The Product:
Lean Cuisine Thai Style Chicken Spring Rolls
These are part of Lean Cuisines “Culinary Collection” line.
Preparation:
They suggest you cook these for 2:30 and they come with a Hot Pocket style crisper sleeve so be prepared for a un-crisped greasy stick that’ll melt the roof of your mouth off if you take a bite from the end. I’d suggest breaking it in half and eating the middles because like a hot pocket it’s still frozen. Fuck you, you try writing about a Hot Pocket style product and not land on a Gaffigan joke. Asshole took all the obvious stuff and I’m not that original.
Taste:
I pick up a hint of chicken, ginger, carrot, and shit. The shit was actually the most dominate flavor. As expected, like all Lean Cuisines the only thing “lean” was ingredients that produce flavor. Zing. Seriously. Starving African children wouldn’t even eat this rolled up pile of failure. They’d rather starve to death. The person that created these should probably kill themselves, because like the rest of their life this recipe was a complete failure. Your parents aren’t proud of you and would hate you if they were still alive. Good thing they’re dead so they didn’t have to witness this abortion of a microwavable meal. Again, kill yourself.
Rating:
I give these a 2.5 out 5. They were edible, but that’s about it.
I don’t get away from home much these days now that I’m a father. If I’m not working, I’m probably watching my daughter. For some crazy reason, I decided that I should get a second job before she was born.
About 2 years ago I started homebrewing beer. After my first batch I wanted to brew my second batch right away and it continued to be that way and still is to this day. My little homebrewing hobby quickly became a obsession and it is literally all I think about. It became such a consuming obsession that I spend most my spare time either reading about brewing or researching new beers to try or brew.
After about 6 months of brewing I began volunteering my time down at the local brewery Riverport Brewing Company. For the first time, I found work I actually enjoyed doing. Your parents spend your whole life telling you to do something you love and I have finally found it. After volunteering for about 6 months I finally got the opportunity get paid to help. So obviously, I jumped all over the offer. Since than, I’ve spent the last 8 months juggling my time cleaning kegs, moving beer and occasionally brewing beer. It’s been awesome learning how to brew on a commercial level. For the most part, it is similar to homebrewing and the process translates well. I love it.
So, I started writing this to tell how I went to Portland, had a great time, drank/bought a bunch of amazing beer, but continued to drink this 9.5 percent ABV Imperial IPA while watching Aziz Ansari on Jimmy Fallon that I have lost the drive to do so. I also worked like 12 hrs today and am a pussy and hate working long days, so if you work long days all the time, fuck you, I don’t care. I’m lazy and good for you.
So I purchased this Double Daddy Imperial IPA by Speakeasy at a neighborhood snooty yuppie upper middle class white people store. This beer lacks the massive hop aroma that we expect from imperial IPA’s these days. It has a very subtle resinous cascade like hop aroma. Has some sweet alcohol aroma and the taste is of syrupy hop juice. Bitterness is firm and the beer is slightly dry on the tongue. Nothing exceptional and easily forgettable. Bummed I bought this when there was so much other beer I could have chosen from. Smoke weed.
“I’m a runa train on dem thang.”
Haven’t blogged about beer in a really long time. I got some new beers to drink so I figured, hey, why not tell the inter-world about it. Everyone on the Al Gore net would love to read my word stuff. So here we go rodeo.
I had the fortune to make a quick trip to Spokane to visit my brothers this weekend. My middle brother Kevin is celebrating his 21 birthday Monday so I decided to drive up and surprise him. Guess what, he was surprised. Success. He and his girlfriend Ween and my youngest brother Kolby all live together in the fucking Spokane Valley. Spokane’s already a big enough spread out shithole, but they live in the Valley which is about 9,000 fucking miles from Spokane and even more spread out and shittier than normal shithole Spokane, so I had to drive for a fortnight just to get there. While driving to the Spofuckhole I stopped at the Huckleberries on the South Hill on my way. The one redeemable quality Spokane has is that they get better beer than us, so I like to stop and find some beers I normally can’t, other than that fuck the place. It sucks. It’s a bigger shitter version of Clarkston and Lewiston, but, “They have a mall.” you may say. Well who cares, malls fucking suck ass. And just like Lewistons Shitcenter Spokanes Shitcenter is too failing and lots of stores are vacant.
