FOOLCiRCLE

Here is a picture of the Palino Pimps vs. Punk in Drublic. This picture was taken at the fabulous 2nd Annual (Invitational?) Dogfish Head Intergalactic Bocce Tournament. This was a 16 team bracket double-elimination tournament. It took place over two 10 hour days.

Unfortunetly, since I was occupied, I could not attend last year. And because of that, I missed out on this years play. The teams from last year were invited back first. Anyway, Robert and I decided to see if we could “stop by” on the second day and maybe hang-out for a bit. Surprised, we felt as though we were totally welcomed. All of the players were very nice and hilarious, the employees that were that were being very cool towards us, and even the owner of the company personally came over to us and told us to make ourselves at home – awesome. So a couple of hours of “stopping by” turned into all day hanging out. We then left the brewery to head to the brew pub to try the brew pub exclusive Fed Extra Mild. This beer was really anything but mild at over 6% and really nicely hopped. While we were standing at the bar, one of the employees asked us to come upstairs to the private bocce party, where we thouroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Because people don’t always think, we forget to remember that we had previously signed up to run in the 1st Dogfish Dash 10K the following day. Let’s just say morning came fast and hard. But, we were determined to run the race. We had two objectives that we easily accomplished: 1) We are not allowed to be last & 2) We have to finish. The race was rough, but I’m glad we did it, already looking forward to next year – both bocce and the 10K

So next year at the bocce tournament look out because if you have a problem – if no one else can help – and if you can find them – maybe you can play bocce with : The B-Team.

Today I went over to my buddy Garrett’s house and we brewed a 10 gallon batch of a Pale Ale together. Not that this beer won’t be good, but essentially we brewed this beer as a giant starter for a 10 gallon batch of Barleywine we plan on brewing in like 3 weeks or so. The brew day actually went pretty smoothly, only real troubles we ran into were the mash briefly got stuck and there was a lot of break material in the kettle. I also got to try some new beers Garrett had available including a Mango Witbier (Mango Mama), a Robust Stout (Choking Sun Stout) and a DIPA (Hopacalypse), an English Bitter (Horizon Bitter) and the newest rendition of an Oaked Aged Vanilla Porter. Please feel free to correct me if I got any of the names wrong or left out any of the goodies. Regardless, I am already looking forward to brewing the Barleywine.

Brewed a second batch of the Angler Amber Ale today. Things went pretty good for the equipment I was using and for with the break since my last batch. Actually, things went much smoother than I had anticipated with only 2 problems, one more major and one more minor. Problem number one was I missed my target gravity by about 0.010. This may not sound like a lot but it is really enough to make a difference. Don’t know why the efficency was so low, but I’ll get it straighten out. Problem number two was my yeast. I tried to make a yeast started with a White Labs vial of California Ale Yeast 001 and the sucker was dead for lack of a better term. After 36 hours in the started there was still no visible action. I was pissed about the yeast not working partially because I was so excited about not having to make a starter from scratch since Garrett had canned off a few quarts – DAMN! Anyway, I was fortunet enough to have some US-56 on hand which basically saved the day. Next brew day in less than a week. I will be teaming up with Garrett to brew a 10 gallon batch of a Pale Ale, can’t wait.