Scooter Chronicles

OK, here are some more answers to more questions.

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My friend Kate asked the following questions:

What are your top three new beer finds for the past year?

I am going to qualify this first. I had two beers that I would say were two of the three best, but they were both from Unibroue. Both of these were special beers that they don’t brew all the time. Given that I have had everything they brew on a regular basis, and how wonderful it all is, I buy these without thinking. Therefore, the beers that I am going to name here are ones that I never knew existed before.

1. Olde...

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Here is another batch of beer reviews. More to come eventually.

Jolly Pumpkin La Roja
I found this one at Champane’s on my last trip to Michigan. They had many different brews from Jolly Pumpkin, and many of them were listed as spiced ales. I decided on this one due to the description. On the label it says that it’s a “deep amber with earthy caramel, spice and sour fruit notes developed through natural barrel aging.” I don’t know if I got a bad bottle, but this was a HUGE disappointment. All I got was sour. It literally tasted like really sour red wine. It had a great head and even gave off a lot of Brussels lace....

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The other beer outing I had when in Michigan was to Bastone in Royal Oak. I am sad to say that I had never heard of the place until the week previous when Kate and George mentioned it while at Dragonmead. Bastone has a great selection of Belgian styled beers, and Belgian style food. Mussels and scallops are big, as well as french fries with just about anything. (I remember that vividly from my two weeks in Belgium.) We ended up having some of the appetizers (the mussels and scallops I mentioned), and then ordered a few pizzas, which were very much not like one would be used to here in the US. All the food was excellent!

I stuck with one beer while there, though I sipped a few others. The...

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On the first Tuesday I was in town to visit my family, my sister Jenn, her friend Cris, and I planned on going to one of my favorite places: Dragonmead Microbrewery. It is a great place for beer drinking friends to get together because of their huge selection. They almost always have over 30 beers on tap, and they are all good. Sure, many of the styles they have are not as good as other breweries’ versions of them, but they are all good quality and exact definitions of the style. There is always something to please everyone on their menu.

The only downside of Dragonmead is their lack of food. In some ways this is actually a good thing. With a Little Caesars’ only a couple of...

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This batch I am doing as one. They are some homebrews from my friend Kate’s husband Scott.

Scott Suttles’ Porter
A very respectable porter. Not the best I have had, but true to the definition of a porter. It’s obvious that he took great care in making a very good beer with this one. Nothing in the taste was too much, just nice subtle touches.

Scott Suttles’ Ginger Ale Beer
I would like to specify the BEER part in the name. This isn’t ginger ale like the soda from Vernors’ or Canada Dry. This was beer. One of the reasons I don’t like ginger ale is the overpowering ginger taste, along with the carbonation. Scott’s beer was still...

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Here is the second half of my long overdue beer reviews. There will be some more coming up in the near future, due to having a few new ones this past week. But this is the batch that I had been meaning to get to for a year or more, even if some of them I had only a couple of months ago.

Kuhnhenn’s Maibock
I had this during our trip to Michigan back in May when we met up with some friends from school. This would be the beer for me for spring. It’s a great compliment to Victory’s Moonglow Weizenbock, which to me is the best autumn beer that I have had. It had...

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This has been a long time coming. And I do mean a LONG time. I have so many new beers that I have drank over the the past year …. well, really more then a year, that I have to divide it up into two posts.

Blue Mountain’s Classic Lager
From my Uncle Steve. Nothing spectacular about this one. Better then Yeungling, not as good as Sam Adams’ Boston Lager. A good session beer though, and was impressed with the amount of Brussels lace it left behind.

Blue Mountain’s Rockfish Wheat
From my Uncle Steve. This one surprised me. On the...

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Being unemployed, and having a newborn, you tend to lose track of the days.

Parents
My parents are heading out to Pennsylvania to spend some time with their newest grandchild today. They will be here through Friday. We are looking forward to seeing them again. As it stands, if I am not employed by Thanksgiving, we will not be making the trek out to Michigan for Christmas. So this may be the last time we see them in a while.

Lions
Not that I am a huge NFL fan to begin with, and though from Detroit and clinging to my baseball and hockey loyalties, I am not a Lions fan. But in some respects, I am excited a bit this year. I think that the team’s direction, for the first time...

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Finally getting to this. We had a great time seeing my family and getting to spend time with them. And thanks to Facebook I caught up with some friends.

The first group was some guys that I played roller hockey with for a few years. I met them through an ad on the board at the rink where we played. They were looking for a goalie and I was looking for a team. Eventually they started including me in on their other get togethers. I caught up with Neil, the team’s captain, first. Then with Dan. Neil travels for work and we almost met up when he was in the Philly and Lehigh Valley areas. Unfortunately we just couldn’t find a good time. But we set up to meet at one of Chris Chelios’ places to watch Game 3 of the...

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I am a member of the Book & Reader forum. Not really too active, but I post from time to time. Like most forums, I don’t visit as often as some, and when an interesting topic comes up, usually somebody has already added what information, wisdom, or general BS I would have added, so I don’t. But this year I decided to get into their Secret Santa outing.

My gift arrived yesterday. It was “The Beer Book” by Tim Hampson. To be honest, I was hoping for some cool novel that I had never heard of and would really enjoy reading....

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