USA-Canada?

Looks like the odds are about 2-1 for the Candians. Predictions?

Franconia

I had to get out of the house fairly early today and took the opportunity to go tour the Franconia Brewery in McKinney. It starts at 11 on Saturdays, and McKinney's almost an hour away so it would've normally cut into my sleeping in, but today was a good day for it.

And I'm glad I did- it was the best brewery tour I've ever taken. The tour lasted about an hour after which everyone hung out and sampled some of their fine product including the second batch of their . The brewer/owner Dennis Wehrmann (only one other employee) led the tour and struck a great balance between technical speak and humor. Some key points for me:
-All their beer is brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot, which means only grain, hops, yeast, and water (so sadly no pumpkin beer from them)
-Their annual production was about 1,500 barrels (that's 3,000 kegs) last year and Dennis expects to double that this year (how's that for growth)
-They self distribute their beer (there's a pickup covered in Franconia decals). I'm not sure how they get around all the three tier laws but it's pretty cool and I'm sure it allows their beer to sell cheaper for it.
-They exercise a lot of quality control measures
-They don't bottle their beer (which I knew) but not due to the economics, but rather the environmental issues relating to the US not reusing their bottles. Dennis claimed that in Germany they reuse their glass bottles many many times over before even recycling them, and also reuse their plastic bottles (suprising. Can the Germany trip guys confirm or refute this?)
-The brewery is brand new and very environmentally friendly (no trash can).

All in all a great tour with a great drink local message and delicious beer.

Curling

After a discussion about how ridiculous curling is I found this Wii game...(disclosure: this video is rated PG13 for some mature sexual content)

Local beer from far away

Finished a long research assignment tonight and decided to relax with Dirtoir Black Lager from Rogue brewing in Oregon.


It's brewed with grain and hops which are grown on their own farm, although the label lists a whole bunch of specialty malts before it gets to "Rogue Micro Barley Farm first growth Risk Malts". In general the amount of specialty malts in a beer compared to the base malt is pretty small, so it's probably mostly homegrown. I give them props for cutting down on transportation needs and producing a uniquely local beer. This is a growing trend in beer now. Sierra Nevada recently put out a beer using all their own grown malt and hops. Bells makes a beer with grain(I think wheat)grown on fields they own in Michigan. And it goes pretty hand in hand with fresh hop beers (all but a very select few beers are made with dried hops because fresh ones go bad in a days time). Anyway on to the beer!

It pours beautifully- a total black color with a blooming head of foam that looks like hot chocolate. The look strongly resembles a super intense stout, especially with the dark head. It smells roasty and chocolaty and I can smell bits of smokiness as it warms up. The taste is good. As a lager there's not a lot of fruitiness, but great coffee and bittersweet chocolate notes. It washes down pretty cleanly- I could have a couple of these and not get sick of it or think it was too heavy. Reminded me a lot of the Saranac Black Forest which is probably my favorite Saranac beer, but this is better- more flavor and more complex overall. Quite a nice beer to savor at the end of the day.

Mavs update2

Damp's out for a month, and Haywood's making headlines on Daily Dime. Did I call that or what? In related crappy news for Washington, former Mav Josh Howard is out for the season (that's major bonus points for Cuban for the timing on that trade) and the wizards will be signing this guy to a one year veterans minimum contract in order to have enough players to avoid forfeiting

On the plus side this dude sets the record for oldest current player and he looks like he can smoke the competition.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler

We made cobbler tonight and it turned out surprisingly well. The rhubarb (frozen) was really flavorful. The recipe we used wasn't very good so I won't put it up, but I'm all for cooking with frozen rhubarb.

YOU'RE AWESOME

Still pertinent

I saw this food philosophy on the blog a Buffalo area chef that I read. Good advice, even after 90 years. And who knew the local food movement wasn't a recent trend?

Urban Simplicity: Food Philosophy 1917

DSO plays Shosty 7

I went to the Dallas Symphony on Friday night with Kaley- they played a Violin concerto which we missed and Shostakovich's Symphony no. 7. Surprisingly I hadn't ever heard this piece before. It's a really long work and has a ginormous brass section (double the normal number of players). In general I liked it- it's fairly melodramatic, but still fun to listen to. There's a point in the first movement where its just the snare drum and col legno strings, which sounded really amazing- so quiet you could hear people breathing. The DSO snare drum player is incredibly precise. He sounded great in Bolero a couple months ago and again in this piece. In contrast the end of the symphony is wall rumbling loud, the entire orchestra blaring out fortissimo- really powerful with the huge brass section. A much better concert than Ma Vlast.

