Big Boss Brewery

Last evening, the SWMBO and I made a trip to Big Boss Brewery, and their adjacent pub to sample a few of their brews. Their beers, while more malt-oriented for my tastes, were very good.

Of the seven (I believe) beers on tap, we sampled five of them: The Helle's Belle Belgian Pale Ale, Bad Penny Brown Ale, Angry Angel Kolsch, their Porter, and an Altbier (German Brown Ale).

All of their beers were as they were supposed to be, The Belgian Pale was sweet, fruity and peppery; The Brown Ale was caramelly, nutty and chocolaty, the Porter was nice and roasty and chocolaty, the Altbier was a bit nutty, clovey, and peppery, and the Kolsch was forgettable, just like Kolsch's should be. Seriously, not knocking on their Kolsch, they're a super light-style Ale that is basically not supposed to have hardly any flavor.

Big Boss Brewery was one of the local guys I was calling out earlier to make a "house" (non-seasonal) IPA. I actually got to get some answers while there on why they don't. I was able to ask their head Bartender, Jesse, about this. He explained that the brewery has a three-year contract with their hop supplier and that they are bound to those prices. From the sounds of it, they entered the contract at the time of the hop shortage, so their prices to buy hops are very high still. Jesse said that they have an IPA recipe ready to go once their prices come back down and it makes financial sense. They've already got the labels and art for it as well, they're just waiting on the price.

Big Boss shows off their brewery on the second Saturday of every month. Be sure to check them out.

Busy, Busy, Weekend!

So I really need to update the blog more often. Far too much happened over this past weekend and week for me to have not put up a blog update. We'll start with the Canes.


All last week and this past weekend the Canes were on a Western conference road trip. They visited Vancouver, San Jose, and Phoenix. All of which had very late puck drops. I missed the first two and was slightly disappointed we lost to Vancouver (we are streak breaking team! The Canucks had lost 8 straight.) and was amazed that we beat the Sharks in a Shootout. Would have loved to have stayed up till 12:30 to watch that one. We then went on to man-handle the Coyotes. 7-2. Destroyed a crappy team. Hooray! At least we got 4 points out of 6 on a road trip where we easily could have only gotten 1 or 2.


Next up, the brew's news!


The Porter has come of age. It's at the point now where it is perfectly carbonated. The flavors have come together and it tastes great. No more flatness. I have read that 3 weeks is the magic number for letting your beers carb. The Porter came in at 19 days. Now, it'll only get better with time. Now, just another week and a half or so for the Amber and it'll be good to drink too.


I also got to brew my next beer on Saturday! A nice Irish Red. Unfortunately I didn't have the foresight to brew this about 3 weeks ago in order for it to be ready for St. Patty's day. Here's the ingredients.

• 6.6 lbs of Light Malt Extract.
• 1 lbs of Crystal 80L Malt.
• 1 oz. Perle hops.
• 1oz. Mt. Hood Hops.
• 1 packet of Wyeast London Ale Yeast.

Here's a picture of the Wort right after I had steeped the 80L malt. It's nice and red, just the color I'm hoping the final product will be.

Along the brew lines, we went and took a tour of the new Brewery in Raleigh, Lonerider Beers. It's a real small micro-brewery that just opened shop a month ago. They've got some good brews on tap already, a Hefeweizen and a real robust Porter. I'm not big on Hefe's or wheat beers, they're too sweet for me, but the Porter was very good. It's very strong and robust, almost a Stout in color and flavor. Definitely go a check them out if you have the chance. Here's a few pictures that the SWMBO took of the brewery.

And finally, Boone, our dog, and I went hiking out at Umstead Park on Sunday. It was overly warm so I decided to get rid of the dog's extra energy and take him for a 3 or so mile hike. Here's some pics from the day.

Cheers!

Welcome to Pics, Pucks, & Porters. This blog shall be my attempt to catalogue, dissect, give and receive input into three of my passions; Photography, Hockey, and Brewing/drinking beer.


Let me start by saying that I am in no way a writer. It's funny that I have even started blogging because I hate writing as it is. This is simply a "for fun" activity for me to enjoy and share my passions with others and perhaps get some feedback along the way.


First off, I live in the Triangle region of North Carolina. In the past decade, I have grown to love the Carolina Hurricanes of the NHL. Having Canadians as friends in high school can really push you into loving a certain cold weather sport. Basically the only thing I cannot say about being a Canes fan is that I wasn't there when they were in Greensboro. As soon as they were officially in Raleigh, I was hooked and have been there for all of the major moments.

Which brings me to my next passion. Photography. The above picture was taken with my old Canon S1. Of course I didn't have the greatest vantage point to capture Rod Brind'Amour kissing the Stanley Cup for the first time, but it's not the worst shot ever. The S1 was my first digital camera, and I used the crap out of it. It's a good bridge camera between just a point and shoot and a nice SLR camera. It was an awesome camera to have right out of college, but I missed what I had during my years in school. Here's a few S1 pics.


















My previous camera, that originally got me hooked on photography is my old Canon A-1. Sweet-ass 35mm the A-1 is. It's old, from 1978, but it still takes amazing pictures, when it's got a good battery and clean contacts. It was given to me by my Great Uncle along with quite a few accessories. I took tons of pictures while I was in college. I went to Appalachian State University and loved the picturesque landscapes of the mountains around Boone. In the winter I would take my Bronco out on the Blueridge Parkway and take pictures of the snowy landscape. I could spend all days driving in a foot of snow and getting shots that hardly anyone could get to.


Now, I've moved on to my new baby. The Canon 40D. Finally the best of both of my previous cameras. A digital SLR. And a sweet one at that too. My wonderful, and beautiful wife Jennifer(SWMBO) got it for me this past Christmas, and I've barely been able to put it down. I've got two lenses with it, a normal 28-135mm zoom lens and a 70-300mm zoom lens. Next up on the list is a wide-angle lens. Since most D-SLR's have a 1.6x crop on the frame, my 28mm is really a 45mm lens. I love scenery pictures and 45mm is not wide enough for me. So watch out 12mm lens. Here I come.

Here's a few of my 40D pics from just messing around.

Now onto the third and tastiest of hobbies. Beer! I enjoy beer. Actually, I enjoy good beer. Call me a beer snob. I'm Okay with it. I don't drink beer for the sheer buzz of it. I enjoy the flavors. The malts, hops, esters, foam, and bite. The only light beer I truly enjoy is Sam Adams Light. It has flavor. Lately, I've been into very hoppy beers. India Pale Ales and the like are great on my tongue. I love the super-bitterness of the hops.


Now to culminate my beer-fondness I have gotten a beer brewing kit for Christmas that I plan on using as much as possible. It came with a nice Porter kit. It's all from American Brewmasters here in Raleigh, so it's their own recipe and malts. Here's the ingredient list.


3.3 lbs Dark malt extract
3.3 lbs Amber malt extract
Steeping Grains including 4 oz. Black Patent, 4 oz. Chocolate Malt, 4 oz. Crystal Malt
1 oz. Bittering Hops
1 oz. flavoring Hops
1 Pack Nottingham Ale Yeast

Unfortunately, as I look back on the recipe, it doesn't tell me what the exact hops are. That helps a lot. So, as I write this, that Porter is in it's Secondary Fermenter settling out and maybe getting rid of some off-flavors. I don't have any pictures from the brewing process, but here's where it is as of right now.

Tommorrow, I'll update on how my latest brew went tonight. Plus I may try to work out some formatting kinks and post links to pictures so they look better.

(Edit) You can click on most pictures here for a full-size picture. Some work, some don't for some reason.