i like beer

I bought a Starr Hill mix pack a month or two ago and really liked all of them.

I put a couple of bottles in a grocery store sixer myself: Lucy and Festie. I think the hotel served Lucy and Pale Ale.

Their Dark Starr Stout sounds right up my alley. When I get the Guinness and Young's Chocolate Stout out of the way, I may have to locate some. Frig space is at a premium.

Besides the critically declaimed Pumpkin Ale, I also had a Southern Tier Unearthly IPA (9.7% ABV!) and a Rogue XS Scotch Ale. The IPA was fruity, full flavored, and awesome. Rogue's scotch ale was excellent -- sweet, malty, and dark.

All had at the "Blind Pig" in Urbana, IL. Great hangout spot.

Today at ChurchKey, while enjoying the "sanity" on TV, I had a number of good beers. The ones that really stood out were...

Smuttynose Big A Imperial IPA: it smelled earthy/dirty but had an awesome flavor.

Victory Yakima Glory: a fruity/floral/malty Cascadian Dark Ale (black ipa).

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout: Whoah! This was a strong one with a lot going on. Aged in bourbon barrels for 6 months. Really forward bourbon flavor, but dark, rich, coffee/cacao/chocolate ice cream on the palate, too.

Peter: Are you going to be doing any axiom-exclusive bottleings (sp?) sometime? :-) Or I guess we'll have to brew ourselves.

Tasting a Bell's Winter White Ale. It's great.

I purchased it at night with eggs and tobasco sauce. I mentioned to the grocer that I covered all of the main food groups -- eggs, beer, and tobasco sauce.

Think I was missing a few...

Dan, those look like your actual M22s etc.. in the pic, did you stage that ? If so very nicely done...

Kind of looks like the room I'm working on right now.

Yup, my M22's (and STF-2). And it was staged. The bottle cap and all. LOTS of thread ;-) Thanks.

I go on these odd photo projects once every few months and do a weird picture of me. The Axiom photo competition was a perfect excuse.

Our basement was all tore up, so I liked the "dirty warehouse" feel, I guess ;-)

BUT THIS IS THE BEER THREAD! BEER!

I'll let you guys know when I have a beer worthy of shipping. I'll gladly share a bottle with anyone who passes through, though.

Speaking of homebrew, the wheat beer that I bottled almost 4 weeks ago is finally starting to show some carbonation. It's amazing how the flavor profile changes with the presence of bubbles and without.

Also, last Sunday, I dry-hopped the Bell's Two Hearted clone with 1oz of Centennial hop pellets. The recipe says to bottle 1-2 weeks after adding the hops to the secondary fermenter. Since my volume is about 1/2 gallon below the 5 gallon mark (had a very active blowoff tube in primary), I'm wondering if I should bottle closer to the 1 week mark or the 2.