Entries from August 2007 ↓

You just gotta watch this:

For once I actually did a Friday Feast before Logtar!

Appetizer
Describe your laundry routine. Do you have a certain day when you do it all, or do you just wash whatever you need for the next day?
We don’t really have a routine for laundry. Keli does most of it, primarily because she’s home more than I am. We just try to keep up on it - however many loads that requires, however close together we need to.

Soup
In your opinion, what age will you be when you’ll consider yourself to truly be old?
I already feel truly old: When I told Bailey a few weeks back “When I was little, we didn’t have GameBoys…” she looked at me like I just spit fire and brimstone out of my ears.

Salad
What is one of your goals? Is it short-term, long-term, or both?
Short Term: To have a great day
Long Term: To be independently wealthy

Main Course
Name something unbelievable you’ve seen or read lately.
Gigantor the Spider

Dessert
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how happy are you today?

8. I’d probably be happier except my wife is stressed out and having a lousy day, and I’m super tired.

I know, the title of this post is shocking, eh? Something classy and sophisticated? On Deguia.net? How absurd!

On a whim I searched for “Russian River Brewing“, my favorite beer-time hang out, on the Food&Wine magazine web site and found this interesting article on some breweries in Sonoma County. Prepare yourselves for a lengthy excerpt (Writing styles be damned!):

Chef Sang Yoon will almost always choose ale over Riesling, and he’s happy to battle any sommelier about it. In Sonoma County - where wine geeks rule - he seeks out (and finds) excellent craft beers and creates six beer-friendly recipes.

In the ’90s, the craft- and microbrewery movements in America really took off, a momentum fueled by brewers’ interest first in traditional English and German beer styles, and more recently in Belgian ales and lambics (many of which have yeasts left in the bottle to promote a secondary fermentation). “What’s interesting is that now the influence of American brewers is heading back to the Old World,” Yoon tells me as we drive to Santa Rosa’s Russian River Brewing Company. “Now you find Belgian brewers experimenting with American hops, for instance.”

Possibly thanks to Yoon’s Delirium Tremens epiphany, Belgian-style beers, with their complex, exotic palette of flavors, are his real passion. This partly explains why he cites Russian River Brewing Company as his favorite brewery in the region; the other part of the explanation is that Russian River brewer Vinnie Cilurzo makes some beers that are simply outside the realm of what anyone else is doing. Yoon, an extreme-experience kind of guy, loves them.

We gather around an upturned wine cask and taste Cilurzo’s latest experiments. One of the best is Temptation, a Belgian-style blonde ale that spends about 15 months in used Chardonnay barrels. “It’s Meursault-esque,” Yoon states. “King crab with this? Mmm. Whole roasted turbot! Dover sole - classic French! I’m ignoring the fact that it’s beer and pretending it’s Meursault,” he says, and in fact that is what the beer recalls, with its earthy and bready scent, bright acidity and fruity flavor.

Cilurzo’s wife, Natalie, now joins us. An attractive woman who also happens to have the pitchfork from the label of Russian River’s Damnation ale tattooed between her shoulder blades (a gift for Vinnie), she opens up a few bottles of Supplication for us, saying that it’s her favorite of all the beers Cilurzo has made in the 17 years they’ve been together. A Belgian-style brown ale, Supplication is finished in Pinot Noir barrels with sour cherries and wild yeasts, including Brettanomyces, the bane of winemakers everywhere (when “Brett” infects barrels, it gives wines a sweaty, musky aroma and taste). “We had some winemakers come into the bar, and I heard one of them tell the others, ’Don’t touch anything in here,’” Natalie says.

The beer is tangy, with bright acidity and a distinct cherry note, and Yoon loves it. “It’s like a version of Rodenbach,” he says, referencing a well-known Belgian ale. “Other people have tried to do this and failed miserably. Typically beer is low in acid, but what this does is mimic wine with its brightness and acidity.” Finally we try Salvation, a powerful Belgian-style dark ale that’s not aged in barrels and is one of Russian River’s mainstay beers. Yoon looks at the glass with thoughtful respect and says, “I can pair this with stuff that will rock your world. I’m thinking lamb - rack of lamb, definitely, maybe with an arugula pesto.”

Source: The Keg vs. The Cork in Sonoma

Below is an infobox that ran with the article:

5 Top Wine Country Beer Stops

Lagunitas Brewing

Try the potent Undercover Investigation Shutdown Ale (1280 N. McDowell Blvd., Petaluma; 707-769-4495).
Russian River Brewing

Ask for Perdition, a great Belgian-style ale (725 4th St., Santa Rosa; 707-545-2337).
Bear Republic Brewing

Sang Yoon loves the Big Bear stout (345 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg; 707-431-7258).
Anderson Valley Brewing

The Hop Ottin’ is a benchmark India pale ale (17700 Hwy. 253, Boonville; 800-207-2337).
Stumptown Brewery

Check out the Big Red amber ale (15045 River Rd., Guerneville; 707-869-0705).

Source: FoodandWine.com

Note to RRBC Brewmaster, Vinnie: PLEASE sell Damnation by the Keg!!! My Garage desperately needs one. It told me so when I moved in.

Electonica. Techno. Electro.

These are terms that seem to conjure very strong feelings, for or against, regarding music. For many, hearing one of these terms brings to mind a vision of a teenager, doped up on Ecstasy, in baggy pants, twirling and spinning away in a dark concert hall with glow sticks in hand, sucking on a pacifier. For others, the same term may put them on edge and the idea of listening to techno makes them feel jittery and anxious - and not in a happy way.

Most of the people I know have no tolerance for electronic music. Many of my attempts to get people to listen to Blaqk Audio, as I’ve written about previously, have fallen upon deaf ears. This is largely due to a couple of reasons:

• People have a strong dislike for AFI
• People have a strong dislike for “push button” music

It’s true that Blaqk Audio is comprised of Davey Havok and Jade Puget from AFI. However, the vocals and sound are very much the opposite of AFI. “Cex Cells” is synthesizer heaven for those that have a special love for those things, and for those of us that like Davey’s voice and vocals, the album completely delivers on that note as well. For those of us that like each of those elements, “Cex Cells” is great all around.

As usual, you can listen to the first two “singles” from “Cex Cells” by going to their MySpace profile. There’s really not a whole lot to say about this album. I think it’s great, and feel it’s worth a listen if you’re even sort of open minded about music. If you like it, definitely go buy a copy!

For Keli’s birthday last Tuesday, my parents bought her seasons 1 & 2 of Scrubs. Over the weekend, we were watching some of the DVDs and there was an episode where the creators of the show thought I’d be fun to pepper the scenes with renditions of Erasure’s “A Little Respect”:

In case you’re in a masochistic mood, you can watch the video for “A Little Respect”:

Why am I torturing you with this? Because I have had this damn song stuck in my head all weekend. I started my week today by waking up and found myself singing this little gem of insanity while I brushed my teeth.