Declan’s Blog

I’m doing a small write up for a silent auction of “beer baskets” at work where I’m trying to help people who may be new to the craft beer scene get the most of out of a visit to one of our donor beer places. Below is what I have so far and I KNOW I’m over generalizing, but I don’t want to overwhelm people who are just starting. I describe how I help people who want to choose something new quickly, but I’m open to other approaches. Please drop your thoughts in the comments.

It is important to me that you get the most out of your visits to the restaurants and breweries. On the breweries tours, you will be presented with a spectrum of beers to choose at each location. At the restaurants, though, you will see menus (even books!) that list beer after beer. This can be very intimidating and I urge you to take this opportunity to try something new or unfamiliar. Most locations offer small “tasters” of a beer for $2, and some of them will even splash enough in a glass for you just to try for free.
Talk to your waiter or bartender and tell them what you like. These locations are well known for knowledgeable wait staff who can discuss beers quite extensively. There are books written about the myriad beer styles, but here is how I help someone decide what to try:
Decide if you’d like to go lighter or darker. While this is not always true, lighter colored beers often accentuate the hop flavors, which can range from bitter to grassy to floral. They are more often dryer than darks. The dark beer range starts with reds, browns, and ambers and extends all the way into barrel aged stouts. They can be heavier and contain more alcohol. They often have a lot of flavor, especially when they have aged for a while in an oak or bourbon barrel.
Next, if you’ve gone lighter, decide if you’d like floral or more bitter. Different types of hops are used to shape these flavors and your server should know the range. If you’ve gone dark, decide if you’d like bitter or sweet. Some really nice stouts are given a bitter flavor with unsweetened chocolate, and others are so sweet they can serve as a dessert.
These are REALLY rough guidelines, just to help you tell the server what kind of mood you are in and what you prefer. I highly recommend you try a range of what you think you’ll like. Then ask for a taster of something strange to you. There is a whole world of sour and fruit beers that is just amazing.

Elaine and i just finished up trying out the Taste of Adams and had a few reflections:

When we started researching the event, there were 2 different dates referenced on web sites. In fact, the Blind Lady mailed out that they had confused the date too.

The tickets cost $25 each, but Mercedes found a $5 off deal. Still, the ordering site added a $2.50 processing fee, so that kinda sucked. For what we got, we think it was over priced by about $10.

Parking was about the same as normal for Adams, so about 5 mins of hunting side streets. The ticket booth was quick, with laser zappers that read the 2D barcodes nicely. Then we got a necklace badge with numbers that some of the vendors punched, I guess so you didnt come back for another whole bite of soy chorizo burrito.

We started at Blind Lady – a slice of nicely spicy margherita pizza. Then we hit Mariposa ice cream and they were very generous with two scoops of whatever they had. The Mexican chocolate was great! Next was Tams Thai which had a line too long to wait for so we skipped it. Next was Gold Donuts. They gave you a piece of a donut or fritter, or 3 donut holes for yer card punch. That was actually a pretty nice portion and fulfills my donut needs for the next year.

Then we met up with our buddies Kay Marie and Gerardo, and headed back in the other direction. Country Kabob Greek had some steam tables on the sidewalk with a tiny piece of pita with really spicy yogurt, and a bite of yummy spanikopita. Portions too small, but very tasty.

Lestats had iced coffee and brownie bites. Elaine liked the coffee, I never touch the stuff. The brownie was fine – kinda dry. Then we ran back across the street to TAO Thai and had some nice spicy tofu and a great chicken in some sweet sauce with mixed wild rice. No skimping on the portions here! They even had a mini dessert with mochi and bean curd. Right next door was Viva Pops! where they make their own Popsicles. The blood orange was yummy, and the girls said the chocolate banana was great too.

Elaine really liked El Zarape – rice, beans, carne, and chicken. Then a nice margarita shot! Well be back! Then we walked all that off and stopped into Incredible Cheesecake where I think they gave us a wafer thin hint of a smell of a taste of some cheese cake. Really chintzy.

Next was Jaynes Gastropub, who did the best job of all of the venues to treat us as more than a bother. We were seated and served bangers and mash. The portion was tiny, but we liked the service and the friendly people. We stayed a bit and ordered some beers to keep our strength up. Senior Mango was next, and I had a berry smoothy that was a nice size. None of the others had been inside AC Lounge before, so we popped in and were greeted very warmly by the bartender. They were serving half off drinks, but we were worried about running out of time, so we pressed on.

We skipped Twiggs because of time and tried Cafe 21. They had some dried out hash on dried out bread crumbs on a tray. Quite meh. Then we jumped on the trolley, which was a really nice part of the event, and went to the Farm House Cafe and had ricotta pancakes in a butter sauce with oranges. Very rich and tasty!

The trolley driver was cool and let us take our food on board so we didnt have to wait another 10 mins for the next bus. One of my main goals was to get to Ponces, someplace Ive heard great things about, so we rode the trolley all the way to the other end of Adams to Kensington. This was about 2:40, so we had 20 mins until the end of the event.

We tried out the Kensington Cafe, which had really nice people staffing sidewalk steam tables, but served up a minuscule bite of the aforementioned soy chorizo. Double meh. Burger Lounge had a 5 minute wait while they whipped up some more food, so we skipped it and hit Bleu Boheme. My old buddy JenBen was hosting and directed us back to a gentleman serving escargot in a rich sauce. Id never had them, and they were kinda like mussels or salty, chewy mushrooms with a slightly grainy texture. Oh, and they were snails… So that was different. I liked the place and the vibe tho.

Finally, with 10 minutes to spare, I get to try out Ponces!!! But no, theyre rejecting people at the door saying they ran out of food. WTF? How the hell do you run out of food? Youre a restaurant! The snails didnt leave a bad taste, but Ponces sure did. What a shitty way to treat people.

