Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular 2012

Craft beer is alive and doing OK in Australia.  I wouldn't say it is doing well though.  According to this article in The Economist, Australian beer consumption is at an all-time 65-year low.  I mentioned this fact to an Aussie mate of mine.  He said it's "unfortunate" and that he personally can't be "blamed for the drop in consumption".  

With this in mind, I decided to go to the Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular anyway.  I don't regret it.  My only complaints are that the event was too small and there wasn't enough time to try all the beers.  I had hoped that every Australian craft brewer would have sent a representative to be at a booth.  Alas, only three representatives from three different breweries were at the event.  The event only lasted four and a half hours.  Multiple Q&A sessions with the three brewers were offered during the event, but I was too busy either taking down tasting notes or waiting in line for more samples.   

Of course, the most important question you have is "How was the beer?".  I must admit, as an American craft beer snob, I was completely surprised by how good the beer was.  I tried 20 unique beers from Australia and New Zealand.  Let me say right off the bat that New Zealand has got some hops.  In Australia, getting hops from New Zealand is relatively easy compared to importing them from the States.  As a home brewer, I will definitely be exploring the hoppy goodness that the Kiwis have to offer.

I will spare you all the gory details of how the event was run, but I will say that I didn't find it to be very efficient.  I would have preferred a booth style event.  The beers were served at four bars with the same 60 beers at each bar.  If you want to know more about the event and all the beers, here is a link to the booklet that I got.

This is what the sample trays looked like (I got 10 samples at a time):

And this is what the bars looked like:

Finally, this is a shot of the inside of the Royal Exhibition Building where the SpecTAPular was held:

OK, OK, enough beating around the bush.  Here are the beers that I tried with my own amateur tasting notes:

Tasting Notes:  This beer was spicy, like it had hot sauce or pepper in it.  I've never had anything quite like it and honestly I didn't like it.  I don't even think it was the right sample.  A very rocky start to the event.

Tasting Notes:  I wouldn't call it a "Californian flavour" IPA.  IPA is a very common beer style throughout America these days.  When I think "hops and more hops", Delaware and Dogfish Head come to mind, not California.  Compared to a typical American IPA, this beer did not have much of a floral or fruity nose to it.

Tasting Notes:  Wow!  Fruity and malty.  I am a sucker for very strong Belgian yeast flavors and this beer had plenty of that.  I think the fruit and spices gave it a deceivingly higher ABV taste.  The beer was only 6.5% ABV, which is at the low end for a farmhouse ale.

Tasting Notes:  Suprising taste.  I guess I missed that it was a barley wine when I picked it out.  Very slight hop character.  I could have been imagining the hop character or maybe it was lingering from the previous IPA I had.  I would like to point out that this beer was the only international collaboration at the event.  AMERICA!

Tasting Notes:  This was my second favorite beer at the event.  Distinct fruity nose.  The aroma of this beer was unlike anything I have ever had.  Such a sour but tasty flavor!  I can't fully describe how good the taste was, but the tartness of this one was amazing.  I could drink this beer every day and not get bored of it.

Tasting Notes:  My first Grissette. The description above says it all.  This beer had a great Belgian yeast tatse.

Tasting Notes:  The strangest German-style beer I have ever had.  Smoky flavor and I could taste the banana too.  Sublte smoky nose, but it wasn't overpowering like most smoked beers.  Believe it or not, this beer also tasted like a Hefewizen.

Tasting Notes: Guesses: ginger or sarsaparilla. Liquorice taste as well. The most interesting farmhouse ale I've had.  

Tasting Notes:  Lovely mix of Belgian yeast and dry hops.  After the first sip, I wasn't sure if I liked the spicy after-taste.  Surprisingly fruity nose for such a spicy taste.  After the second sip, the spicy after-taste wasn't so overpowering, but it did linger.

Tasting Notes:  The above description says it all.  I will also point out that this beer was brewed in the suburb next to the one I currently live in.

At this point, I had to get back in line for more beer.  I was probably in the queue (Aussie for "line") for about 30-40 minutes and I lost most of my buzz.  Later, as I was waiting to pay for the trays, I caught a lovely whiff of my New Zealand IPA tray.  You have to be a true hop head to fully appreciate the smell of five hoppy beer samples.  Mark my words, New Zealand is making moves with their hops.

