P I C N I C

I racked the stout into a keg last night in preparation for bottling on Sunday. It had lost a little more weight, dropping from 1.018 to 1.016 during the last 2 weeks. It now tastes fairly dry and really good! Not too bitter, very round and malty. Like porridge. I’ve been drinking some other stouts as well. It’s generally a style I’ve stayed away from before but am now finding that I kind of like. The Ninkasi oatmeal stout is good. Very fresh, not bitter. HUB makes a multigrain stout with espresso that’s very good. Rouge is a very technically accomplished and reliable brewery but I’m always ambivalent about their beer. The Shakespeare stout is a little too bitter for me and I think it’s verging on being an imperial. Last night I had their chocolate stout. Very well made, clean, and integrated, but after a few sips it just tasted like they had poured hershey’s syrup into the stuff.

My machine is running and I’m drinking Joel’s espresso this morning for the first time in months. I seem to remember that the Sidamo takes a few days to mellow out as right now I’m pulling very bright shots. However, underneath this there seems to be a chocolate and biscuit character, waiting to come to the forefront. The coffee was roasted on the 8th, so it’s on day 2.

I’ve got my espresso machine up and running again! Today when I picked up some beans from Joel he was cleaning out his afterburner where the chaff collects. Apparently the garbage and recycling, or possibly the yard waste, was not being picked up by the garbage men. So I offloaded some chaff for him and threw it in the compost. As I shoveled, hot musty odors of compost were mixed with clean coffee drafts.

My vote for best superbowl commercial? The Doritos in a coffin sketch. Brilliant. The fantasy of lying in a bed of Doritos, watching TV, and pretending to be dead, this goes deep into the matter. The music is the Overture from Rossini’s The Theiving Magpie, and was used in A Clockwork Orange when Alex and his droogs were carousing in their codpieces. The intent? Laughing at death while we cause it?