First off, I've finally got a sour cooking in the Kitchen. I've posted previously about replacing bits of older equipment, to use the old strictly for sour in order to avoid cross-contamination. That "piece at a time" strategy may have as much to do with building up the nerve to make the jump to sours as any worries about contamination, but I finally got over the hump. MoreBeer has a Russian River Consecration clone extract kit that includes a chunk of a Cabernet Sauvignon barrel that Russian River used producing Consecration, so I'm jumping into "oak aging" along with my first sour. No sense dipping a toe, when I have two good feet!
So I cooked up the grains/extract in the kit with no major surprises, other than the silicone tubing I had been so terribly impressed with for it's flexibility and ease of connecting to whatever, did some really, really SCARY expanding when I started running water through my wort-chiller:
This is just what I was comfortable with long enough to take a picture. At full pressure, it looked entirely suitable for making balloon animals!
Cooled wort in my fermenter, I pitched a smak-pak of Wyeast 1214 Abbey Ale. It hadn't expanded ALL the way (i.e., it didn't look like it would burst if you left it much longer) so I made a run up to BeerWorks to see if they had the White Labs equivalent. Unfortunately, they had just sold the last tube of that variety. I though possibly under-pitching would be preferable to pitching yeast that would produce a distinctly different taste profile, so I opted for pitching my questionable smak-pak. (it hadn't expanded completely, but the temp was significantly higher than ambient, so I kinda thought/hoped that's just how this yeast acts in a smak-pak?) While there, I did enjoy a lovely Gännuhn (2016) from Blue Stallion on tap. So nice to enjoy a tasty beverage while shopping for homebrew supplies!
So I pitched my questionable yeast, and let it roll for a little longer than recommended per kit instructions. Moved the batch into a secondary fermentor (a brew bucket I picked up on that trip to BeerWorks so I wouldn't be tieing up one of my Speidel fermenters up for the year this may take!) on top of a pound of dried currants and then pitched a Wyeast 5526 Brett Lambicus pack. (No "smack" to this pack at all; I assume due to Brett's characteristically slower speed?) This is gonna sit in the kitchen undisturbed for the next 7 weeks or so, when I'll pitch a Wyeast 3763 Roeselare pack. The main thing I'm looking for from this are the lacto and the pediococcus, but the additional yeasts will hopefully add some pleasant complexities while munching up any off-flavor compounds present.
Once I've pitched the Roeselare and added the Consecration barrel chunk, this brew will sit for at least 8 months to a year before going in bottles. As it nears bottle-day, I may add in an oak spiral soaked in some Cabernet Sauvignon for just a bit, to increase the oak and soak up some of the bugs for future batches? Or not...I was kinda thinking out loud there. LOL!
So much for cooking beers, how about drinking a few (dozen?!?) Liquor Barn sent me an email about the Tailspin Ale Fest 2017 and I decided I had to go. $45 for 40 beer stamps? heck yes, I'll sign up for that when the beer list looks so tasty! They also had a deal where for $10 you could buy a shuttle bus ticket that included early registration, a pint and a bite to eat before you left for the fest. What's not to like there?
Before going further, Against the Grain that sad feeling when there's only one pork belly stick left!
Having looked over the locations for the shuttle bus, I decided New Albanian Brewery looked like the place to start this adventure, and chose a hotel nearby. Unfortunately, our Uber driver decided she knew the area better than Google Maps, and took us to the WRONG NABC location. No "early registration" No "pint and a bite" No ride at all! Sheesh!
Fortunately, there were some homebrew party hounds with a bus who were willing to let us tag along with them. Super enthusiastic and friendly folk pulled my butt right out of that uber nightmare. There were some delays on the freeways, so I still started the fest a little bit late,; it was after 3:45 when I checked in my first brew. :-(
Having arrived late, I found this festival a little difficult to navigate and find any specific brewers I was seeking. Lovely location, but really odd layout (huge empty spaces; tightly packed lines of tables blocking passage between the main sections, huge field of empty to the food trucks, etc) Having paid for 40 punches, I ended up drinking less than 20 beers before the event ended. So not my best time at a beer fest but much of that can be attributed to the late start. So I'm gonna blame the Uber driver and not the fest! LOL
Leaving the fest, we got lucky with a shuttle to the Paddock Drakes, which was sooo very close to the Kentucky Day School where Hayes Carll was playing. Woot! Finally something worked out right!
Having arrived at the Hayes Carll show, everything started clicking! A lovely couple from Cincinnati seated on the aisle to our right decided it would be a great idea to buy me enough beers to float me over their seats and Hayes played a beautiful show. That fella can play a tune to bend your heart-strings and get you to jump for joy, next tune out.
Buying tees and beers and waiting for a handshake and a pic, met the sweetest couple ever: Jason and Andrea, who also have a band called Magnolia Road. You can find them at Magnolia Road YouTube or on Facebook. Hit those links and come back here, tell me there isn't a smidgen of hope for this f'd up species!
And thank you, Hayes, for kinda backing me up with the Ray Wylie brew name thing!
After the Hayes Carll show, Jason and Andrea suggested Monkey Wrench as a good after-show bar. Fine suggestion, as it had that funky Cosmic Charlies feel to it, and had some great beers on tap. Seems such a shame to find a fine place like this less than a month than its going to close down. :-(
Later in the evening, these fine folk introduces me to a tiny dive called Time and Space. If you're looking for skeezy dive, this place will hit ALL your happy buttons. Everything you could ask for in a less than upscale space. Great music, cheap drinks, equality, liberty, brotherhood.
And once I start quoting French revolutionary mottoes as reasons to visit my new favorite dive, it may indeed be time to goodnight, dear Faithful Readers.
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