Captain Video's Mountain Retreat

This is turning into a modern Magic 8 Ball :)

What are you?

It rains here in the Northwest, and when it rains you get mushrooms. I'm not a mushroom hunter and while I'd like to learn more about mycology and mushroom info, I'm a total noob. I found these in the backyard about a month ago -- there was probably a hundred different species of mush out there, and I just grabbed a few of the really big ones to see if I could figure out what they were.

This one's the first I found, right outside the door -- a ton of them. I wasn't able to figure out what it was, so I'm not even going to guess here.

The big umbrella shaped mushroom and the spherical topped one are the same type -- just different ages. This was big, about the size of my hand. It was a gilled mushroom that dropped a huge amount of white spores.

This second one is a Bolete of some kind -- I'm guessing it might be a Zeller's Bolete?

I had no idea what a "Bolete" was, and didn't even know that mushroom's can have pores instead of gills. This thing was really heavy and solid feeling and I'm thinking I'd like to get some help to confirm an ID for it -- in case it's a good edible. I did take a spore print from it and the spores were a dark olive green/brown color.

It's not as slimy as it looks in the photo - it was raining out when I picked it. The color darkened and took on a more matte finish as it dried off.

This was another Bolete -- I think it falls into a group that's pretty widely knows as a "Slippery Jack."

I grabbed it because it was so freakish. This one is way more slimy than it looks in the photo. The slime was really viscus and reminded me of using methylcellulose to do stuff like alien drool.

I didn't take a lot of notes -- I took a lot of pictures -- but I was working out of an old, and pretty difficult to use mushroom book, so I was just messing around. I've gotten newer (and way better) books on the topic, and I've found a local mycological club, so I'm hoping I can start to grok some of this strange stuff that grows so profusely here.

When I lived in Minnesota I picked up a lot of local knowledge about wild edibles -- not really much about mushrooms other than puffballs -- but definitely a lot of different plant types. Things like, where and when to find them, how to prepare them, etc. The Pacific Northwest seems completely different, and the micro-climates here seem to really complicate the "knowing where and when to find things" issue.

So, a question... If you grow up here, did your older siblings make you eat a slug?

A couple years ago, after the Heads-Up brewery closed, I was hanging out with one of the ex-brewers at Tizley's Europub in Poulsbo and he talked me into trying a couple bottles of Avery's "The Beast" and "Samael's Ale," (I'd post links, but Avery's whole page is flash, so I can't) which are beers from Avery's "demon" series -- some of their more "out-there" beers -- Since then, I have been looking forward to trying more beers from these, "Small brewery, Big beers," beer makers. I don't recall where I picked up the particular bottle I'm tasting tonight (most likely Bottleworks in Wallingford or the Puget Sound Wine Cellar), but I do believe, when it's in season (see "Availablity," below) you will find this in most decent bottle retailers around around the Pacific Northwest.

Yay craigslist!

I picked up a stack of brewing equipment a couple days ago, and it wasn't until last night that I finally had the time to look over all the new toys. Warning: Beware the incoming train-wreck of brewing lingo -- only a couple of my friends will understand everything in here... Just indulge me while I share :) I'll try to add enough extra info to make this educational and hopefully understandable.

Essentially what I'm doing is moving from a 5 gallon "brewery," to a system with a maximum batch size of about 13 gallons -- this is what most brewers would call a "half barrel" system.

I've now got 3 converted Sankey style kegs -- one is set up as a Hot Liquor Tank ("Hot Liquor" really means "Hot Water" in brewspeek), one is the Mash/Lauter Tun (which you use to steep the grains, and then strain/rinse them), and the third is a Brew Kettle (where you boil the sweet liquid, aka, "the wort", you got from the mash. You can see my old brew kettle in picture). The Brew Kettle and the Lauter Tun both have stainless steel Phalse Bottoms (fancy strainers), and the Lauter Tun has a Sparge Arm (kind of like a sprinkler for straining/rinsing the barley -- aka, "sparging"). On the right in the picture (the white thing on the barrel) you can see the Counter-flow Wort Chiller (a heat exchanger) that I also picked up -- you use that to quickly cool the boiling-hot wort down to a temp that's safe for adding yeast.

Here's a bucket full of random smaller bits and pieces (some of this is pictured later), and on the left of this picture you see two new (new-to-me) glass carboys (big bottles used to ferment the beer) -- this puts me at 5 carboys (I'm not really trying to collect carboys, but they keep showing up -- I want to start moving my fermentation over to some 10 gal stainless corney kegs I picked up.)

The following is a blurry picture of a new dual regulator, which will be nice if I ever want to serve different beers at different pressures.

Here's some of those random bits and pieces: racking canes, bottling tubes, various hose clamps and fittings, cornelius keg fittings, picnic taps....

This interesting stuff was also included: A counter-pressure bottle filler (used to put already-carbonated beer into bottles without having it foam all over), an inline carbonator (for adding carbonation, nearly instantly, and automatically, to any liquid), and a wort aerator (add's O2 to the wort to keep the yeasties happy).

There's also an electronic RIMS control system that I forgot to take a picture of. It's made of an enclosed electric heating element, a pump to circulate the wort, and a PID temperature controller to maintain the mash temperature. I'm not sure I'm going to use this control system the way it's all put together now, but I may part it out and redesign my own system. (explanation)

One of the things that's got me the most excited is the "project" pictured below. It's a for-reals, from England, old, dual beer engine! It's functional, and it's real, but it's roached. I'll probably get into more detail on this thing in a future post.

