Fall-Back Beer Fest

One of my greatest passions is, of course, for craft/micro beers. I feel very fortunate that I've had the opportunity to experience as many different beers as I have and I look forward to trying many, many more. Some people aren't as lucky though. Some people haven't had the chance to try very many. I've found that it's for many reasons, too. Not enough money to buy more expensive beer, unfamiliarity with the many styles of beer, fear of buying a whole case of something new and not liking it, or just a lack of desire to try something new.

Since I realized that some of my friends fall into this unfortunate category, my wife and I decided to take it upon ourselves to change that.

Last night, we hosted a Halloween slash Beer Tasting Party. The idea was to have everyone attending bring a 6 or 12 pack of their favorite craft beer to share. Everyone got a custom made, "Fall-Back Beer Fest", 4 oz. tasting glass (thanks to my inability to do things simply). Then we started to drink.

Each beer was opened, explained a little, then shared by everyone. We ended up having almost twenty different beers. We had lagers, English and German ales, pugilist ales, pale ales, ESAs, IPAs, porters, stouts, wheat ales, lambics, and a few more. It was fantastic.

By the end of the night, many of our friends told us that they never realized how great craft beers are. They all found new favorites and an appreciation for new styles. It was definitely a success and its something we're planning to do many more times.

Very Brief Update

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted anything, so I'll have to give a quick update. I don't want to make it long and drawn out, so any details that I leave out, just fill them in with your imagination...

The biggest update that I have is that I got married! I'm now Mr. Graham Kopp! Well, I guess I always was, but now I'm Mr. Graham Kopp + Wife! The Kopp family just grew a little bigger. Here are a couple pictures of my beautiful bride, Sonya, and I at our awesome wedding.

So many people ask me if it feels different now that we're married. I have to say that it does and it doesn't. All in very good ways. In the ways that it feels the same, I'm very happy about. I didn't want it to feel different. That's why I asked her to marry me. I loved it just the way it was. As for the things that feel different, I guess its really just a sense of pride. I'm very proud to be her husband. I'm proud to call her my wife. I catch myself using my left hand more often in social situations so people notice my wedding ring. Simple things like that. I just feel good. I feel lucky to have such an amazing person in my life that loves me as much as I love her.

Alright, now to pick up the pace on this update...

I've been building a bunch of cabinets for the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital with my buddy Ryan. It's going really well. Getting our names out there.

I took a job with as a professional custom furniture and cabinet maker. It's pretty sweet. I get to design, build, and spray things all day long and at the end of the week, I get paid!

I've been building a bunch of things at home. I recently was given a pile of cedar planks, which will soon be built into a kayak. I have always wanted to build a boat, so I'm very excited.

Other than that, there have been a few exciting things, but nothing out of the ordinary so far. I'm looking forward to some new adventures in the near future. Especially now that I will have my wife by my side through it all.

I'll try to keep up with this more often, but until then, I'm off to have some beers with my friends.

Tongue Splitter Pale Ale

It's been a long time since we've brewed. Unfortunately, brewing costs money and life seems to have been leaving my wallet a little on the empty side.

Well, we finally got some more ingredients the other day and we got back to work. We figured we'd try yet another new style, so we went with a Pale Ale. I would place it closer to an IPA though. Appropriately named Tongue Splitter Pale Ale, this five gallon batch has five ounces of hops. We used Sterling hops, Nugget hops, Glacier Hops, and two ounces of Cascade hops. Our house smelled incredible for hours. This brew should have some fantastic bite to it.

I think I fell in love with Sonya even more when she came running downstairs to tell me something and stopped in her tracks to say, "Oh my God! Our house smells delicious!"

You have to love a girl that appreciates a good brew.

Primary fermentation went very well. It just finished up last night. I'm getting ready to run downstairs right now to rack it into secondary. So in about five and a half weeks from now, I think we're going to have a pretty amazing beer.

I'll make sure to post something once we try it out.

Next week we plan to brew a Cream Ale. This will be another new experience. I've never brewed a Cream Ale before. I'm pretty excited.

But how couldn't I be? It's HOMEBREW!

Disc Golf

A while ago, Sonya and I found out that one of the parks nearby has a disc golf course. Well, yesterday we tried it out. It was a perfect day outside and we couldn't pass up the chance to take advantage of it.

