When I first met my husband I very much disliked beer. We used to go on dates to various beer and ale festivals at Lucky Baldwins in Pasadena. Since I didn't like beer and you really can't go there and drink anything else, he hooked me on Lindemans framboise, the non-beer drinker's wimpy fruity beer (excellent over some vanilla ice cream, by the way). I would drink framboise or ciders. We went to Ireland and pub hopped and even went to the Guinness brewery. It was all wasted on me, the anti-beer person. Somewhere along the way, when I was pregnant with my first son, working summer school as an elementary school teacher, I just needed to pretend to have a drink. I found Clausthaler non-alcoholic beer in my local Trader Joe's and it tasted like real beer to me. It was enough to pretend like I was having a refreshing beer after a long day on my feet in the dead of summer, 8 months pregnant. From that moment forward, I started liking beer. It's now almost like a race to see who gets the good beer in the fridge first, me or my husband!
We have done several homebrews and I hope to do some more soon, before it gets too hot. Our good friends have an amazing homebrewing set up at their home. I wish we could afford something like it. The below pictures are all horrendous cell phone pictures I pulled off of my facebook page. It's pretty funny to see how much I like taking a photo of a tasty beer I'm drinking.
I think our most favorite breweries have to be the Lost Coast Brewery and Russian River Brewery.
From the Lost Coast I love their Downtown Brown for a good, light brown ale. Their Great White is a fantastic summer ale. It has that lovely fresh baked bread aftertaste and it's nice and refreshing for a hot day. Their Alleycat Amber ale is a great anytime beer. It's probably my favorite from them.
The Russian River Brewery does some more hardcore ales. My husband's favorite is Pliny the Elder, which can be a pain in the butt to find as it sells out incredibly quickly. My personal favorite is their Blind Pig IPA. A bit lighter than the Pliny, which is a double IPA. Either way, if you run across any beer from Russian River snatch it up because chances are it won't be there for long! You really can't go wrong with their brews.
Homebrew in progress
Testing out a homebrewed porter
Homebrewing at our friend's house
His awesome set-up
This later went on to shoot out, all over our dining room ceiling, we have video of it somewhere
Our ghetto keg chilling system for the homebrew
The tasty homebrew results with some leftover homemade eggplant parm, tell me that isn't pure heaven!!
The hubby on one of our very rare dates at 38 Degrees in Alhambra with my glass of Blind Pig IPA.
Sampling some tasty goodness
Another Blind Pig at 38 Degrees, served to me in a pint jar, love it!! I think this is how all beer should be served!
No comments:
Post a Comment