Winter Brewing Adventures

Sun. 10 March 2013

My brewing has typically gone in fits and starts. When people ask how long I have been brewing I always have trouble answering because I started in 2007, but I’ve taken three year-long breaks. The first two were because I was deployed to Iraq and then Afghanistan where I had other things to occupy my time. Then last year I lived in an apartment that was too small to brew. But last August my wife and I moved into a new house.

  

Two Saturdays ago I brewed a Saison (The Flying Fish Baby Saison Farmhouse Ale from Charlie Papazian’s Microbrewed Aventures). One of my friends stopped by to see the process. It is always fun to have a friend over when brewing since a good half of brewing is sitting around waiting for biology and chemistry to take place. I explained the brewing process over some slightly over-caronated pints of pumpkin porter. (Digression – an important part of the homebrew process is to have a homebrew from the previous batch. As you enjoy the yummy previous batch, you are reminded not to worry – a few mistakes go into every homebrew). This is the third time that I have made this Saison and it is fun to experiment with a known success. It has about 6-8 oz of acidulated malt that give it a nice spice.

Today I brewed a Magic Hat No. 9 inspired beer. I will confess that No. 9, while a fine beer, is not one I usually go to in the store. But a friend of my wife had a bunch of frozen peaches that she did not think she could use. I said we could probably handle them. I like it when there’s a story behind a particular batch.

During the brew another friend stopped by for an hour to check out the process. We had some pints of a poblano stout that I bottled two weeks ago. This one was inspired by a poblano stout that my wife and I had at Big Choice Brewing in Broomfield. I put five roasted poblanos in the secondary and let them sit there for a month. It came out with great flavor and not too much heat – in my humble opinion.

The Peachy Magic Hat (as I’m calling it) is now sitting in the carboy. I will add the peaches in a few weeks. Winter Sunday afternoons are pretty awesome.

Exploring wine in the heart of beer country

Saturday, 23 February 2013

Like the protagonists in He Said Beer, She Said Wine, my wife has tended towards wine as her drink of choice. She has humored me over our months together by going to more brewpubs than wineries (okay, many more). So this year we decided that we were going to learn more about wine. I agreed and then we put the idea on the shelf until this Saturday when we were at the homebrew shop getting beer ingredients. Then my wife told me “we’re going to visit Boulder Creek Winery”.  I generally go along with plans like these, so we found ourselves on an impromptu wine tasting.

There was one guy manning the counter. We did the self-directed tour first. This was rather well put together. This is a small enough winery that you can pretty much walk into the production room and see everything. They have some neat informative boards about the wine-making process. The tasting itself was $5 a person – and well worth it.

Then we went and checked out the Bookcliff Winery in Northern Boulder. I had stopped by the Upslope Winery before but had never gone next door. It was pleasantly busy for a Saturday, but not too crowded. This tasting was also $5. We liked their Viognier (just a bit of sweet French oak) and their Riesling enough to go home with a bottle of each (with the bonus of making the tasting free). We’ll call it a good start.

Cheers in Boulders – 10 Days into Stout Month 2013

The Southern Sun (or So Sun) is sort of like my Cheers. I might not quite be Norm, but I do drag my wife over to this brew-pub more than usual during this glorious month when the taps “fade to black”. My wife and I live about a 10-minute walk from the So Sun so we often eat at home and just head over to sample a stout (or two).  

 

I have always liked the Sun Brewpubs for the sense of community that they foster. We have been in Boulder long enough that we almost always run into someone we know when we show up. So far this month we have had spontaneous double and triple dates with couples we happened to run into. One time we had just been seated and we flagged down two friends who just showed up and wandered by. Thus a 20-minute walk to sample the Girl Scout Stout turned into two hours of what the Irish would call “good craic”. We have also whiled away one long wait for tables with a grad friends from CU that happened to be across from us. We have never wanted for good friends to go along with our good brews.

 

While I hope to make it “one or two” more times in the next 18 days, here is a smattering of my favorites black pints (so far).

 

Girl Scout Stout – this continues to be one of my favorites. This year’s batch has a good balance of mint and bitter chocolate. Grab it when you see it because this one always taps out fast.

 

 

Stoked Oak- this is another beer that you need to get when you see. The oak is in great balance with this very smooth and drinkable Stout.

 

Brett Stout – nice tan head. Thin body with low carbonation. Nice orange fruit flavor with just enough roast in the background to still call itself a stout. Good brett sourness to balance the sweetness.

 

Thunderhead Stout – good medium-hopped American stout. Citrusy orange on the aroma. Thin head. Nice blend of orange citrus and chocolate in the flavor.

 

Oatimus Prime –  The name alone should make even non-Transformer fans give this one a look. This is a beauty of an imperial stout. Thin tan head with a medium to heavy body. All the great dark fruits and alcohol flavor that you expect from a rich stout.

 

Dark Harvest Pumpkin Stout – persistent half inch of light tan head. Pumpkin flavor and pumpkin spices (ginger, nutmeg, etc.) come through nicely but at a balanced level.

 

Land Shark Foreign Extra Stout – less sweet than Guiness’ Foreign Extra Stout. Nice chocolate notes come out when it warms up. Opaque dark body. Medium to high carbonation. I really wish that the Southern Sun would serve their stouts warmer. I always taste so much more in the last two inches of the pint (not just because I drank the first three quarters of the pint).

50 Marathons in 50 States

I forget exactly when I decided to run a marathon in all 50 states. I would like to say that I came up with it all on my own, but it was probably when I read about the phenomena (and its associate clubs) in Runner’s World. Like deciding to do my first marathon the idea grew on me fairly quickly once the seed was planted. I like variety and exploring and the marathon was a natural vehicle to justify both. It’s a big enough race that you invest enough time into that you can justify traveling.