The game is played just like real golf, except minus the plaid pants. You also mainly play in the woods rather than nice manicured fairways. There are also hard, heavy versions of frisbees instead of clubs and balls. Plus the holes aren't so much holes as they are big metal baskets wrapped in chains.

Other than that, its exactly like golf.

We had a great time and 18 holes only takes a little over an hour. We're definitely going to make this a normal outing.

Bottled Beaujolais

Well, here it is folks.

Sonya and I bottled our next batch of wine last week. The bottles are still naked because I haven't come up with a good idea for the label yet. Don't worry though, I'm sure we'll come up with something delightfully cheesy very soon.

This batch, I must say, smells incredible. I'm really excited to try it out in a few months. Hard to believe that our wedding is in less than four months!

I'm looking forward to sharing all of this wine with my family and friends!

Hooray for Beaujolais

As you can seen in the background of this picture, our wine cabinet is looking pretty pitiful. We're down to three bottles. That's sad considering it was completely full about three months ago. I'm not really sure how to explain that, but the fact is, we're almost out.

Sonya and I are making wine once again and we're very excited about it.

This batch, we've decided to go with a Beaujolais. It's a light to medium bodied red wine that is typically consumed young, which is perfect because we plan to share it with everyone at our wedding in August. We're making six gallons, so we should have about thirty bottles, however considering our families and friends, we may need more.

Imperial Stout

Well, we've brewed again. This time Ryan and I decided to tackle the challenge of an Imperial Stout.

I am very pleased and impressed with this brew, too. It turned out amazingly. It's dark, it's smooth, it's bold, and it's very strong. We brewed five gallons and we only have a little less than a case left. We're definitely going to brew this one again.

I've been thinking lately that I should start posting the recipes for each brew as well, just in case someone wants to try them out for themselves. You really don't need a ton of equipment, just a lot of patience, a great sense of cleanliness, and a passion for beer.

Maybe I'll start with the next brew...

Kale Chips

One of the things that I love about Sonya is that we share a love for food. All kinds of food, too. We're probably the least picky people in that department, especially me. A few weeks ago, we decided to try out a new recipe that we had stumbled onto. It was a recipe that involved Kale.

Basically, all you do is tear the Kale into potato chip sized pieces, coat them in olive oil and salt, then bake them until they are crispy. Supposedly they were supposed to taste like a healthy version of a potato chip.

For those who don't know, Kale is a very dark, leafy, green vegetable.

And it tastes like crap.

Maybe we just didn't put enough salt on them, but in any case, they bypassed our mouths and headed full steam into the garbage can. At least we tried though. It's so hard to be healthy.

Wine Stopper Attempt

I finished my first wine stopper this afternoon. I'm fairly pleased with it considering it's my first attempt. I used Yucatan Rosewood for the top and I'm very impressed with its natural beauty. I still have to put a few coats of clear finish on it, but I thought I would post it as-is for now.

Southwestern Dinner

I wouldn't consider myself to be the greatest cook ever, but there are times when I happen to throw things in a pan and they end up tasting pretty good. Last night, I decided to try my hand at making Sonya and I a southwestern styled dinner. It turned out really well, so I thought I would share the recipe with anyone who is ever in the mood for a fairly unhealthy, unbalanced, absolutely delicious meal.

Here's the menu. It's simple and I'm pretty sure I didn't cover all of the food groups, but it was darn good. So I don't really care.

Pico de Gallo Chicken Quesadillas and Baked Southwestern Egg Rolls

I realize it sounds like I'm missing something like a side dish, but it honestly seemed perfect to us. I listed the links to the recipes that I found online. I altered my recipes just a little. I wanted to go a healthier route with the egg rolls, so I baked instead of fried. I recommend it.

Pico de Gallo Chicken Quesadillas

Southwestern Egg Rolls

This is the "stuffing" for the egg rolls. It smelled incredible while it was cooking. I almost decided to scrap the rest of the recipe and just eat it with a spoon.

I decided against it though.




The pico de gallo was amazing. Sonya and I both really enjoyed the lime and cilantro in this. It went amazingly with the quesadillas and we found out later that it's even great alone as a dry salsa with tortilla chips.




Here is the final product. I cut the quesadilla into 8 slices and served those with the pico de gallo. I cut the egg rolls in half (at an angle so they looked nicer) and served them with a dollop of daisy.

Seriously. A spoon full of sour cream.

Instead of frying the egg rolls, I prepared them according to the recipe, then baked them at 450 degrees for about 12 minutes.

