pizzas went well with the cool, sweetness of the beer. While the tastes are completely different this beer works well with spicy food the same way a gerwurtzaminer does.

I've since cracked open another one to sip while I write this. There is definitely a honey aftertaste. Not a strong one at all, but it's there. The more I taste it the more I like it. I don't think I would want to drink this one all on its own, but it's certainly a beer I would want to have with a meal. The fact that it's a 9% also factors in to having it with food.

Definitely looking forward to having this Friday night matched with something complimentary. Friday night can't get here fast enough.


Update: Whew. Definitely feeling two of these suckers.

Update 2: Just realized I never linked to the brewery or named the beer itself. The brewery is the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and the beer I was drinking tonight was the Midas Touch Golden Elixir. Pretty neat that this recipe is their best guess on a recipe from 700 B.C. It looks like the beer we're going to sample on Friday is based off of an even older recipe from 7000 B.C. China. I can't wait. This is gonna be fun.

Update 3: Just in case I didn't like the above beer while I was at BevMo I picked up a 6 pack of Rogue Dead Guy. You know just in case. Really.

Bud Curious

So I stopped at the store on the way home for a six pack and they had the new Budweiser American Ale. I must admit I've been curious about it. So I picked up a six pack of it. I made sure I picked up a back up six pack just in case.


Don't waste your money, your time or your liver on it. While it is certainly drinkable, I'll be finishing off the six pack, it certainly does not leave you wanting more. It claims to be "carefully brewed with barley from America's heartland and Cascade hops form the Pacific Northwest" which supposedly makes for a "rich, amber-colored ale that has robust flavor and a distinctive, hoppy finish."

It's fucking bitter and not in a good way. It's a flat bitter. I'm not sure just exactly what part of the Pacific Northwest they got the hops from, but I think it was out of some dudes butt. And really they shouldn't be using the barley that's started to go bad. Honestly all they're going to do with this beer is sucker people in once. Those that have tasted good beer will never buy it again. Those that normally buy normal Budweiser and decide to try it will never try a hoppy beer again. Terrible.

-5 stars out of a possible 5 stars.

OBF List Link

So a few posts back I mentioned a little something about an Oregon Brewers Festival. 'Member? Mira aqui. I've got the list below of all the beers, that I was coherent enough to note, that Mrs. LK and myself sampled. Why am I putting up this list? Because I'm going to lose the paper copy sitting on my desk. So follow the link below if you're me and want to refresh your memory on what was good or if you're you and want to see what LK and Mrs. LK thought was good, bad and ugly.

List Here

Edit: Because bears are not beers.

Part Four: Star Wars On Ice

I finally got a chance to sample the last variety of our handmade brews. It took a few weeks and there were many diversions that got in the way of sampling it.


I opened this bottle up last week, but just finally had the time to write about it. As you can see below it's a beautiful dark color with a light yet resilient head to it. Again as with all the beers we made there were little bits floating, but nothing to deter even a casual drinker. First sip. Was anticlimactic. I was hoping for so much from this stout, but it just didn't deliver. It wasn't bad. In fact it was very drinkable. It just wasn't anything to write home about. As with the red ale it too had a bit of a sour or tart tang to it. Not sure why or what to do about it in the future. We'll definitely have to ask about it when we brew again. Other than that it was a wholly unremarkable drink. Not bitter at all. Not really anything. Ah well better luck next time.


That's pretty much it for the quartet we brewed. Some were better than others. What surprises me the most is that my favorite of them all was the lemon flavored lager. Who'd a thunk? In order of preference they were Thermal Balance Blond(lemon), Reflector Red(red ale), SCTV Stout and Power Up Lager.

Mental Health Day

First order of business. I'm sick of work. Yes it pays well. Yes we work on unbelievably cool shit. Yes they work the piss out of us. I'm tired. Mentally. Am I going to go find something else to do? No. Too complacent. The money is good and at least at a high level I love what we do. Or maybe I should say I love the idea of what we do.

With that said I'm home today and decided to take care of a little business. Drano the pipes. Take some clothes to the Salvation Army. Most importantly, stop by BevMo and see what there was to see. There was plenty to see and therein lies the problem. With a large selection comes the issue of having to choose. So what did I choose?

Make everyday a Deschutes day. Heh. Since Cheeselover introduced me to Deschutes with their Cindercone Red I've been a huge fan. This was even more strongly reinforced when we stopped by the Deschutes brewery and restaurant in Portland a couple of weeks back. With that in mind and the aforementioned overwhelming selection I went for a familiar name in varieties I have not yet had a chance to try. As of now I have a new favorite stout. Obsidian Stout. Mmmmmm. It's what's for lunch.

