As an adult, some nights I spend my time looking over open enrollment paperwork, trying to decide which plan really feels like "me." Other nights I tell my husband not to fill up on dinner because we have seven different kinds of candy to pair with beer while we watch Stranger Things 2.

Let's get bananimated about esters!

Having just posted about my progress on my New Year's Resobrewtions, I made a decision on my plane ride to San Diego: I would not bring back any beer.

I held out on becoming a BJCP judge for a surprisingly long time for someone who is obsessed with getting points and advancing ranks. There are plenty of times, even for me, when I want to just. drink. a. beer. Not evaluate it.

Now that the year if halfway finished (what? how did that happen?), I decided to revisit my seven beer-related goals for 2017 about which I wrote at the beginning of January. 

It's been 77 days since I brewed my 100% Brett-fermented beer and I'm happy to report three things.

Lately I've been seeing gummies popping up made of wine, booze, and now beer. Curious about how to make them, I started researching recipes. As it turns out, beer gummies are super easy and quick to make.

The very best way to think of the difference between extract brewing and all grain brewing is to think of the difference between using a cake mix and baking a cake from scratch.

There are a lot worse things you can do on a Tuesday night than drink a four year vertical of Backwoods Bastard from Founders Brewing Company. Like anything else, because four bottles of this delicious barrel aged Scotch Ale is a pretty sweet Tuesday night. 

Ah, Asheville - the place that makes everyone who visits look at local job openings and contemplate what it would take to move there. Usually while drinking a beer.

Kugler named his drink Radlermass - radler means cyclist in German and mass is an old Bavarian word for liter. Thus, the cyclist's liter was invented.

It will likely surprise no one that I routinely won the "Most Book Reports" award when I was in elementary school. I regularly cashed in my Book-Its points for personal pan pizzas at Pizza Hut, wearing my giant purple Book-It pin as I chowed down on my pizza.

So smoky, so barbeque saucy, and so firm. Truly, I think I could turn any tofu skeptic into a tofu believer with this tofu and barbeque sauce combination. I served it with green beans and pimento mac and cheese, which is pretty amazing in itself, but the ingredient list is not for the faint of heart (among other ingredients, the recipe calls for a literal stick of butter and a quart of whole milk. It also lists the cheese needed in pounds, so...probably not for anyone counting calories.)

I imagine that the trajectory homebrew has taken in my household is akin to parents with babies - at first, everything has to be clean and sanitized nearly to the point of being sterile to protect your offspring/homebrew; after awhile, though, you realize that your baby will live even if it eats Cheerios off the couch cushions and that your beer will still be drinkable even if you forgot to sanitize the scissors you used to cut open your yeast packet.

"Meh" is not acceptable feedback for competitions. Or anywhere, really - stop leaving "Meh" as beer feedback, everyone

As I predicted, I did not pass. I missed it by a total of 9 points.

I wish I could tell you what I thought about all the beers, but another danger of drinking eight different samples is that by the end, you don't pay attention to where you put your scoresheets and now fear they may be lost forever.

A little over two years ago, Sierra Nevada opened its East Coast brewery and taproom to the public. Although it may be more accurate to say that, a little over two years ago, beer drinkers were bestowed a little slice of heaven here on earth.

"Little" being relative of course - the 27,000 square foot facility in Mills River, North Carolina (about 17 miles from downtown Asheville) sits on 190 acres, 27 of which is developed. 

Two thousand five hundred different beers is a lot of beer. I remember reaching 500 beers back in 2014 and thinking it was a lot (SN: it is). Now there are badges for 5000 and 10,000 distinct beer check-ins. I'll probably get there one day, but for now, I'm taking some time to look back through the beers I have had thus far.