Category: Food and Drink

Seven Things I Did To Reboot My Life

Posted on 24 October, 201526 October, 2015 By Wil

About twenty years ago, I had a portable spa in the back yard of my first house. One day, the heater stopped working, so I called a repairman to come out and look at it. He told me that there would be an $85 charge no matter what, and I told him that was okay. When he got to my house, he opened up the access panel where the heater, pump, and filter lived. He looked inside, then looked back at me.

“Did you try pushing the reset button?” He asked.

“Um. No,” I said.

He pushed the reset button, and the heater came back to life.

“That’ll be $85,” he said. I paid him.

This post is about realizing that I was sitting in cold water, and not doing anything to turn the heater back on. This post is about how I hit the reset button.

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HopCon is coming!

Posted on 27 June, 2015 By Wil

It’s become an annual San Diego Comicon tradition: HopCon, at Stone Brewing’s Liberty Station. We release W00tstout, have a big old party, and tap a bunch of rare kegs and interesting casks for fans of great beer to enjoy … and the whole thing is a fundraiser for The Hero Initiative!

This year, something special is happening, and I’m turning it over to Mike Palmer to tell you exactly what that is:

Among the über-cool upgrades we have in store for Hop-Con 3.0, we’re taking the giant plot behind building 12 (aka the garden bar) and turning it into the HOP-CADE! Our dream of creating an outdoor arcade and beer garden from last year has been realized. We’ll have only IPAs on tap, our oversized lawn games (Jenga, Connect Four, etc), two pinball machines (Twilight Zone and Theater of Magic), Donkey Kong, Miss Pac-Man and a Skeeball machine. Not enough? How about an arcade game with a 25 foot screen driven from a used beer barrel converted into a vintage arcade console? This last feat will be created by our friend Hunter Bond, Troll Slayer and resident Pinball Mechanic at J!NX, with custom metal routing by San Diego’s ReproHaus. This is all in addition to the five vintages/variations of Stone Farking-Wheaton w00tstout, exclusive beers we brewed with Aisha Tyler and Kevin Eastman, epic food and all-around geeky good times. See you on July 8th!

Tickets and more deets can be found here…
hopcon.stonebrewing.com

I think this is pretty great. This year, HopCon is not just for people who love great beer, it’s also for people who love great beer and classic arcade games, which is basically a Venn Diagram describing me.

Tickets are going fast, so if you want in, go get yours today!

TITANSGRAVE: The Old Chaotic Neutral

Posted on 15 June, 2015 By Wil

So I really loved that Leonard Balsera came up with some cool beer names for the Beer Baron in episode one of Titansgrave.

It appears that the Internet agrees with me, and a lot of folks have asked me if we’re going to release a homebrew recipe for The Old Chaotic Neutral.

I would love to do that, but I’m not sure what style it will be … so maybe you can help me out?

[poll id=”2″]

I’ll leave this poll open for a few days, and get to work when a clear consensus emerges. If you have further ideas or thoughts, please let me know in comments.

I helped make a thing that’s funny

Posted on 13 November, 2014 By Wil

Newcastle teamed up with Caledonian Brewery in Scotland to make a Scotch Ale, and they hired me to tell you about it. We made a pair of really funny videos together, and this is one of them. I’m super proud of this, because I helped write it, and got to improvise a lot of the silly bits. I hope you enjoy it.

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At long last, you can homebrew w00tstout — officially!

Posted on 5 September, 2014 By Wil

One of the great joys of my life, the hobby that relaxes me and keeps me sane when the world is threatening to turn me into a pile of goo, is homebrewing my own beer.

I document all of my homebrew adventures at my homebrew blog, the Devils Gate Brewing Company, but this bit of news is so exciting to me, it’s getting its very own post right here on the mothership.

Northern Brewer and I have teamed up with Stone Brewing Company to make an official homebrew version of w00tstout!

This is an official recipe for w00tstout, converted to homebrew specs with the help of Stone Brewing Company’s brewmaster, Mitch Steele. It is released with the blessing of all the collaborators, and I can’t wait to make it myself next week. It’s available in both extract and all-grain kits.

This is a huge beer, and not something I’d recommend for a first time brewer (if you’re looking to get started in homebrewing, you can get your feet wet with my #VandalEyesPA 1-gallon kit).