Beer Celebration

To celebrate the kegging of my Treewhale Irish Red ale, I made Mac& Cheese.

I seethed some vidalia onions in butter, then made a roux and added a mixture of half red ale and half half-and-half. From there, I added a cup of lite cream cheese, a cup of applewood smoked cheddar and a cup of mozzarella. I blended in the macaroni and diced smoked ham, topped it with crumbs and baked it for a half hour.

That's what I'm talking about, baby... Yeah.

Owen didn't win something

Came in 5th in Canadian Brewer of the year http://www.canadianbreweroftheyear.com/winners.htm without really brewing that much this year. Big plans for summer, though. The Aurora Brewing Challenge wrap up was a fun time after several evenings of judging beers. We killed a noble pig and ate a great deal of home-made sauerkraut. It was lovely.

I know, I know, two beer posts in 3 days. Get over it.

So I won the 2010 Vanbrewers beer competition on the weekend. Best of Show. The grand prize? Yaletown Brewing makes a batch of your beer and sells it to customers. Woo hoo.

Black Irish Red

Today, over came Nick the Mighty Brewer, and we proceeded to make ourselves a batch of Irish Red Ale, which turned out a bit more Brown than we expected. It sure smelled good, though, and we are looking forward to trying it out in a few weeks. Also in the beer news this week, Last Sunday was Big Brew at Alley Kat Brewery, where I walked away with a couple of carboys of a pleasing American pale ale, one of which I will be dry-hopping, and the other will be, I dunno, infused with raspberry essence. Yes, that would be nice.