DVD players?

Anybody know of a good free DVD player software? I've been using VLC but it stopped working and the other ones I can find are just trials and stop working after 10 minutes.

Mavs update

Mavericks since allstar break: 1-1

Pistons since allstar break: 1-1

I have to say I wasn't feeling great about my changing allegiance after tuesday night when the Pistons won big and the Mavs lost, but I'm now confident after the week's up that they'll be doing fine. Haywood is playing great (5 blocks last night!) and a big improvement over Damp.

Wind Symphony Concert

I'm playing tonight with the UNT Wind Symphony (that's the top band). You can listen online, 7:30 central time. We're playing a couple lame pieces, a couple interesting contemporary pieces, and a jazzy piece.

I'll also be in an orchestra concert tomorrow (Friday) at 5, which you can check out at the same spot. That one includes parts of a Romeo and Juliet suite, and the 1812 overture (if you think you don't know that piece just look it up on youtube, I promise you actually know it. It's probably the most commonly referenced classical piece ever). The concert will be conducted by the graduate student conductors here on limited rehearsal time (even more limited with the snowday last week) so it shouldn't be spectacular, but the music's really interesting anyway.

Mavs action

Dallas hosted the All-star game this weekend- huge success and way too many people. Cable was out on Friday and Saturday so I didn't get to check out the good non-game stuff (still haven't really seen the dunk contest, anyone know of somewhere I can find it complete online?). I watched a good chunk of the first half of the actually game and it wasn't that good except for this:


make that two made 3's in his career, almost as good as watching Shaq play point last year.

But this all overshadowed the big trade Cuban pulled off. Mavericks shed:

Josh Howard

Drew Gooden

and some other junk

and the Mavs pick up:
Caron Butler


Brendan Haywood


and DeShawn Stevenson


My analysis?
This makes them way better. Damp sucks balls normally, and even more so when he's injured, so the addition of Haywood alone is great. Butler will have some issues adjusting to playing more two than three, and having fewer opportunities than he did in Washington when Agent Zero wasn't playing (basically the entire last three seasons), but it's not like Howard was clutch or dependable for scoring anyway, so you're really not losing anything there. This also has the added advantage of taking Jet out of the starting lineup and though he's an ok starter he's much better as the 6th man.

Prediction:
They go 17-13 from here on out.

This brings me to my next point:
I've decided to switch my allegiance from the Pistons to the Mavericks. You can call me a fair weather fan, but it's mostly about personnel and availability (and I still still follow the Bills so much that I listen to most of their games on Internet radio for lack of other means so suck that) . The Detroit players that I really enjoy watching- Chauncey, Sheed, Afflalo, and most off all, Dice, are no longer there. The ones they have now have no character and no heart. And it's not really fun rooting for a team you can't ever see play (especially with basketball which radio doesn't capture well at all).

So I hope the Mav's can kick some ass with this new and improved lineup. I'll be cheering for them.

another snow picture

Snow... and a beer

So it's snowing right now in Dallas. I had to get up and go to a lesson (all my other classes for today were previously cancelled, unrelated to the weather), which meant a drive to Denton. Luckily the roads were pretty much fine- it's warm enough that the snow's melting quickly on the roads. The biggest problem with snow here is that Texans don't have any idea how to drive in it. But today (unlike on Christmas Eve) I only saw one accident on my drive. Annoyingly my horn professor got a phone call during my lesson that they were closing campus then- after my lesson.

After driving home and eating lunch I went outside with my nephews to play in the snow. It's super wet and great for snowballs/ sculptures. A nice treat to experience some real winter.

When we got back inside it was hot chocolate for them, and a beer I've been holding for a while for me- Oatgoop.

It's a 10% wheatwine made in collaboration between Three Floyds Brewery in Indiana, and Mikkheller, an increasingly popular brewery in Denmark. It's quite a good beer and held up well from when I got it (I think Chad brought it back in August? something like that). Lots of pineapple and tropical fruit flavor in the hops. Tons of caramel. Not too boozy, just some hints of vanilla and scotch. Given how much hops flavor I got I'm curious how it would have tasted fresh- probably too much alcohol hotness without the age but I bet the taste would've been good.

So if you have some snow (CB and Beckum?) you should go throw some snowballs and have a beer- a great way to waste an afternoon.

