Michael Bevilacqua

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us. You can comment here or there.

Is it Christmas? Happy Holidays everyone :)

Last night Elizabeth and I watched Neil Gaiman’s very entertaining fantasy entitled “Stardust” on the laptop positioned on a chair just next to the roaring fireplace. While sitting on the couch, Elizabeth sipped a Delirium Noel Belgian Christmas Ale and I enjoyed a pain-free night thanks to generic Percocet.

Up until now the Doctor had subscribed me Lortab, 5mg of codone and 500mg of acetometiphin. The Lortab wasn’t working very well in it’s minimal dose so I was taking 2 every 4 hours instead of 1. This dosage was causing me to have cold sweats throughout the night most likely caused by the acetometiphin. I would also wake up in the morning in more pain than usual due to the lack of a comfortable nights rest. Last night was the best nights sleep I’ve had since arriving home from the hospital. I suppose this was my Christmas gift from Santa.

Speaking of Santa, according to Google’s[1] Norad Santa Tracker, Jolly Ol Saint Nick skipped visiting Pennsylvania and New York. I doubt that was the case as the cats were repeatedly caught gazing out of our front windows at the overcast, yet brightly moonlit sky. They only tend to do that when there is activity out there :-)

Last evening we also discovered that Simcoe dislikes whistling when one of the guys from Rifftrax.com started up a tune to the movie Spiderman. I continued the tune with the result of her ears and eyes paying cautious attention to her surroundings. After seeing this I couldn’t whistle any longer due to my difficulty in trying not to smile and chuckle. Simcoe also gets a little nervous when you sing to her while she is in your lap as I discovered the other day. I find this strange as she enjoys the ambient music that plays on the home stereo.

This is the first year Elizabeth and I did not acquire a Christmas Tree. We have had a tree every year since we started living together in our apartment in North Wales. In the past few years we have enjoyed going to a local tree farm, getting onto the farm tractor pulled trailer, hunting down and together carrying a nicely sized tree back to the convoy. They give us hot cider and if you are there off-peak, you get the experience practically to yourselves. I wonder if our lack of tree had an effect on the lack of Santa. Hmm…

[1] michael@nano ~ $ host www.noradsanta.com
www.noradsanta.com is an alias for NORADSANTA.L.GOOGLE.com.

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Alright, I promise this is the final months-old post. I’m sure you can tell with the amount of posts I’ve had in the past week that I have nothing better to do while sitting here in my chair, healing, in between physical therapy :)

Back in the summer of 2007 we stumbled across an ad for Sinead O’Connor to perform live at the Keswick Theater on mischief night, October 30th 2007. When I mentioned this to Elizabeth she agreed with me that we should probably see her perform while her vocal chords are still only just past their prime. We mentioned this to our friends David and Kathy and they purchased seats for the performance as well.

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Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Yet another months-old post that I never got around to creating that I’m doing now. Elizabeth and I decided to check out Spinnerstown Hotel in Quakertown. This was the venue that Saint Michael Jackson last visited in this area before his unfortunate passing August 30th 2007.

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Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Or best offer, depending on how well I know you. The post says it all. I want it gone.

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/for/453136487.html

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

December 10th, 6am, Phoenixville Hospital. The morning after the new moon.

The new moon has always had a special place for me in my life before I realized its impact on the world in a Spiritual sense. I’ve always felt clarity around this time of the month. A peace of mind, being at ease on the dark of the moon. The lack of luminescence almost comforting me as I fell deeply into my meditation. It’s comforting that all of this is happening around this time of month for more reasons than I’ll go into here.

I will be receiving a ceramic on ceramic joint in the total hip replacement (THR) surgery. In my research this is by far the best choice for someone my age (32). It wears slower, the particles do not interfere with the body, and the chances of failure according to the surgeon I’m consulting with who has done over 50 are nearly non-existent. Although, like any bone-like material, I have to be cautious. I wont be sky diving. Ever. Good thing that wasn’t on my to-do list.

If all wears as it should, the implant should last 40 years. It should enable me to function normally. It should enable me to hike like I used to. Straighten my right leg out. Regain the 3/4″ I’ve lost in length in my right leg. Yes, quite magical. Getting to that point is going be an uphill battle with recovery. Fortunately, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in going into surgery.

