Tag Archives: Maltose Falcons

by Becki | May 17, 2011 · 7:08 pm

Ladies at Ladyface!

Last night, we had the first meeting of the Ladies at Ladyface: The Fermentables & Comestibles Education and Tippling Society. It was a WONDERFUL way to celebrate the start of the American Craft Beer Week.
Our group consisted of thirteen ladies total, including Cyrena, the owner of Ladyface, as well as Nancy, the president of the Maltose Falcons.
We had 8 pitchers at the table, full of Ladyface goodness, and spent over an hour tasting and learning about the Ladyface brews, the specific differences between the malts and hops that they use, and then just hung out chatting for another two hours!
Our first taste was the Ladyface La Blonde. This is the lightest beer that they make. It’s very popular with the people who come in looking for a Budweiser or Corona. The only difference? It actually TASTES good! Good tasting beer – What a conundrum, right?
Up next was the La Blanche Wit. This wheat beer has a lovely banana/clove smell from the amarillo hops, and a permanent chill haze thanks to the extra proteins from the wheat that precipitate. Ladyface’s Wit is a really smooth sip for those new to beer.
Blind Ambition used to be my favorite before I learned some respect for IPAs. Ladyface’s equipment doesn’t have temperature regulation down to a tee yet, so everytime I try Blind Ambition, I’m getting something a little different. I’m okay with this. This latest batch is slightly sweet, with a thick mouthfeel and lots of toffee/caramel notes. This is also where I started to feel a little soft around the edges.
The Trois Filles Tripel. A triple is a golden ale with a higher alcohol content. This one is pretty sweet (my mom loved it, being a wine drinker), and 8.4% ABV. I think this one was quite popular amongst our group – but I was waiting on the edge of my seat for what was next: the IPAs!
Ladyface IPA. They have two IPAs here. Ladyface IPA clocks in at 6.9% ABV and IBU 70. This one is for the intermediate IPA appreciators. You’ll learn a lot about quality IPAs here!
CHESEBRO IPA!!! I’m not excited about this one at all, as you can tell. Chesebro is honestly my FAVORITE craft IPA of all time! 9.5% ABV and IBU 100. This brew is for the real IPA lovers! I love amber beers most of all (hence why Blind Ambition was my previous fave), but I LOVE a hoppy beer as well. Chesebro is the best combination of the two. Ladyface brews this with ELEVEN different hop additions!

Okay, I’ll stop ranting and raving about that and move on to the next one…
Ever since I had Picture City Porter, I’ve felt the need to sprinkle coffee grounds on all of my porters and stouts in order to fully appreciate them.
This porter is 2% coffee. They put five gallons into each barrel, add chocolate malts and push it with nitrogen (creating a finer carbonation so it’s smoother). The result is, as my mom described it, the perfect breakfast beer. No, not because I drink beer with breakfast (unless it’s Shop Brew day!), but because the coffee flavor is so in-your-face, yet the beer is so smooth that you could honestly imagine sitting down to a hearty sundried tomato, goat cheese and spinach omelette, and sip a room temperature glass of porter instead of coffee.

Ooooh, yeaaah!
This baby is the special release: Amazon Imperial Red! Nancy worked with Brewmaster Dave to develop this amazing Imperial Red. (Nancy, I still want to know how you got that head retention!!!)
This. Is. Perfection. In a glass. You guys know I like ambers by now. You know I like hops. This beer is BIG and BOLD! ABV 9.2%, IBU 100, with a rosy red amber hue. I may have cried quiet tears of joy. I definitely thanked Nancy excessively for brewing this masterpiece… with more silent tears of joy…
And yet, Nancy had one more surprise up her sleeve!
Brut du Faucon – a 11% ABV champagne beer, brewed by the Maltose Falcons. This sweet, bubbly beer was my mother’s favorite. This one is very delicious, and very dangerous. It’s an easy-drinker, and tasty to boot. If you’re not keeping track, watch out! I had a few sips, then ordered a full size glass of the Amazon Imperial Red.
Dispersed between the tastings were lessons on different roasted malts…
and a giant pitcher of whole leaf hops was passed around for education purposes. I may have monopolized this pitcher, and taken two hop flowers for photographic purposes… Said hop flowers may or may not have fallen to pieces in my new Ladyface sweatshirts and coated the left pocket with hop resins…

It was an AMAZING night.