This all represents the 3rd full do-over of my brewery. I started boiling 1 1/2 gallon wort batches that were combined with cold water to bring the final volume up to 5 gallons. At V2.0, I started boiling and cooling full 5 gallon batches (I also started all-grain brewing). Now I'm likely to be doing 10 gallon batches. Interesting note: Dogfish Head Brewery began by brewing 3 batches per day in a similar 10 gallon system -- 400 batches in the first year!

No big news... just took the bike into the city today -- met TSP for lunch at Hale's. Weather report said "cloudy" but there was a pretty solid, wet mist until later in the afternoon -- only notable because of all the extra layers I ended up putting on and taking off all day.

I took the time on the boat to play with the Zi8 (Kodak ultra cheap, pocket HD video cam). I'm pretty impressed with it as a point-and-shoot, but the video, hand-held, even with stabilization is way to shakey for HD. I did some playing around with attaching a mono-pod to it, and even just using the mono-pod, fully collapsed, as a weight on the camera, greatly reduces the vibrations that come from trying to shoot with a device that's this light (110 g [3.9 oz] without batteries) .

Apparently, I'm the only one that thought a ride today would be a good idea :)

The Zi8 has a little switch that sets the lens for macro, which I used in the image above. If you haven't heard of this thing, it's worth checking out -- the simplicity and flexibility of this cam is really remarkable. And at under $150.oo... wow. That's cheap enough that I'm not gonna sweat abusing it and maybe breaking it :)

Best features: Input for external microphone, and built in USB jack (so I don't have to haul around another eff'in cable!)

rugby so far this season has been suck. been thinking the sport has just passed what I can deal with... then I find out i've been playing with a rib outta place. I get that reset and, "wow.' strength is back... wind is back... and my whole sense of old-age-and-treachery is back. rookies and backs can suck it.

I'm a big fan of the Dogfish 90 min IPA, and the more Dogfish Head beers I try, the more impressed I am with the crazy, and successful directions this brewery goes.

Then I saw this beast at the bottleshop: "...continually hopped over a 120-minute boil and then dry hopped every day for a month." Add in the "20% ALC. BY VOL" warning sticker... and a $10 per 12 oz price-point... well, crap... what could I do?

ABV: 18% (the brewery website says 18% -- the bottle has a sticker on it that says 20%)
IBU: 120
OG: 1.205 (45 degrees plato)
Style: Imperial IPA? (No way. This clearly falls into BJC's "Liquid Insanity" category.)
Website: http://bit.ly/4dBa

Background:
Dogfish Head Brewery (DFH) is one of our quintessential American craft breweries. Based in Delaware, and founded by Sam Calagione, the brewery opened in 1995 and now reportedly produces 75,000 barrels of beer annually. Dogfish Head's tag-line is "Off-centered Ales for off-centered people," and their portfolio of beers backs that statement.

Pre-Tasting Expectations:
The color and IBUs of this beer do fit into what would typically be called an Imperial IPA, but the original gravity and ABV put this beer well outside the lines of typical styles, so I expect this to be much more like a barleywine or some big-ass American strong ale.. I have enough experience with DFH beers that I can assume the beer isn't going to suck, but this is going to be an extreme beer, and it's going to challenge my palette.

Tastage:
The beer is clear, and has a dark golden color -- I'd estimate the color to be about 13 SRM.

The beer foamed up a nice head during the pour, which then dropped down to about a 1/8 inch of nice, fine, smooth foam... solid lacing, continuous nucleation, a very pretty pour.

On the nose, surprisingly for an IPA, I initially got bbq sauce. The hop notes are not as strong as I would expect -- The citrus is there -- but not the nose-full-of-grapefruit that is so common in big American IPAs (so the hopping is probably more bitter based, rather than aromatic, like a cascade or something like that). I also got some mild smoke and single malt scotch odors, which is probably coming from the high level of alcohol.

The taste was a bit of a shock: Candy sweet, with maple sugar and a rich rich barleywine like maltiness -- The beer is so sweet that the 120 IBUs of hops are actually balanced and aren't all in your face. Surprisingly, the beer is so big that the hops are battling to combat the sweetness. There's a mild carbonation on the tongue, but I get a lot of heat. The taste is really much more like a fruity barleywine than an IPA, and the delayed aftertaste is really where the bitterness of the hops make themselves known.

DFH says this should age well, and I'd concur. The flavors in here are a bit contentious, but they should gel over time and I would guess that this will lay down well and should hold up. If it lasts at all, this beer could develop very nicely over years to come.

This stuff is really strong, and really not for the less experimental beer drinkers. 1/2 bottle is almost more than enough of this -- if you try it, plan to split the bottle with someone. Will I shell out $10 for another bottle? Meh. I might, but only to lay it down in hopes of trying it again and maybe doing a vertical tasting of different vintages.

PS. Does beer have a "vintage"?

The robins started robbing us of our fruit so it was time to pick.

The plan: With any luck, Streusel Topped Blueberry Muffins and Blueberry Pannekoeken for breakfast tomorrow. The cherries (sour) are going into the freezer and will probably end up in a porter or stout when we get back.

The beer is an Ayinger Bräu Weisse. I'm not typically a wheat beer fan at all, but I'm liking the complexity and freshness of this stuff. The first time I had it I was really overwhelmed with banana and lemon flavors. This time, not paying attention while just working and drinking it in the heat, I just kept noticing cloves.

I'm noticing that photos aren't importing properly from blogger into facebook's notes... still testing...

Pardon the dust -- I'm just using this as a test post to look at how FB updates and syncs, so I apologize if there's multiple FB messages being fired out about it.

mmmm... SuperGoose.