So I got a hold of a Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale Brown Shugga Substitute Ale. For those unfamiliar, Lagunitas makes a big holiday beer called Brown Shugga. It’s a big malty bitter bomb that people love, but unfortunately Lagunitas is expanding at a rate at which it has become difficult to brew said Shugga. It’s a really massive beer and ties up fermentors and storage tanks longer than they could afford while being at capacity, so they brewed a replacement beer called Lagunitas Sucks. They name alone is hilarious and makes me love Lagunitas even more than I already do. Anybody who has the balls to make a beer called Sucks, is pretty fucking rad. It should be no surprise since they make a shirt that says LAGU-FUCKING-NITAS.
Being its winter and the holidays are coming up breweries start brewing their seasonal winter beers. Most breweries brew some sort of spiced ale with Juniper berries, mulling spices, or something christmasy in nature. I personally don’t care for spiced ales like this so it’s nice for me to see that there is a trend by some West Coast breweries to make Winter beers that are big malty hop bombs. Like Double IPAs and Double Red IPAs. Hopworks makes their Abominable Winter Ale which is a big American Red IPA. It’s a nice malty hop bomb. It has a nice warming aspect but big bold hop flavor in place of spices. Right up my ally. Well Lagunitas joined the ranks of the hop forward winter beer with Sucks, which is a American Double IPA. It is a very clear yellow almost the color of a light lager, but has a really nice malty backbone and a high ABV. IT GETS YOU DRUNK. It had a slight two fingerbang of white foam and was oozing of hop aroma. It had a real Resinous, piney, citrusy, dank sweat aroma. Some nice tropical fruit aromas like mangoes and pineapples. The great thing about this beer is that it isn’t excessively bitter. It’s very well balanced and the hop bitterness has a very nice malt character to back it up. It has a very subtle lingering bitterness and tastes a lot like it smells. It has a slightly sweet malt flavor almost sugary, but it finishes really dry so it’s not cloying or overpower aspect of the beer. Some real subtle alcohol with a slight bready malt flavor, but the hops are what really shine in the flavor and aroma of this beer. Another really good beer from Lagunitas. Not even remotely surprised by the quality of this one. IF you can find it, this is one to definitely pick up. Grab a couple sixers of it. And if you find it give me some or pick me some up.
And in case I wasn’t clear I am not fond of Spokane.
Ramblings of a Father to Be
I’ve been thinking of ways to describe my current mood but words are falling incredibly short. 9 months of waiting has began to seem like the norm and the thought of my wife no longer having a 12lb sized bowling ball lump under her shirt is foreign. I’ve been trying to grasp the magnitude of becoming a “father”. Trying to figure what it means to be a father constantly doubting myself and faking confidence in myself and my ability to be responsible for another life while others assure me I’ll “be great”. I feel like I’m getting ready to take a Christmas photo and the wool sweater my mother made me wear is firmly secured and chaffing at my neck while I ritualistically tug at the collar trying to find any sort of relief from the pressure. To be honest I am terrified. But I am also excited. I am nervous and any other adjective that describes a uncomfortable emotion. I’ve been biting at my finger nails all day and will continue until that little girl, my daughter, Avery makes her appearance into the world. So wish us luck as we begin the next chapter of our lives as a “family”.
For all five of you, well lets be honest, all two of you that follow my blog may know I have become completely immersed in the world of homebrewing over the past year. To give all of you a little insight, I have brewed 36 batches of beer ranging from 5 to 10 gallons per batch over the last year. To put this into laymen terms, this is a fuck ton of beer. This may bring you to the understandably logical conclusion that I am a enormous drunk who spends my days stumbling around in my piss stained robe at all hours of the day throwing random car parts on my lawn while devouring a bag of this months new Doritos variety. But honestly, I am only a casual drunk, whatever the fuck that means. In reality, I’ve given away more of the beer I’ve made than I’ve actually drank. For me brewing beer isn’t about drinking the beer I make, although it is quite nice drinking something you made, its about creating something from nothing and hoping it resembles something others would consider “good”. For me, brewing is my release. It is a time where I can say, “Fuck everything that has ever bogged me down in life.” It’s like masturbating and achieving climax over and over again for 5 hrs straight. Brewing fulfills my creative side that I somehow continually lose touch with as I become older and distracted by pointless shit like blogging on the internet. With this being said, last week I was fortunate enough to make time enough to brew twice during the week. Last Thursday I made my first barleywine in celebration of my future daughters birth. Hopefully, I can bottle the beer and each year sample one until my daughters 21st birthday when I can sample one with her. Sunday, I was able to brew again after work, which was a terrible idea since I was up from 7 am to 1030 pm working non-stop. I brewed a Russian Imperial Stout with my friend Lee and his friend Ken. This was my first opportunity to brew with Lee. For me, it is always interesting to brew with others and see the way in which they approach the art of brewing beer. In honor of our big brew day Lee and Ken brought some BIG beers for us to try. We started the day with Firestone Walker, a personal favorite of mines, Abacus Barleywine. I had never tried this beer before and must say it was a blessing having the chance to try such a fantastic beer. (DISCLAIMER: This is the part where my tiredness and lack of ambition and drive takes over and i quickly end the post with uninformative info on the remaining beers) As my mind loses consciousness and my body loses the simple ability to continue typing it must be said thelast two beers were lkj;dsnclshi h8e928wonlc9eijos kljhdv9iw3nrlkdfhfasbcaksdfasdc. FUCK.
