Full Speed Ahead

Beer #270 TRI-PA / Full Pint Brewing Company, North Versailles, PA

Dearest Insurance Company,
If you would like me to pay the premium on the home insurance policy, you may wish to consider sending me a bill.  While I believe I'm quite perceptive, my powers of telepathy apparently have not yet matured to the point where I can anticipate when bills are due or in what amounts.

I notified you that we were refinancing back in the spring, and yet the bill for our policy was still sent to the old mortgage company to be paid from escrow.  Which would be hard to do, considering they don't have my mortgage any longer.  All of this may help explain why I didn't pay it - but thanks for the letter telling me you're cancelling our policy.  Enjoy the check I dropped off today, but realize that's money I could have spent on ESP lessons.

Warmest regards,

Gary

The beer for today is the TRI-PA, an Imperial IPA from Full Pint Brewing.  This one was on draft at Mad Mex in State College - interesting that in a town where cheap macro brew still reigns supreme, there are bars  putting forth very solid beer lists, and Mad Mex is definitely ahead of the curve in that realm.  In the glass, I think this beer is sort of brown.  Well, it was hard to tell due to the fact the bar was dark with green lights all around.  The aroma (thankfully not affected by the dark lighting) has a lot of malt for an imperial IPA, and the taste was more Belgian than IPA in my book.  Instead of a high degree of bitterness, with tons of grapefruit and pine, I noticed more of the caramel malt, sweetness, and stone fruit notes along the way.  Maybe the green light threw off my taste buds?  It wasn't a bad beer by any measure, just not what I was expecting.

It's brown, right?

This brewery is a newcomer to the scene, and it appears they've set up shop in an old John Harvard's brew pub.  Looking forward to trying some of their other offerings as they make their way east across the Commonwealth.

Thing to Think About Today:
In the recognition of Full Pint and things that are full, we'll go with a Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise, a quite fantastic and wonderfully mellow song by an incredibly talented group, The Avett Brothers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEr9gMYdkHI

Beer 268: Full Pint Triple IPA

Me with a little time on my hands is a scary thing. Stuff knocked off my to do list today included:
-all the laundry
-cleaned out all the stuff I never wear from my closet and bagged it up for Goodwill
-found the desk in my at home office (!)
-watched the final episode of Breaking Bad and will now suffer my own withdrawal until summer 2013 when it returns for the final season
-made magic in the kitchen resulting in this...




I can only take credit for the chocolate, chocolate chunk muffins. The pickled peppers are all Gary's doing. The muffins are from Joy the Baker's cookbook. If they're anything like the blueberry muffins I made from the same book, we are in for a definite treat!
Today's beer was found at Mad Mex in State College this past weekend. The food at Mad Mex is average at best but they have an everchanging and pretty impressive beer list.
The Full Pint Brewing Company's TRI-PA was sold to us as a triple IPA...but we went for it pretty much because we've never encountered this brewery before. And the rule lately is drink it as soon as we find it. Don't assume it'll still be around tomorrow. Ah the pressure of the final 100 breweries!




The TRI-PA poured an opaque sort of chalky-looking brown. This photo doesn't do it justice. It had a resinous hop aroma with underlying sweetness. The flavor was fig, malt, rich caramel sweetness. It was kind if boozy (9% ABV) up front, fruit in the middle and hoppy at the end. Honestly I think there was just too much happening with this beer. It was only ok in my book. But the brewery is relatively young and I'm excited to try some of their other stuff.

Cheers!