I’ve officially quit drinking for the remainder of my life. There are a number of reasons but the primary one is obviously health and weight. I have to maintain 165lbs, which I am at right now, to prevent unnecessary wear on the joint. I’ve also reverted back to a diet I was on a while ago that I should have never left. Primarily vegetables and occasionally fish for protein. No other meats. I’ve never really eaten sweets. When I do have a craving I have fresh fruit. The beer portion though has been difficult as I have built a good portion of my life around brewing, writing about beer, attending beer events, etc. I still haven’t worked myself to a point to put my home brew equipment onto Craig’s List. If anyone is interested in purchasing it and picking it up, talk to me. You’ll get it cheap if do. I want it gone.

I’m already thinking of all of the things I’ll be doing after I recover. One of which will be hiking portions of the Appalachian Trail. It’s truly incredible the things you put off and take for granted until one day you realize you might never be able to do them. Elizabeth and I will be joining the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) and taking classes to learn backpacking survival. And of course, I will be doing the Sun-Moon Tribal Dance, a Native American styled Sun Dance.

For the people reading this that are interested in what I will be going through in the operating room, I came across this fascinating, interactive flash training game for med students. It’s not gory, although, if you can’t stomach the thought, heh, you best not check it out. But if you can, it’s really something:

http://www.edheads.org/activities/hip/

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

A terrible loss. The world will miss you and beer advocates across the world will drink to your name. Godspeed, and thank you for your insight into a world some of us could only barely understand by ourselves.

http://www.timeout.com/chicago/outandabout/?p=2933

http://www.allaboutbeer.com/

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Unfortunately, my plans to hike around Mount Washington with my friend Bob were canceled due to Bob coming down with a wicked flu. As a last minute decision, I ended up heading to Four Quarters for the weekend for Body Tribal; a celebration of the Body and the Tribe. It was a small event and very fun, I’ll write more about it later.

On the way home Sunday evening, I stopped in Stoudts for some dinner. There was a man in a white suit sitting with a woman at the table in front of mine. They got into an argument and she stormed out. A little while later she came back, sat down and they left together. As they were leaving the man in the white suit said goodbye to another older woman sitting across the room with a younger boy. He asked what the boy’s name was and then said to the boy “I hope when you come of age you purchase yourself a suit.” The two then left. The older woman then explained to the boy that the very nice gentleman was from Germany and visits Stoutds occasionally.

Like something out of Twin Peaks.

Now, I’m sure you would love to hear about how surreal my weekend was with regards to the Earth ceremony, discussions, being in nature, etc. Let me assure you that my weekend was much less surreal than what I experienced at that restaurant :-P

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Hops have started growing early this year and are already a foot tall. According to what I’ve read it takes a year or two for the roots to form and from there they get stronger and grow better.

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

We met up with Kathy and David and sat in a nice quiet area in the back of the dining room. It was inside this time and surprisingly not very packed with people which automatically made it a great time. Lew’s very intelligent. He spoke well on each of the beers which made it all very entertaining.

He sat down with us toward the end to get some feedback from us since this was his first dinner of the series. I got to chat with him a bit on PA-LCB politics and we had him sign our copy of Pennsylvania Breweries. It was fun picking his brain a little. Oh and he almost choked when I asked him ‘What is your favorite beer’ as we were sitting across from the ‘adult table’ where SlyFox, Victory and some other big wigs from Lancaster were sitting. He gave the politically correct response ‘The next beer!’ and then changed it to ‘A friend of mine once said ‘I haven’t found it yet, but I’m still looking’. :-)

Food was great for the $40. Freshly prepared potato chips with a coleslaw like dip, cheese plate with local made farm cheeses, sweet brats and roasted red peppers mixed with veggies served with spiced mustard, open-faced hot ham and gouda sandwich and a side of scalloped potatoes and then finished with some homemade chocolate beer sorbet and pound cake.

Beers were ’session beers’ or better known as beers under 6% ABV. I can’t exactly remember the order. I wish they gave out lists or I had remembered to bring my notebook. I started with a Victory Braumeister Pils since they happened to have that on tap and we arrived early. Love that brew. Then it was, according to Lew’s website:

Anchor Bock
Zum Uerige Classic Alt
Penn Marzen
Troegs Sunshine Pils
Victory Donnybrook Stout
Stegmaier Brewhouse Bock

Although, I can’t remember having an Alt. I was pretty sure we swapped that out with a Red Hook Copper Hook for some reason. I loved the Sunshine Pils as well. Victory Donnybrook stout reminded me a lot of the dry Irish stout they had over at Iron Hill recently. And the Penn Marzen was a bit sweet for my taste, if I remember correctly, but was equally as refreshing.

