Cameron Stokes’s Blog

This past week has been a great beer week.  Last Tuesday we had dinner at the Westside location 5 Seasons Brewing Company and enjoyed their beer sampler along with some great food.  Each of their beers was delicious, especially their IPA.  This was only the second time I’ve been to 5 Seasons; the first being at the Prado location where Kevin McNerney brews, of Sweetwater fame.

Last weekend we made our way down to Tampa for the ACC Championship Game (go Tech!) and made sure to take advantage of the beers available in Florida and Tampa specifically that we can’t get in Georgia.  Friday night, we grabbed dinner at the Tampa Bay Brewing Company and had great beers and great food.  Again I got their beer sampler which included each of their year-round beers and a cask-conditioned Moosekiller Barleywine; all very delicious.  I highly recommend Tampa Bay Brewing Company; in addition to the beer and food, the service was excellent.  Before the game on Saturday we stopped by a Total Wine and stocked up on the infamous Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA as well as Dogfish Head’s Shelter Pale Ale, Raison d’Extra, Fort, and Theobroma, Cigar City Brewing’s General Zhukov’s Imperial Stout and Improvisacion Ale, and Lazy Magnolia’s Southern Pecan and Indian Summer.  I’ve since tried a 120 Minute IPA but haven’t made it to the others yet.  I had to reorganize the beer fridge in order to fit everything.  Here’s the full score from Florida:

Score from Florida

Back in Georgia, Terrapin has released their Hopsecutioner IPA.  I am a total hophead and this beer does not disappoint.  I’m actually quite proud of myself as this is the first beer I’ve successfully identified a hop in the beer by taste alone.  A couple weeks ago I had Rogue’s Yellow Snow IPA and remarked how different the hop profile was from a typical IPA.  I can taste the same hop in the Hopsecutioner: Amarillo.  I’ve yet to make a homebrew using this hop, but this has moved up the list on things to try.  I love the flavor of this hop.

If only more weeks could be like this…

I’ve started several development/technology projects over the past few years, none of which have made it to a launch or release.  Many of them were to learn new a new framework, a couple were things I thought I could turn into a full-blown product but for whatever reason didn’t.

In any case, I have a new project I’ve been working on for the the past 2 weeks that I plan to see all the way through.  I think there’s a real need for a product like this and can see it having a pretty decent adoption.  Without giving away too many details here’s a tease:

I’ve tried some delicious new beers recently and my list of favorite breweries has grown, specifically Stone Brewing Co., Duck Rabbit Craft Brewery, and New Belgium.  A recent post on Blogfish, the Dogfish Head blog, answered the question of where Dogfish Head conceived their name and since I’ve always been curious about some of the other breweries and their names, I decided to do some research.  Here’s what I came up with:

• Atlanta Brewing Company - Obvious…
• Dogfish Head Craft Brewery - Named after the a cove behind founder Sam Calagione’s parents’ home in Maine; suggested to Sam by his father. [1]
• Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery - Named after an illustration in Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein, a throwback to head brewer Paul Philippon’s previous life as a philosophy teacher. [2]
• Flying Dog Brewery - Named after a painting the founder, George Stranahan, saw in Pakistan while attempting to climb K2 in the Himalayas. [3]
• Left Hand Brewing Company - Named after Chief Niwot, a tribal leader of the Southern Arapaho people in Colorado; Niwot is the Arapaho word for left hand.
• New Belgium Brewing Company - Presumably after head brewer Jeff Lebesch’s bike rides through Europe. [4]
• Stone Brewing Co. - A quick email to the brewery told me Stone was chosen to elicit thoughts of “old school European architecture, strength, simplicity and craftsmanship…the opposite of the plastic and aluminum culture which (regrettably) dominates the beer drinking world of today.”
• Sweetwater Brewing Company - Presumably named after Sweetwater Creek in west Atlanta near their original brewery.
• Terrapin Beer Company - Named after the Grateful Dead album Terrapin Station, a favorite of founders Brian “Spike” Buckowski and John Cochran. [5]

This gets me thinking…if I were to start a brewery what would I name it?

Since planting the hops back in March we’ve made numerous trips to Bogart to water, trim, and just overall tend to the hops.  A few of the rhizomes didn’t make it but of the 23 vines, we ended up with about 18 that took off and have been growing like crazy ever since.

Hop Cones

Based on my research I wasn’t expecting the plants to actually produce any hops given they’re in their first year but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what they’ve produced.  Since early July we’ve had 4 pickings and have over 6 ounces of Cascade and Chinook hops vacuum-packed in the freeze.

Getting ready to dry.

The best part of growing hops is the smell…they smell incredible.  Being a hop head I can’t get enough of the smell and dunked my head into our picking bag several times.  Breaking a hop cone open you can see the lovely lupulin glands and imagine the wonderful beer they will produce.

I’m already thinking to next year about what new varieties to plant and how to expand the hop farm.  All those goes to show you really can grow hops in Georgia.

More photos of the harvest are here.

I’ve posted a MySQL backup script to the lab for anyone that is interested.  The script will backup all MySQL databases and allows you to configure the filename and path for backups and how long to keep older backups in number of days.  I have mine set to run via cron every night at midnight and to retain 31 days of files so that I can revert to any day within the past month should anything happen.

It’s a simple script but it gets the job done.  Hope you find it helpful.  You can find the script here.