I just posted a video of Ouzo showing Havana how much he loves her, or maybe he’s trying to eat any crumbs left on her face:
After mowing the lawn and washing the car, I sat down for a “Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA”:http://www.dogfish.com/brewings/Occasional_Rarities/120_Minute_IPA/15/index.htm. I’ve had the 60 Minute and the 90 Minute, but have never found the 120 Minute until Saturday at the Thriftway in West Seattle on the way to Megan and Jon’s wedding shower. So I bought a bottle. Just one bottle because it costs $8.99 per bottle! This and Dogfish Head’s Raison D’Extra, which I didn’t realize is so pricey, are the most expensive beers I’ve ever had. It’s also the strongest beer I’ve ever had… it’s 20% alcohol! Wine is only 14-15%.
In spite of all the hops in it and the extreme dry-hopping, there was very little hop aroma. Maybe my nose was less sensitive after the the aromas of gas and cut grass from mowing the lawn, but I just couldn’t detect much at all in the beer. The flavor is a very citrus-y flavor and a bitterness (120 IBUs!) that makes the back of your tongue curl. Yum! Interestingly about the alcohol level, after drinking it I was glad that I didn’t have a Raison D’Extra because the last time I had one I could really feel the alcohol. But this beer has _more_ alcohol, but felt like much less.
The label reads:
“What you have here is the holy grail for hopheads. This beer is continually hopped over a 120-minute boil and then dry-hopped every day for a month. Enjoy now or age for a decade or so.”
We, along with two other couples, hosted Jon and Megan’s Hawaiian-themed wedding shower tonight in Seattle at Zack and Cynthia’s house. Gay cooked all day Friday and most of Saturday, making chicken skewers, crabcakes, fruit salad and corn with a delicious butter.
Gay’s Aunt Lillian just sent us a bunch of photos she took at “Havana’s 1st Birthday Party”:http://troyandgay.com/blog/2008/05/03/havanas-1st-birthday-party/. I added them to “the photoset”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/troyh/sets/72157604879923100/. Ruth, where’s yours?
We got our “Netflix Player”:http://www.roku.com/netflixplayer/ today and a few minutes later had it hooked up. It’s amazingly simple to setup: plug the power cable in, plug a network cable (or just use WiFi) and connect it to the TV with an HDMI cable. It’ll tell you to go to Netflix.com to activate it and seconds later, you can see your Netflix Instant Queue. The user interface is really nice, you horizontally scroll through the cover art of your movies and movies start in seconds.
While starting and stopping movies and knowing that I have 10,000+ movies available to watch instantly I’m reminded of just a decade ago when Bill Gates spent millions of dollars building the same thing for “his new house”:http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/05/inside-bill-gates-home.html. 10 years and $100 later, I have the same technology. It’s even better: I don’t have to buy all the movies or maintain any hardware. For a very low price, anyone can have a huge database of movies at their fingertips already. Who says technology doesn’t move fast enough?
After brewing, I sat outside and drank Dogfish Head’s “Black & Blue”:http://www.dogfish.com/brewings/Occasional_Rarities/Black_._Blue/58/index.htm. Gay found this at Esquin, a Seattle wine shop, and it cost $12.99 for a 750ml bottle. That’s about $6.50 for a 12 ounce beer, making it the most expensive beer I’ve ever had, I think.
It’s a Belgian-style beer, although it doesn’t mention the style on the bottle, and is brewed with blackberries and blueberries. I normally don’t like Belgian beers because they put strange ingredients in them. Strange ingredients is Dogfish Head’s thing, and I have yet to have a bad beer from them. This one has a slight reddish tint to it and is only slightly sweet, despite the fruit. I really liked it, although not as much as their “Raison D’Extra”:http://troyandgay.com/blog/2008/05/24/dogfish-head-raison-dextra/. I tried to share some of it with Gay, but she didn’t like it at all. More for me!
I brewed an English ESB today:
