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while we enjoyed some rainy time this weekend, we went and had lunch @ Brouwers in seattle, and enjoyed some fine belgian style beers.

the cornerstone of the meal was this enormous veggie burger:

yes, tax season 2007 has ended. carrie celebrated on the 17th with her co-workers, when their office closed at noon, to remain closed through the 18th as well.

since she had the 18th off, we decided i should take a vacation day as well. after sleeping late (much to the chagrin of the cats) we had breakfast, and took some time to relax and study (carrie for the CPA, and me, for my Accounting class).

due to the amount of studying we had to do, we decided to limit the day’s traveling activities to a few hours. our destination of choice is one we had been to several times before, but not for a long time — LaConner Brewing Company in LaConner, Washington.

so, a typical memorial day weekend might be spent drinking beer, then going to work at the end.

when have you known me to be typical? well okay, you got me there. but we spent the weekend, in addition to doing household chores & work, doing work on our kegging setup, and didn’t get it done until late monday night.

the last element missing was faucets & shanks. these are the 2 elements that, together, make the “tap” that you see at your local saloon. we purchased 2 of each from a local homebrew supply store, and i spent all day monday doing all the final hookups and testing the system.

we have the capacity inside the chest freezer to hold 4 kegs, and we’ll probably add on at least one more in the next few weeks. in order to fit that 4th keg, we need to do a bit of finagling with the lines & whatnot inside the fridge.

now, with these expenses, how many batches of beer to we have to brew & serve ourselves, before we realize a monetary savings over purchasing it? i don’t know — ask my accountant. luckily, the accountant happens to be the brewmaster (er, brewmistress - aka, alewife) so the answer has to be “it’s worth it!”

hold on, i studied engineering, i can do math. (plus i have access to google calculator). so let’s think out loud, in bulleted-list format:

• 5 gallons of homebrew is 40 pints.
• a pint of microbrew at a restaurant, outside of happy hour, is at least $3.50.
• to drink 40 pints in a restaurant, would cost $140.
• the ingredients to brew 5 gallons beer cost around $30, retail.
• our brewing equipment has already paid for itself several times over in the 22 batches we’ve already brewed.
• a CO₂ cylinder refill is $15 (i think), should be necessary twice a year.
• our chest freezer was energystar rated at $26/yr to operate — that’s when it was a freezer. we’ve convereted it to a fridge, should use less energy.
• propane refill is about $30 (i think) should only need this once a year (only use it for brewing).

so, with all that babbling about, let’s say that a batch of homebrew, with diluted energy and supply costs, runs us around $40 (probably a tad high estimate). that means a savings of $100 per 40 pints over purchasing it elsewhere. is that right? i’ll have to call my accountant to check out my numbers.

i know, we could have saved even more money if we continued to bottle. but frankly, we would have paid that price with out sanity. bottling is tedious at best. and since we don’t really take our beer anywhere or share with anyone (the only friends we have don’t drink) then why do it? we’ll still bottle some (for things we want to condition for a long time, or send to contests) but i think we’ll primarily be kegging from now on.

the only additional ongoing task now, is for me to work in biceps, triceps, and deltoids. because lifting a 40lb keg of beer into the chest fridge is no small feat!

i’ll post pictures up after i take some tonight.

no, i’m not adding Nitrous Oxide injection to my car.

we’re assembling the parts to finalize our kegging/draft beer setup. since we started homebrewing, we’ve grown more and more tired of collecting, stripping, cleaning, and sanitizing bottles. read on for more info and pictures that only a homebrewer could love.

the first picture is all the supply-side equipment boxed up and together, CO2 cylider on the floor and a big length of gas supply tubing.

here’s the ball-lock valves for the supply (gas) and the service (liquid) sides of the kegs.

this is a 4-way manifold to split off the supply gas to 4 different kegs.

these are (on the left) the gas pressure regulator, that meters the CO2 out of the supply tank. (on the right) is an inline regulator. i think i need to re-assemble these — the splitter needs to go on the tank regulator (higher pressure) so we can tap off one high pressure line for carbonating beer, then send the other line to the subsequent regulator for serving beer at a lower pressure.

a motley assortment of used cornelius kegs, previously used to store the syrup that makes soda-pop as it comes out of the soda fountain. these are excellent for homebrewers, as they can have a lid that can be removed for cleaning, and can hold 5 gallons. this is a whole, or one half, of a typically sized batch of homebrew, depending upon whether your brew 5 or 10 gallons.

another recent purchase not pictured here, is a chest-freezer that we will convert into a refrigerator to hold all (or most) of these.

more pictures & information as the project progresses. we expect to have it almost complete within a week or so. exciting!

tax season is ovah!

so, after her tax day celebration with her former employer yesterday, carrie & i stopped by Duck Island pub before heading home. (good beer had, btw.)

and now i’m back to riding the bus or train into and out of downtown seattle for my commute. it’s weird going back. i also realize that it’s very difficult to wake up earlier so i can get the train. i’ve got to work on that.

so now our plans include brewing a beer to celebrate the demise of the tax season, and start working on the house - gangbusters. also, we should get out and about once in a while and have some fun.

and i have some ambitious plans as far as this and my other websites go. i really want to break this out so that mikeyboy.com is just about me & us & dog & cats & fish & house & etc. and have a separate URL & blog for the car, and one where i can rant about varied & sundried things relating to technology and the internet and whatever else strikes my fancy.