Scotty Pippen remembered longer than Jordan

In the most interesting thing that's happened in any of my academic classes this semester, we watched this short college humor made movie yesterday. It's pretty funny and made me think about how computers have changed the way we keep records. It's really easy to have and keep tons of information now, but it's also really easy to delete it. Will there be any record in 50 years of the chronology of Jing's aliases? Or will that valuable info have been lost to the world?

Mahler Concert

I'm playing a concert tomorrow night (Sat) at 8pm (Dallas time) with the UNT Symphony Orchestra. We're playing Mahler's 1st symphony which is a really sweet piece, one of my favorites. If you're sitting at home bored (or you wanna see a sweet piece being played live) you can listen to a live stream here:

http://recording.music.unt.edu/index.php/live

The video at the top of the page is the end of the piece played by the Vienna Phil conducted by Leonard Bernstein (Bernstein conducted the NY Philharmonic for decades. He also wrote the music to West Side Story among other things). It's interesting if you want to see the musicians but not my favorite recording (though still good). The trumpet players are playing rotary trumpets as opposed to normal piston trumpets and the horns are playing single F horns, which is crazy and very hard- but business as usual for the Vienna Phil.

This video is a recording of the Chicago Symphony which has the greatest brass section in the world. If you compare the ends of the two videos you'll see what I mean. In the Chicago one the brass completely dominate the whole ensemble, you can barely tell the strings are playing. If you enjoy this I'd recommend listening to the other sections by the CSO, as they are equally awesome.

Quannum Spectrum

I got this cd out of the library today after seaching for J5 (it's pretty nuts what the UNT music library has) and liked this quote out of the liner notes

"If you ask somebody what Hip-Hop is today you'll get a grip of different answers ranging from Jay-Z to Puffy to Beastie Boys to The Roots to Blackaliciouis to Lauryn Hill to DJ Shadow to E-40 to Beck to Beanie Man [no mention of Cam] In my broad and ultimately correct opinion, each one is Hip-Hop in their own right...If a record is good, it's good, whether it sells 1 copy or 1 million. Fuck the underground if it's [sic] insecurity and self-image can't accept it's [sic] members with some dough. Conversely, fuck the mainstream if their insecurity and self image can't accept its members with some creativity."

Utopias!

On Saturday night I attended an awesome beer tasting at a friends house, mainly on the premise of drinking a bottle of Sam Adams Utopias. This is a crazy beer weighing in at 27%abv, meaning that if you drank 12oz of it, it'd be the equivalent of an entire six pack of bud light.

Needless to say we did not drink 12oz of it, but split a 24oz bottle six ways for 4oz a piece. The price of the bottle $150- also split six ways- was pretty hefty for a beer, but I'd say it was worth the experience.

As it happens I had suggested that weekend for the tasting because it corresponded with my 3 year mark on Beer Advocate and was the 250th beer that I reviewed there- so that made it even more awesome.

We also drank a bottle of Sinner's Blend 2009, from Lost Abbey Brewing which was incredible and ended up being in my top 10 beers ever. It was a sour ale with the perfect amount of sourness for my taste.

Here's my Utopias review, many thanks to Chad for organizing and hosting:

Appearance- 4oz of ruby amber liquid into my Duvel glass. I was expecting a much thicker liquid, but no it's pretty thin, not much viscosity. Obviously no head or lacing (with no carbonation) but it's got some legs- thin trails going down the swirls of the glass.

Smell- Whoa careful where you whiff this beer- the smell is strong. For all the beers I've hated on for not having a strong enough smell this makes up for it all. My first impression is brandy. Then I smell brown sugar, dark cherries, dark sweet sweet orange, maple syrup, toffee. Incredibly complex. There is also tons of alcohol- burns off my nose hairs and stops me from just smelling it for the rest of the night.

Taste- In the taste there's more sweetness and fruit compared to the smell which had more liqueur, at least in my first sips. Maple syrup comes to the fore. Candied orange peel, tobacco, juicy vanilla bean pods, blueberries. I'm noticing the tobacco more and more, which gives it some Scotch notes. And like the smell the taste is incredibly complex.

Mouthfeel- Burn, obviously- it is 27%. I wish I could say that the alcohol is hidden but not really. The sweetness covers it up a bit but not to a great degree.

Overall- it's hard to rate this as a beer- more a liqueur. One of, if not the most complex beers I've ever had. Quite the special experience.