New IPA day!

There's a new IPA in town, and it's a local one, from Knoxville, Iowa, a town heretofore known pretty much only for sprint cars. Now I'm not saying Peace Tree Brewing is going to supplant auto racing as the local claim to fame, but they do make a fine IPA. It is (as all their beers) sold in shorter, fatter bottles, which is a bit different, though a purely aesthetic choice. The brew itself is pretty good, hoppy, but supported by a solid malt character and a smooth and almost sweet finish. I'm not sure it's worth $10/six pack, but it's an alright beer nonetheless. Pricing this at $7 or $8 would reserve it a spot in my regular rotation, it just isn't quite good enough to justify $10, but it is pretty cool that another brewery in Iowa has started producing quality beers. Unlike, say Hub City, a brewery out of Stanley, Iowa, that as far as I can tell from 4 or 5 beers, can't make a passable brew. Good job local boys! I might have to make a trip over to check out the brewery and the tap room.

So my wife, many friends, and tons of customers are all on RAGBRAI this week. Some friends and my wife met the team bus in Webster City. Now I need to retrieve the car. I'm pondering a ride up there after work tomorrow. I've got a route i think will work fairly well, but I'll have to take off right after work and it's gonna be 65-ish miles. I figure I've got about 4 hours of light to work with before I need lights, which I have, but finding a gas station in a strange town at dusk might not work so well, but at this point I'm up for a crazy bike riding adventure. I just need to pack well tomorrow morning and swing by home to grab and go. It will probably be a weather based decision at go time. Anything other than a north wind is probably a go. We'll see.

Sharing fancy beers with friends.

As some of you may know/I may have mentioned in passing, but I have a friend visiting. One of my favorite things is to share fancy beers with friends. This friend is from what I sometimes refer to as the "promised land of my people", that is the place where bicycles and beer are often the two most important things in a person's life, the Pacific Northwest, specifically Eugene, Oregon. When I visit, we drink all kinds of (to me) exotic beers, and ride bikes. Finally with the fantastic Rye on Rye from Boulevard's consistently excellent Smokestack Series, I have one upped him.


A strong rye ale aged in Templeton Rye barrels for 11 months. Really complex and really intense, it is amazing, especially if you love whiskey. Sadly, it is no longer even remotely available, so if you don't have any, you won't have any. If you have a friend who might like it, be a pal and share. If you have a friend with some, offer something fancy and hopefully exotic in trade.


Here's Seager enjoying/being confused by "the best beer ever. like, seriously, ever."

Beers in fridge not yet consumed and absence explained.

I have been so freaking busy at work the last couple weeks, what with RAGBRAI coming up. If you don't know, Ragbrai is the oldest and biggest cross state ride in the nation, and is effectively a rolling party where drinking cheap beer, listening to terrible cover bands, and riding 450-ish miles in one week all come together in a glorious symphony of awesome. My wife (and friend) are back, minor problems, but overall a good time, and I've house guests preparing for said ride, and yeah, everyone is getting stuff fixed and buying more stuff, so we're busy as all hell. Also my little sister got married this past weekend so I was out of town for 3 days for that.

Now for the fun part: beer.
I have a bottle of Dark Lord. Three Floyd's Brewing makes an amazing Russian Imperial Stout called Dark Lord. I got to sample some from a bottle a friend brought explicitly for such a tasting. I had to trade some fancy stuff from my own stash for it. It is extremely limited release and can only be purchased at the brewery and only while supplies last, which is usually one day every year. He paid $120 for four bottles on Chicago craigslist. I'll do a full write up once I crack my own bottle, but briefly, it is super complex, smooth, dark, with vanilla, coffee, chocolate, and about a thousand other flavors. Seriously amazing.


La Folie from New Belgium has finally filtered through the vast wasteland of Nebraska and made it to the less expansive wasteland of Iowa. I'm pretty thrilled. I've tasted it on a brewery tour (the 2008 version) , and it is a killer example of a sour beer. Here's an article from the NY Times about sour beers and what they offer and how they're a unique style. Again, a full write up is pending.


This is the beer I actually drank tonight. It's a homebrew double IPA I brewed, and this was my "test bottle." It's the first I tried of this batch, and it probably needs a bit more time to mature. It is plenty hoppy, but not carbonated enough, and the mouthfeel is a bit off. Not sure what is exactly the matter, perhaps a bit more time to carbonate would fix it. Regardless, it's okay to drink and that's the most important thing.

