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!

Holy Crap

Well now, we just bought a house this weekend. Lots of time being spent right now putting our life in boxes so that we can stage our condo so that we can stage open houses and start the move after this part sells. I'm still stunned that we pulled the trigger on it, I can only hope that the home inspection works out favourably...

Other than that work's going well. The internship still has a few activities to wrap up but nothing unmanageable...

Did I mention we bought a house? Not just a house, but one with 4, possibly 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, fully detached and in reasonably good shape within reasonable reach of downtown without breaking the bank. That's an accomplishment my friend!