Anyway, I present to you my impressions of this New Zealand IPA tray:

Tasting Notes:  I thought this zythos was a standard yet solid IPA.

Tasting Notes:  Excellent floral nose.  I didn't really taste the "cat pee".  Strong tasting "dank" IPA!  This was the best IPA that I tried at the event.

Tasting Notes:  Quite a unique IPA with rose petals added after fermentation.  Very bitter IPA taste with a wonderful rose nose.  Interesting contrast between the sweet rose smell and the bitter taste. I can't emphasize enough how subtle but good the rose smell was.

Tasting Notes:  I did not find "extreme bitterness" in this IPA.  Very good IPA though.  Malt sweetness was obvious and lingered on the back of the palette.  Fresh grassy nose, similar to Great Divide Fresh Hop.  After-taste went from bitter to sweet slowly in a good way.  Very complex tasting IPA.

Tasting Notes:  Here are my unedited notes for this one:

"Wow! Tea leaf taste is great. lemon tea taste at first, lingers to orange/citrus taste. lemon at the end. Lemon 'sticks' to the tongue. Could have been a bad batch, but the nose was not good at all. Bacon smell? Strange....".  

I could swear the Yeastie Boys added actual lemons to this beer, but the description states that it was just "lemon hop flavours" mixed with the English tea.  The Yeastie Boys have some very tasty hops in their arsenal.  I brew beer myself and I am inspired to explore as many hops varieties from New Zealand as I can after trying this beer.  With that said, I was still very disappointed with this beer.  The nose was horrible.  It had a "bacon" smell to it and I'm thinking it was a bad batch.  Regardless, this beer still tasted amazing.  I would consider this beer an "over the top" beer that only a seasoned beer (or maybe tea) drinker would enjoy.  I really wonder what went wrong with the nose though.  If anyone who is reading this has an idea, please post in the comments.

Before I move on to the last set of the samples, let me say that this New Zealand IPA tray was the highlight of the event for me.  I can honestly say New Zealand IPAs easily rival American IPAs.  They are basically on par with American IPAs in my mind.  Like I said before, I am going to do further research on New Zealand hops.  As a side note, the rest of my tasting notes were probably skewed by the hoppiness of this tray.

Tasting Notes:  I didn't like it. It had a muted and stale grainy taste to it.

Tasting Notes:  A very unique Dunkelweizsen. I could taste the "bananas", but I couldn't taste the rum.  I might have detected a slight spicy rum smell, but it could have been my imagination.  I thought the "bananas" taste was slightly overpowering.   All in all, I thought this beer was too sweet for a Dunkelweizen.  Still a good beer though.

Tasting Notes:  Great hopped amber.  Definitely "leans towards the hoppier" for an amber ale.  This beer reminded me of "Native Amber", which is an amber ale brewed by Coop Ale Works in Oklahoma City.   Although this one had more of a sweet malty/fruity taste to it than Native Amber.  Hoppy smell was subtle.  This style of hopped amber ale is one that I want to explore more in my own home brewing.

Tasting Notes:  This solid Dunkelweizen had a sweet smell.  My favorite German-style beer at the event.

Tasting Notes:  Here are my unedited tasting notes:

"Sweet potatoes taste was too subtle and dissappeared quickly. bitter after taste didn't seem to fit the style. pretty much bitter on the whole palette. oh, its a Porter, not an ale."

Basically, I thought this was an attempt at mimicking American pumpkin ales.  This beer was definitely a porter though.

In conclusion, my taste buds were in heaven after the Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular was over.  I was very excited to be there and due to time constraints, I was overwhelmed by the amount of beer that I had to taste before it was all over.  I have to tip my hat to all the craft brewers in Australia and say "Keep up the good work!"

Gag Reviews of Diamond Encrusted HDMI Cable

While snooping around Google+, I found a link to a bunch of funny reviews for this ridiculously priced diamond encrusted HDMI cable. But first, a little background. I've seen this kind of stuff before. On Amazon, hundreds of people posted ridiculous reviews for this stupid t-shirt that had two wolves howling with a full moon behind them.

If you are a tech geek, I highly recommend you read the reviews for this HDMI cable. The review below was one of the funnier ones I read.