Sunday hate, unicycle soreness, mediocre pale ale

I gotta be up front with this, I hate Sundays. For most folks it is a day off filled with charity bike rides, lawn care, or just lazing about because all your other chores got completed Saturday. For me they're really just another work day, but they shouldn't be, I'm only at work four hours. The problem is that I'm there from 1-5 pm, and we're almost always super busy. But you'd say, "Mark, you have all the time before work to get out and ride/do stuff, and you're off and 5, which is earlier than most weekdays." And you'd be technically correct. Some how Sundays feel like a full day of work, with not so full day pay. Aside from the business, working most the afternoon totally kills your day. Anything done in the morning has to be started early, finished early, and cannot be terribly ambitious. Everything attempted in the evening must be done after an exhausting time of work, and usually gets passed up in favor of beers and cartoons. Sure I often go on rides before work, but not always, and this morning in particular the weather was damp and crummy, but this afternoon was sunny and overall quite pleasant. I could ride now, but I'm worn out from work and waiting for my wife to call me and tell me what's up with dinner and everything. She's home now, by the way.

They had to cut their tour a bit short because of some infected (for lack of a better term) saddle sores, and she was instructed by a doctor to take 4-5 days off the bike, and when you have 7-8 days left in a tour, pulling the plug is probably the best plan. Now she and her traveling companion/friend are out doing things. I'm awaiting a signal on the plan for what we're doing for dinner tonight.

Yesterday I rode a unicycle a surprisingly long was in the Summerfest parade in Ankeny. Summerfest is like every other small-ish town festival except Ankeny has no culture to celebrate, no founding ethnic heritage to promote, nothing save for strip malls and chain restaurants, so they've decided that celebrating summer itself is the next best thing. Anyhoo, the parade always a good time of riding a unicycle around and throwing fist fulls of candy to/at children. Today I'm pretty sore. I don't unicycle much/at all any more and hence, all the little helper muscles that get used while riding one are woefully out of shape and hurt a bit today.

Picked up a beer label as an "extra pale ale" figuring there'd be boatloads of hops, but i was disappointed. James Page (a division of Point brewing) is generally a good value, and their Voyager Extra Pale Ale would be no exception, save for the word "extra." Not that it isn't a solid pale mind you, but with the word extra, I want huge hoppy flavor bursting forth in all directions and breakneck speed. Only Cascade hops and a paltry 33 IBUs? This qualifies as extra anything? James Page, you guys need to man up and at least double that number. Plus more hop varieties would be excellent and would round out the flavor. Not horrible, just not as good as it should be. 6/10.

Shoddy commuter ride, but new fancy beer

After last week's generally good weather, this week is shaping up to suck. A good 30%+ chance of rain every day, and today (and yesterday) was no exception. I was planning on mountain biking yesterday in addition to the more traditional grilling and beer drinking. The rain crossed the riding off my list and I just drank and grilled and played games with friends.

Today there was more of the same, and being a bit lazy and hungry after work I skipped a serious ride. I got sprinkled on both directions on my commute this morning and evening, but avoided any heavy downpours. As I was picking up supplies for dinner, I grabbed a new beer I hadn't seen before: Whole Hog 6 Hop IPA. Seems Point Brewery in Steven's Point Wisconsin, has made a few special and/or limited edition beers that are outside their normal range, and they've named this line "Whole Hog."

The color is just slightly lighter than pictured, cell phone cameras and all that, and the flavors are deep and excellent. Complex, hoppy, floral beginnings give way to a malty and solid mouthfeel with a smooth bitterness and malty heft and the end. Not as much citrus flavors as their website copy says, but there are a few citrus notes in there, which I love and wish there were more. At 87 IBUs this is not for noobs. Because of the brewery this is from and the regionalness (regionality?) of beers like this, you're unlikely to find it outside of the upper midwest. You know what? That's fine by me. Most other regions have outstanding IPAs. The midwest now has another, which is still not enough.

On a completely unrelated note, with my wife gone I've lost most of my ambition to shave. She's threatened to punch me if I'm still unshaven when she returns which I suspect it mostly due to my sister getting married 3 days later, but I digress. Anyhoo, here's a picture of my terrible facial hair. I blame my crappy beard on my inferior beard growing genetics, I'm mostly of German heritage with some Swiss, French, and assorted other European mixed in.

Note the lack of cheek hair and patchy neck beard.

Homebrew and a ride

Progress on the bridge at the north end of the Ankeny to Woodward trail, now called the High Trestle Trail. Rode up there Thursday, rode past the road closed signs at the end of the pavement and got sorta close to the bridge. There were plenty of workers busily constructing some portion of the structure so I didn't venture too close. The picture does it no justice, but it's a) really really high, and b) pretty long and surprisingly narrow. With some luck I'll get out there some time when there aren't workers and get a better picture/more info about what's going on.

Tonight (Saturday) I once again had nothing to do so I took care of some homebrew bottling. It takes longer than I remembered but made my kitchen smell like hops, so it was an okay trade off. Here's a shot of transferring the beer from secondary to the bottling bucket. Now there's about five gallons of extra IPA in bottles being conditioned. Now I play the waiting game, in about 2 weeks I should have some fancy beer i made myself.