Categories
Beer

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Tonight myself and several friends spent the afternoon / evening at Rose & Thistle to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

I woke up early after dozing off early last night and spent the morning tinkering around the house, and at 2pm got cleaned up and started walking the three miles to the pub. I met Snooks and L there, joined a bit later by Mrs. Ghost Dog (GD was up finishing his ski patrol training, congrats again on that), and later my brother Travis, and even later Kelly (after a hard day at class).

Had a great night, and ended up with a bunch of Guinness swag, including a big foam pint-shaped hat, a bottle-opener key chain, t-shirt, and best of all a big metal "Size Matters" sign (referring to the standard 20oz Guinness pint). Great night, and thanks to all for coming out.

Categories
Beer General Work

Pouring the perfect pint of Guinness

Since Guinness now flows at my office, I thought it would be nice to make up a nice 'how to' sheet for folks who have never poured it and are only used to domestic microbrews. What you see to the left is my enhanced illustration of an old metal sign image I found online (here's the original). The photo was too small and blurry for printing, so I made a new one in Illustrator. I even illustrated thousands of tiny bubbles to make the settling look right! Finding a vector version of the Guinness Draft logo online made the whole thing pretty easy.

I finished the sheet up by adding a right panel with an Esquire.com interview with Guinness brewmaster Fergal Murray, where he describes the six steps in more detail.

Here is my 'how to' sheet (PDF)

Enjoy! 

Categories
Beer Work

Guinness at the office

As of today, my office has Guinness on tap! The keg arrived on Monday, but due to the multitude of bits that the company needed to track down to go from the common CO2 keg to the Nitro-driven, European-fitted Guinness keg, the assembly was delayed. However, today it was all assembled and shortly after 5pm I was pouring myself a pint of Guinness at the office. Sweet!

I did a bit of pouring training for a few coworkers (pour 3/4's the way full, let settle for a minute, then press the tap handle back to top off slowly). Though I realized later that the training wasn't quite right… I'm used to seeing the 'sloppy' method which is to set the glass down on the tray and pour straight down to the 3/4 point… where you're supposed to hold the glass at a 45 degree angle… only the 'top off' of the last 1/4 is poured straight down. Damn!

Fearing I may have lost some beer nerd cred, I'm going to (time-permitting) assemble a nice, easy to read 'how-to' sheet to put next to the tap tomorrow. We're throwing a company happy hour on Friday, and I thought it'd be a nice touch for those who are used to just pouring the glass full in one go.

Categories
Beer General

Ant killing, and a quiet night at home

Slept late today (because I could, dang it!), then spent day on a cleaning rampage, primarily in the kitchen, trying to eradicate the sugar ants we've been seeing over the past couple months. I still haven't exactly figured out where they're coming from (probably under the house somewhere) but the kitchen has become something of a game… spot the ant, kill the ant, wipe area clean, repeat. It's never been a massive infestation, just a few here and there, always around the counter tops and cupboards. We'd clean, and for days, nothing, and then all of a sudden, we'd spot 10 here, 4 there, etc. We've sealed all our foodstuffs, and had been fairly good about keeping things clean, but the persistent little shits still keep popping up. The other day, Kelly picked up some eco-friendly (orange peel based) insecticide spray, so today I cleaned. Big time. Under the sink, around and under the oven top, floors, etc. The kitchen still (hours later) reeks of orange peel, but it seems to have had some effect. I've only spotted a couple since.

Tonight Kelly got together with Miranda and another friend to play games, drink wine, and relax. I dropped her off at around 7:30pm, and since Miranda lives fairly close to Belmont Station, I stopped in to check out the new digs (moved, no longer on Belmont) and pick up some beers. Got a few interesting things, a couple English ales from Morland Brewery ("Hen's Tooth" and "Tanner's Jack"), and a couple old favorites, Adnams "Suffolk Special Bitter" and Coniston Brewery's "Bluebird Bitter". Having a nice quiet night at home relaxing, sipping on beers, reading through emails, and writing in my blog. 😉 Hopefully tomorrow, two things will happen… 1) more relaxing, and 2) I won't see any sugar ants. Stupid bugs. 

Categories
Beer Food

Night at Rose & Thistle

Tonight Kelly and I met up with our good friends Ty & Aymie at Rose & Thistle. It had been far too long since we'd seen them, so it was great to catch up, have a meal, and a few pints. It was also a great way to end the crazy week. Had the delicious pasty for dinner, and many pints of Guinness of course. After our bus ride homeward we stopped at Binks for another pint (had the Amnesia Brewing ESB) before walking home. Great night, though I think both Kelly and I were suffering from last night's outing (to 'celebrate' her layoff) … starting at Kells at around 3pm, then to Thirsty Lion for a meal and a few more pints, a quick stop home to drop some things off, and then hopping the bus to Moon & Sixpence to meet up with my brother Travis. Basically, we've hit just about every pub in the Portland area over the past 2 days. 🙂