Bottling the Winter Spiced Ale

By Greg B.  As promised, I’d follow this beer through with updates at the different stages.  The beer has been in the secondary since 12/15/08, at which time the gravity had come down from 1.104 to 1.030.  With December almost gone (today is 12/29/08) I decided to bottle the beer, and see what happens. Read more

Chocolate Peanut Butter Porter: Redux

By Greg B. So, after the terrible choice of beer to bring to the filming of the 24th foodandwineblog video episode, I decided to crack open another of my chocolate peanut butter porters.  Sure the first one was chunky and gross, but I had a hunch that the bottle I picked was that last bottle to be bottled… you homebrewers know it.  It’s got a little of ‘everything’ from the carboy, you promise to keep it for yourself and use it as a ‘test’ beer, never to be unveiled to the public.  Well, I unveiled it on TV.  So, here’s another shot at this beer! Read more

Winter Spiced Ale Recipe

By Greg B. So, I was in the mood to try and make a winter ale.  I’ve had some great ones this year, and I really wanted to try to follow suit.  So, after checking with some homebrewers, sampling enough beers, looking around the internet and consulting my local homebrew suppliers at Maryland Homebrew, I bought a bunch of supplies.  This one is going to be one heck of a beer. Read more

An Assortment of Belgian Styled Beers (plus a few others!)

By Greg Bisonette (with commentary by Michael Mohammadi) - main image from wikipedia commons.

Mike had been searching for some interesting Belgian ales to try (or at least, Belgian styled ales), and had come across some really unique and varied beers from Kapittel brewery, brewed by Brouwerij van Eecke. Looking into their history, apparently the brewery was completely destroyed twice in their past: once during the French Revolution and once during WWII (who destroys a brewery?!??! I mean really!!). Currently, they produce some very fine Belgian abbey (not trappist, see the list of official trappist beers here) beers, here are our ratings! Read more

The Beers of Max’s Dart Room

By Greg B. It was a cold Saturday night, and there are few places I’d rather go than the old standby, Max’s on Broadway.  Knowing that one of our favorite bartenders was working the backroom (see Courtney, if you read the blog you can see how famous you are!), we dropped in and went about sampling the majority of the beers on tap. Read more

Rare & Obscure Beer Night at Max’s

By Greg B. It was the Thursday night back in Baltimore after my DC excursion, and I expected a nice relaxing evening.  I was going to try my Peanut Butter Porter beer and that was it, but after surfing the web, I discovered that Max’s had a Rare & Obscure beer night, with a very interesting lineup.  Not wanting to out out, but also acknowledging that some of these beers sounded quite interesting, I wandered out to the bar to check out what was on tap. Read more

Day 6: The Final Day in Washington DC

By Greg B. Well, the final day in Washington DC for the neuroscience conference was upon us.  Packing up from the hotel and dreading the fact that we would need to drag our luggage around the conference or stash it somewhere was an annoying factor, not to mention the day of posters, followed by the commute back home as an anticipated future burden.  Fortunately, however, Old Dominion came to the rescue. Read more

Day 4: Chinatown, RFD, Busboys & Poets, Saint-ex and Brickskeller

By Greg B. For lunch today, we ate at the Szechuan House (748 6th st NW Washington DC).  Minimal food to order from at first, though if you want there is a menu you can order from.  We opted to eat the lunch species, which were rather cheap (plate o’ food and a drink, $6).  Not bad Chinese, not amazing either, but a good quick meal.  Later on though, after yet another long day of science lectures, posters, meetings and chatting about grant money, post-doctoral research and various elements of methodology of research, I needed a beer.  So, I took a stroll with Gabi down to R.F.D., a bar I had seen while in China town that had a ton of beer taps in the window on display. Read more

A Rainy fall night at Max’s on Broadway

By Greg B. In the post collegiate years, I’ve drank in a good many bars.  But there is one bar that is the one my friends and I always fall back on, Max’s on broadway.  For years this bar has offered an enormous variety of beers to drink, has a staff that will get you your beers, tab, food, check, menu, etc very expediently, and an atmosphere this is a real mixing pot of social classes and age groups, something that happens rather uniquely in Fells pt.  Read more

Oktoberfest & Other Assorted Beers for Tasting

By Greg B. Last week my labmates and I sat down for a little beer tasting of Oktoberfest styled beers. Since tasting some very good Dogfish head IPAs, notably the 60 minute, they have been very eager to try new beers and explore what this other side of the alcohol spectrum has to offer. After a few weeks of letting them sample various hoppy beers I decided that, being oktober, they should try some oktoberfest styled beers, which are very different in nature than the hoppy IPA styled ales. Essentially, both beers can start in similar styles, with pale and amber malts, but the oktoberfest style really emphasises the malt aspect and not the hoppy profiles. Read more