Royal mile/Red Monk and a new one from Summit

Last night I ventured into Des Moines to eat dinner with some friends and use my last Groupon to the Royal Mile. When I arrived around 6:30 the place was really really packed. I figured there were just a bunch of last minute Groupon-ers, but I soon learned that was only partially to blame. A flier alerted me to a new beer from Summit was being shown off via firkin, and even the founder of the company was there hanging out. While I didn't get to meet him, I did drink some of the new beer. It was really really good. Gold Sovereign Ale is part of their limited release Unchained series, where brewers are given free reign to do whatever they want. This beer is reportedly a Victorian era pale ale, but with a modern twist: 100% organic malts. I briefly wondered if there were non-organic malts in the 19th century but I was quickly distracted by the fruity elements of this beer, as well as the clean and balanced finish. Pear and apricot notes made up most of the nose, with a hefty malt body and spicy hop balance did the heavy lifting. The whole thing was well balance, easy to drink but required some thought to pull out all the subtle flavors. I'm sure my not so great palette missed a bunch, but I liked it nonetheless. This is the part of the review where I'd normally post a picture, but the area around the firkin was super crowded and photo friendly, and the beer looked like any other beer in a pint glass. Plus I kinda forgot until after I had finished it. Ooops. After a hearty fish and chips platter, my friends took off and I moved to the bar upstairs at the Red Monk, a killer Belgian place I'm sure I've mentioned before.

I had a couple old favorites, and then with considerable help from the highly knowledgeable bartender, I gave the La Chouffe Blonde a try.

Sorry for the sideways photo, but my phone and computer are arguing and I had to upload the photo from my phone, then write this entry on the computer. Anyway, just tilt your head or something. Back to the beer, La Chouffe is a great blonde with a slightly hoppier flavor than a lot of other Belgian blondes. Mind you, there's not a lot of hop in there, but a little more than you'd expect. The fruity/citrus notes of the style are pleasant and blend well with more complex hints of flavors from the yeast and hops.

Airport drinkin', travel thoughts, tweets, plus some new wheels.

Sitting down to write this post I wanted to talk a bunch about Oregon and brag about my incredible intake of fancy beers, but I quickly realized that a) that's a dick move, and b) such a post would take ages to write and ages too read, I simply drank too many beers and had too much fun for a single update. So I'm going to break it up by category , or at least into some categories that make sense in my totally unhinged brain. So, seeing as my first beer was in an airport on this trip, I figured I'd start with a little write up about drinking in airports.

I know what you're thinking, "drinking in an airport? no thanks. expensive crappy beers, with the only company either serious drunks, executives with big expense accounts, or both." And in some cases you'd be right, but not always, and in some airports, quality beer at non-insane (is that sane?) prices can be found. My first drink this trip was in a place called Ike's on Summit in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. They're a place that features the Twin Cities' own Summit Brewing's beers. With no booze prices listed I braced for the worst, but I had a 3+ hour flight ahead of me, and was pretty hungry, and few things wash down mediocre airport food better than decent beer. I ordered a Maibock and asked for a menu.
I was in the place before 10 am, so they were still serving breakfast, I picked out a nearly $10 breakfast burrito, figuring it would be fairly large, I was wrong. It was mediocre and small. At least the Maibock was clean and refreshing. To get the burrito taste out of my mouth and out of my brain, I followed those two with an extra pale ale.
I don't think I've written about this beer before, but I drink it semi-often, as Summit six packs are regularly on sale for $6 or 7. Anyway, it's pretty good, fairy hoppy, on the dry side of an already dry style, and very clean in the finish. It sure did the trick. On the down side, each of these beers cost me about $8. Incredible. Stupid expensive airport beers. Plus the guy next to me sat down, ordered the "largest and strongest bloody mary you can make" and asked what the fasted meal he could order was. He heartily polished off his drink while on the phone with the office and waiting for his food, asked for the check when his food came, and hardly touched his food. He mighta been there for 20 mins total.
MSP airport bar, while quite and kinda nice inside, was stereotypical on so many levels. I sadly, had no time to have a drink in another airport on my way out to Eugene, so airport drinking would have to be put on hold until the return trip.
Luckily for me, I had a little over 90 mins in the Portland airport, which has a Rogue Public House, which happened to be literally right next to my gate.

Bam?

I sat down around 1:15, and pretty quickly thereafter had a 20oz beer (only $1 more than a pint), a pretty awesome sandwich with tots (only $1.50 more than fries). The beer pictured is Rogue's Half-e-weizen, pretty solid and refreshing wheat beer, I followed it up with a Juniper pale ale, not pictured, but pretty good. The John John pale aged in spruce gin barrels is the beer I want the juniper pale to be. . This is how an airport bar should work $5.50 pints of high quality beers, $8 sandwiches, and classic pub atmosphere. All told, even with tip by bill was well south of $30. Thus ends my tale of airport drinking, really just two bars with wildly different approaches, i guess I'll have to wait until my next trip to compare more bars, but it's gonna be really hard to top the Rogue Pub in PDX.

Another thing I did on/for this trip was start Twitter account. I figured I could just tweet pics of all these beers and save myself a huge blog update, but alas, 140 characters is somewhat limiting. Anyway, you should totally follow me because I post beer and bike stuff fairly often, plus I'd like to think I'm interesting. My handle is @2wheels1cup. Hell, I'll probably follow you in return.

Upon my return I finally finished building some sweet new wheels for my commuter bike. I know, I know, sweet wheels on a commuter is a waste, but I got a great deal on the rims, and I built them myself, plus my old wheels were so worn out, I needed new wheels anyway.
Velocity B43 rims with the Halo reflective powder coat laced with DT Swiss spokes to Velocity high flange flip flop hubs. Check them out once installed:
They're about a jillion times stiffer and stronger than the stock (probably original) 27 inch single walled crap wheels that were on there. The frame is a 1976-ish Motobecane Grand Jubilee, a pretty nice lugged steel frame. So far I'm pretty exited about these wheels. I couldn't get a picture of the reflective powder coating in action, but check out Velocity's page about it here: click here, stupid. If i can figure it out in the future I'll probably post a photo.