Editors note.
The Stone Belgo Anise Imperial Russian Stout is fantastic, but needs to age as the anise is quite overpowering, but with aging could mellow out to create a very unique and complex beer.
The Beast is by Avery Brewing Company, one of my personal favorite breweries. They beers they make are fantastic and I cannot think off the top of my head a beer by them I have yet to enjoy. The Beast is part of the Demons Series. This series consists of 3 super high strength beers. The Beast is a Grand Cru brewed to a astonishing 13 percent ABV. IT was malty, heavy, syrupy, and complex.This bottle would age better than Rob Lowes character Chris Trager on Parks And Rec.
“Craig Ferguson is a fucking asshole.”
I haven’t beer blogged in quite some time due to my impossible to defeat laziness and general lack of inspiration. For those unaware I am only a couple months away from being responsible for a life other than my own. While this scares me completely shitless I am also incredibly excited and anxious for what the future holds. In the process of preparation for becoming a “father” I have been growing a beard and additional layers of body fat. I figure all respectable father figures have beards and since I am from the LC Valley, it is required I be borderline obese in order to grow a beard of a length longer than a 1/8”. I would suspect that with such rigid rules for Valley beardumb that it would be required I fill out some sort of paperwork, then reality sets in and I remember I am from the “Valley” were it is more than common that expecting mothers smoke cigarettes while wearing nothing more than booty shorts, high heels, a camisole that barley covers her rolls of pre-baby fat/pregnant belly while her breast practically fall out due to the absences of a bra and she carries another small child and casually drops her cellphone between her breasts for storage.
I have started tonight with a bottle of Laughing Dog’s Cream Ale. I had this beer recently at AppleSleeze and was positive the Jusitn Biber like douche who brought it to me brought the wrong beer being he informed me it was “Bud Light”. When I told him I didn’t order a Bud Light he went back to check only to return with what tasted like a Bud Light. I even mentioned to the waitress I may have been given the wrong beer. She quickly informed me that, “Cream Ales are SUPPOSE to taste like Bud Light” I have not drank very many examples of Cream Ales, but Bud Light certainly didn’t come to my mind when I tried them. After popping open this bottle of Laughing Dogs Cream Ale, I have come to believe I was correct in my assumption that I was served the wrong beer. The ACTUAL Laughing Dog Cream Ale has a slight grainy flavor and a very crisp finish from the mix of lager and ale yeast. There is almost a subtle tartness to the beer and a very faint hop bitterness. The particular bottle I have has been almost over carbonated due to what I believe to be poor packaging. It had sediment in the bottle and the according to the bottle this beer is filtered. It has a very gassy aroma and flavor that reminds me of improperly bottled homebrew. In fact, the beer reminds me of a slightly better version of the many failed attempts at Blonde Ales/Cream Ales local homebrewers have given me to try over the past two years. Although the beer taste ok the over carbonation is hard to get past and the flavor mediocre at best. I give this beer a C-. I think now I will go enjoy a Stone Cali-Beglique.
“Him and her GOT IT ON!”