[EDIT] I should have read the comments on Lew’s Blog. He writes (as I expected):

“We did have to make one change: the Uerige Classic Alt is no longer imported, and we don’t want to serve you old stuff (and it’s not really a seasonal anyway…), so we’re serving up the Redhook Copperhook instead. It’s 5.7%. but to be honest, at this point we’re scrambling a bit for seasonal sessionals. So drink up, me hearties!”

Good to know I can still hold my beer brain.

At the end of the dinner they had a little trivia with some prizes provided by Victory brewing. I won a bottle of V12 when I was asked “What is PA’s oldest brick and mortar microbrewery.” Stoudt’s Brewery, of course :-) We gave the bottle to Kathy and David as a thank you for showing up and having dinner with us.

There are a few more of the Sessions to be held. I’m sure we’ll be attending again with more friends :-)

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Elizabeth and I headed to the West Chester Wellness Center this afternoon to have our first Shiatsu massage sessions with our friend David Brown. Wow, we feel good. I’ve had one deep tissue/European massage before and that was very intense in comparison to the shiatsu I received today.

Afterward we headed to Bear, Delaware to meet up with our friends Kenny and Kati at Stewarts Brewing Company. Kati surprised me with this gem:

Screw all you SciFi purists, this was a fun show that shortly aired during the 80s. I loved this show. It had geek attributes, dystopia and all of the conspiracy you could ask for… just plain ‘ol fun SciFi with some great actors to make the lack of well written scripts tolerable.

Thanks for the gift Kati!

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Your state not corrupt enough? Thinking of moving to PA? If so just remember our liquor laws are just like that of that other progressive state you know of. Yep, you guessed it. UTAH! :-P

But seriously…

It’s difficult enough to get good wine and beer here in PA. Forcing out the one person that made the PA LCB *tollerable* is a very strange move on Gov. Rendell’s part.

Now read:

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17663690&BRD=1675&PAG=461&dept_id=18171&rfi=6

The man credited with revolutionizing the way Pennsylvania sells alcohol is quitting his job.

Jonathan Newman, who took the state-run monopoly and brought it into the modern era with a series of customer-friendly moves, is expected to submit his resignation this morning at a meeting of the Liquor Control Board.

Newman’s exit comes just a few weeks after he publicly disagreed with Gov. Ed Rendell’s decision to name a new chief executive officer at the LCB. Former Sen. Joe Conti was tapped for the $150,000 a year job. Newman makes a little more than $67,000 a year.

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Happy 2007 to everyone reading this post.

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Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

I’m sad to say that my all-grain batch that I bottled yesterday did not turn out with the strength I was expecting from 22lbs of grain (read: poor conversion efficency). I’m on the homebrew talk forums now trying to discover where I went wrong. Obviously, it’s my mashing and sparging techique that needs closer examination.

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Using a large starter yeast culture is paying off.

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Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

I can happily say today was one of the most productive and inovative homebrewing sessions I have ever had.

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Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Saturday I will be doing all-grain batch number two for which I have almost doubled my original grain amount due to the final gravity of my Wedding Celebration Ale being much lower than I was aiming for. 22lbs of malted barley; 10lbs of 2-row Breis malted barley, 10lbs of 2-row Breis pale malted barley, 1lbs of 6-row 120 degree Breis crystal malted barley and 1lb of 6-row 60 degree Breis crystal malted barley. It will be heavily flavored with Cascade and Amarillo Hops. I will be using a traditional American Pale Ale yeast.

In other news, I found out the other day that one of the Celebration Ales sent home with an attendee of the wedding exploded in her pantry. I am very careful with the measurements during the racking stage when I add boiled and cooled wort to the fermented brew for the bottle conditioning (carbonization). I’m guessing it might have been that due to her traveling by Airplane from Pittsburgh to Maine and the altitude and air pressure change combined with the very powerful Belgian Abbey Ale Yeasts may have slightly compromised the bottle.

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Friday night Elizabeth received a call from David and Constance asking if we wanted to meet up at Ortino’s Northside for some drinks and dinner. We headed up there to find it packed to the gills, at best the most crowded I have ever experienced the place, and for great reason. Troegs was having their Mad Elf tasting which included a 2006, a 2005 and 2004 vintage of this Holiday Ale.