I'll definitely do this one again.

Ski Dummy

Last week, I heard about a Beer Festival in Seven Springs. So obviously, I wanted to know more about it. I went to their website, but immediately got distracted. I stumbled upon an advertisement for an annual event called the Ski Dummy Competition. Apparently it's an event that happens every January and it just so happened that it was going to be held this weekend!

As you can imagine, I called Ryan and our friend Steve and we got plans rolling. We only had one day to construct our Ski Dummy, but that was no problem. We figured our competition probably only had a few weeks head start on us.

You have to love spur of the moment things like this.

We decided that we wanted to build something ridiculous, so we ended up building an old man with a walker on skis. We didn't have a ton of time, so we build him in cross section style. You can see what I mean in the pictures.

Sonya video taped our run and it is pretty cool.


One night of planning
One day of construction
ONE TROPHY

That's right. We won longest run and best time. Not too bad for last minute.

American Homebrewers Association

I am very proud to announce that I have become an official member of the American Homebrewers Association!

This excites me for a lot of reasons; I'm now open to many more opportunities to learn about my brewing, I can connect with thousands of brewers from around the country to talk about what's going on in the brewing world, I can learn how to build better brewing equipment, and now I have a cool AHA hat to wear.

Now all I have to do is quit my job and brew full-time. That would be a dream come true.

Pumpkin Chlorophenol Spice Ale

The Pumpkin Spice Ale seemed to be doomed from the very beginning. You can read all about it in an earlier post.

I'm pretty sure that this recipe may be thrown out, but it depends on who you ask. Sonya, Ryan, and I decided to give it a taste test last Friday to see if, by some miracle, the beer turned out. After the first taste, Ryan and I just looked disappointingly into our mason jars of "Pumpkin Ale" and decided, nearly simultaneously, that it had the odd taste of Band-Aids. For anyone who has ever brewed, you'll understand exactly what I mean by that.

It's not like we had an unfortunate "lunch lady band-aid in the goulash" kind of problem. It's just something known as off-flavoring. Surprisingly, I blame it on what seems like the smallest mistake that we made.

The tap water.
Although we only used a little bit, Pittsburgh's water sucks. You get Chlorophenols in unfiltered tap water if your city adds any chlorine to the water. Chlorophenols smell and taste like vinyl.

In case you were wondering.

Sonya, however, said that she didn't mind the slight medicinal taste and thought it wasn't too bad. I'm glad to hear that because we have two cases of it that I would hate to see go to waste. Anyone interested in helping us drink these two cases of beer is more than welcome. Or if you happen to have a cut on your tongue or in your throat and can't figure out how to put a band-aid on it, come on over.

It's honestly not that bad.

Darn tap water.

Another Excellant Hobby

Recently, I decided that I don't have nearly enough hobbies. Although Sonya would probably disagree.

I've always wanted to own a wood lathe, but never got around to actually getting one. Now that Sonya and I have a house with a basement, I decided it was time to clean it out and build a workshop.

What house is complete without one?

My new lathe came in last week and I am very excited to get started on my newest craft. Sonya is happy that I finally cleaned out the basement.

I got the lathe from Grizzly Industrial, Inc., which is now my favorite place to shop. While I was checking out, I noticed a link called Gift Cabana. It peaked my interest for some reason, so I decided to see what it was.

The Gift Cabana made me very, very happy.

It turns out, it is a gift registry and it just so happens that I'm getting married this summer. I'm not sure if Sonya is quite as excited by this find as I am, but I am beyond thrilled to say the least.

I'll post some updates on my lathe adventures in the near future.

Man Hairy January

It's been a while since I've been involved in a pointless and rewardless competition, so a few of my friends and I decided to compete in a beard growing challenge. It's going to be a short and sweet event. It's only taking place during the month of January this year. We considered having it during February so that we could lead into Mustachio March, but we decided against it for two reasons. Man Hairy January seems to sound better and mustaches are really creepy.

Unless you're this guy. Then it's just awesome.

To tell the truth, I'm not sure I have it in me to allow my face to grow such a thing, but I guess I'll take it one day at a time.

Sonya told me that she'll allow the beard as long as she can take a lot of pictures throughout the month. I'm not sure if this is purely for blackmail or if that's just part of it. I'm sure blackmail has something to do with it though. Understandably so.

I'm sure I'll keep this post updated due to it's ridiculousness.