If I had planned ahead (or maybe I could in the future) I could have made some dandelion wine. Heck, I've got enough back there that I could have a decent salad for several days too. Most of them are mowed down now, but they'll come back, I believe in them.
I probably could have finished mowing in the allotted time, except I spent about a half hour pulling on the cord before I finally thought, maybe there isn't enough gas in there? There was gas in it, but apparently not enough. I ran next door and took some from my nEighbor and filled up the tank. It easily got me through the nearly grassless front yard, but only half through the back. The back yard had grass that was more than a foot tall, and very thick too.
As I was cutting it I was thinking Al Gore thoughts, about how I was increasing carbon, and shit like that. I'm taking a product that takes CO2 and stores it, and cutting it down. Granted, I'm not destroying a rain forest, but in my little piece of the planet, I'm making a difference, and not for the better. I've got these massive bushes that are growing back there too, and I needa cut those down a lot too. Virgil... killing the planet one blade of grass at a time!
After I finished as much mowing as I was gonna get done last night, I put everything away and realized I didn't have any "after mowing beers" in the house. A Leinenkugel Summer Shandy would have been awesome. Maybe a blonde ale; maybe a wheat (not Wit); but alas, about all I could think of in the fridge was a bottle of Satin Solstice, and an imperial stout just didn't seem like the thing to drink when I was hot and sweaty. (I forgot I had a 12 pack of Old Style; I got it for the cubs stuff on it; and hey, it would have been a good "after mowing beer")
So I went and got kriddy, as we were hoping to meet some people out at Jupiters at the Crossing (Jupstew) for some billiards action. Was hoping to get a guy from work and softball there to see if he wanted to play on our league, but he couldn't make it; also another co-worker who is the greatest pool player I know, didn't get my text until 7 a.m. this morning, so he obviously didn't make it.
When we got there, I ordered a Great Divide Yeti... yeah, so I had an Imperial Stout as the first beer anyway... I never really noticed the hops in it before last night. I didn't give it the full drinking evaluation like I've been doing for "new" beers, but I did try to analyze it a little more than just loving it.
Before, I'd only been focused on the chocolate and coffee flavors and the thickness of it. I hadn't paid any attention to the huge amount of hops in it. It's so well balanced, I had to really search for the hops in order to find it, but once I did, man, was it enjoyable. It's odd to me that when I'm drinking a beer, once I get an idea of what a flavor is, that the one flavor then becomes the predominate taste. I can go searching for other tastes but it'll always come back to that one.
I first noticed this while drinking an Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald and I picked out the flavor of black olives, from that point on, this beer screamed black olives to me.
If you are wondering what it is that you are tasting, and have trouble picking it out. Check out the Beer Flavor Wheel.
It's also known as the Meilgaard Beer Flavor Wheel, as he's the guy who thought it up. (The image isn't the greatest, there are better copies of it out on the interwebs, but this was the only one I could get to ... right now). This page seems to have a good breakdown of the wheel. There are other sites too. While I don't have it in there yet, I'll be putting a copy of the wheel into my beer notebook. It'll help with picking out the flavors.Well, after I finished drinking the Yeti, I switched to a Great Divide Hercules. It was a Great Divide night. This beer has a thick tongue feel to it, almost like a syrup. So bitter and hoppy (did I mention I hate to say hoppy? But it's just so easy... hoppy... hoppy.. what friggin KIND of hoppy? dunno... it was just... um ... hoppy). Now you see why I need to carry around a flavor wheel.
Well, I'm happy to report I don't have any blisters from mowing yesterday, so that's really nice. However, typing is really hard as my forearms are really tight. My hands are also shaking a bit, so that's kind of fun. Unfortunately, while my hands are blister free, the roof of my mouth didn't fare as well from the pizza.
Otherwise, possibly softball tonight (depending on rain), and then we are heading to Asheville North Carolina tomorrow. We are doing the Brews Cruise on Saturday, so that should be fun. I've had some of the Asheville Brewing Company beers and probably all the Highland stuff (which is good beer), but haven't had any of the French Broad, so that'll be nice.
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