So, all in all, it was a nice event but many of the venues didnt do themselves any favors by being cheap on the offerings.

Elaine and I had dinner out at West Coast Tavern and liked it so much that I wrote a Yelp review.

Click here to read it.

To celebrate Mothers Day, we went and picked up the boy at SDSU and went to Ali Baba in El Cajon. We had the 4 Person Feast, and it started with a blanket of bread:

and ended with a trough of lamb, chicken, rice, and so much food that we filled three take home boxes. All for $60! Very good deal. Then we dropped the boy back at school:

and I snapped one more picture:

Just got back from one of my favorite conferences of the year, code4lib 2009, this year in Providence, RI. It was great seeing a lot of my liberry geek buddies, and it was a nice reminder of why I live in San Diego and not the God forsaken hinterlands of the East. Cold is just dumb.

I took a lot of pictures as usual. They’re all up on Flicrk, but here are a few I really liked:

Our hotel was right across the street from the Rhode Island State house. I forgot to fix my white balance before I shot it, but I kinda like the effect:

If all of the cars in front were as old as the one in the middle, I could have pretended it was an old slide

Here’s a more “accurate” shot:

We headed over to the local mall’s food court for lunch:

Lotsa folks in that one – Mike Giarlo, Rob Cassion, Ross Singer, Phil Cryer.

I really enjoyed spending a few days with our intrepid Esme:

(He lives in Florida, Mike.)

Here Dan Chudnov does his Bollywood routine in celebration of Slumdog Millionaire’s big Oscar wins:

Jodi Schneider was thrilled to see me, as always:

I finally met Ed Summers, in the middle. It’s good to see him inspiring others as he does me. Bess Sadler is enjoying the fracas as well:

Gabe Farrell, on the right, forgot he owed me $20. Never do that. It gives me WAY too much license…

Mike Park left me waiting to be picked up at the airport:

Well ok, he mailed me 3 weeks before the event asking if I needed a ride and I sent him an itinerary and said I’d confirm closer to the flight. Three hours before the flight takes off doesn’t really count! Mike drove me, Esme, Brad, and Dan all over the place, either because he’s a great dude, or I’m good at making people feel guilty. Either way, I win! Thanks Mike for being a great host.

Actually, I gotta say that the whole Brown Univ (or is that Univ of Providence?) crew kicked ass in prep and execution of this conference. BRAVO Birkin, Jean, Bonnie, and other names I can’t remember because I drink a lot.

I also take a lot of pictures, so I’ll inevitably get something cool like this:

Heehee! I love my Lensbaby!

Pizza is good!

Did you know the lead singer of Saliva is a librarian?

Ross pretends to laugh at something while trying to ignore the fat dude sticking a camera in his face:

Just looking at this costs me 14 points:

Brad, Dan, and I visited the inside of the RI State House before we ran to the airport, and decided that we should hold the next code4lib in the Senate chambers:

Never get on that end of a canon, especially when I am on the other end…

As usual, way too many pictures here:

Awesome seeing you all again!

Just to make mjgiarlo feel worse about missing Access!

They always try to get ya with the coffee break cookies.

I’m at another conference with too much free food.

I just got back from a week on Prince Edward Island in Canada. I was up there for an intense, 5 day introduction to Fedora (the digital library repository, not the RedHat variant).

I haven’t processed the content yet, but I did take a lot of pictures. What encapsulates a trip better than a grown man in an Anne of Green Gables hat and braids?:

Jim Tuttle is so silly… I wouldn’t be caught dead…

Dang digital cameras…

PEI is famous for its lobster, and there is good reason:

They are served almost everywhere. We had these on Monday night:

We also had a few tasty beverages. Here Grant and Jim listen politely to Mike tell a story. The politeness comes from not understanding a thing he was saying due to a very strong Boston accent:

or a lot of beer.

The University of PEI’s University Librarian, Mark Leggott, took us all on a walk to the red sand beach:

which he said was lovely. We had to take his word for it because there were no lights, the moon was covered in cloud, and we were all dizzy from blood loss to mosquitoes.

Thankfully, there was a bar at the end of the walk, so we could hide from insects and Chris could get a drink:

For lunch on Wednesday, we went to the local farmers market:

where three of the locals – Paul, Peter, and Alex demonstrated the East Coast Canadian habit of stopping and standing in the middle of a walk way. I’m not kidding, these people have getting in my way down to a science.

Then we walked the length of the island on a path:

Ok, not really, but the path does stretch from tip to tip. Maybe someday I’ll bring my bike up there.

The locals bath when the sewers back up and spew what can only be raw sewage 6 feet into the air:

Or it was a clever fountain.

This was a small petting zoo for crabs and lobsters. Notice no one putting their hands in:

Jim was then sent home for “disturbing” the local livestock:

Ok, so the water and boats and beautiful:

But what is prettier than a man sized potato?

I’m talking about the one in the back…

On Weds night, we were sitting at dinner and I got the Lensbaby out and got some nice shots:

Here’s Richard Green from Hull:

Peter Binkley from Canadia:

And Mark Leggott again:

The flowers really add to the scene…

On Thursday night, Grant and his daughter brought us down to see Victoria Bay:

Note the famous, ubiquitous red soil.

I got a little bit of the sunset:

Then the rain rolled in:

On Saturday, Jim and I got a car and drove from Charlottetown as far East as possible and looped back.

PEI has many lighthouses:

And pretty, red cliffs:

And pretty streams:

And more light houses:

That one is on East Point, the farthest we could go East.

Jim was too cool for all this:

And I was eaten alive by mosquitoes:

Then we went to see Pineapple Express. All in all, a pretty good day!

Here are a lot more pictures (Flickr link):