I Heart Homebrew

It's been a while since I've touted about the wonders of beer, but I'm kind of a big fan. I even participated in Stubbie's 100 Beers in a Year challenge in 2009-2010. If you wondered why that fizzled out, I did get 60 in, but I just live too far way from the bar [just under an hour] to safely be successful at that challenge. Safety first, my friends.

The "failed" challenge was not a loss by any means, however. Not only did I have a blast blogging about my 60 different brewed adventures, I rekindled a friendship with a college buddy, Slim. After Slim stumbled across my blog on Facebook, we started chatting about styles of beer, beer advocate forums and the fact that Slim has started dabbling in homebrewing. Yeah, he's pretty much a badass, but I already knew that from our undergrad years.

However, when he offered to ship me some of his brewing samples from Austin, Tx where he currently resides, I pretty much jumped for joy. Would I like to try his homebrew? I would LOVE to.

Slim sent me 2 different beers to try: "Adam" or Adambier is a German style, high abv (alcohol by volume), dark, sour beer which Slim informed me he had been aging for two years.  The "IS" meanwhile is a year old Imperial Stout. 

I'm a total sucker for a sour beer (hello, Duchess is still my all time fave!) so we started with Adam. psst, by "we" I mean Christine, Ross and myself. They are my two favorite beer snobs, so it was only fitting we shared in the wealth of homebrew.

Cheers!

Honestly, my big girl words are failing me to describe how wonderful this beer was. I wish I could just loan you my taste buds and neurons so you could experience the wonderful crisp, sour combo of this beer. While Adambier is a dark beer, and according to the history, is traditionally hopped more heavily than other sour beers, I found this to be light and bright. Just perfect. My only complaint? That I only had one bottle and had to share it! ok, so I chose to share it, whatevs.

Next up was the Imperial.  This IS was bursting to get out of the bottle...literally.

Glug, glug, glug....but please don't chug.

No, you certainly would not want to chug this thick, creamy and slightly sweet stout. This would be the perfect "dessert" in my world and I enjoyed savoring the rich mouth feel as much as any chocolate ganache. 

"Adam" may have came out as my number main squeeze of the evening, but I would have loved to have more of the imperial on hand too. Slim, my wonderful friend, please don't stop brewing. You have a delicious talent and if you need me to try any of your next batch....well, you know what to do. Thank you again for sharing and letting me blather about the experience online.

Love to all,
~the, "it really pays to have talented, beer loving friends" gal, Jess

PS. Oh, and that whole perfect dessert idea? Technically both of the homebrew samplings were dessert, since Christine kindly whipped up a tasty dinner of some pesto gnocchi, asparagus and some yummy garlic bread from Fresh Market.