so stay tuned. i am most certain i will not shake up the ‘blogosphere’ with my nonsensical babbling. but maybe i can throw some context-based advertising on and make a buck or two. (yes, it will probably only be a buck or two.).

yes, we’ve recently returned from our 2nd trip back east. this time, a visit to carrie’s parents in New Hampshire. (live free or die)

much fun, and many tasty brews, were had by all. details follow.

the timing of our visit was driven by our attendance of a party held annualy by carrie’s parents to celebrate the holiday of Epiphany.

during the visit, we also got to visit with various family & friends. rather than timeline events (because quite frankly i can’t remember on what days we did what) i’ll outline things by place.

breweries, brewpubs and pubs

Milly’s Tavern, Manchester NH

milly’s is a relatively new establishment, in place of the defunct Starck Mill Brewery. we went on a weekday afternoon after the lunch rush, we were the only diners present.

atmosphere: basement of a mill building, dominated by a bar and brewing equipment. also a dance-floor area. most of the place was dark and smokey, even though nobody was actively smoking at the time. food: food was good, usual pub fair but with a bit of flair — sweet potato fries were good.

beer: most of the beer was perfectly unremarkable. they have a very light ale to appeal to the sporty crowd (named after the new hampshire baseball team that plays in manchester). they have a few varieties of cider, and a whole range of reds, browns, ales, stouts.

beer standouts: their seasonal pumpkin, which carrie enjoyed (and she’s quite the critic of pumpkin beers) and best of all - bo’s scotch ale. one of the best examples of a scotch ale that we’ve ever tasted (again — carrie can be considered a good judge of that style, too).

overall impression: eek, milly’s is trying to be a lot of different things to a lot of different people. and it does an okay (but not spectacular) job at each of them. beer bar? tavern? dance club? coffee shop? who are you?! still, next time we’re in town, we’ll go back. keep the bo’s flowing.

Strange Brew Tavern, Manchester NH

strange brew is the kind of place that we’re going to miss. tavern-style: bar-side with stools & rail tables on one side, seating area on the other side, main stage/floor in the middle. free popcorn. flatscreens everywhere, showing sports and/or CSI or somesuch.

huge plusses: live music wasn’t so loud that we couldn’t hold a conversation in the bar. server was knowledgeable of what was on tap. taps? lots of them (48 i believe). many many good things on tap, menu broken down by style (and labelled with brewery/state).

most memorable beer: i had a dogfishhead 90 minute - i know i won’t see that on draught on the west coast.

best surprise of the evening: apparently tuesday nights and all day sunday is $2 draughts. ($3 for belgians). 2-1/2 hours, 3 baskets of free popcorn, 5 pints between us: $10! i tipped quite heavily, i suggest you do the same.

Portsmouth Brewery, Portsmouth NH

we had a very good trip to the seacoast to visit Portsmouth Brewery. owned by the same parent as Smuttynose, they had a good selection of Portsmouth and a few Smuttynose brews on tap (and a Sierra Nevada seasonal). we had the sampler, which included 10 different styles.

food: more upscale as you would expect from the culture of portsmouth, but still not expensive. we had a delicious plate of pita with hummus & baba ganoush. atmosphere: a large, open place, not bad. big bar.

beer: all beers were great examples of their style. you can’t really go wrong with any of them (Portsmouth or Smuttynose). kinda confusing that they had a couple of the same style from both breweries, but were different enough that we didn’t feel like we got 8 beers instead of 10. beer standouts: the Portsmouth American Style Pale Ale was unique and tasty enough that we brought a 22oz bottle of it home with us.

overall impression: good stuff, worth it for dinner if you’re visiting. street parking’s tough, but we went up, around and down an alley to get to the metered garage behind the restaurant. (2hr limit on meters - don’t let it expire, we saw someone getting ticketed as we arrived)

Sunset Grill, Allston MA

we’ve been itching to get back to Sunset (BeerAdvocate review). it was a place we frequented years ago while we were dating, but we weren’t yet into beer! we were so close to a good thing and we didn’t even know it.

there’s not much to add to the hyperbole about this place that already exists on the web, so the summary: 112 taps. good pub food, giant nachos. decoration is eclectic kitch, but authentic (without the “TGIFridays kit in a box” feel to it).

best surprise: 2oz and 5oz sampler sizes (in addition to pints, imperials, half-yards, and yards) mean you can try more beers and not get completely wasted. i believe we tried 7 different beers and only had the equivalent of a pint of beer each.

in summation: go!

this concludes the beer portion of our tour. between what we sampled at the pubs and what we drank from bottles, we tried between 36 and 40 different beers for the entire trip.

other attractions

you mean we actually do things besides drink beer while we’re on vacation? why, yes. we do.

currier museum

the currier was a must-visit on our list due to their commissioning, ownership, and display of Amoskeag Canal, a work by Charles Sheeler (one of my favorite artists).

wow, i think that’s it. okay, we mostly drink beer on vacation. but we did a lot of non-specific driving around, too. this got us all nostalgic about being in new england again — until we picked up a Real Estate guide. i guess we could wait at least a few more years before we move back east … or i hear that buffalo is quite affordable.