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!