Beers and the BallPark

A few weeks ago, I was rewarded with 4 Rockies Tickets. I know ... seems more like a punishment, right? The game was this past Sunday. My kids didn't want to go to the game and I didn't feel like forcing them. My wife didn't think we should leave them at home alone. Plus, we had a church thing that at least some us of should be at.

Long story short, I ended up going to the game alone (is that as pathetic as it sounds to me?)

But, as I was going to be without children, I figured I might as well head downtown early and hit a couple of the breweries by Coors Field. What better way is there to prepare for a game than to sample some Denver Beers?

Brewing the 2013 X-Mas Ale

Every year since I started home-brewing, I have brewed a special X-Mas ale for the holidays. Each year, the recipe is different, but so far it has always been pretty dark, malty, and fairly high in alcohol. Each has had special holiday flavoring.

Each year, I try to save 6 (or so) bottles to age and taste them together in the years to come. My 2009 beer is gone, but I have 4 of 2010, 5 of 2011, and 6 of 2012 ready for these vertical tastings.

You can read quite a bit about these X-Mas Ales (including this post) by looking at Sheppy's Blog: X-Mas Ales.

Missing Travel Bug: Guacamole

Have you seen this Travel Bug? He is missing already. If you have him, or know where he is, or even have some idea where he might be, leave a comment on this blog post. Better yet, do it on his geocache page, Guacamole.

Better yet, if you have him .... LOG HIM!

Again, the webpage on which you can leave a comment or log him is:

Guacamole

Placing Sheppy McShepardSons take 1

My boys ... especially Little Brother have been working on making a geocache to hide.

Do you know what a geocache is? If you follow this blog on a regular basis, you have probably noticed our renewed interest in geocaching (see Sheppy's Blog: Geocache), and probably have either figured it out or don't really care. If not, it is basically a global hide-and-seek game using GPS coordinates.

If you are interested in learning more, take a few minutes and check out "Geocaching in 2 Minutes" and / or  "Geocaching 101". Go ahead ... I'll wait.

So, anyway, we have been FINDING geocaches since November 2008. This is our first attempt to hide a geocache. My youngest pretty much took the lead on this one. He found the container, and convinced Mommy to empty it of its previous contents. He talked his dad into taking him to the store and buying Camo duct tape (weird that we didn't have any already ... right?). He applied the tape, found a log book, assembled the contents, and coordinated getting a little information sheet about geocaching printed out and laminated to put in the cache.

Brewing the Sloth Man English Mild

This past weekend I brewed the next beer in my BJCP Category Project (see SheppyBrew Styles). This one was Category 11 — English Brown Ale, and I decided to brew an English Mild (11A) to satisfy this category.

As always, you can see the recipe on the Sheppy Brew website. See Sloth Man English Mild. I went low alcohol on this one. It should be a 3.7% ABV beer with lots of rich English caramel and biscuity flavors. It is sort of a toned down Gnasty the Gnome ESB, which coincidentally disappeared recently.

I got started pretty early on Sunday. I had some non-beer related issues I ended up having to deal with, though so I didn't really get the mash going until well after 6AM. 

#GABF Events

The GABF is less than a month away. Aren't you excited? I am.

I got an email from the Great American Beer Festival (actually a guy from the Brewer Association named "Spencer", pretending his name was "Great American Beer Festival"). The email announced that the GABF Beer & Food Pavilion Schedule was out.

It is very possible that it has been out for quite awhile, but this is the first I have looked at it. You can see at the GABF Event Schedule along with what is going on at the "Brewers Studio Pavilion" and other GABF events.

You see, GABF is not just about drinking beer. If you are a beer geek (even if you are not) you can attend presentations.

Mt Rushmore Pictures

I have mentioned our family trip to South Dakota a few times on this blog. It is hard to believe that was way back in July. Can't believe it is already September. I am not sure where the summer went.

I told you that my favorite part of the trip was the Badlands National Park (see Badlands National Park Pictures). My kids' favorite part was Mt. Rushmore National Monument. My youngest boy, in particular, wanted to go see it every day. His mean parents made him wait. Every once in awhile during our other adventures, we got a view from afar, which appeased him for awhile, but the day we visited the monument was the highlight of the trip for him.

3 Floyds Dreadnaught

When we went to South Dakota last month, we met my wife's sisters and their families about mid-way through the week. They all live in Illinois, and knowing that they had better access to 3 Floyd's Brewing company, I asked them to try to pick up some Zombie Dust. Zombie dust is one of the beers on the Zymurgy's 2013 Best Beers in America list that I am trying to drink my way through.

My brother in law made a heroic effort, but apparently, they don't live quite close enough to the Chicago Land area to get 3 Floyd's beers by them. He even made a road trip to a good craft beer store in attempts to pick some up.

August 2013 Blogging

August had more pages views on this blog than March 2013 did. It was not by much, but this makes August the new record holder. Aren't you excited?

Ok. I know you're not.

In case you are wondering, though, here are the blog posts that have been the most looked-at over the past 30 days: