Update: Mocha Porter

Tonight was the night I finally around to kegging the Mocha Porter that was brewed on 8 February. The gravity wound up at a respectable 1.018, putting it in the middle of the 7% range which works for me. The important thing is that it's full of awesome. It smells dark, rich and full of coffee with a somewhat subdued chocolate nose. The body is think and silky, with the roasted grains taking a nice back seat to the coffee and chocolate. I can't wait until this one is chilled and carbonated. This is going to turn out well, and will probably be gone really quickly. :( Which just means I need to make another batch. :)

Update: Belgian Dubbel

The dubbel I brewed on 14 March got itself racked to secondary tonight. The airlock looked done, but I roused the yeast and am hoping that gets things going again. The gravity is currently at 1.022, giving it 68% attenuation so far. I'm aiming for more like 75%+, so I'm gonna keep an eye on it over the next few weeks. As expected, it currently tastes sweet, but the Belgian character I was looking for is there. This one just needs a fair amount of time. I can handle that.

Fantasy Draft

Below is the result of yesterday's fantasy draft for Patrick's league. There are 10 teams in the league, and I had the 9th position in the draft order. Sigh. Here's what I wound up with:

Hitters:
C Brian McCann
1B Ryan Howard
2B Mark DeRosa
3B Troy Glaus
SS Stephen Drew
IF JJ Hardy
OF Carlos Lee
OF Vladimir Guerrero
OF Xavier Nady
Util Pat Burrell

Bench:
BN (OF) Rick Ankiel
BN (2B) Kelly Johnson
BN (2B) Rickie Weeks
BN (C) Kelly Shoppach
BN (OF) Daniel Murphy

Starting Pitchers:
SP Johan Santana
SP Roy Oswalt
SP Edinson Volquez
SP Gavin Floyd
SP Mike Pelfrey

Relief Pitchers:
RP Joakim Soria
RP Carlos Marmol
RP Francisco Cordero

I think I can go into the season with a reasonable measure of optimism for this team. The one glaring void is that I have no speed on this team. If ever win the SB category, it'll be by sheer luck. Now, because I'm obsessive about baseball and fantasy, and it's a quiet lazy Sunday, I'm going to analyze my team. Yes, I'm that kind of uber-dork.

Starting Pitching:

Obviously, the strength of this team is the pitching. Johan should win 18-20 games this year with the Mets' improved bullpen and Citi Field likely more of a pitcher's park than Shea was. Oswalt could win 20 games if his team wasn't the Astros. Volquez is something of a question mark given his lack of experience; was this past season a fluke for him or is he going to be a consistently dominant starter? Pelfrey turned a corner last year and pitched great the second half, while also looking really good in spring training. I think he'll have a really good year. Gavin Floyd is looking good, but is mostly in there for depth if one of the other question marks fails or gets injured. The really nice thing is that this pitching staff really has no fear-inducing injury history.
Grade: A

Relief Pitching:

The relief corps of Soria, Cordero and Marmol should give me a ton of saves with a good ERA and WHIP and a fair amount of strikeouts. I just hope Marmol can keep up his high level of play for a full season in the closer role. The Cubs should win enough games to give him lots of chances. The problem with Soria and Cordero is that they're on lousy teams.
Grade: B+

Catcher:

For once my catcher position isn't a black hole of hitting. Brian McCann is one of the best hitting players in that position these days. Unless he gets hurt, this position will only change hands when he gets a day off. Kelly Shoppach is on the team as a reliable backup in the case that I want to take a slumping McCann out of the lineup for a week.
Grade: A

First Base:

Ryan Howard, despite his lousy batting average, will hit a ton of homers, score a lot of runs, and drive in a ton of runs. He's a perpetual home run champ in the NL, and a constant MVP threat. I don't have a backup for him, but any backup I could get now would be useless in comparison. First base is a strength for me this year. That being said, I really wanted Pujols. After finally getting surgery on his elbow this offseason, he'll be playing pain-free this year. I believe he will have a disgustingly monster year which is scary considering his typical season. Oh, well.
Grade: A-

Second Base:

Second base is one of those positions where there are a couple of great players, but the rest of pack is mediocre at best. Mark DeRosa has eligibility at 2B, 3B and OF, and is a fairly reliable hitter. He gets lots of RBI opportunities in the Cubs' lineup. I think this was a really good mid-round pickup. The need for depth at this position, though, forced my hand. I grabbed Kelly Johnson, who should be a decent backup for DeRosa, but may also come out and have a good season in his own right. Worth a shot, in my opinion. In addition I made something of a dark horse/sleeper pick in Rickie Weeks. He's always had real potential: decent power and lots of speed. The problem has been injury and a propensity to strikeout (425 Ks in 445 games). I feel it's a chance worth taking, and I can always drop him if I see someone else coming up big.
Grade: B-

Third Base:

Third base is usually a strength for my teams, but not this year. DeRosa can slot in here, but I've got Troy Glaus as the regular starter. I'm honestly not a fan of Glaus, but the draft order kept me from my boy, David Wright, and I want nothing to do with A-Rod's fragile psyche and the relentless verbal attacks he'll get this year on the road. Now, there's nothing really wrong with Glaus, he'll still get me 25-30 homers and drive in around 100 runs, especially in a lineup with Rick Ankiel and Alber Pujols, but I still wanted someone better there. We'll see.
Grade: B

Shortstop:

I grabbed two shortstops for a specific reason. I missed out on the elite shortstops (Reyes, Rollins, Ramirez), so I decided to take the route of drafting a SS with lots of potential that I think is likely to have a breakout year. Stephen Drew is that man. He's been in the league since getting called up by Arizona in 2006, and has shown a lot of improvement over the time period. I firmly believe this is the year he establishes himself. In case he falters I have JJ Hardy as a backup. Hardy is not the best SS out there, he has put up respectable numbers consistently.
Grade: B

Outfield:

The outfield is hit or miss with me most of the time. Either I have one that's stacked or I have one that's mostly average. I'm carrying 6 outfielders currently, 3 filling the OF slots, 1 filling the utility slot, and the others on the bench. I think Carlos Lee and Xavier Nady will be provide good, consistent production, while Vlad is a question mark. That Angels lineup is never overly potent, so he never really has the opportunity to drive in a ton of runs. He'll still put up good numbers if his knees don't completely give out on him this year. He's the one I'm worried about most, but he does have a really good chance of helping me quite a bit. It pained me, as a Mets fan, to pick Pat Burrell, but he's around for depth. I think he'll have a good year in Tampa Bay, but there's a lot of really good pitching in the AL East. He'll probably bounce back and forth between my lineup and bench unless he's cruising. Rick Ankiel will probably be in the lineup more than Burrell, as he's in a situation where he'll face weaker pitching and just looks really good right now. Either way, Ankiel is great depth that I couldn't pass up. Dan Murphy is totally a homer/sleeper pick. He is the young man that the Mets are slotting into left field to replace Grandpa Alou. He has shown great plate discipline at the ML level, and is looking really good this spring. Either way, this position is above average for me, with solid depth.
Grade: B

All in all, this is not a bad team to go into the season with. It's not the best I've had, but it's solid. The positions that don't have elite players have enough solid depth to hopefully compensate for any under-performance. If the pitching staff doesn't have any injuries, it's going to be filthy. So close to the season, but still so far away....

Fantasy Baseball

Yesterday was the live draft for the fantasy baseball league that Patrick runs. Last year I dug myself into a hole in June, but was able to claw my way back to third place. I wound up cruising through the playoffs and beat Meredith for the championship. That said, Meredith had a great first year of fantasy baseball. This will be my fourth year of fantasy baseball, and I've had a decent amount of success running two teams every year:
My team names are typically the Solar Flares and the Big Scary Animals.

2006
My first year saw the most success I've had so far. I made the championship round in both leagues. I won one of them and lost the other.
Solar Flares: 2nd place
Big Scary Animals: 1st place

2007
Not as much success my second year. This year's results were entirely based on one pair of moves I made. One was brilliant and the other was absolutely moronic, while both involved the same player. I dropped Gary Sheffield from one team when he couldn't hit anything for two months (he was promptly picked up by someone else). I picked him up with my other team when I realized he was back on track. Suffice to say, that move made one season and broke the other.
Solar Flares: 1st place
Big Scary Animals: 7th place

2008
Both of my teams this past year went un-managed for the month of June due to no internet at the new apartment and way too much going on in and out of work. Oh well.
Solar Flares: 1st place
Big Scary Animals: 5th place

I'm not sure if I'm going to run two teams this year or not. One team was drafted yesterday. We'll see. I may join a public league and try to dominate a bunch of random idiots. :p

Brew Day: Belgian Dubbel

Today was brew day. Hurray! It's a been a few weeks. As the winter is beginning to wind down, I decided to take the opportunity to brew one last darker beer. This is a Belgian Dubbel which, while still dark in color, isn't really a "heavy" beer. If I didn't screw anything up, it should be pretty drinkable, especially in the crazy Rochester spring weather.

Jeff and Angela came over and helped, so it was more interesting than normal.

