Generik's Tap: Updates

Memorial Weekend - What are YOU doing?

Thu, 22 May 2008 17:57:25 GMT

My weekend starts tonight and is shaping up to be very liquid. First on the agenda is a day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Carb Day tomorrow. My dad is coming down and we are meeting up with a buddy of mine for a day of drinking cheap beer in the sun and watching the action on track. So what's going into the beer cooler for Carb Day? A half case of Stroh's and a half case of Schlitz. The Hoosier Beer Geeks have a great recommendation for 5l mini-kegs to bring to the track, but I personally like to kick it with the more obscure macro lagers at the track. To end the day is a free Stone Temple Pilots concert which I have been looking forward to.

Saturday I am hosting a cookout at the house followed up by the main event. Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals, where the Detroit Red Wings will hopefully take another step towards the goal of hoisting the greatest sports trophy in the world. For the cookout, I am planning to fire up the BBQ smoker and do up some chicken drumstick and smoked sausage. It will be the first time I have had a chance to smoke some meat this year and I am looking forward to that. As my previous post mentioned, I have a fresh batch of German hefeweizen on tap along with an Amarillo Red ale, so along with the fridge full of craft beer, we will be well refreshed.

Sunday of course is race day. So once again I will be heading to Speedway with a cooler in tow. This time though, we are going a bit more highbrow and bringing a case of Ballantine XXX Ale that I personally carted home from New Jersey. 16oz cans no less.

The Indy 500 is quite possibly the most anticipated event for me every year. I find there is nothing like being at the track for all the fanfare and excitement. From Jim Nabors singing Back Home Again in Indiana to the cars screaming by at 220mph, there just is nothing else like it in the world. In other words, if you haven't been to the race, you should do something about that.

Monday, well I am just hoping to get there at this rate. If I do, relaxation and maybe some grilling if the weather is still nice. Speaking of the weather, how awesome is it that all month it has been below average temps, rainy, and more or less miserable, then Memorial weekend arrives and the forecast is in the 70's and very clear of precipitation just in time for the grandest weekend Naptown throws every year?

Well I hope everyone has safe a happy holiday weekend! You can look forward to a true taste test report between the new (old recipe) Schlitz and old (new recipe) Schlitz in the very near future. And I am sure there will be plenty of photos added to the site from the track.

Back from the Big Apple

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:57:21 GMT

Well I had planned to try and keep up with some posts while on vacation, but in the end just couldn't stay motivated to post on vacation. So instead of a have a ton of stuff to slowly filter to the blog-o-tron. I will keep this fairly brief and just give you a quick glimpse of some things to come.

Reviews of some east coast beers not found around here, and in fact brands I had never even heard of.
A virtual tour of the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, PA.
A virtual tour of the Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland, OH.
The glory that is McSorley's Ale House in New York City.
Reasons why The Monk's Cafe in Philadelphia, PA is overpriced and doesn't really belong on the "top 125 places to drink a beer before you die list"

So stick around.. the gory details are just over that next hill!

Oh yeah, the Red Wings are already up 2-0 on the hated Colorado Avalanche.. and I did at least get to see most of Game 2 on Saturday. There is still time for any bandwagon jumpers out there to join the Red Army with me!

New look

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:34:01 GMT

I spent some time today to really try and give this site a little more personality. Up until now I had been using fairly basic built in site controls and wanted to step away from that a bit. The main thing I wanted to change was the page banner up top. Unfortunately Live Spaces doesn't give you a lot of control on how that looks. Basically you can have 2 lines of text and you can adjust the font, font color, and font size on each. Other then that, you're out of luck.

So after some searching around through the controls I found I could add an HTML module and from the be able to use straight up old school HTML coding to do as I wanted. That module replaced the default Site Tag module up top and all that was left was to create the actual banner itself. All in all it is still a work in progress. I have it down now that it will be easy to modify. I will probably change the picture in the banner to reflect events, holidays, etc.

That was the major change, but certainly not the only one. I also added some lists on the left side of the page. One for my personal gaming recommendations with a small blurb regarding each game. And another list to expose you to more brewing and general beer related websites. I also added a module that will allow you to select a category and sort all of these posts by that category to make finding previous postings a bit easier.

The final addition is a link to my public files on Sky Drive. The idea is that I plan to post up homebrew recipes and I don't want them to just be a blog post that will slowly sink into the mire never to be found again. I am planning to post two versions of each recipe, one as plain text, the other as a ProMash file. ProMash is a great brewing tool and if you have it, this will save you much time to access the recipe. I would expect you will see some of that to start showing up in the next week or so.

Let me know what you think of the changes. Oh, and I am sure most will wonder.. but the Pig's Eye Pilsner in the banner picture is a beer I traded with some guy at the Indy 500 3 years ago. My dad and I always bring a fairly unique beer to drink at the race and were staggered to see someone a couple rows ahead of us drinking something just as obscure. Some sweet talking to the guy and the deal was done.

Better Late Then Never

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:59:56 GMT

No posts for a bit. Mainly due to being sick for the majority of last week, to the point of missing the final two days of work. With that said, I spent that time sitting around the house quietly playing video games while giving my body a chance to shake the virus or whatever was running amok. So Wednesday night I finally completed Mass Effect for the Xbox 360. Amazing game with a stellar sci-fi storyline and some great voice acting throughout. All in all, I think it took about 22 hours to fully complete but that included quite a bit of non-vital content. I fervently hope there is a sequel made down the road and would give it my highest recommendation.

I went from Mass Effect and started playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on Thursday. This game has been out for quite some time now, so I picked up the Game of the Year edition which had a ton of extra content packed in. I had read and heard how massive in scope and how free ranging Oblivion was.. but nothing really prepared me for the truth of it. This game is beyond enormous. The game world itself is every bit as big as some MMOs out there, yet it's all for a single player to explore and adventure in alone. So far I am hooked. Beautiful graphics and a world that truly feels alive along with a solid storyline and more things to keep you busy then I could begin to describe. If you are looking for a fantasy RPG, check it out but make sure to get the strategy guide with it. You'll need it.

The European Beer Tour photo set is complete

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:52:19 GMT

Well that took the better part of an evening to do but it is finally done. All pics should now be captioned and I have melded my dad's pics with mine and gotten his in the proper chronological sequence. Quite a pain but I am happy it is now done.

The labeling is DONE!

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 02:32:22 GMT

The current pictures are finally all properly labeled and some of the poorer quality shots have been weeded out. I need to upload a few from my dad's set and there is a couple that I notice got missed from mine. Slowly getting there.

Picture labelling update

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:37:15 GMT

I have gotten all of the pics taken in Germany now labelled. Many of the Belgium ones are as well, but there are gaps all over where I need to consult my trip diary to refresh my memory on location names. When you are dealing with bars named t'Wagstuuk and similiar, you will understand why there are currently gaps. When I finally get that done, I can add in my dad's pics and finally do a write up of the whole damn thing.

Almost done

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:41:30 GMT

Almost done labelling the photos from Europe. I need to get my journal out to help finish this task off. And I guess when I do that I will finally type up the whole experience and post it up for everyone. Should explain better what we did.