Hop Rod Rye, Red Rocks, and Carpenter peak.

Today the beer review comes first and then the hikes...

Why? Because this beer deserves immediate attention.

The first thing I'll say about this beer is that if I ever win the lotto, become a king, or otherwise had the chance to rock and roll all night and party every day this might likely be what I eat for breakfast most days. :o

The second thing I'll say is that I can not think of any other commercial beer off the top of my head that tastes as close to homebrew as this. To avoid any confusion that is a massive complement on my part as I've had the good fortune to sample many an award winning homebrew made by some amazing brewers. I'm not sure yet why I'm getting this vibe from Hop Rod but because I KNOW I'll be drinking this one several times again in the future perhaps I'll track it down.

Deep amber color in the glass and big citrus hops as you should expect from a DIPA / Imperial IPA but the rye and malt bill are probably what makes this beer genius. The balance is perfect for me in a beer crafted in this direction. It's not really a hop giant or anything but with the body it's sort of hard to say how hoppy it really is. All in all I'm loving this beer! I give it a rating of must buy if you have not tried it. My short list of must buys also include Pliny The Elder, the limited addition red ale from Lagunitias, and maybe Czar from Avery or Espresso Oak Aged Yeti on the darker side of the fence. Also my absolute favorite PA New Dogtown but I digress...


Great beer, I'm a huge fan with my first 22 ozer.

Hiking this weekend served for us to continue winding down just a bit because our official 14er season is now ON!! We are in a ready to launch pattern and the hot temps next week are going to get us where we need to get I hope. We need some more snow to melt up there asap. Last year our first climb was the 4th of July but this year we are going to have to wait for until the weather permits. We are ready right now!

Sat we hit Red Rocks and today was Carpenter Peak. Obligatory summit vids below.

Evergreen mnt, pasta, and Hop Stoopid

Today we got out to Three Sisters and scurried up Evergreen Mountain. This is an inviting hike that isn't too tough (even when you do like we did and park in the wrong lot and add extra distance hiking to/fro).

This trail has super wide and gentle switchbacks that I think offer a better summit view than most hikes of this length and difficulty level that I'm aware of. We had a lot of fun with it.

We also wandered into an artisan pasta booth today at a farmers market and it was all I could do to get out with only 3 selections. Everything in here looked good and just the dried pasta section had 20+ selections with everything from Thai orzo to chocolate linguine.. The website says all the right things and I'm excited to see if we might have found a real score on the high quality pasta front.

And to finish off the day I decided to give Lagunitas Hop Stoopid a try.
I've put off trying this beer for a long time mainly because the name makes me think of big wonk hop crazy beers that might have names like the Hop-ness Monster or Hop Cannon. As much as I love hops I don't care for screamingly "stoopid" brews that offer nothing but IBU's.

My appreciation for some of their limited release beers and the New Dogtown finally pushed me to try this offering.

Color: looks like a deep honey to almost amber color. Very Maris Otter looking to me, kinda maibock-ish or something..anyhow.

It's got tight and light carbonation..


Taste: Hmmmm.... Unexpected. My very first impression is that this beer if horribly named. To my taste this beer is not even aggressively hopped forward. I get a humongous blast of orange citrus hops and orange just isn't aggressive like pine or grapefruit can be. Construction wise it's solid as should be expected from Lagunitas.

As I try this beer at different temps and work my way to the end I'm left thinking two things.

1) This beer is much different than I imagined it might be and the name put me off for far to long.

2) This is not the type of beer I like to have on hand because it falls into the class that I call "danger beer". The lighter carbonation, smooth bitterness (they say it's 102 IBU's), and the balance of this beer make it very easy to drink. Off hand I'm not sure if this is a double IPA or not but either way it drinks like a pils to me. That might be a slight exaggeration but the point is it's a way easy fast drinking beer to my taste..too fast/easy.

I'd say if anybody has been put off by the name like I was don't be. It's not aggressive at all to my taste. Give it a shot.

Deer Creek, Parmalee, and art

After 4 weeks of bigger hikes we scaled it back this weekend and hit Deer Creek and Pamalee trail out at Mt. Falcon.

I'll post a couple quick vids of those spots right after an art update.....

After some time I'm finally seeing progress on my latte art. One thing that has taken me time is pouring just one drink most days. Between my set up, caffeine intake, my diet, time, and so on....actually if I had a different machine I'd forget about those other excuses. :)  But nevertheless I just pour one drink per day in most cases. Finally I'm getting consistently good milk and have turned the corner on stacking it up (marking). Now it's a matter of learning to control things. I'm very happy to have reached this point and the journey from here to there promises to be more fun than the one from back there to right here. Obviously all of it was necessary and the consolation prize for all those learning pours was still drinking solid small milk drinks...not bad in a days work. I still feel like a Czar or a Sultan sometimes when the shots are right, the milk is right, and the cup rewards beyond what a few ounces of milk, water, and coffee ought be capable.

Maybe art is (in small way) to show some respect and appreciation back to the coffee for what it is to us... just a thought.  

Some recent pours:

Now the hikes.. Deer Creek was interesting because it was a conditioning test coming from a place I've never been before. Perspective is everything and coming off much harder hikes this summit was gained in 70 min. descent in 50 min. Pretty fast for me.. Can't wait to see what times I can pull in 2012. :)

Parmalee / Falcon is just a place we like to be. The vid below shows my fav part of this hike. The very start with the picture frame mnts behind the hitching posts.... nice!

Bear / Beer

For our 4th mountain in 4 weeks we came back and grabbed Bear. The weather last week might have pushed us off on that day but today was a new day and we came a' calling.

The hike in was great again and from the places we have been in the area I've got to say Boulder is a great place to find challenging/training hikes. Lunch at the Whole Foods on Pearl is also an adventure....the place is like a normal WF but amped up a few notches (because it's Boulder).

Nice views from Bear and about 5 min before you get to where these vids are shot you get a huge view of the continental divide. It was pretty stellar out there today. I'm not sure when we have to taper down for our first 14er this year but after all the bigger hikes of the last month I'm ready to scale back a tiny bit and come in on strong/fresh legs. In a strange way I'm already thinking about next season now BEFORE we even have this one in the fully locked and loaded position. We upped our game so much it's impossible not to imagine upping another level next year.....but that is getting ahead of things.

Here are two vids from up high this am.

After this much climbing I took a look at my watch and sure enough it was BIG IPA time.

When I spotted the Avery Maharaja Imperial IPA I knew it was my destiny to ride with the Maharaja. In fact when paying the shop keep he says to me "oh the Maharaja....it's a good one".

In my glass I find massive citrus and maybe even tropical hops. Dominant tangerine assertive hopping here. This beer is aggressively enough hoppped that it's dancing on the line of soapy but damn is it good!  This beer makes me desperately desire some very spicy queso and chips. In fact I'm making a mental note of that and WILL revisit the idea at some point in time. But sadly it can't be today, damn!

Anyhow, this is a hop lovers beer and worth a try whenever you see it sitting on the shelf.