More drink and thanks to the city of Ankeny

Surly's Coffee Bender. Very very interesting, with a hefty brown ale as a base, and a liberal dose of coffee. Most coffee beers are stouts or porters, I'm a fan of adding it to not super dark beers provided the base style can withstand the additional (and often strong) flavor. This beer certainly delivers in that regard. If you're not local to Minnesota, and particularly the twin cities, you probably can't find this beer, but if you see it, I highly recommend it.


While not actually a beer, I picked up something else in Minneapolis that I'm excited about: Rogue's Pink Spruce Gin. This is Rogue's interesting and delicious spruce gin aged in Pinot wine barrels, which impart more complexity and a lovely pink hue. If you like gin at all, give it a shot. I personally really like it, but find the cucumber notes to be a tad pronounced for my taste, but then again I'm not a big cucumber fan. While my photo above doesn't really show off the color, nor the taste to be fair, it does show off how good my martini looked.

Finally, I'd like to give a big 'thanks' to the city of Ankeny and whatever crew they've got that keeps the bike paths clean. For the past couple winters that I've been commuting to the shop, the paths are generally cleaned of snow quickly, nearly completely, and I am appreciative. Someone told me it's only done on school days, and I've noticed that big snowfalls on weekends is not cleared until midday on Monday, but I'm impressed they bother at all, especially as far away from any school that I ride.
The above photo is on my trip home after some snowfall both overnight and during the afternoon. If you look closely you can see the edges of the path, clearly piled with snow previously plowed, and the snow is obviously not very deep. Thanks Ankeny city workers!

Minnesota trip: beers and no bikes

This past weekend I went with a friend to Minneapolis to see some other friends' of ours play a kick ass metal show. We arrived Friday before the snow started falling, we fell asleep with the snow starting to accumulate, but we didn't think much of it. By the time Saturday afternoon came around and the snow was still coming down it became clear there would be no show, and we would not be going anywhere for any reason. Then this happened:


Yep. there was enough snow that the roof of the Metrodome fell in. Crazy. So we drank fancy beers and watched movies and football all weekend.
On Monday we finally ventured out into the world. Everything seemed fine, just snowy. We had originally planned to get to a beer store, a home brew store, and a few restaurants. We only went to the homebrew place and a beer store. And holy cow did we go to a beer store. Found all sorts of goodies, all of which I'm sure I'll talk about here in good time. That said I set a personal high score: $214. Sure there was a $40 bottle of gin + 6 Bourbon Barrel Quads + my normal amount of fancy beers, but wow, over $200. Guess I don't need to spend anything on beer for quite a while. I, of course, grabbed a 4 pack of each variety of Surly. Despite being from the Minneapolis area, the brewery has nothing to do with the bikes.
So far I've cracked open two of them, the Furious, and the Cynicale.
The Furious is Surly's 99 IBU American style IPA. Big hop flavor, smell that I noticed while pouring, easily 18 inches from my nose, and a solid malt back, all add up to a competent entry into the world of American IPAs. Nothing super duper amazing to report, but it is a quality beer. Maybe I'm getting burned out on monster hoppy IPAs or perhaps my palette is maturing, or I just need something more than a ton of hops to make me live a beer, but I'm not in love with this beer. Sure it's good and well made, but nothing about it stands out in a sea on similar brews. Certainly worth a try, and I'm glad I picked it up, but it wouldn't be my first choice in a bar that had other AIPAs.

The CynicAle is a very well made farm house ale. The French farm ale is either a new trend in craft brewing, or a style I'm just becoming more aware of, but either way, I dig it. Surly's example is really really good. Smooth honey and hop flavors in the nose and initial flavor which fads to a lingering peppery aftertaste. Easy drinkin and super smooth for sure. Not sure I like it more than something like Tank 7 from Boulevard, but it's pretty close, and a bit different flavor wise.