The Ladies at Ladyface: Fermentables & Comestibles Education & Tippling Society is open to all women with good taste in beer, and meets every third Monday of the month! If you can say it twice after two beers, you’re out of the club!

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Tagged as Amazon Imperial Red, Blind Ambition, Chesebro IPA, La Blanche Wit, La Blonde, Ladies of Ladyface, Ladyface, Ladyface Ale, Ladyface Alehouse, Ladyface IPA, Maltose Falcons, Picture City Porter, The Fermentables & Comestibles Education & Tippling Society, Trois Filles Tripel

by Becki | May 16, 2011 · 10:05 pm

Mumsie’s Day!

In case you haven’t heard, I’m a terrible daughter.

I spent Mothers’ Day in the Vegas, working. My Mothers’ Day looked like this:
Neon lights, smoky casinos and no mumsie in sight. Sadness 🙁
My dad was able to spoil her on the REAL Mothers’ Day, so at least she was happy when she was abandoned… (SHE’S SO PURDY!!!)

Luckily, I was able to make it up to my beautiful mother today. We went up to the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa and had a lovely, leisurely three-hour lunch.
The waiters forced freshly baked potato rolls on us. We offered resistance, but to no avail. Instead, we were doomed to slather these decadent, soft, slightly sweet breads with freshly whipped butter, and consume them.
It was surprisingly chilly considering it was the middle of May in California, so we both got steaming mugs of coconut chai, which they kindly served in heated china. I didn’t let mine go until all the heat had been sucked up by the chilly breeze.
The burger looked amazing on the menu, but all I wanted at this point was a piping hot bowl of soup, so I ordered the tortilla bisque. Basically, it’s a tomato bisque topped with roasted chicken, strips of tortilla, fresh avocado and cheese, and served at a high price. It was totally worth it.
Mumsie went all healthy on me (booooo!) and ordered a spinach salad with scallops, shrimp, mango and ginger. I sampled one of her scallops, which was cooked to perfection, but I always prefer a big burger or steak. I’m just that kind of girl…
The dessert menu was incredibly delectable, and after a few minutes of indecisive bouncing back and forth between crème brûlée, cheesecake and chocolate cake, we finally asked Jake (our helpful server) for his opinion.
Goat’s cheese cake with kumquat and candied thyme it is! I honestly must say, I wasn’t excited about this. Then I had the first bite.
The cheesecake was served warm (perfect for the chilly weather), the kumquats in simple syrup were tangy and sweet, the goat’s cheese was almost savory, and the crust had me melting into the chair. Don’t even get me started on the candied thyme!

I could have died happy.
One of the workers (my personal favorite) brought us “shawls” aka thick blankets, so we were wrapped up and cozy for the majority of our meal while we enjoyed the gorgeous view.
The entire property is coated with fragrant flowers, and there’s even a fragrance cottage where you can mix your own perfume!
This isn’t the fragrance cottage, but it smelled just as good! We stopped here on the drive down from Ojai for some steaming cups of coffee to keep us warm, and awake for… Ladies at Ladyface: The Fermentables & Comestibles Education & Tippling Society!

A LONG night at Ladyface (It was supposed to last an hour – it lasted 3!) sampling TONS of different brews, featuring Cyrena the owner and Nancy, the president of the Maltose Falcons (my homebrew club!!)!

But that’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s blog. WAY too many pictures to add to this blog 🙂

HAPPY MUMSIE MAKEUP DAY, MOM!!!!