Sierra Nevada Celebration
Everybody I know went apeshit over the Celebration by Sierra Nevada. To say the least, I was excited as well. A holiday seasonal that is an IPA, right up my ally. To my dismay, Celebration is fresh hop beer. Fresh hop beers use fresh wet hops. This means the hops haven’t been dried out like normal. Because of this when making a wet hop beer in order to achieve the same amount of bitterness, about 3 times the number of hops is required. Because of this, fresh hop beers usually have a vegital grassy flavor that doesn’t sit well with me. The beer has a really nice flavor until on the back of the tongue you get this wet grassy taste. It smells sort of like mowing the lawn and taste the same. I bought a 6-pack and it took me a long time to drink and I had help. Next.
Port Brewing Wipeout IPA
I’ve had one beer by Port before. Their double IPA was fantastic and loaded with malt and hops. It also had a high ABV, nice. Port’s Wipeout IPA was breath of fresh air. I hadn’t been able to locate a good hop forward IPA since I last brewed one. My current area of residence does not provide me with ample varieties of super hop forward IPAs. We get the usual Sierra Nevadas, Ninkasi, Widmir type IPA’s, which are all great, but they run along pretty traditional standards of American IPAs. Their trying to reach mass audiences so they are slightly tame. Port’s Wipeout is one of those beers that gets you excieted and reminds you why you love craft beer so much. It poured a light gold color and had a super white head. It oozed out citrusy hop aroma. I was in love. Wish I had access to this beer more often. I would load up and drink way more than my wallet could afford.
Southern Tier Unearthly Imperial IPA
Southern Tier Unearthly Imperial IPA is really expensive. It cost $9 for a 22oz bomber. Was it worth it? Sort of. The beer was fantastic, but it might not be worth $9 to most. Unless you are a avid craft beer fan and have a hankering for high ABV high hopped Imerpials then buy one it’s worth it.
Janet’s Brown Ale Attempt #1
This was my first attempt at a Mike “Tasty” McDole recipe. McDole is a contributer to the Brewing Networks, Sunday Session and Jamil Show CYBI. He is also a avid homebrewer and has won many awards for his beers. He has also brewed many of his recipes on a commercial level with local California Breweries. This beer is a hoppy brown ale. Almost like a India Brown Ale. It uses healthy doses of Northern Brewer, Centennial and Cascade hops. My beer need a little more malt, but was still a great beer. The hops were forward and firm and the aroma was massive and resiny. I plan on remaking this beer and adding a little more base malt to up the gravity.
Lagunitas Imperial Red Ale
I went to Lagunitas website to try and figure when Lagunitas brews the Imperial Red Ale. I found nothing. It should be noted I have no idea how old this bottle is. I bought it at Jim’s Homebrew Supply in Spokane in their clearance section for less than $2. So I am gonna assume it’s old as shit and has been improperly stored. When I poured the beer I was very careful because the bottle was naturally carbonated and had sediment in the bottom of the bottle. This is something I haven’t experienced with a Lagunitas beer before, so this leads me to believe the beer to be relatively old. Because I poured so cautiously no head formed. It had medium carbonation, but the hop aroma of this 84 ibu behemoth have almost completely fallen out and rich malt aromas have taken the forefront. It is a dark copper red color and smells of dark thick syrupy malt. The taste is similar to the smell and the malt is the primary flavor with hints of…..
fill in the blank I’m tired.
I just remembered I wrote this little story about 6 plus months ago. I don’t believe I ever posted this so here we go.
In the last week I’ve made a two trips to the ever so delightful Spoakompton. Spokane is one of the most spread out shit hole excuses for a city I’ve ever visited. Every neighborhood except for the nice parts of town, which all lay on the outskirts, are filled with a couple nice houses then fucking meth dens next door. Fuck that town. One nice thing about Spokane is that it’s big enough to support a pretty vibrant supply of craft brew.
During this latest trip I was introduced to a new store thanks to my friend Grant. Over on the corner of Alberta and Rowen rests a bodega. Say it with me now. BO-DAY-GA. It think it was called BG or something like that. Inside this barred up concrete building lays a plethora of craft beer that is rarely available in Eastern WA. The whole reason we even went to this store was because Grant claimed to have seen the elusive Dogfish Head 120 Min IPA. Of course, they didn’t have any, but they did have a bunch of sweet shit I wanted and it made my selection difficult. Although Grant and I had a difficult time deciding the picture above shows we ending up settling on a few things. (editors note: not all those beers were purchased their, but about 7 of them were and Grant forgot some in the fridge)
“hey, hey, mutha fuckas.”
