aggienaut | Barrels of Fun (Reply)

   Today (Tuesday) we celebrated regime change at work by all meeting for brunch as a place called "the White House" in Laguna Beach. Boss Dave bought a bottle of Dom Perignon (sp?) champagne to celebrate. I wouldn't say it tasted bad per se, but it tasted like sweet slightly carbonated water to me. Everyone else was absolutely raving about it (its like $100 a bottle I guess?) so I figured it was being completely wasted on me and gave my glass to someone else. Their coffee and food was great though.

   People have been tiptoeing around Barack Obama's middle name, but, frankly, I think its delightfully ironic that Bush ousted a guy named Hussain, and was himself replaced by a guy named Hussain.

   In other news, I've bought a barrel. A five gallon american oak barrel slightly charred on the inside whiskey barrel style. I've been told be several independant credible sources that the greater surface to volume ratio of a smaller barrel will have the same effect in weeks it would take years to get in a normal 53 gallon barrel, so thats exciting -- I don't feel like waiting years to enjoy the fruits of my labours!
   I'm actually more excited about putting beer in it than hard alcohol, since I love barrel aged beer but am not a big fan of any hard liquors. BUT my favourite barrel aged beers are aged in barrels formerly used for hard alcohol, and impart some really interesting flavouring from such things, so I thought I ought to put something else in it at first.
   For the time being I've filled it with all my extra brandy from the brandy experiment.

Recent Beer Reviews
   Green Flash Barleywine: was quite good. Don't recall anything unique or unusual about it, just a very nice barleywine. Nice bold flavour but not too much so. A-
   Acme IPA (North Coast Brewing): totally blande. C-
   Hop Trip (Deschutes Brewing): TASTED LIKE TEA!! I've never tasted anything like it! Well okay, I have, I've had tea. But yeah. Earl grey. In a good way. A-

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