Part Three: Return of the Beer

The selection this evening with dinner was the Power Up Lager. Unlike the book reference above this one was pretty unremarkable. It was a lager. Not unlike a lot of the light beers most people have tried. It did have more flavor than both of the light beers from the big two. As you can see very little head. Since the bottle had been sitting for over a week the sediment had settled and the beer was quite clear. I promptly messed that up by trying to get the last bit of beer out of the bottle which in turn got all the sediment as well. Good on a hot day. Very light on the alcohol content. Didn't feel any effects at all.

Number Two

The title does not reflect the quality of the second beer from the home brew mentioned previously. I popped open the Thermal Balance Blond today. This is the lager we added a bit of lemon flavor to during bottling. This variety was the one I felt I was not going to have much interest in. During our tasting while bottling it turned out that I really liked this one.


It held a a great head which disappeared pretty much as soon as my 'stache touched it. It's a pretty golden color. Again these weren't filtered so it's a bit cloudy, but you can see the increased clarity at the top. If this bottle had been allowed to settle a bit more than I was willing to wait it would probably have been quite a bit clearer.


Definitely not a strong hoppy flavor. Very mild. You can taste the grains late. The only thing I would do different is to use even less lemon than they told us to use. They said to use 1 drop of the extract and I know I wasn't always accurate with that single drop.


Cheers!

Celebratory Liquid Refreshment

We decided to brew some beer prior to starting a certain type of testing on one of our current projects. The test phase was scheduled to last around 70 days. We figured we'd brew and bottle the beer at the beginning of the phase and then upon completion of that testing we'd all get together at a BBQ or something and celebrate our success over our handmade brew. A couple of things came up that didn't match with our plan. The test phase itself ended earlier than expected. Go us! No issues, hence none of the scheduled buffer was needed. W00t! The second issue was our program totally stymieing our attempts to set up the BBQ. They wanted to do something else and then that never happened. We got tired of waiting and started distributing the goods out in the parking lot.

Step back almost three months. A group of about six of us gathered at Brewbakers in Huntington Beach on a Saturday morning to begin the process. Of those of us there only one had any experience with brewing. In fact he's an accomplished home brewer, but the quantity we wanted to make didn't really lend itself well to brewing in his home. We had decided in advance that we wanted to brew up four different types in order to try and make something that just about everyone would like. We settled on a stout, a lager, a red and another lager, but this one with a hint of lemon added to it.

The brewing process was great fun. We measured, boiled, mixed and filled for about three hours. Four half batches of beer. That's twelve cases of twelve 22 ounce bottles. Thirtysix bottle of each type. The whole time was spent eating bread, the baker in Brewbaker, drinking beer and generally having a good time. We finished brewing, saw our beer go into barrels for the next two and half to three weeks and headed home.

Just about three weeks later four of us showed back up to put our maturing beer into it's ultimately final dispenser. We proceeded to bottle 144 bottle of beer in about two and a half hours. We would have finished quicker, but then we wouldn't have been able to sample as much of our beer as we did. The cases were loaded up and again we all headed home. The cases were stored for the next two months or so.

Well last week we finally distributed. Unfortunately a lot of people were still interested and so those of us that made it only ended up with one bottle of each type for ourselves. That leads us to today and the pictures below. The night prior to distributing the brew the guy that was storing the bottles made some labels and applied them. Now remember this relates to what we were testing so the names of each relate to that. We ended up with SCTV Stout, Reflector Red, Power-Up Lager and Thermal Balance Blond. (SCTV stands for Space Craft Thermal Vacuum which is just about what it sounds like, you test the spacecraft in a vacuum and over changing temperature to make sure it does what it's supposed to. A reflector is used to redirect RF radiation to its intended destination on earth from space. A power-up is just that, turning on the spacecraft prior to testing it. Thermal balance is a portion of testing that puts the spacecraft through temperature variations and verifies that everything stays at a temperature that won't damage anything regardless of the surrounding temperature conditions.)

So without further ado the four types.


Today is my first taste since the bottling. I'm hoping for the best. I chose to open the red first to go with my Stouffer's White French Bread pizzas. See below.


Definitely reddish in color. The head was a bit taller, but decreased by the time I managed to get the camera and take a picture. These are all unfiltered beers and there is definitely some sediment floating around. Nothing large though. We added a bit of carbonation during bottling, but the process itself would have added some as well. With that said it's very light on the carbonation. Still bubbling a little as I type this which is about forty-five minutes after opening. Taste impressions. Hmm, two things jump out. The first is the hoppy flavor. Reminiscent of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The second is a bit of tartness. Not sure where that flavor comes from. All in all I'm very happy with this bottle of beer. I hope the others turned out as well.

