February 27, 2006
San Diego visit part II with pictures
Part II of my San Diego visit:
After recovering from the previous evenings festivities, Rick, Andy, and I flew kites and went for a swim on Sunday - we managed to find a thai place that was open (after several closed ones) for dinner and had a beer at Shakespears. Monday at lunch we met the crowd at Pizza Port (in Solana Beach) for some awesome beer and pizza, it's one of the top 10 breweries in the US. Monday night we had a Paella cookoff! I think Rick won by a hair but they both tasted great and provided an evening of entertainment! On Tuesday I borrowed Rick's car and stopped by Ocean Beach for a taco and headed out to Stone brewery for a tour.
I had a great time in San Diego last weekend! I think it was a good excuse for everyone to hang out together again, and eat meat at the very successful meatfest. I ended up going to 3 breweries on the trip as well: Ballast Point, Pizza Port, Stone (what a surprise, I know).
February 22, 2006
Hugo
Rebecca sent me a cute picture of Hugo, what a serious dog!?
February 20, 2006
Disturbing Food
While randomly catching up some blog posts I've missed this afternoon
(while waiting a couple hours for Ricky to finish work so we can make
Paella tonight) I found a deeply disturbing image
That reminds me of lileks.com.. wow.
February 19, 2006
Trip to San Diego - Part I
After months of saying "I'll go back to San Diego some day soon" but
somehow never finding the time to make the trip.. Debbie got me a trip
down here for my birthday. I'm at my friend Rick's house in La Jolla
right now after a couple great days hanging out with a bunch of old
buddies. It's been a blast so far, the weather's great, and it's so
good to get back in touch with everyone again!
To start off we went to our old chinese food haunt and ate a bunch of
food I didn't recognize, tasty! Then we went to arguably the best pub
in San Diego (O'Brians on Convoy street) Friday night where we met
some funny and talkative locals who argued over which beer I should
try first while another guy I've never met gave me a sip of his Pliny
the Younger. We jumped over to the San Diego Brewing Company till 1am
which had a pretty surprising lineup of beers as well.
Then Saturday we breakfasted at Harry's in La Jolla and walked around
the beach there after waking up late. Sunshine! For the afternoon we
hopped (pun intended) over to a grand opening of a new Ballast point
brewery where we tasted some great beer and food for $5 - and I met
the VP!
Then Sat evening we had a meatfest reunion with most of my grad
student friends! There was much meat - and a surprising amount of
vegetables for a "meatfest". We laughed and drank wine while running
Office Space on the projector! Ahh it's fun to remember the life of a
grad student... although briefly.
Beers tasted so far:
Alpine Exponentional Hoppiness (wow!)
Alpine Pure Hoppiness
Russian River Pliny the Elder
Russian River Pliny the Younger (wow)
San Diego Brewing IPA
San Diego Brewing Imperial Stout
Ballast Point Black Marlin Porter
Ballast Point Sea Monster Stout
Ballast Point Sea Monster Stout (aged in whiskey barrels)
Ballast Point Big Eye IPA
Ballast Point Dorado Double IPA
(wow.. that looks like a lot. actually many were only shared tastes..)
I'll post some pictures when I get my memory-card reader plugged in..
February 06, 2006
Homebrew stirplate
After hearing about the benefits of making a yeast starter for making
beer I constructed a stirplate (like in chemistry class, remember?)
using a fan and a plastic box and some assorted electronics I had
around. In the clear liquid of these pictures you can just see the
white stirbar, the other one is the yeast starter for my latest brew:
Imperial Pilsner!
It is a lager so I'm hoping to be able to lager in the garage (~40F this
time of year) for a few weeks. The brewing Sunday went well and faster
than expected despite the 2hr boil and 2hr mash, and I even managed to
finish in time to catch the end of the Superbowl.
It was so nice out with the sun shining, what a change in atmosphere
for rainy Portland. It's even shining right now... which I'll be able
to see well everyday from my new window cube at work!
