#FABQ

So I stumbled across this cool little project while binging on Tasting Nitch's YouTube videos (If you don't know who she is, check her out! You won't regret it.). #FABQ stands for "Frequently Asked Beer Questions." It's a set of questions that *most* beer enthusiasts get asked at one point or another. The challenge is to make a video answering the questions, then tag 5 friends to do the same. It sounded like a fun way for all of you to get to know me a little better, so I decided to participate, but I'm bending the rules a little because videos just don't mix with my introverted self. So now that you know the game, here we go!

1. How did you get into beer geeking?/ Why beer?
When the hubby and I first moved to Galveston in 2009, we discovered a store called Spec's that carried more types of beer than I even knew existed. Hubby made it his mission to try a new beer every time we went shopping there. I was resistant to it at first, but finally came to realize that not all beer tastes like piss (thank you, Shiner!). A few years later, we moved to California, and the rest is history!

2. What's your favorite beer?
This is not an easy one to answer. It's like asking someone what their favorite book or movie is. It's like asking a mother which child is their favorite (OK, that might be a little extreme). When I get asked this question, I usually just say that I can't pick one, but I lean towards stouts and sours.

3. If you have one beer forever, what would it be?
Again, a hard one to answer, but if I absolutely had to pick one, I guess it would be Shiner Bock. Because it was the brew that opened my eyes to the beauty of craft beer, it holds a special place in my heart.

4. How can you drink so much? How do you stay healthy?
 I actually don't drink all that much? I don't drink every day, and usually don't have more than 2 beers at a time. I have gained some weight since I started this hobby, but I don't know if it's because of the beer or if it's because I've just crossed 30 and my metabolism is slowing down and hormones are weird. It's probably both, but mostly the beer. To keep it in check, I walk a lot, kayak occasionally, and have just started training to run my first 5k (pray for me!).

5. Are you an alcoholic? 
I actually wrote a small piece about this when I started my blog last year because I was getting some, ahem, "concerning looks" when I would express my passion with beer and brewing (read it here). I am definitely not an alcoholic. I'll give the answer I gave to a friend who is a recovering alcoholic and asked if I could stop drinking when I wanted: Yes, but I don't want to. I don't drink to get drunk, I drink to experience the flavors and appreciate the art of brewing. If I had to stop, I would be sad, but I wouldn't need help to do it. Besides, the great thing about being a homebrewer is that I could learn to make non-alcoholic beer! (Always looking for that silver lining)

6. What's your favorite ingredient? 
This is a question I don't think I've ever been asked, actually. I think I'd have to steal Nitch's answer and say yeast. Because without yeast, beer would not exist. We'd all just be drinking sweet wort. Yeast is the real hero here!

7. Do you brew? 
 Um, duh! Why else would I be here writing this?

8. What was your first beer?
 Ready to cringe? My 1st beer was Smirnoff Ice. Yeah, I know, it's not technically beer, it's a malt beverage, but did you think I knew that back then? No. A friend asked if I wanted a beer, I said if it tastes the way it smells, no (referencing Budweiser). He said, "You'll probably like this one." and handed me the Smirnoff.

9. Who in the beer world do you look up to?
I'd have to say Ashley Routson, aka The Beer Wench. I discovered her book, The Beer Wench's Guide To Beer, when I was working at B&N, and was immediately smitten. At a time when I was questioning whether or not I, as a woman, could actually make a name for myself in the beer industry, Ashley was the proof that I was looking for. She no longer works in beer, but I still admire her so much.

Well, that's it! I really enjoyed answering these, so I hope you enjoyed reading the responses. To see who I tagged, visit my Instagram page and check out the related post. And if you feel like participating, let me know so I can read your answers

Have a great weekend! 🍻

Happy Birthday to DBB!

A couple days ago (March 22nd) marked the 1st birthday of this blog, so naturally I've been reflecting on the events of the past year, and what a crazy one it's been!


Brewing and blog-wise, I wasn't as active this year as I wanted to be. My goals were to post something at least once per month and to brew just as often. I wanted to upgrade to a 3-tier all-grain system, add a few more carboys to accommodate my increase in brew days, explore barrel-aging, move from bottling to kegging, and find a job in the beer industry. Adulting got in the way of all the fun, and almost none of these things happened. I did buy one extra carboy and switched to all-grain in the form of Brew-In-A-Bag, which is better than nothing! It just so happened that the year I decided to get serious about my brewing, life threw us a few curveballs. If you know me personally, or have read my other posts, you know what those curveballs are, so I won't discuss them here.