"It was during my 32 viewing of The Phantom Menace that I began to lament the disservice of Jar Jar Binks. A phenomenal portrayal, my tv doesn't do the character justice. I needed more. Perhaps, I thought, it was my HDMI cable that was the culprit. Yes, I knew it was. I needed a cable that could faithfully relay the Gungun dialect with its delightful linguistic playfulness. I needed a cable that could realize in true definition Jar Jar's floppy ears and big teeth, his Steven Tyler-ness so to speak. Off to Best Buy it was.

Having arrived, I was in awe of the cable selection. There were tungsten/graphene alloy plated HDMIs and barnacle-encrusted VGAs with optional gold leaf insignia. But then I saw her, the AudioQuest Diamond 3.3 HDMI cable in Dark Gray/Black for the measly price of $1059.99. I snatched it as if it were the last scrap of food in the world. Looking furtively around at other customers I sprinted to the cashier and paid, but it felt like stealing.

At home, I plugged her in. I was brought to tears as Jar Jar came to life on the screen. His performance was even more magical than I had ever dreamed. After watching Phantom, I popped in Lord of the Dance to see if there was a noticeable difference with 3D. What happened next was indescribable. The images began to slip into 4 dimensions. I could now watch as the Irish dancers pranced back in time to Cretaceous period where they were eaten by Velociraptors. Then the Velocirapotors began doing an Irish jig and were transported back on stage with the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. Then they ate Ringo.

I am currently using my cable to perform self-surgeries with some modest success. All in all, money well spent."

Hilarious! Now back to reading the rest of the reviews.

Kanye and Jay-Z Twitter Hate

So, I'll share a little secret with you. The best way to find new music is to follow your favorite music artists and record labels on Twitter. By doing this, you also get to hear their opinions on other people's music. I have a list on my Twitter account where I follow 37 other Twitter accounts. As my favorite artists or record labels mention a new artist or a new album release, I follow that new artist or preview that new album on Amazon MP3. I've found so much good stuff on Twitter by doing this. This helps me keep current with the music I like.

Anyway, to the point. I was catching up on my music on Twitter today. I found a few tweets from my favorite music producers regarding the new Kanye West and Jay-Z album, Watch the Throne. Let's just say I didn't read anything positive. First of all, Blockhead's comment is hilarious:

I'm thinking about releasing a book called "Watch the throne".It's contents will be made up entirely of tweets I've made about shitting.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyBlockhead
BlockheadNYC

I don't think HudMo liked it either. He deleted his tweet about the album, but I retweeted it before he hit the delete button. Here's what I retweeted. Not making this up:

RT @Moanhawke Ok I've watched the throne all the way through, still waiting on something happening... #moreKanyeJayZhateless than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyJohn Delaware
taterpoon

I think Flying Lotus is indifferent towards the album. Here's his facetious comment:

ok im not gonna say anything bad about watch the throne. I like some stuff on track 7.....There.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyFlying Lotus
flyinglotus

And what is my opinion? I'll probably never listen to the whole album and I might hear a few tracks from it while I try to dance up on chicks at the club.

Delawhere

I was chilling in Delaware this past week. Got back in OKC yesterday. I was hanging out with my brothers and a few close friends. I don't keep in touch with many of my high school friends in Delawhere, so most of my time was spent chilling with my brothers. We drank quite a bit of Jäger one night. My brothers and I were yelling, playing pool, yelling, wrestling, and ripping the buttons off my brothers pants that night. I decided to play Out From Out Where, an album by Amon Tobin. I turned it up pretty loud at what had to have been 3 AM. Things in the room got hectic to say the least. The Jäger didn't help, or did it?

I thought I would be posting about the good times while I was in Delaware, but it all started to turn into a blur after a few days. I might post a few stories once I sort through the whole experience (and the pictures).

I'm on a Billboard Somewhere in Missouri

So, I decided it was a good idea to check my email right in the middle of putting some socks and shoes on. Bad idea! I read an auto-generated email from facebook.com that said someone tagged me in a photo. Cool. With only one sock on, I checked out the picture. I was pretty excited when I saw the photo. Back when I was a Senior in college, some marketing people for the engineering school I went to (Parks College) decided to take some pictures of students in the Electrical Engineering Senior Design Lab. Welp, little did I know that the picture I posed for that day would end up on a billboard. I'm the guy in the middle:


The girl on the right is cheating since she wasn't a Senior when that picture was taken, but whatever. Heh. Well anyway I got excited and decided to make this quick post. I'm going to finish putting my shoes on now and go to Wallymart.

