While I hadn't intended on doing so much beer stuff today, it just turned out that way. Not doing anything at work (last day is in fact Aug 15th), so I had plenty of time to drive around.

First Stop - Laurel Bottled Gas Co

Never been there before but I heard Chris from MDHB mention it before so I figured I would try filling my empty CO2 instead of exchanging for another. Is cost around $12.50, $13 something with tax for my 5 lb tank, which I think is better than roberts oxygen. One thing that occurred to me during this exchange was why that they name gas tanks by the pound. Essentially it describes the amount of gas by weight. When I originally heard these weights I didn't get it (yes I'm dense) because the tanks weigh roughly 6-8 lbs (the tar weight on my steel one is 7.6). But sure enough, I just measured mine and it now weighs 14.4 lbs.

Second Stop - Astor Liquors

Figured I would check this out since of was in the near vicinity. The selection here has kind of been stagnant since the new owners took over. I find that the token stuff they had before stays stocked, but new stuff never shows up. One thing I do find here is that the Cantillion prices are very good. Historically they have always been good at astor, so I hope they keep bringing more in. I took their last bottle, so it's hard to say what will happen. I only picked up two bottles here, Cantillion Bruocsella 1900 Grand Cru and Weyerbacher 13.

Third Stop - Corridor Wine Wine

Was primarily going here to get wine for Dana but also ended up getting beer for her. I got a 6 of ST. Rogue Red Ale and Dogfish 60 min for her, and a 6 of Dales Pale ale and 750 of Saison Dupont. Corridor has some decent pricing of a few items which is why I like to go there. One example is the Dales Pale ale 6's, which are usually 7.99.

Fourth Stop - Frisco Grille

Frisco Friday was upon us, so I had to meet John there for lunch. Started off by helping Adam with the program I wrote for him. Going to tweak a few more things to make it easier to manage. My first beer was the Olivers Strong Man on cask. I have never had this before at olivers, so this was a good one to try. The beer had a surprising amount of flavor for a cask beer and definitely had a decent punch. I would recommend it if your not a cask beer drinking because it was very good beer. My second beer was Shipyard export ale. It was decent, but unfortunately I don't have much to say because the flavor of the strong man kind made it hard to guage much afterwards.

Fifth Stop - Perfect Pour

I really don't like going to this place because their prices can be high to very high, but no one can match their selection. Plus they always have the new releases which is nice. Not to mention that it's prolly bad to go with a friend (john) and after drinking because you tend to buy more then you normally would. I got a few things worth noting, Ommegang 3 Philosophers 2008 and St. Bernadus Triple in 750s, and a 22 of the Southern Tier Creme Brulee. The 3 Philosophers was interesting because this is the first time I have seen the 2008. I have been looking for it so I could have a decent vertical for my wedding week in October. I currently have 2006 cave aged, 2007 and now 2008. The St. Bernardus Tripel was interesting because I'm not sure I have seen 750s before. This is one of the better tripels and true to what I consider a tripel.

Sixth Stop - Maryland Homebrew Shop

Figured I would check out the yeast supply and check on the specifics of the grain I need to buy for next weekends brew. Picked up a couple vials of octoberfest yeast just to be sure they didn't ran out. Also got a nice large wine fermenting bucket to use for the mead. Now I just need to modify my recipe to match the grains they actually have.

Seventh Stop - BJs Wholesale

Mostly went here for household stuff, but ended up getting 9 lbs of blueberries for my mead. I wanted to make a blueberry one using the berries from my sisters, but we never had time to go and pick them. I saw that BJs had wild frozen blueberries so I grabbed these instead.

Acquired Beers

I tried this at Frisco today and have to tell you it has some intense flavor and aroma. So much so that without knowing it came from Southern Tier you wouldn't think that it was a beer at all. It smells very sweet, much like a creme brulee desert but is mostly overpowered with caramel smells. When tasting I got strong flavors of butterscotch, caramel, vanilla, and maybe a little coffee.

