Brews you can use

Surprisingly, I did manage to enter the Upper Mississippi mash-out as I mentioned a couple posts ago. I included the Imperial Stout, bringing the total to 6 entries. I hope at least some of them do well, I won’t know until the 27th.

I’ve recently gotten into Rye Whiskey. A New York Times Article had quite a bit to do with it. If it hadn’t been posted on Making Light and mentioned in a conversation with a co-worker in the same week, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought, and continued to view the few Ryes on the liquor store shelves with a suspicious eye. The article sold me on the style, so I decided to give it a try, starting with a mid-range “value” rye to avoid being turned off of the style by a low-quality example.

First up was Sazerac, ~$25/750ml at Surdyk’s. Quite good, light bodied and spicy. Next, I tried the next step down, Rittenhouse ($12/750 mL) which disappeared pretty quickly also. Rittenhouse was somewhat mellower, but definitely a quality whiskey. Currently, I’m down to “Old Overholt”, a $10/bottle whiskey and thus among the cheaper liquors sold in glass bottles… It’s also my favorite so far, a wonderful value and a good example of the Rye style. I haven’t tried Jim Beam or Wild Turkey yet. As for high-end examples, the only one I’ve seen locally has been a 21yr Rittenhouse for $130/bottle, so I won’t be having one of those anytime soon…

All have been decent sipping whiskeys, but an old out-of-style liquor calls for an old out-of-style cocktail. Rye shines in an Old Fashioned. Its bold spicy flavors give a tasty and balanced version of the cocktail, in contrast to the mellow, sweeter, usual Bourbon version.

They’re also a simple cocktail to make. Put a sugar cube, a thin (1cm) wedge of orange, and a splash of water into an Old Fashioned glass (short, thick bottom, straight sides, ~6-8 oz capacity) and muddle until the sugar is dissolved and the oranges are nicely bruised, especially the skin. Add a dash of Angostura Bitters, top off with 3-4 oz of Rye Whiskey and ice, stir. and serve. This is now my favorite cocktail by a large margin.

Well, that was quick.

I decided to give Linux another shot, to see if I it could reduce my computer futzing, etc. (Me shying away from computer tinkering, Jess making fermented beverages — what’s going on here?). I’ve been using Fedora Core 6 on my primary workstation at work for about a week, without incident. Meanwhile, my FreeBSD laptop gets a bunch of “are you fscking nuts?” comments.

This time, Linux lasted only two hours. Slower boot-up, spotty/fragile support for the Intel Pro/Wireless 2200 — I only had that working for one session, it disappeared on reboot. Couldn’t even do sleep/wakeup as smoothly as FreeBSD; it dropped the network connection and never recovered.

So, back to FreeBSD (as soon as I could get a FreeBSD install CD to reinstall the FreeBSD boot loader) for a while. Both are still installed, so I may give Linux another go when I’m feeling like tinkering

I think I may actually get some entries to the Upper Mississippi Mash-out this year. More entries than ever before, in fact. I almost feel like I have a hobby again!

Of course, competitions means bottling (with the exception of Beer and Sweat keg-only competition, with two drawbacks: location, and insanity), and I keg. Enter the Beer Gun. Quite cool, very easy to use. I’ll be sold on the concept unless/until all the beers I sent to the mash-out get dinged for oxidation.

So, I’m planning to send:

• The steam beer and pale ale I brewed two posts ago. They aged well….
• My 2005 wild-yeast-fermented cider. I tried both the natural and the pitched yeast versions side-by-side before deciding. The natural cider basically screamed apple!, while the pitched version was much more subtle with honey notes and a crisp, dry finish. In beer, at least, subtlety does not seem to do well at competitions, so the natural cider goes.
• The Dubbel I tossed together last summer. This is turning out to be a wonderful beer. Unfortunately, not the beer I’m in the mood for most of the time. I may have to work my way back into liking the Belgian styles again…
• The Rochefort 8° clone I brewed two summers ago with a friend. Since I haven’t been in a Belgian mood, and when I am, I want to save this stuff rather than drink it, I have most of my case left. It’s quite excellent, and I’m sending some.

The Rochefort 8° clone was a tough choice to send vs. keep all to myself. I’m currently drinking another tough choice, an Imperial Stout I brewed back in 2004 (<boggle>, was it really that long ago?), and is developing very nicely. I have somewhat more than a case left, and it did really well in the 2005 State fair competition (high score, no medal — Imperial stouts are a popular style among homebrewers). This one will be a gametime decision….

… and I still need to work tomorrow. Feh. Me sleep now.

You have to log back in to WordPress, and you’ve forgotten your password. Tenth time’s the charm

I normally have WP remember me and Firefox remember my password. That doesn’t do much good when the toddler decides your laptop is a fun thing to throw. Surprisingly, the tot survived. The laptop, though, needed a new hard drive.

Anybody know of a good network-bootable/installable Linux distribution? I hacked my own FreeBSD one, but am thinking of dual-booting with a “just Fscking works” linux distribution for when I’m feeling less adventurous… The laptop doesn’t have an internal CD, I’ve lost my USB CD, and struck out trying to boot from one of those snazzy pen drives.