Mel’s birthday brew y mas

I have to hand it to my homie Raqui for helping make UC Irvine cool in the eyes of beer fans. Damn, what a brew list! I’m all excited about the nitrogen working now on that Irish stout and I’m actually inclined to head down there soon to try it out. I have downed many a beer at Pappy’s Pub at UC Berkeley and The Pub at UC San Diego, so it’s nice to know that UC Irvine isn’t so, well, dry.

Yes, my 35th beerthday was certainly not dry. It was all about beer! I enjoyed Taps in Brea and Belmont Brewing Co. in the LBC. I have to say that the beer is a’ight at BBC (their guest beers are better than their own house beers, I think, with the lone exception of their strawberry blonde beer, which is worth buying in growlers), but Taps is way better and, in my eyes, still a standard to emulate when it’s time for me to open my own beer place. But I digress…

My birthday also meant that I was ready to crack open that homebrew I started back in January. My “Mel’s Birthday Brew” was an amber ale, and it was the first time I experimented a little. I added brown sugar during the fermentation process, and while I don’t know what it would have tasted like had I not done that, or if it even made a difference, I’m kinda glad I did because this beer had a pretty rich flavor and I get to say, “maybe it’s the brown sugar?” I wish I had the capacity to brew more than 2 1/2 gallons because this is a beer I’m actually pretty proud of. It was way yummy and it looked so purdy in its nice pilsner glass. Checkitout:

It poured really nicely and had a great head on it. Toasty and smooth and like all bottle-conditioned beer, is unfiltered and so has a little bit of yeasty sediment on the bottom. But that’s okay! It’s supposed to be there. (It’s like next time you get a Hoegaarden beer, look closely and you’ll notice there are pouring instructions to pour about 3/4 of the bottle in a glass, swirl the bottle around a bit to get the yeast and then pour the rest of the beer in the glass. For sure, the best way to enjoy the full flavor of a bottle-conditioned beer.)

So the next step is to upgrade my equipment and start following some of the cool beer recipes I’ve been finding. I have clever names picked out for beers I haven’t even made yet, kinda like when people pick out baby names for kids they’re probably not gonna have for like 10 years. That’s me. Put on this earth to make books and beer. Certainly not babies!