Cold commutes and ( you guessed it) new beers

Weather has gotten colder, the commute has required a bit more gear, and I've kept drinking.
Temperatures at my work bound commute have been in the mid-20s and the trip home has been that or colder, plus the unstoppable wind of course. As such I've donned my snowboard helmet and goggles, as well as an extra layer sometimes. Especially with the stronger winds, I've noticed my gloves aren't as warm as they once were. I'm using the Specialized Sub Zero, which is really a liner and an outer shell system, which as been working really really well, until recently. See:

I've got 2 full winters of every day use out of these things, and plenty of other use as well, so I'm not terribly upset that they're wearing out. I am a bit upset that the new model doesn't fit my hands worth a damn. I'd still wear these in a 40F rain storm, but for wind chills in the low teens, they aren't cutting it any more. Now I have to figure out new gloves. Pondering lots of things, lobster mitts are highly likely, bar mitts are also a possibility. Not sure what to do, and I kinda need to make a decision.

In less cold, and somewhat happier news, I'm still drinking fancy beers. Rye beers have been a recent "thing" in the beer scene. They've been around basically forever, but rye is having a huge resurgence in popularity as an ingredient. Perhaps the rye whiskey explosion of the last few years has spilled over into the beer world. Whatever the cause, I'm fairly excited about it. Rye has a spicy and deep flavor profile that adds an interesting flavor to any beer it's used in.
Left Hand Brewing's Rye Bock, is a smooth yet complicated beer, with a spicy nose, heady middle, and smooth finish. A traditional bock (which as you know is a lager) is smooth and full of flavor. This beer does not disappoint, big props to my buddy and drinking cohort Andrew for hooking this up.
Sour beers are definitely the wave of the future. Set to supplant ultra high octane IPAs as the way for brewers to show off their skills. Until know the way to (cynically) judge a brewer/brewery was to check their huge IBU IPA, both numerically and flavor wise. Sours are awesome, tart, complex, often fruity, generally aged, and they come in a ton of varieties. A hallmark of the style is the lactic/wild fermentation that imparts that wonderful tart/sour flavor. New Belgium's La Folie is a great example. Based on a Flander's brown and aged in spent wine barrels, it's tart, deep, with a sour finish that's outstanding. A serious top notch sour, and fairly readily available. Go buy some.

rough day? fancy beers to the rescue

Today was a bit rough. As it sometimes happens in retail, people all showed up at once, then no one was in the store for a long time. This went on all day; I rarely had just one person in the shop, but usually had 3-4 that all arrived at nearly the same time, and that's never a fun time. It started pretty much from opening the doors onward. Three people were in needing different things in the first 15 mins, two of them needing to get set up on our trainers, which can take a while. Anyhoo, somewhere in that process I pinched a finger in something and took a good chunk out of it. It was deep enough/a big enough piece missing that it quickly soaked through a single bandaid. It's on my left index finger so, while it doesn't hurt much, it's super annoying doing anything with two bandaids on a single finger. When I got home, I cracked open a couple fancy beers and promptly enjoyed the hell out of them. Enough petty bitching, on to the beers:

Three Floyd's Broo Doo Harvest Ale.

Wow. I can't believe I drank a beer with a wish troll on the label, but I'm really glad I did. This fall seasonal is wet hopped, which means the hops aren't dried before being added to the beer. In this case they claim 24 hours or so from harvest to wort. This technique enhances the aromatic qualities of the hop and impart a certain "fresh" characteristic. According the their website, this brew has 80 IBUs, which isn't surprising given the incredibly citrusy nose to the beer, but depsite the large-ish IBU count, it is smooth and entirely not bitter. The smell is the biggest attraction here, full of citrus, pine, floral notes, and more citrus. They don't say exactly which hops are involved but I'd be surprised if Cascades and Citras, weren't involved. There's enough malt to balance the potent hop dose, but not enough to muddy up the complex flavors involved. A++++ would drink again. Next up is a beer that is finally available in the US, and one all my globe trotting friends insisted I had to try:

Guinness Foreign Extra

A different version/style of their regular stout. It has finally gotten out of the UK and into my grocery store. It is different, richer, deeper, just a bit more flavorful. Certainly not going to be drinking this all the time, but it's a nice change. If you like Guinness, or darker beers in general, give it a shot. Decidedly not on par with something like Shakespeare Stout from Rogue, but it is an new option in the vein of "regular" Guinness, and that's a-okay.