House

Today's something of a landmark day for us, as we get the keys to our new home. If everything goes down according to plan we'll be meeting up with our lawyer around 4 today, then later on going to meet our realtor by the house to tour and make sure everything is in place. There's a bit of concern on our part due to all the weather that's been going on lately as part of multi-storm-Sandy... mostly we're just hoping that the drainage around the house is keeping the water away and drained nicely.

Also, I found something new today: HVAC people apparently don't do roof ventilation! When we bought the place, the bathrooms on the upper floor were vented into the attic (which in turn has an opening to the great out of doors via the chimney which needs to be capped). This isn't what should be happening here, and shame on the flipper we bought this from for not doing this correctly. It's kind of similar to a few other things in the house that we've seen where it's just, well, sloppy. Thankfully the place is still good value even with the work we'll have to put into it to make it what it needs to be so it's not the end of the world.

I'm really looking forward to setting up the garden in the backyard :) That and giving my artichoke plant a more permanent home. All in due time...

Birrificio Del Ducato - New Morning

I've just gone and renewed my appreciation for this lovely Italian saison. I first tried it this summer as one of the LCBO seasonals, and have kept finding it since then... hopefully they're trying to keep it in stock regularly. It appears a nice light yellow/orange on pouring, and smells a bit floral. The flavor of it is really quite intriguing as in addition to a flavor that I would describe as being like a light hefeweissen, or like a wit... it also carries herbal scents and flavors that one wouldn't expect from that kind of beer. The one that stands out for me is the pepper flavor that I'm able to pick out every so often.... it's not strong and is somewhat faint, but this oh-so-slight spiciness is definitely there and I love it. Similarly with the ginger and coriander. If you've had beers featuring coriander or ginger, you'll be able to find those here as well, but nicely blended in so that if you're not looking for it you may not find it. Really a remarkable beer.

Black Creek Pumpkin Ale

Overall a bit of a disappointment. Came out of the bottle flat, little to no body. Tasted a little bit caramel to me, but not much. You get a bit of pumpkin out of it too, which isn't too good for a beer where the pumpkin is supposed to be the main event. Really most of what I was tasting was the spices and in particular the cloves. I'm not much for cloves so that's not a plus. There just wasn't much to say about it past that it left me feeling let down by the whole experience... I would have rather had a Rifleman's Ration.

Black Creek Rifleman's Ration

I'm just going to come out and say it: This is my go-to beer at the moment. It's a lovely brown ale created using only local products. It has this lovely molassess-y taste sort of a bit like you'd find in a spruce beer but without all the tree stuff. The malt it the focus here, and the hops stay firmly in the background. Not too strong easy drinking stuff. Did I say this is tasty?

Cannery Brewing Squire Scotch Ale

The Cannery Brewing company's Squire Scotch Ale. I just had my second bottle of it last night, and I liked it just as much as the first. Not everyone likes the strong smoky malt taste of a scotch ale, but I do ... and I feel that this is very much what I go looking for when I'm looking for one of these. Nice rounded flavor that doesn't overstay its welcome and mild hopping round this offer out nicely. Well done! I'm definitely going to revisit this one later.

Crabbie's Alcoholic Ginger Beer

Ever since I've been making my own ginger beer, I've been consistently disappointed by the ginger ales and ginger beers that I've found in stores. I want it to taste like ginger, be bubbly and not be too sweet. The Canada Drys and Schweppes are ok for a road trip here and there but the flavour just isn't right. Crabbies comes awfully close... I just find the sugar content to be a bit syrupy to be really enjoyable. If they were able to take the sweetness down just a notch it would be fantastic. As it is, it's still miles above anything that I've found to be purchaseable, just not *perfect*. Lots of ginger flavour though, so if you're looking for that in your alcoholic beverage, step right in.

Beau's Weiss O'Lantern

Both the wife and I were quite excited to try this one. We love Beau's products in general, we love Hefeweizens, and we love pumpkin beer. The combination seemed made in heaven. Unfortunately the best thing about this one is the label (as Beau's branding is excellent as usual). The sweet dessert like flavours of the hefe are present throughout, followed by the savoury and spicy notes of the pumpkin and spices. Not entirely unpleasant, but it just didn't work for me. Kind of like drinking a banana milkshake and then going into a chunk of roasted pumpkin afterwards. It might be for some people but not really for us.

Definitely worth trying, definitely more hefe than pumpkin so don't let it scare you off. Just don't expect to have your doors blown off.

Howe Sound Pumpkineater

Next one we tried last night was this one. Loved the bottle, I'm going to be reusing it for homebrewing later on. The beer itself was quite pleasant, with the expected tastes that one expects from a pumpkin beer, the coriander, the pumpkin ... and over all the beer itself. Quite lovely, only downside is that the alcohol content is tasteable and wasn't masked as well as it should have been. That being said this is an imperial beer and this type of thing should be expected occasionally from an imperial. I would try this again.

Southern Tier Pumpking

We went through a number of pumpkin beers last night, mainly for sampling. I'll start with this one:

Very different than many of the pumpkin beers out there, and has a very pronounced pumpkin taste. I know some people compare it to whipped pumpkin pie, but you know what? I like pumpkin beer in general but I hate pumpkin pie, so maybe that's why I don't like it that much. The main thing that I'm not fond of is probably what attracts so many people to it on Beer Advocate. It just has a very strange taste throughout, perhaps if it was toned down a bit it would make for a more pleasant drinking experience

Hops Nouveau 2012

Came back from a shift at the pharmacy last night. Most people I run into there are genuinely appreciative of the service I provide but occasionally you run into one or two that insist on trying to prove to you how horrible people can be. Thankfully it was only one yesterday, the rest of the day was pleasant.

When I got home and was relaxing with the wife, I cracked open a bottle of the Trafalgar Brewing Hops Nouveau 2012. Not impressed. No body, very strong taste of something off/wrong. It just didn't taste right. Like something was wrong with it, like a funk or bacterial infection is the closest I can put it. If it was because of the wet hopping I can see why it's not done more often, but I really don't think it was. Hopefully this isn't representative of the batch since it wasn't good at all.

onwards and upwards

Things have been pretty busy over here. The condo is now officially conditionally sold (which means no popping of bottles just yet), and there is a month overlap where we have to hold up both the condo's and the house's mortgages. I think it works out fairly well given circumstances. We may not have gotten what we were initially looking for the condo but at least it sold in time for everything to roll forwards as planned.

I still have one exam left to write in November before licensing. Preparing for it is sucking up all of my spare time, and the motivation to study 24-7 is vanishing awfully quickly. Going to have to mix it up to keep everything on track fast!