Something Wicked This Way Comes...

Well, I finally decided I was strong enough to take on the Hot Chili Beer. So here is the long awaited review.

Appearance: Nice straw color, with a snowy white pillow of foam. It is brilliantly clear until you get to the bottom of the bottle. This beer seems to produce much more sediment. If you look close, you can see the fine white layer in the bottom of the bottle.

Aroma: The first thing you smell is the peppers. This beer just smells hot and angry. It smells like fresh cut jalapenos and a bit of bell pepper.

Taste: From the first sip, you can taste the peppers and feel the heat. Again there are some very slight hints of green bell pepper. It is very smooth, and the oak gives the beer a fuller, softer mouthfeel. There is more heat through the middle and end of the palate.

*** I had a few people that said they could see this beer going with lime and/or Mexican food. Well, I was fresh out of Mexican, but I did have a lime rolling around. So I sliced it up and here are those additional tasting notes.

On a side note, the lime appeared to anger the beer. I squeezed the lime and then dropped in the wedge, so the beer foamed excessively as soon as the wedge went it, and the foam proceeded to try and drowned out the lime and sink it, but the lime's feisty nature kept it afloat.

Lime Tasting Notes: The lime definitely makes this beer much more mellow. It softens the pepper, it is still there fighting its way through, but a lot of the fight was taken out of him. It becomes much more drinkable, but the beer loses too much of its character.

Overall: This beer is much better than the first hot pepper beer that was just liquid fire. It is much easier to drink and has better structure. The lime is a good call to make this more palatable for me, but is not worth sacrificing the original character of the beer. However, even with that being said, this beer is not for me. I just don't care for it. Oh well, it just means more beer to hand out to the people who enjoy it and deserve it.

On to the next batch...

Buffalo Bill's Brewery - Orange Blossom Cream Ale Review

So I have been saying for awhile that I need to do a beer review of my hot chili beer, but every time I open the fridge it just looks to damn angry to taste.

Just look at it, it kicked down the Ginger Ale and forced the milk up against the wall. Its just mean, so I decided to rifle through the fridge and came up with this.

Buffalo Bill's Brewery: Orange Blossom Cream Ale.

Now normally, I'm not a big fan of beers that incorporate fruit into them. I will occasionally squeeze a lime in a Corona or a Dos Equis, but most of the time I even drink those beer without lime. But I figured what the hell, by looking at the label, it didn't look nearly as angry as my hot chili beer and it was all I had.

Appearance: Brilliantly clear, golden in color. Produced a nice foamy white head that took its time to dissipate.

Aroma: It definitely lives up to its name, it is immediately flowery and citrusy, then overpowering with oranges.

Taste: At first taste, it only slightly tastes like an ale before it is overpowered by the cloying sweetness of oranges. It has a thicker, creamy mouth feel that is true to style of a cream ale. The more I drank the more it became sickeningly sweet.

Overall: I really didn't care for this beer, it was just way too sweet and way to "orangey" for me. But I don't care for fruity beer, but hey if you would like a creamscicle dipped in beer, this could be a good choice for you.

Procrastinator?? What? Who me?

Well, back in March I had ordered and received ten hop rhizomes to plant. I ordered 5 cascades and 5 sterlings, I was going to plant them in the back yard in April once the weather broke and by the end of this month I would be picking hops, yeah well that just didn't work out.

The hop rhizomes arrived about mid-March while I was in the midst of building the chicken coop. I was so focused on getting that coop built and the run set that it was all I could see in front of me, so the packages of hops went into the refrigerator. Then like most things in my fridge, if it isn't yogurt for A Bird, cheese sticks for L Bird, or an icy cold delicious beer for me, it gets pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten until it begins growing something that could possibly take over and eat the fridge itself.

So that's what happened, until L Bird got it in her head to clean out the fridge. In her cleaning the packages of hops got moved to the front and in the side door compartment, right next to the Coke, so I had to see them. I pulled them out and they all looked in pretty decent shape for spending 4 1/2 months in the cold unknown of the back of the fridge.

With that I grabbed my post hole digger and went out to the back yard and planted them. I gently tucked each one into its nice, moist, (Ha ha, I said moist), bed and covered them up. I watered them, said a little prayer that they would grow and went on my way.

Two weeks later, this is what I have:

You see those spiky leaves in the center of that dirt, yep those are the survivors. So far I have 3 out of 10 plants growing, this year is pretty much shot for them growing big enough to produces some hop cones, but they will have a good root base for next year. I'll keep monitoring the other 7 plants to see if they come up, but I won't know for sure until next spring.

I figure 3 out of 10 isn't bad for waiting this long.