Joel Johnson Has Him a Blog

OG 1.060ish. Extract kit.

In fact, Frances became a bit of a local celebrity that day. After the game while she was waiting for Murray to get the car, she was immediately recognized by a group of guys. “They said, ‘you’re the woman who did the three-story beer bong!’ ” Frances recalled.

Party all the time [Michigan Daily]

Original Pussy Beer, with trace amounts of real vaginal yeast.

Put up a hoppy extract kit tonight from Northern Brewer, based on Bell's Two-Hearted Ale (an IPA I've heard nothing but good things about, but have never had a chance to have). The OG was way lower than NB said to expect. They said in the 060s, but we read something like in the 040s. This is the second beer in a row that has come up way low in the OG.

Either we're doing something wrong (possible, but I don't think so), or their projections are way off (that also seems unlikely). A mystery!

This is our third super-hop IPA we've put up, and the last two have been crap. I'm not expecting very good things out of this one.

The Marvel 61HK 24" Wide 1/2 Keg Draft Beer Dispenser fits seamlessly with kitchen cabinets and accepts half or quarter kegs of beer. It's only $1,500, too! More expensive than a kegerator, especially when factoring by capacity, but infinitely more swanky.

I've been in Florida for the last few days, hanging out with my pops—an otherwise poorly thought-out decision in the heat of summer, but I figured a week in the swamps would be better than a week with my girlfriend's mother, who is visiting Brooklyn. A cowardly evasion, certainly, but the better part of valor.

Dad woke up a few weeks ago to find a dark, floating globule in his right eye. And I mean in—he somehow had torn his retina, causing bits of rod and/or cone to begin an unplanned secession establishing an independent island of blindness in the jelly of his eye. It's healing up fine, but that meant our normal recreational schedule of rum and scuba has had to be amended, culminating in a trip to Miami to check out South Beach, a place Dad continually reminded anyone who would listen is "one of the premier nightlife spots in the world."

We rented a Lincoln LS, so as not to drive cross-state in a truck that smells of old embalming fluid, picked up Uncle Jim, and proceeded to the only city in the state with an anthem written by Will Smith (ignoring the pre-major label demo 'Fresh Prince of Pensacola').

At first, South Beach sucked, until later, it sucked some more. Fortunately, I had girded my mind's loins for disappointment—my bump and grind days are buried under about 8 years of waist-expanding internet addiction. As much as Dad and Jim were entertained by the paucity of paunchiness (not to mention string bikinis so negligible that they could accept most standard guitar tunings), I'm of the persuasion that everything in life is designed (and this applies doubly to gorgeous women) to emphasize how much I should hate myself.

If I were to look at these geometries of libido-cranking curves and lust after them, it was only as a inversion of their total disinterest in me. If by some miracle one of these ladies would have expressed interest in me, it would only be a reminder of my complete inability to act on the ego-building opportunity, as I have a girlfriend to whom I am faithful (looking and lusting, bless her, is not in violation of our handshake deal). So basically, lose/lose/lose, if we were to include a trip to the strip club, which I forfeited in lieu of a few more hours sleep. (Not a hard choice, for me, since strip clubs are about as much fun as going to McDonalds, paying for a burger, then getting an empty bag and a smile, even though smiles are free.)

But before we were the three wandering albinos^* paying their general admission way into Crobar and other Crobar-like clubs, I looked up South Beach, on a lark, really, in Beer Advocate's Beerfly database of quality bars. I presumed I'd find a couple of decent places in Miami—any town of size will have something—but instead I found one just a few blocks away: The Abbey Brewing Company.

They don't brew on site, but have a brewery in Ybor City cook up a few barrels to their specifications. Or so the reviews go; there is some indication that the same brews might be offered as 'house' drafts in a variety of locations. My tongue tells me otherwise—a Russian Imperial Stout as fine as that offered at The Abbey intimates a hand-crafted purposefulness. I mean, I'd be happy to be wrong—that would improve the chances of it being bottled and sold elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the PopUnc wasn't too keep on the flavors of regional brews; partially that was my fault. I started them out on the house IPA, which was probably a bit much, but drinkable, but then followed up with the Rogue Hazelnut Brown, which I've had before and enjoyed, but tasted almost syrupy here. That pretty much prepped their stomach for rum and Coke, and we had to leave so that we could wander for endless miles trapped behind lock-stepped women who would only make eye contact long enough for me to fruitlessly mouth 'free cocaine.'

And then the next morning, we were gone, leaving me no chance to try the Imperial Stout again in the climate that it deserved: slightly colder than room temperature, under a TV playing Pulp Fiction with closed captions, in darkness unpunctuated by strobe lights or subwoofers.

South Beach wasn't all evil, though. I saw a real, live dwarf lady, paraded sideshow-like in the middle of a mid- to upscale open-air mall. Also, in a flash of momentary, drunken brilliance, I palmed two VIP invitations off the table in front of the doorman, only to flash them right back at him. For two minutes—about the time time it took me to get into the VIP room and be given my first icy, irrational 'No!' by a slim blonde who apparently didn't want to let me borrow her lighter—I was cool.

^{* On the upside, many girls mistook our total lack of style or grooming as an indication that we were filthy rich. This, of course, made me feel awful that I, a veteran of two dot com booms, was not rich.}

I haven't been recording the beer as I once did, mostly because the initial mystery is over—I pretty much know what we're doing and how to do it. The trick now is to discover all the little steps we could be taking to improve the batches and to continue to make mistakes to learn from.

Case in point: the Tongue Splitter Mk. II, a super-hoppy IPA extract kit that we doctored up with even more hops and malt, then idiotically added a full package of priming sugar when bottling. The result? Our first exploded bottles and a beer that foams uncontrollably when exposed to open air.

It's sort of amusing to try to direct the foam into two or three glasses and let it mellow out enough to drink, but it's not great beer to drink in the first place (it's better than the first batch of Tongue Splitter, but still not amazing).

We've ordered another two kits and another secondary carboy (5 gal) to start up the July/August brewing season. Both kits are extracts, one a Beligan-style Witbier and another the most generic Porter that Northern Brewer offers. It's clear that the time for moving to whole grain is near, though—we're simply running out of extract styles that we want to try.

The Saison and Hefeweizen we brewed last were both very tasty, however, so it's not all crap beers. We're approaching a point where we're going to need to take this slightly more seriously (new equipment, more attention paid to temperatures, cleaner brewing environments). If we're going to take it to the next step, however, I want to make sure that we're making beers that are worth the trouble.

Just when I thought I couldn't love Lush more than I already do, they come out with a shampoo made from Irish stout. We got some for a Guinness loving friend for Xmas.

Kronenbourg commissioned Phillipe Starck to make a special 1664 can and bottle, including a bottle cap that looks like the foam on the head of a lager.

My friend John and I decided to brew beer together. Of course, he's in Kansas City and I'm in Brooklyn, but from a moral-support standpoint, we're good to go.

I'm brewing a Belgian-style Dubbel, and it is fermenting nicely.

John tried a slightly more simple (and faster) Nut Brown Ale and it is taking off, as well. In fact, I wish I would have tried something more simple for my first batch so I'd get my results more quickly. He also took pictures of the brewing process and began to chronicle his endeavors, which I thought was a pretty good idea. Hence, I posted.

It also pleases me to announce the first category on my personal blog: Beer.