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Filed under Mothers' Day

Tagged as chilly breeze, Full of Beans, Ladyface, Ladyface Ale, Maltose Falcons, Mothers' Day, Mumsie, Ojai, Ojai Valley Inn and Spa, scallops, shrimp, stormy weather, The Fermentables & Comestibles Education & Tippling Society, tortilla bisque

by Becki | April 23, 2011 · 8:34 pm

In Mem’ry of Bacon

I’ve been slacking on the blogging lately, I know. I’d love to say that I’ve been busy with school, but the truth is…
I got new technology, and my brain has been completely involved in it. I actually tried blogging from it the other day, but the title of my post would have been, “Clogging From Android” thanks to the text prediction. Yeah, it’s definitely not meant for blogging.

Anyways… now that I’ve torn my eyes from my Droid screen long enough, here are a few of the brews I’ve tried lately.
Autumnal Stillwater Artisinal.
Good head retention! A little bit too harsh of a pour… oops on my part! This beer was mediocre. It had a funky tart taste and after half of a glass, the flavor became almost cloying. I finished it anyways. I’m gracious like that.
Shockingly enough, I’d never had ANYTHING from Firestone prior to this DBA! Please don’t hurt me for admitting that! I always thought that Firestone wasn’t craft beer, but was edumacated very recently and gave this one a shot. LOVE! It was a little sweeter than I generally like, but very smooth and had a beautiful color! If I’m ever in a pinch, I’m willing to try more Firestone!
For the next beer, I needed to prepare. I chopped up a crapload of veggies – eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, broccoli and onion, marinated it in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garam masala and curry powder, then grilled it over low heat until everything was caramelized. I threw a couple of steaks on next to it as well, all in preparation for this:
Legit Bavarian smoked beer! This stuff is INTENSE! The smokey scent punches you in the nose, but surprisingly enough, it’s a smooth sip. Until you swallow. Then it’s like a group of smoked salmon is having a barbecue in your throat. I thought that this would be a good pairing with barbecued veggies and meat. I was wrong. It totally tipped the scales into the “excessive” zone of smokiness. This one, I couldn’t finish. I think it would make a good marinade for my next steak, though!
To rinse the smoke out of my mouth, I turned to Liefmans sour ale. I’ve tried a few sours before, and have only enjoyed one of them. This one is a keeper! It wasn’t overwhelmingly tart, but not overpoweringly sweet either. I love a unique beer, and this was just right. I’d compare it to Duchesse De Bourgogne. They are almost identical! If you’re looking for something different (especially if you’re trying to convert a wine-drinker to beer), this and the Duchesse are wonderful!
After all the veggies and red meat, I needed to round out my meal with some sugar! I received a coupon from Magnum for a box of their ice cream bars that are just now being introduced to the U.S., and picked up the first box I could find.
HOLY CRAP! I can honestly say that this was the best ice cream bar I’ve ever had! I probably wouldn’t have tried them without the coupon, but this is something I will actually go back and purchase! I loved the uber-thick layers of chocolate encasing more chocolate. I actually felt like crying – it was that good. My only complaint? The letter from Foodbuzz said I would be getting TWO coupons, and I only got one. Sadness 🙁

And all those beers bring me to today! It was BOTTLING DAY for my beer from the shop brew! This was my second beer I’ve ever brewed, and my first time using 12 ounce bottles and a capper.
Mmmm, bottle capper! Drooooool!
I plotted this all out, Hebrew-style (from right to left, in case you didn’t get that – my artist taught me that :P)…
First, I boiled some corn sugar in water and added it to the sanitized bottling bucket. Then, I siphoned the beer gently from the carboy into said bottling bucket. I soaked all of the bottles in Star San, emptied them and filled them within an inch of the top with a bottle filler. Next came the capper (my favorite part!!!), drying and boxing.
I ceremoniously finished up the LAST growler of Dos Beckis whilst bottling this new beer.
Speaking of which, the new beer’s name is: In Mem’ry of Bacon.
(For those of you who are new, I made Oatmeal Stout Brownies with Caramelized Bacon for the shop brew, which were a HUGE hit! I thought this name was fitting)
I also got some awesome new gloves (thanks for those, mom!) to spare my poor skin from the acid sanitizer, which exfoliated the CRAP out of my hands last time.