The critics I care about

A friend of mine AIMed me and asked me to post something on the blog. I am actually a little embarrased about it, but I’m going to anyways. My friends and family are always the folks that I brew to please, and here is a bit of feedback I got from one of them. There are Kudos to all of you at the end too.

So without further ado…

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First, a little background:
I’ve had the immense pleasure of knowing Garrett since 1995, when I first moved to Atlanta. I had probably crossed paths with him before then, but it wasn’t until that time that he and I discovered our common love of industrial music, griping, and intoxication. We passed many a day in his room at the frat house, sucking down beers and blasting music that most human ears, (including his housemates) would classify as utterly antisocial. At the same time, I fell in with Garrett’s cousin Drew and a group named Order of the Beak; and after being an erstwhile roadie for them on a utterly horriffic tour through Florida, became a member of the band as well.

Many years have passed since then, with both Garrett and I eventually losing our painted, spiked leather jackets, in favor of more corporatish attire, and Order of the Beak changing names, moving to Florida, and now having been resurrected by Drew, Jeremy and I as Choking Sun. However rare our chances to be in actual proximity to each other are, I cannot imagine not having Garrett in my life.

That being said, I began to read about his exploits on the First State Brewer’s Blog a couple of years ago, and remember my first reaction along the lines of, “wow, I have no fricken idea what he’s talking about here, but it sounds very cool.” And then I was lucky enough to have some of the Choking Sun Stout, which, with no sense of overstatement, knocked my socks off. I will always remember the glorious shining moment when it occurred to Drew, Jeremy and I that not only were we a very exclusive group of three guys who had weathered a hell of a lot together, but we had our very own, lovingly handcrafted beer named after us.

Then, just the other week, I got to try the Traveler’s and Tourists Ale. From what I understand it’s Garrett’s take on a Belgian Ale, so when I first spied it, it seemed almost right on the money colorwise, although a bit thicker looking than a normal Belgian. However, on first sip, my lord. It was lighter than it looked, crisp, just enough sweetness and bitterness, and left an absolutely amazing aftertaste. Again, Drew, Jeremy and I sat out in the studio, savoring the greatness, and smiling. While I am always going to be loyal to the Choking Sun Stout, (kind of like one being loyal to your first love) I think the Travelers and Tourists is possibly the finest beer I have ever had the opportunity to drink. I’m not a connesieur, by any stretch, but I’d like to flatter myself by thinking that I can sniff greatness in things, and this is greatness embodied. I have had chances to taste some of Garrett’s other fine work as well, especially that Bourbon Stout (?) and it’s all touched with immense talent.

So for all those up there in the First State, I would like to heartily thank you for being such good folks to my dear friend and his family, and for any peer pressure you might have provided to keep Garrett striving for excellence, (though I doubt he needs much prodding at all, dedicated man that he is.)

Cheers…
d. battermann

Gratuitous Customization

While I haven’t been working much on the sculpture development platform much recently, I haven’t been idle. In fact, I’ve been getting to know the inner workings of .NET a little better by taking on some completely unnecessary and extremely difficult customizations to standard user controls. I had a large library of control modules in VB6 that allowed me to do all manner of amazing things with simple controls like Tabstrips and Edits (Textboxes)… and with .NET that library evaporated. The tabstrip and textbox are the first I’ve tried to tackle, and while they are only partly complete right now – the really hard stuff is behind me.

I started with some of my favorites – a textbox that includes a line number tray AND provides complete control over text and selection colors. The number tray is complete, as is the custom selection color. It responds to the mouse gestures as it should, and scrolls appropriately. I have not gotten around to keystroke redraws yet, but since the VB6 version has the requirements pretty much captured – I do not see it being an issue.

So what would that be useful for? In the development platform, it could be used for displaying action scripts, and when syntax checking is generated, it could help the user find the “errors” by calling out specific line numbers. In the sculpture control app, it could be used for printing out error messages or something.

The second item is the tabstrip – I don’t much care for the way a standard tabstrip is rendered, and while .NET makes ownerdrawing the “text” part of the tab areas easily, you have no control whatsoever around the “frame”. After a little effort, I figured out what it takes to override and draw the tabs, as well as the little child window that lets you scroll through them. I haven’t settled on exactly what I want the tabs to look like, but once I do – I can now make it happen.

I love how much power .NET has built into it, but I find that many of the items still require resorting to the Windows API calls, or at least that is how I have tackled (being somewhat ignorant of all .NET’s capabilities). Dealing with structures in the API calls seems a little problematic for me, but I’m sure its simply a lack of experience.

So anyways – that’s only barely related to brewing. I did brew 20 gallons of IPA this weekend with my friends Brian and Chris – turned out to be 1.074, and we used 1.5 pounds of hops… was killer. Its downstairs chugging away in the primaries.

Tastes of Summer

In a couple words – wheaty, light, summery, and fruity. They best describe the flavors that I’ve focused on for the past few hot months (aside from the stronger belgians)… and they have resulted in some great batches. I realized that I have not posted any tap labels recently, and that I also haven’t talked much about what we’ve had on tap – so here’s a quick pre-independence day synopsis:

Thursday’s Tonic Black Raspberry Ale:
This was actually a starter batch for 20 gallons of Amarillo Pale Ale, but turned out to be one of my favorite fruit beers I’ve ever made. We made a relatively light ale with a weird assortment of leftover old grains (which needed to be used or tossed), including some honey malt and a touch of crystal. We then racked the beer into the secondary ontop of 2 pounds of frozen black raspberries picked back in Sept/Oct of 2006. We let it condition on the raspberries for about a month, and the beer picked up a ton of color and flavor from the berries. The beer itself was deep red (almost purple) with a strong berry taste, a long-lasting pink head, mildly tart, and a nice sweet finish. I was very disappointed when this keg blew last week.

Mango Mama Witbier:
A mostly traditional Belgian-style witbier with a twist – it sat on mango cubes for a couple weeks in the secondary. The coriander and bitter orange peel additions were relatively reserved, I didn’t bother with any chamomile, and the malt bill was mostly just wheat malt and pilsner. It is a very good witbier, and has all the right characteristics – but does not have a very strong mango flavor. Last time we pureed the mango, which I think helped alot – this time we were in a rush to get it on tap, so it didn’t condition as long as it should have – and the mango cubes didn’t flavor the beer enough. Lesson learned. But hey! It is a very good witbier nonetheless. And before you all judge me somewhat pervy, the artwork was composed by my wife. She’s so cool.

Summer Haze Wheat:
Another starter batch that has pleased me beyond all expectations – This was a 10 gallon batch of a relatively simple ale fermented with the Wyeast 3864 Canadian Belgian strain – and formulated to fall pretty close to the Belgian Pale category. The addition of a little wheat malt gives it some haze (as well as the yeast strain, notorious for not flocculating well), 1.5oz of fresh ground ginger and several ounces of Sorachi Ace hops give the beer a refreshing and crisp flavor, and the yeast strain – well, its my favorite. It pushes this beer into a whole new world of yumminess. At 5.5%, this is perfect for fortifying (not stupifying) you after mowing the lawn or working in the yard.

I had a few other batches in there that are worth mentioning, but they didn’t stick around long enough for me to even create a tap handle (yet)… one was a peated scottish aged on bourbon oak chips. It’s tentative called “Thistle Dew”… and once the next keg goes on tap I’ll post the label I come up with for it. I also gone through a couple kegs of Amarillo Pale – Man, that stuff rocks.