Belgian Dubbel

Malt:
-11 lbs British Pale Malt
-1 lb CaraAroma
-1lb Light Munich Malt

Sugars:
-1 bottle (~1.5 lbs) Dark Belgian Candi Syrup (beet sugar)

Hops:
-1oz East Kent Golding hop pellets (5.5% AA, 60 minutes)
-1oz Saaz hop pellets (4% AA, 15 minutes)
-1oz Saaz hop pellets (4% AA, 5 minutes)

Mash:
-4 gallons of water at 162F for the mash
-Mash temp stabilized at 148F (where I wanted it)
-Mashed for 90 minutes
-Sparged with 4.75 Gallons at 168F

The gravity wound up at 1.070 (temperature corrected). The yeast was Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale. I was really happy that the mash temp came in where I wanted it, as I did not want this being too unfermentable. It's supposed to be a fairly light (in body) style, so I didn't want the temp to be too high in the mash. It came in at the temperature I was aiming for. The gravity also came out where I was hoping it would. I haven't brewed a Belgian in a long time, so I'm hoping this comes out well. The brew day was pretty much free of screwups, so I'm hopeful.

Beer Review: Great Lakes Blackout Stout

Blackout Stout, Great Lakes Brewing Company



I've been impressed with Great Lakes Brewing Company, as we've been seeing a lot more of it on tap around the Rochester area during the past year. I'm a big fan of stouts, so I decided to grab their stout last time I was at Beers of the World. Apparently, Great Lakes brewed the Blackout Stout in memory of the 2003 blackout that hit a large portion of the northeast. I remember not knowing about it until I left work, as the building I was working in at Cornell was on their own power grid that wasn't hit by the outage. It was a weird day, but turned out to be kinda fun cooking dinner in the kitchen at my dad's lab.

The Blackout Stout pours an extremely dark color, with a little light showing through around the edges. The head begins at two finger-widths, but settles to about a quarter-inch with some serious lacing on the glass.

Its aroma is one with a smooth roasted base. There are definitely some sweet caramel notes, with some lighter roasted notes, possibly brown malt or some dark toasted malt.

There is a mooth roasted bitterness with a touch of crystal malt sweetness. A serious chocolate character provides a nice layer on the roasted base malt flavor A moderate bitterness from the roasted malts and the hops hits the back of the tongue and mixes well with the smooth roasted chocolate flavor over the middle of the tongue. All these flavor mix to give a great finish.

As expected from a 9% ABV stout the body is heavy, but with a silky character that makes it go down easier than would be expected.

Overall I would call this a delicious imperial stout. The hops can become a bit harsh as you drink, but that's the only real complaint. The rich, smooth, roasted chocolate flavor works well with the silky body. This is definitely highly recommended, as the beers tend to be from Great Lakes Brewing Company.

And now they've gone too far.

Last week I setup my new media PC. I made sure to get an internal Blu-Ray drive for it ($100, eat that PS3!), and just finally got it to play my first Blu-Ray disks. Was the drive broken? No. Were the disks scratched? No.

First, the software included with the drive, Cyberlink PowerDVD 9, was the Deluxe version. PowerDVD 9 comes in three flavors: Standard, Deluxe, and Ultra. Ultra is the only one that has Blu-Ray functionality included. Any guess as to which they actually package with the player? That's right, Deluxe. Interesting that a Blu-Ray player would be packaged with software that you have to upgrade immediately in order to use with said drive.

PowerDVD9 Ultra was subsequently... 'acquired'.

The proper software, when loaded and reading the disk, actually gave me an error within the first three seconds. The error said something about not being able to process the contents of the disk. Huh? Alright. After a few searches on the intertoobs I found something wonderfully amazing called HDCP, High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection. Basically, this is hardware implemented anti-piracy scheme used by the ever-paranoid recording industry. This is a three pronged attack against piracy:

1. Devices go through an authentication process, whereby all devices being used to read, transmit, process, and display HD content need to be 'licensed' to perform those actions.
2. The data are encrypted while being transmitted, because obviously digimal piracy involves grabbing bits from the toob that connects the computer to the TV.
3. There are unique keys in these 'licensed' devices that help ensure that compromised devices can't be used. Blah blah blah.

So, what does this mean for me? My Blu-Ray player, graphics card, sound card, HDTV, and probably my AV receiver need to be HDCP certified/licensed/whateverstupidbullshited. I know the graphics processor on the motherboard isn't compliant, neither is the sound card. Hell, I don't know if my TV is even compliant, but that's moot with the rest of the hardware failing the compliance test.