So far I have completed 12 states. I also ran a marathon during my deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan but, fortunately, those are not US states (although sometimes I’m not sure if our congress is any more functional). At the moment I try to do about two races a year. There are some folks who have the time and money to do over a race a month. I respect these people, but this is not my style (or budget). I like to do each marathon with full effort and preparation.

The one drawback to this project is that I do not have the time or money to do unnecessary marathons. Even if I find an amazing marathon, it is doubtful that I will get back to it anytime soon. So far this has not bothered me. I respect my friends who are on their 3^rd or even 13^th Boston Marathon, but the same part of me that loves trying a new beer also loves trying a new area.

I have not gone to a bad one yet, although some have been more fun than others. I primarily rely on the reviews in MarathonGuide.com to make sure I find good races. So far my top 3 favorites have been:

1.       The Boston Marathon – You cannot beat the history of this race or the crowd support. It is also amazingly well run – they’ve have had over a century to work out the kinks. And I will never forget being able to hear Wellesley College from over a half-mile away.

2.       The Bataan Memorial Death March – I am glad I got to do this while there are still surviving members of the march. The day before the race my wife and I got to hear one of the survivors tell his story. It really put my race-day discomfort in perspective. This was good because there was a lot of it. At mile 6 I realized that my good time so far was because I had a 25 mph wind at my back. For the next 7 miles as I went uphill, I ran into the wind. Everyone should do this challenging course while they can still see some of these people who fought during one of the most desperate moments in US history.

3.       MDI Marathon – This was my first marathon. It is run during the fall on Mount Desert Island (home of Acadia National Park) in Maine. The leaves are at their peak and you have some beautiful stretches running along the rocky coast.

Other honorable mentions so far: Ogeden Marathon (Utah), Missoula Marathon (Montana). Next up is the Rockin’ K Marathon in Kanopolis, Kansas. Never heard of it? Never been there? Neither have I, and that’s what I love about this project.

Making peace with treadmills

While I will always prefer running on trails outside, I have come to appreciate treadmill running in certain situations. At the moment I find two main advantages to running on a treadmill:

1. form-work
2. shelter from the storm

I was recently forced into treadmill running again. I was on a business trip and I had to get ready for the day’s work early enough and work late enough that running with the sun on my back was not an option. My work schedule combined with the cold weather in the morning (11 °F) caused me to rethink my plan of driving to a nearby bike path network and use the treadmills at my hotel.

The funny thing was that I turned off the TV that was on the treadmill in the hotel’s workout room. It was not just because the news program was classic TV new dribble (I could really care less if Beyoncé lip-synced the national anthem), but I realized that I have come to really enjoy the silence of running. I have also come to a separate peace with the boredom of treadmill running. At some point my thoughts grudgingly admitted to what I liked about treadmills.

I realized that a treadmill running is a great way to focus on my form. If I swing my arms wide they hit the side rails. Most often I am looking at a mirror or, in this case, the turned-off TV screen. I can see when I am hunched or my shoulder are scrunched. Since I am usually at some point in my run checking the time countdown every 15-20 seconds, this is a great time to see how close my stride frequency is to the magic 90 strides per minutes that they claim the best runners have – regardless of the distance raced. When I say 90 strides per minute, I count the left or right footstrikes in a minute (180 if you count both). This first time I found that I was around 80 to start. I found when I tried to go closer to 90 the running felt easier. While a lot of this is probably finding the result that I want to find, it is definitely something I plan to try next time I am on the treadmill.

Finally, a treadmill can be a necessary shelter from the storm (i.e. weather). In this case the treadmill saved me from running in an unfamiliar place in the dark and cold (or, more likely, not running at all). The other time in my life I turned to treadmills was when I was on base in Afghanistan. This base was not plowed. By February the roads were an icy, hard-packed snow. After one run in the cold were I took several falls I decided that my body would not take too many more runs in these conditions and went to the treadmill. I was blessed to be on  base with a gym and reasonably good power. The treadmill allowed me to maintain a base of running fitness until the base roads cleared with the spring.

While I still find treadmills monotonous and a poor substitute for even most cold, dark and / or rainy conditions, they do have a place when the weather crosses my thresholds (which I imagine will get lower with age and, someday, parenthood).

The Fast and the Flurry-ous

Fast and the Flurry-ous Cross Country 4.1 Miler

Sat. 19 Jan. 2013

One of the things I like about racing it that it keeps you honest. I can tell myself that I feel great in training, but a race give you a true assessment of where you are at. For my first race of 2013 and at 32, I chose the Fast and the Flurry-ous. The bottom line is that this is a well-run race and with a challenge course and stiff competition.

I chose this over some other attractive races in Denver (Snowman Stampede is a fun one that I’ve done in the past) because this one was 1.25 miles from my house. It also had the added attraction of being one of the races in the Boulder Track Club series. Even though I am not part of the development team, it is still fun to race with the guys that I train with.

 

This race is also fun because it’s an old-fashioned cross country race. I felt like I was back in high school as I toed to the line. The course is three laps on a grass course near the South Boulder Rec Center. The weather was unseasonably warm (high 30’s, I believe) and the course was virtually free of snow. I actually ran in a singlet in January.

In spite of these ideal conditions, I found the running on grass to be more challenging than expected. The uneven surfaces made in hard for me to get into a rhythm. I also went out too fast (5:29). However, I hung in for a 24:07 which made for 5:53 miles. 

 

I really liked the course. It has a good mix of hills and turns. The worst I could say about it was that the 2-mile mark was only about a kilometer past the 1-mile mark. Or I ran a world class mile.

The registration and sign-up was easy and well run. The results also posted pretty quickly. I would also give the race administration and logistics a solid score.