Update: I forgot to mention alcohol content. All of the recipes provided for a beer with around five to seven percent. With that said I can definitely feel the affects after one 22 oz. bottle. Not sure where that puts it, but woohoo!

Fee, Fie, Foe, Fitty

Kitty in the window and beer in the titty. w00t!

***WARNING***

Barleywine is nothing to be toyed with. Oi!


Barleywine. It's what's for dinner.

Remember me.

Maybe those darn trappist monks know something I don't. We'll see. Remember me.

UPDATE: I've sampled the wares and those celibate fuckers may be on to something.

PS: I pronounce Chimay the same way that Trey and Matt pronounce Timmy on Southpark. Shiiii-Mayyyy!!!

Bene Gesserit Litany For Beer

I must drink beer. Beer is the mind-killer. Beer is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my beer. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see it's path. When the beer has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

-endotoxin

Selection

This is what happens when you stop by Bristol Farms and decide that you're finally going to try some of stuff you've looked at for years and said "I'm going to have to try that sometime." I already know I like the 1845. I bought it anyway.

Sometime is now. It's a start anyway.

Debauchery

It's been a long time since the last update. Not a whole lot was happening hence the lack of posts. Then the past two weekends happened and there's now a plethora of info and pics. Two weeks back we went to Vegas. This last weekend I brewed beer and then attended the demolition of the SDDD by the LADD.

First things first. Vegas. Showed up Friday after flying in from Los Strangeless. Immediately took a nap. Heh. Damn oldness. Mrs. LK was already there for work so she went downstairs to tune up the crowd for me. Amazingly they all left me alone to actually take a successful, much needed nap. After that it was off to Bouchon for dinner at eight. Mmmmm, dinner. Expensive, but delicious. After that we headed to Planet Hollywood for some end of the evening, err, end of the morning libations before bed. The walking scenery at PH wasn't bad either. Made it back to the room by four. In the morning. Weeee!

Slept until two the next day. Man did that feel good. Mrs. LK headed off to work at who knows when o'clock in the morning and I had the whole bed to myself for hours. Owww-errs. Ahhhhh. Finally rolled back downstairs and hooked up with Donnakins and Mr. Fancypants. Played a few nickel slots with them and a bit of video poker. Good times. Mrs. LK got off work around five? I think. We then all headed over to the Hofbräuhaus for dinner and drinks before the Raconteurs concert later that night at the Hard Rock.

The Hofbrau House was absolutely rockin'! We had our whole party with us at that point. Myself, Mrs. LK, Donnakins, Mr. Fancypants, Mr. Kimono, the Chinese Jet Pilot(CJP), Rosanna Kicks Ass(RKA) and Cheeselover. We filled the table. Great table too. We were the second table back from the band, Trenkwalder. We got there early enough to be able to enjoy our meal while still getting the party started prior to the concert. The party was started my friends. Oh. My.

As a preface there were a number of what looked to be bachelor party groups in attendance. There was also a woman going around the room selling Jaeger shots accompanied, if desired, by a paddle to the fanny. Ow. She was very enthusiastic with the paddle. Somehow Mrs. LK managed to talk one of the members of the band into doing the same thing to RKA. Hence the vid and pic above. More pictures over here. The concert was way better than I anticipated. I haven't gone to a "concert" since I don't know when. You know too loud, too many people, blah, blah, blah. I ended up really enjoying it a lot. The pictures, while vibrantly colored, really do no justice whatsoever to the show, but the colors are pretty.

I was going to post about the brewing and the skating here as well, but I'll leave that for later. Back to work. Yeah. Right.

UPDATE: Couple of things. One is a correction to the Bouchon night. I totally forgot about Bill's. Bill's used to be the Barbary Coast. Quite a bit of slot action occurred there. Yes I do mean slot, not slut, although there was an inordinate amount of that as well. Not to forget the marathon session of Let It Ride. CJP actually got shushed by the dealer for celebrating when someone else won. That's right he was told to keep it down while winning was going on at the table. Lame dealer.

Second additional bit. This picture.


This guy was part of the entourage with the band. I'm not sure how long they had been in Vegas or how long the party had gone on before they showed up at the place to play, but this guy totally snoozed out for a good little while. Even with the band playing right behind him. I couldn't resist after coming back from the restroom and had to sit down next to him. Heh! We danced later as well. Absolutely totally awesome fun night.

Infinite Sadness

And it broke while opening one of these.