Last Post of '09 (maybe)

I am back after a nice Christmas trip to Chicago, not much new, but I can find a way to BS through a post. 

The day before I left for Chicago I had an unfortunate occurrence...the CO2 on the kegerator ran out.  I think I have a leak somewhere because there was no pressure on the kegs, although after getting new CO2, I can't find a leak so I dont know.  The problem was that it was Sunday (nowhere open to get CO2) and there was no pressure on The Caboose and Peppermint Chocolate Stout for a week.  I am hoping that it can be salvaged now that it is back on the CO2.  As I write this, I am drinking the Caboose, it is noticeable low on carbonation, but not totally flat.  We'll see how it turns out after a few days at pressure.

Managed a few brewery trips while in Chicago, both of which have been profiled on the blog before.  Had dinner at Two Brothers, meatloaf sandwich with an imperial stout and their hoppy rye beer.  The meatloaf and rye beer worked really well together.  I really liked how the restaurant specialized in "comfort" food, like macaroni, meatloaf, etc.  I am a fan of most of the beers Two Brothers makes.  There pub is not what I am looking at doing for PBC, but their production facility is quite impressive. 

Also stopped by Half Acre's tasting room, it was a different take on a tasting room that I have really seen before.  It was really more of a retail store than a tasting room, although they did have 6 beers on tap.  They gave us like 2 oz samples of all the beers, but we were not able to buy a beer by the pint.  They had bombers of two of their beers available, 6ers of one beer and growlers of anything on tap.  They also sold Half Acre schwag and had bombers from other breweries available.  My initial thoughts were that it was not a very lucrative way to set up a tasting room, but while we were there a ton of people came in and bought beer, so I could be wrong.  They were getting a lot of people buying their "Big Hugs Imperial Stout," which was quite good (it was more of an imperial coffee stout than imperial stout, but still tasty).

Might make more beer this week, but if we get some more snow I will find myself on the mountain.