I immediately had my heart set on the 2004 and rightfully so, it was splendid. Dry, so very dry, with all of the subtle character of honey, bitterness of cherries ballanced atop a sweet malty chocolate malt. YUM. And 11% abv!? Wine lovers, if you can get your hands on this, you’ll never ever regret it.

Elizabeth and I paired this nectar of the goddess’s up with a cheese and fruit plate containing a smooth brie, a farm cheese and some sort of salty, well aged romano? Very delicious.

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

The labels turned out great. 13 bottles total, 24oz each. I yeilded almost 4 gallons total. Not bad for my first batch of all-grain.

Elizabeth also printed out the programs for our guests so that they may follow along in our wedding ceremony we spent a few weeks working on.

And everything seems to be coming together for our Wedding Sunday.

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

Youch…! I suppose when I used the ‘critical mass’ analogy for the crowd size at the Lehigh Valley Brewfest I was in the right. More here:

http://beeradvocate.com/forum/read/832047

Originally published at Bevilacqua.us.

On Saturday Elizabeth and I took a drive up to Easton, PA for the 3rd Annual Lehigh Valley Brewfest. Bob had mentioned to me that last year’s Brewfest was very fun including free food and lots of leg room within the state theater in Easton. This year turned out to be quite different than expected as they hosted the event outdoors under a small tent in a unusually small section of the park along the Delaware river.

 

Fortunately for us we arrived early enabling us to get a reasonable parking space in the lot across the street from the park and to get started sampling before the crowd reached critical mass. We were only in line for about twentyfive minutes before we got to our first sampling. We met up with one of my co-workers from JDS Uniphase John Klima and my best man Bob after we were in the tent area. Victory, Magic Hat, River Horse and Dogfish Headwere present with their usual selection of fine craft micros. I ended up skipping a couple of these as I was already familiar with what they offer. They provided us with dixie cup sized plastic souvenir mini-mugs at the gate to use for our sampling.

 

My first brew of the day was Rock Art Brewery based in Vermont. I sampled their American Red Ale. Great brew! Clean finishing, lots of Magnum hop flavor, a good amount of body and a crisp October punch of strength. Also, for a red ale, a fantastic deep red color in the glass like that of the turning autumn leaves. Poured with a rich, white head. Highly recommended.

 

The second brew was Kutztown's Golden Avalanche Brewery. I sampled their Old Brick Alt. Again, wow, amber smoked malt character hits you like a brick and finishes crisp and clean. Very nice light boddied year-round brew. Truly a wonderful tasting surprise.

 

My third brew is the ever pleasing Penn Pilsner from Penn Brewing Company . I decided to use this old favorite to cleanse my pallete for the next round. A refreshing treat from this beloved Western Pennsylvania Brewery.

 

 

My fourth brew was Dogfish Head’s India Brown Ale. A big, malty nut brown ale with a good amount of strength. I haven’t had this one up until now and was surprised at how good it was. Dogfish Head’s brews can go either way with me due to how experimental they can be. Delicious beer although I was disapointed that it was poured from a bottle instead of from the tap.

 

My fifth brew was a favorite of Elizabeth and myself from the River Horse Brewing Company in Lambertville, NJ. Their smooth and hearty Belgian Frostbite. Nice and spicy with that Belgian yeast kick at the end.

 

 

Sixth was Cricket Hill’s Hopnotic that I’ve sampled before from our favorite local beer bar Ortino’s Northside. Nice and hoppy as the name suggests with a good balance of body and strength to back it up. A teriffic hoppy IPA from Jersey with a funny looking mascot. We liked the mascot so much we bought a pint glass from them as a souvenir.

 

And finally I tried the Weyerbacher BrewingDouble Simcoe IPA. An outstanding IPA heavily hopped with Simcoe hybrid hops. Comparable to SlyFox’s Simcoe IPA only a tad lighter in body and strength.

 

On the way home we picked up our pumpkins from a local farmstand and order a pizza. I finished up the growler of the Sly Fox’s Nugget IPA and chilled out for the remainder of the evening with Elizabeth and our cat. Overall it was a nice time, nothing compared to Sly Fox’s Annual Goat Race and Brewfest. If they correct some of the space limitation problems we might venture there again next year.