Finishing Touches

As I'm writing this, I'm finally putting the finishing touches on my first mix. I'm using the Sony Acid Pro 5.0 audio software package for this mix. This powerful audio software package is the perfect pallete for the powerful music I threw into this mix. Making a mix with audio software is so much harder than I imagined it would be.

First of all, phrasing the music just right was pretty challenging. Basically what phrasing means is that you have to make sure the transitions between tracks flow just right. Phrasing with Acid Pro is much easier than doing it with two turntables, but I'll admit this mix is far from perfectly phrased.

Overall, I'd say the biggest challenge in making this mix was the sound engineering. Getting all the volume levels just right for all of the tracks in this mix was very tedious. The fact that I'm a perfectionist didn't make engineering this mix any easier either. Just to give you an idea of how much of a perfectionist I am, as I wrote this post and listened to my mix, I was still making volume adjustments to tracks! I started making the mix without worrying about the volume level of each track. Towards the end of making this mix, I was constantly going back and forth between tracks, changing the volume levels to get everything just right. Intially, I ended up running out of time to properly engineer this mix before I had to burn it to a CD so I could play it at a party up in Delaware. As the mix played at the party, my good friend Luke noticed that the Pop Levi track was too loud, and also that I poorly phrased one of his favorite tracks in the mix. The track right after the track he liked came in way too early. He said, "The song wasn't over yet." You were right Luke, it wasn't over yet, so I adjusted the phrasing to let that Bonobo track you like so much play a little longer.

Finally, another challenge in making this mix was trying to get it to last a full hour. The mix CD I took up to Delaware back in July was a full hour, but honestly I was just throwing in filler tracks towards the end, and I think the mix really lost it's flow at about 45 min. Since July 2006, I've thought about how I'd correct this issue. Then a spark of brilliance came to me. "I'll just make it shorter and cut out the filler," I said to myself and that's what I did. I cut out two Daedlus tracks, a Blockhead track ("Expiration Date" was so overplayed amongst my circle of friends in Delaware anyway), and also a track by Pest. I really, REALLY wanted to leave the other two Daedlus tracks in this mix, but the tracks by Daedlus I threw in at the end orignally were clocking in at 120 bpm. The majority of the mix was running at 80-90 bpm, so the transition to 120 bpm was pretty sloppy and just killed the flow of the mix. In the new and improved version of my mix, the fastest track is 105 bpm and the total play time is 50:29 min. Don't worry Luke, I left Bonobo "Recurring" in the mix too.

I know I said I'd release this mix on my blog back in July, but I've been busy with other things and to be honest, the challenges involved in making this mix were really frustrating for me. I bascially gave up on this mix about mid-Augus 2006 and didn't mess with it until about a day ago. So it's finally done.

Tracklist:

1. Treva Whateva - "Singalong" VS. Mr. Scruff - "Fish"
2. Skalpel - "Test Drive"
3. Loka - "Meet Dad"
4. Jaga Jazzist - "Oslo Skyline"
5. Jaga Jazzist - "All I Know is Tonight"
6. Daedlus - "Viva Vida"
7. Skalpel - "Konfusion"
8. Fink - "Biscuits"
9. Fog - "Under an Anvil Tree"
10. Pop Levi - "Blue Honey"
11. Blockhead - "Dough Nation"
12. Ammoncontact - "Beautiful Flowers"
13. One Self - "Hollow Human Beings"
13. Bonobo - "Recurring"
14. Ammoncontact - "Elevation"
15. Ammoncontact - "Omniverses 1"

Download it here. (Link is temporarily down)

Much respect to the Ninja Tune crew.

My Brother's New Bodyboard

brother: dude im gonna get a new bodyboard
brother: dude im gonna get a new bodyboard
brother signed off at 5:58:46 PM.
brother signed on at 7:23:25 PM.
me: hard slick, or the one with a clear window to look down through the water to see the fishies?
me: i recommend the one with the clear window
brother: yea thats the one i ordered, jay reale only had like 3 left in stock
brother: they are selling like hot cakes
brother: colin hurlihy has a new hard slick drop knee sig model with two windows
brother: one in the front and one in the back so you can see stuff behind you too
me: HOLY SHIT!!!! TWO WINDOWS!?!?!?!
brother: hell yea dude
brother: it's like $360
me: i'd pay 500 for it
brother: the windows are framed into the board with plastic stringers, none of that aluminum graphite bullshit