The next piece of information I came across was that there's a program called AnyDVD HD. Running in the background, this software will remove copy protection schemes from any DVD that is playing, so the HDCP never gets initialized. This is a legal program that requires purchasing a license. I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around this, but I'll move on. I 'acquired' that license and now I can play Blu-Ray disks. Finally.

The recording companies are so damn paranoid about piracy that now I have to buy software to remove copy-protection from my legally purchased Blu-Ray disk, and upgrade the useless software that came with this drive so I can play said disk in my legally purchased Blu-Ray drive, with my legally purchased graphics and audio processors in my motherboard, transmit those data through my legally purchased HDMI cable, so my legally purchased HDTV can display this movie to my legally purchased eyeballs. This is the reason I refuse to pay money for anything that will help these companies get richer.

This just makes me want to pirate media MORE.

Ugh, Monday

Quite the interesting weekend. I left work on Wednesday morning around 11am and took the rest of the week off. I had just finished getting some functioning that had taken me forever (lots of hardware communication issues), so I decided to have an extended weekend to relax.

I got my new computer parts on Wednesday afternoon. It was the summer of 2005 when I last upgraded my computer, so I decided to go all out and get a media PC put together to hook directly up to my HDTV.

There was a beer tasting on Saturday via Twitter Taste Live. I'll have to sit down and do a more in depth post on that later. Let's just say that the night ended painfully, and I don't remember going to bed. That'll happen when you drink a full (large) bottle of Dogfish Head Fort, Red & White, and a small bottle of Palo Santo Marron.

The World Baseball Classic is underway, as is MLB spring training. The USA crushed Venezuela yesterday 15-6. I'm considering starting up a second blog just dedicated to baseball. Gotta document another miserably disappointing season as a Mets fan. Huzzah.

Beer Review: Harpoon Celtic Ale

Harpoon's Celtic Ale

I had this on tap at J.B. Quimby's last night.

This beer pours a deep copper color with a two finger thick head. The bubbles in the head are large and coarse and pure white. After settling, the head remained thick enough to keep the beer covered.

The first impression you get from this beer is that it smells like lightly toasted bread. If there was any hop aroma, I wasn't able to detect it. Some British malt comes through in the nose, slightly offsetting the bread aromas. A minimal amount of yeast esters manage to poke through as well, lending a touch of a sweet floral aroma.

As with the aroma, the flavor of this beer is dominated by bread. There is a solid malt base that uses the bread and toasted notes to balance itself rather than hops. There do not seem be more than a token amount of hops as the hop bite was barely noticeable on the back of the tongue.

While not a light beer, this is an easily drinkable one. It's thick enough in the mouth so you know it's a solid beer, but it's thin enough to go down pretty quick.

Overall
Harpoon's Celtic Ale is not the most exciting beer, but you could do a ton worse. It's definitely a solid beer that should be really good on those cool rainy spring evenings. I would have enjoyed it more had I not been in a hoppy mood when I tried it. Don't expect an award winner, but this is a decent beer that's worth trying if you're not in the mood for hops.

Beer Review: Drake's Crude Oatmeal Stout, Erie Brewing Company

Drake's Crude Oatmeal Stout, Erie Brewing Company


Pour
This stout pours a thick black, with a small white head on it.

Aroma
There is a light malty sweetness in the aroma, but it is dominated by the roasted grains (as would be expected). No detectable hop aroma.

Appearance
This is a black beer. I see no light getting through it at all.

Flavor
There is a nice roasted flavor that forms the base for this beer, but it is nicely balanced by a light crystal malt sweetness. It is dark and roasty, surely, but only has a very mild bitterness, probably more from the roasted malt than hops. This oatmeal stout is a very easy drinking beer, which says a lot for a stout.

Mouthfeel
This is a full bodied stout, with a very nice silky smooth feel to it from the oats.

Overall
This is a fantastic oatmeal stout, and I encourage anyone that enjoys this style to try it. There are just enough hops to keep it from being a malt bomb, and the texture from the oats makes it deliciously smooth.

Update: Mocha Porter

The mocha porter is now in the secondary (after procrastinating for a week). The gravity is sitting at a nice 1.018, putting it a little over 7%ABV. The gravity sample tastes like a mix of dark roasted coffee, one of those 75% cocoa dark chocolate bars, and has a silky chocolaty body. This beer is still way young, but it's got some serious potential. I'm thinking I'll probably secondary it for about 2-3 weeks and see how it is then. Let me just say, I've surpassed all of my previous chocolate based beers with this one. Mmmm.

Three inches of trub at the bottom of the carboy! And it was thick, chocolaty stuff that took forever to get washed out.