Trip to the New Brickskeller

I got so lucky today and discovered that RFD, the bar that essentially took Brickskeller's place as best beer bar in Washington, DC, was within walking distance of my hotel.  Luck?  Good fortune?  Kharma?  I would vote yes to all 3.  Needless to say, this discovery put the finishing touch on a great day in the DC area.  Here's what I had at this fine establishment:

1.  Flying Dog Raging Bitch - both keg and on cask.  The latter was dry hopped with simcoe so naturally it was my favorite.
2.  Heavy Seas Loose Cannon on cask.  Smooth, hoppy and delicious.
3.  New Glarus Vintage Belgian Red - last taste of this beauty from their last bottle.  It was flat, but still tasted like a slightly tart slice of awesome cherry pie.  Well worth the effort to get a taste of what this highly touted brewery puts out.
4.  Finished up with a Bells Two Hearted Ale.  Not much needs to be said about this beer.  It is consistently voted #2 or #3 best beer in the country in Zymurgy's annual poll.  Perfectly balanced and absolutely delicious. 

What more can I can say than I am a blessed man.  If only all of my road trips can be this satisfying... Cheers everyone.

Happy Birthday Auntie Dee Dee!

Last weekend I traveled back to the homeland, Chicago, to celebrate my Auntie Dee Dee's 75th birthday. This was a surprise party organized by my cousins Theresa, Rosie, and Rita. I come from a very large extended family on my Mom's side. My Mom is from a family of 11, so even if all of my aunts & uncles had small families of their own, it would be a rather large family. Well, Auntie Dee decided to have 9 kids! I stopped doing the math years ago, but figure I have close to 50 1st & 2nd cousins just on my Mom's side! Here's a photo of me with the birthday girl. It was funny as she didn't recognize me at first. Guess losing all that hair made me incognito...

Here's one of me with my Uncle Joe. He's my Mom's younger brother and one of my namesakes. My grandfather was named James Joseph, so Mom just switched the names to get mine. As you can see, we have alot in common. I can easily see myself looking just like him in 30 years.

And here's a shot of Auntie's Dee Dee's clan (at least a portion of it, with in-laws). It was great fun hanging with all of them, catching up on old times, and getting drunk along the way. I hope we get many more chances to do this in the future.

Happy Birthday, Auntie Dee Dee. Hope you have many many more to come :-)

Makin' Baloney...

Trust me, I reacted the same way to these words as you probably just did. I was invited up to Sullivan County (only a few miles from the location of the original Woodstock - actually Bethel, NY) to spend the weekend 'making baloney' with my friend Matt & his family. Seems that these friends refer to all smoked sausage as baloney, regardless of the type, in much the same way people refer to all cotton swabs as Q-tips, I guess. Once I got past the odd name for what was actually going on, the whole thing seemed a bit more normal.

This weekend festival has been a family tradition for these folks for many years now, and I now have first-hand experience to the festivities. Nearly all of these guys are hunters, and they use a lot of the venison from the previous year's take in the sausage. It also has some pork in the recipe, but that's about all I can say. I've been sworn to secrecy... We made 3 different varieties on Saturday; a normal smoked sausage, a summer sausage, and their version of a slim-jim. All of it was made from scratch and smoked in their little shack behind the garage.

This is what the first recipe looked like when it was placed in the smoker. They call this variety 'Ring Baloney'. Bet you can't guess why...

While the first batch was in the smoker, we worked on the other two batches. The photo below is just a sample of how much was made. In all, we ground and stuffed about 400 lbs of sausages. Seeing the assembly line in action was quite amazing. Let me tell ya, all of it tastes awesome. These guys have the whole process down to a science.

After a full day's worth of sausage-making, we sat around the garage and basically got drunk. That too is part of the tradition, or so I was told. Once everyone woke up the next day, we took a quick trip up the mountain to the place where Matt's Uncle owned a large farm. It's now where they all hunt, as it's ~300 acres of rolling hills and beautiful scenery. I set the camera on black & white as it seemed to fit the surroundings. Here's a few of the best shots I got.

We headed back to Montgomery about noon, totally exhausted and smelling like a couple of guys from a meat-packing plant. I was never more happy to take a shower and get a nap.