In beer blogging news, a few conscientious friends pitched in this weekend to help me put away something like a mixed case of my pale ale and Belgian trippel. The beer nicely complemented three days of cooking eating that featured, among many other wonderful things, beef bourgignon (made with trippel rather than red wine, natch) and an Indian-themed goat stew. Urp.
Paging through the last two weeks, Yuengling Porter is still fantastic for the price whereas the Big Hop from East End brewery in Pittsburgh struck me as a touch one-note with the Cascade hops.
The Church Brew Works, meanwhile, front-loaded their tap with an unfair number of interesting brews that included a cask-conditioned pale ale, a trippel and an anachronistically anti-seasonal barleywine. The pale ale was a smooth number that worked quite well with cask aging; given the English pub style that they were going for I would call it a total success. The trippel was fine enough as a medium-bodied beer with light hopping and light malts, but like most American trippels not made by Allagash it had a noticeable gap where non-fermentable sugars and suspended protein solids ought to be. Sadly my wife acquired and paid the check before I could move on to the Barleywine.
Chat about beer or whatever.