It is week 273 of #beersaturday, and I am celebrating with my own beer!
As we all know, being The Blockchain Beerologist definitely has its perks, including but not limited to getting paid to tour breweries and sample new beers! When I am not globetrotting or brewing my own beer, my fridge looks like a colorful mosaic of regional craft beer I enjoy sharing with the #beersaturday alliance of #beer bloggers on #hive.
This week, I am looking back on a week of sport drinkin' our own brew at the cottage.
The PotW is plenty of fun because it is usually a beer enjoyed on the town or otherwise in a social / business setting that we is a bit of a treat. This week, it is a fond memory of time spent at a cottage craft brewery.
This beauty is the flagship IPA from Boshkung Brewery named Blairhampton Triangle New England IPA. Beautiful almost orange hue and perfect haziness hints at a fantastic, sweetly hopped and nicely malt balanced IPA. A true highlight on a trip to town from the lake.
Do-It-Yourself Cottage Beers!
What do you do when you have a week away, up in the highlands, beside a lake celebrating hard work done and nature wrapping itself around you? Why, brew a couple different kegs of IPA and team up with another IPA to try and drink it all! That's what!
I brought my big Clutch mug because it holds a pint and a half, and they are one of my very favourite bands.
How do you pour kegged draft beer while away? Well I certainly didn't have room to pack the keg fridge for the trip so we used the handy jockey box. The keg can sit out at room temperature and pour cold because of the cooler full of ice and water, which wraps around a10-foot coil of steel tubing. Add a little 5 pound C02 cannister to push it and we are in the beer!
Here is another view of the setup that I moved away from as the warm sunrise baking the 20-liter keg just didn't seem right. Beautiful beer with the wilderness in the background.
2 Kinds of IPA
The first keg was the last of a batch we had been enjoying back home and at the office a couple weeks. All carbed up, hazy and a bit golden for an IPA. We didn't actually come up with a name but referred to it as The Dankness. Seriously hoppy as it waged a war of sweet, bold, full and then a dry almost earthy finish. It only weighed in at 5.9% ABV but we came to find that is pretty heavy when you are cottage day drinkin' into the wee hours beside the camp fire.
Having pushed through the full keg of The Dankness in a few days, I cracked the second keg, not knowing what this one would taste like. Turns out it was a touch darker and was very sweet in comparison. Almost like a mouth full of cotton candy on the front of your mouth when we were used to the dank and dry of the previous one.
Being well-beered and childish, we wondered what we would call it. Candy-like sweetness at the start, well rounded and bold as you went, then that familiar touch of dry and serious, toward the end. Of course we named this one Santa's Pubes. Candycane sweetness to make you celebrate the holidays then you come to the serious realization that it is a big beer when the rest of the hops hohoho at you. I will let you draw your own visual on that one and blame it on the cottage.
Beers in Paradise
Here is our view while enjoying a good number of those pints. This might be considered my Happy Place if I were to only have 1. Made even better by #BEER of course!
Thanks for sharing a little awesome beer in paradise with us.
#BEERSaturday!
Ah the cool embrace of a beer to ignore some of life's problems a while.
Join me, @detlev , and the other beerologists because there is always room for more beer bloggers at this week's Beer Saturday gathering... https://hive.blog/hive-187719/@detlev/beersaturday-373