This definitely would be a great desert beer though it was a bit too sweet for me. The beer had to be sipped at first to get used to the rich flavors and sweetness, but was easier to drink once the palette got used to the intensity. This would probably be a good drink for some of the ladies who aren't really into beer but like strong flavored drinks like kahlua.

I'm very interested in how they were able to get those flavors into the beer. I would be very impressed if the majority of the flavor comes from pre-fermentation additions. There definitely is a creaminess to the flavor which I would assume come from the lactose additions, but the source of the strong butterscotch flavor is a mystery to me. Maybe simply the combination of the dark caramel malt, lactose, and vanilla are what provide the flavors. Assuming the label highlights all the ingredients (it may not), then this could explain the flavor partially because only the caramel malt would have been used to provide the dark color, no roasted stuff. There are some dark caramel malts available, so this is definitely possible.

Also wanted to mention that we had two of the Eugene City Brewery beers today. I had the 100 meter first while John had the 200. I followed the 100 meter with a randalized 200.

The 100 meter was good, a nice hoppy red, but I didn't find anything particularly special about it. John was saying that the 200 was very hoppy two, but from the randalizer it almost seemed to have less hop action. I wonder what hops they were using? Personally I didn't get much hop flavor on the front, only a little late bitterness. Though this could have been affected by the 100 meter I drank first.

Overall thy were definitely good beers, worth trying but nothing really spectacular.

Frisco grille a brew pub? 

Was chatting with Adam of Frisco Grille on Friday about the best way for me to sell my beer. We discussed the issue dealing with distribution and the overhead it would cause for a super small brewery. Adam has often said he would be willing to tap my beer in his bar if it were legal. I guess I could do it if the beer was free, but that doesn't help me or him. 

I tried to convince Adam that if he wanted to expand, adding a small brewpub would be a good way to get small batch beer on tap. We agreed that it is in a bars best interest to continue taping and serving all of the good beer that they currently serve. The point would be to have a few in-house beers on to establish a market. This would be a good way of experimenting with new beers and finding out what people like. The Dogfish head owner did something very similar with his initial brewpub that opened in Rehoboth.

Interestingly, after talking about this for a while one the patrons at the bar announced that he was the owner of Ellicott Mills. He mentioned that there are some small distributors, like the one they use that might not be too bad. Adam was asking about maybe having Ellicott Mills contract some beer for the grille. After some discussion we discovered that they have a 20 barrel system which might be a bit too much for Adam to store. Even a half batch would probably be too much beer. From what I could tell the Ellicot Mills owner seemed somewhat interested, like he might go back and talk it over with some people to see how worthwhile a contract brew or two would be.

New On Tap Program

Adam was complaining about the web program he uses to show the beer list. It seems to timeout a lot and he can't get it to rotate the way he wants. I offered to write a simple .NET program for him that would fullscreen itself with no decorations and use the WebBrowser controll to changes pages based on a custom confirguation. I wrote the program and it seems to work really well. When it loads it asks which display to be shown on. Once started it loops reads the XML config file to figure out what to display and when. It's a pretty simple configuration, but lets you set a default page to go to every other page, as many ad pages as you want, and a duration for each page. The ad pages can be displayed randomly or in series. Since the web pages are now controlled with code behind them, it should be easier to prevent the timeouts and control it the way he wants.

I sent the program over Friday early evening, but have not heard any feedback. Will be interesting to hear how it worked.

Beers

I tried the, Avery Maharaja which was pretty good. It had a lot of hop flavor typical of an strong American IPA. I also tried a bottle from the rack which I cannot remember the name. Maybe I'll update this later when I look it up in my book. It was a rye ale with caraway seeds in the brew. It definitely had an interesting flavor that I would attribute to the seeds. Almost like a mild licorice/coriander flavor.

Oliver also mentioned that he is going to have several of the Eugene beers on draft soon. The kegs were arriving as we drank. Should be on now, so I can get some Monday.