We did manage to close out the last 12 months on a high note, though, and finally bought a house a little over a week ago! It's in a great neighborhood, has a big yard for our doggies, and plenty of space. Best of all, it has a HUGE garage with a nice shelved area that I've already claimed for my brewery space (we aren't completely moved in yet, so pics will come later).
Needless to say, I am so excited about what's to come in Drunken Borracho's 2nd year! All the goals I didn't reach this year seem much more possible now, and I'm itching to crank out our first batch at the new place. If all goes according to plan, it will be my first entry to a homebrewing competition taking place in May (freaking out just a little!).
Of course, this blog would just be a journal if it wasn't for those of you who take the time to read it, so THANK YOU for joining me on this journey. I hope you all decide to stick around for a while.

Cheers!

Did You Miss Me?

I'm finally back! Last time we hung out, I was getting ready to move from California to Texas with my Coastie husband. Well, let's just say our move turned out to be much more . . .eventful than we had planned. It started off with the discovery that our travel trailer (and home for the next few months) had been stolen from its storage space. Along with that came all the fun of changing plans, filing police reports, dealing with insurance, and deciding what the hell we were gonna do for a place to live when we got to our destination. 

With everything that was going on, I was worried that 9 Year Itch wouldn't be brewed on time to qualify as our anniversary beer, because who wants to brew beer in a hotel room? After going through plans B,C,D,E, and F, though, we finally got into an apartment and brewday was only postponed by 3 days, mostly due to the heat. I'll give more details on that in my next post.

So here we are, 6 months after my last post and 5 months after arriving in Galveston. In that time, we've managed to have some actual fun in between all the crap we had going on. We've brewed 2 batches of beer (3 if you count my little 1 gallon batch of ginger beer), attended a 3-day beer fest, several Oktoberfest celebrations, reestablished our status as regulars at our favorite bar, and visited a few breweries that popped up since we've been gone. Clearly, I have a lot to write about, so the posts should be a little more regular now. Thanks for being patient while I got my shit together!

 Wanna see pics of our adventures while waiting for the next post? Click here to go to my Instagram profile.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

A few days ago, I was driving to Reno to attend a wedding, and saw some Budweiser billboards that left a bad taste in my mouth. One said "Not A Fad," the other, "Not Overdone." It seems that the Super Bowl ads they put out for the last two years didn't satisfy their need to continually bash on the craft beer industry, so they've decided to continue the shit talking through billboards.

Normally, I wouldn't let things like this bother me, but they're talking about something I'm passionate about. Craft beer is anything but a fad, and it sure as hell is not overdone. The craft beer industry is a place for creativity and constantly pushing limits. It's not for sissies, as Budweiser insinuates in their ads. We know what it is to "brew the hard way." There are a lot of failed experiments and stories of things gone wrong, especially in homebrewing. Craft beer is also a very supportive industry, from what I've seen. Brewers collaborate with each other, promote each other, and celebrate each other. A fair share of them are buddies that started as homebrewers with a dream, and worked hard to get where they are today. Most homebrewers wouldn't think twice about sharing tips and tricks with others.

So to Budweiser, I ask- why the hate? Sure, you're a huge macrobrewery and proud of it, but you had to start somewhere, just like the rest of us. I know you get bashed on by beer snobs, too. That's no reason to target an entire industry. Not all of us judge (or even care about) the beer choices of others. Everyone is free to drink what they want. So why not take a note from your booming competition and show some class and support, rather than alienating yourselves from a great bunch of passionate people?

By the way, you readers may have noticed that I didn't include any pictures or video links to the ads in this post. That was on purpose, because I don't want to help spread their message any more than I already have. If you're really that curious, though, a quick Google search will show you all you need to see.

To end on a positive note, I had the opportunity to taste yet another one of those so-called "overdone" craft beers at the wedding I went to. Props to Great Basin Brewing Company for their Wild Horse Ale (altbier)! I only wish the keg would've lasted long enough for me to have more than one serving.

Moving Sucks

 My husband and I have moved around a few times during the 8.5 years we've been married (one of his occupational hazards), and it always sucks. The packing, the cleaning, the hours of driving, searching for a new place- it can get old quick. This time, there's an added (but welcome) complication, and it's name is homebrewing. Why does it make things complicated? I'm glad you asked . . .

Complication #1: It makes me feel like a hoarder.

One of the things I'm usually pretty good about is not accumulating too much stuff, because I know it'll all have to be packed up eventually. I also try to purge the house of unneeded items at least once per year. Those things kinda went out the window when I started brewing, though. It used to be that all my equipment fit nicely in the little cardboard box the kit came in. Then came the upgrade: a huge 6.5 gallon glass carboy, bottling bucket, several cases of empty glass bottles, various tubes, siphons, funnels, bottling tools, you get the point. I ended up commandeering one of my husband's shelving units in the garage, then eventually traded that one out for something bigger when the cases of finished product and our growing stash of cellared beer didn't fit on the small shelves anymore. When it came time to start purging, I knew my brewing space was no exception. Remember those cases of empty bottles? The logical part of my brain said, "Why are you going to lug all those empty bottles across the country? It's stupid, just get rid of them." The brewing side of my brain said, "It took you weeks of saving and hand washing bottles to build up this collection! Don't throw them, you'll just have to start over again. You'll use them eventually, anyway." After the silent panic attack, the logical side won, and into the recycle bin they all went. I'm not gonna lie, it hurt a little to let them go. And while I'm pretty sure I'm not an alcoholic, I sure as hell looked like one after throwing out about 48 bottles at once. That eliminated some of the load, but I still have about 2 cases of home brew (if you want to take some off my hands, let me know) and a case of beer from assorted breweries that do not distribute where we're going (you can't have any of those, sorry) in addition to all of my equipment. I wasn't willing to purge anything else. It takes baby steps, people.

Complication #2: Moving awakens my OCD tendencies

I've heard enough horror stories about moves gone wrong that it makes me picky about the things that I let the moving crews touch. You never know what condition your stuff will be in when it gets to the other side, or if it will even make it there at all, so anything that I can't bear to lose gets packed neatly into plastic bins and comes with us instead. It should come as no surprise that when we got word of our upcoming move, my first thought was, "There's no way I'm letting the movers touch my brewing equipment!" Not only is all that shit expensive to replace if it gets broken or lost, I was a little skeeved out by the thought of my clean and sanitized stuff being touched by multiple hands and collecting who knows what kind of microbes in that dirty moving truck. Nope, I was going to take control. If I packed all the stuff very carefully in a clean bin and brought it with us, the only person I could blame if something went wrong was myself. I bought the biggest bin I could find at the store, but thanks to the bulky shapes of the carboys and bucket, it didn't all fit. So I ended up with a big bin, a smaller bin, and a few cardboard boxes. Add this to the 2 or 3 bins of other stuff from the house that I don't trust anyone else to touch,  and it's pretty safe to say our vehicles are going to be packed tight! So much for not accumulating too much stuff.

 Complication #3: I CAN'T BREW!!!

This might be the worst one of all. It's like an itch I can't scratch. I have a growing list of styles and recipes that I want to brew and can't, because everything is packed away. Sure, I could unpack everything if I really wanted to, but the logical side of my brain is in control right now, and it says no. On top of that, operations will probably still be on hold for a few months after we get to our destination, since we will be living out of an RV until we find a house. I'm trying really hard to stay strong. Hopefully, I'll be back up and running by our wedding anniversary, so I can work on  9 Year Itch! For now, I'm living vicariously through others via Instagram. Leave me your username or follow @drunkenborrachobrewing if you want to support my efforts  ;-)

Alcoholics Go To Meetings

It happens to everyone- you find something you're passionate about, and it seeps into all areas of your life. It's like being in new relationship. If you're not doing it (giggety-gigetty), you're thinking about it or talking about it. The behavior is normal and everyone expects it, unless that passion is beer. When you love beer, sometimes people think you need help. To a complete stranger, I can see how it may look that way.

-My phone, Facebook, and Instagram accounts are filled with pictures of beer glasses, bottles, and breweries (oh my!).
-Beer bottles with cool labels and German steins are part of our home decor.
-We have tons of merchandise collected from the various breweries we've visited.
-I have an entire shelf (and growing) of beer/homebrew related books & magazines, plus an entire shelving unit in the garage dedicated to my brewing equipment, cases of homebrew, and "special" bottles of beer that I'm not ready to open yet. (I would include a picture, but at the moment, it's all packed up. More on that later).
-During a recent staff meeting, employees were asked to bring a book that inspired them. I brought a book about, you guessed it, beer!

Yes, I drink a lot, but I rarely get drunk. It's part of my research. How can I know what I want to brew or how a style is supposed to taste & look unless I try it myself? Still, I can't tell you how many times I've uttered the phrase "I swear I'm not an alcoholic" because someone is looking at me funny while I'm describing our latest brewery visit.
What's my point in all this? You can all stop worrying! A person can love beer and not need to attend a meeting. Besides, AA is for quitters, and I don't intend on giving up on brewing any time soon.