A little New England Distilling mojito for Elise while she was sunbathing and reading a book yesterday. Me? I wasted away the entire day sitting on the couch recovering from Saturday’s fairly successful first BBQ with the $20 Weber turned 5AM bottle share. No pics as I was busy as hell cooking but here’s the grill menu for the day:

• First up were hot dogs from Hembold’s/Old World Provisions with my Michigan-Style Coney Sauce. I think I hit this last batch a little too hard with the immersion blender and doesn’t have the consistency I’m looking for. Also, I got distracted during the cook and the dogs got a little more done than I would have liked as I’m still working on my temperature control but I’ll get there.
• Half Bacon, Half Chuck Ground Burgers. These sounded fantastic and completely decadent in my mind but in practice they didn’t come off much different than regular burgers other than they were super smokey. I can’t tell if that was from the bacon in the burger, or the bacon fat burning on the charcoal.
  
• Chorizo-Stuffed Poblano Peppers (recipe from the Meatwave). Made the chorizo from scratch, too. These came out decent and the extra filling made for a much needed Sunday morning breakfast on top of english muffins with poached eggs and a cheese sauce prepared by Chef Dave.

After dinner Pig Destroyer Jon got going on the fire pit, and being this was our first time drinking outside after cooped up in the Chez Fuj Tasting Room all Winter, the drinking stretched into the early morning. Some of the highlights of the night were:

• Double Trouble – This year’s Double Trouble is tasting great. A lot more grapefruit than I was expecting.
• Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout – cracked my first bottle of this this year after only having it on draft when it was first released in this area. It’s a totally different beer. The draft version is like how I’ve remembered it in the past: in your face bourbon. The bottle tasted like a more chocolatey version of Breakfast Stout. Not that I didn’t love it, just wasn’t what I was expecting.
• Lawson’s Spring Fever, Double Sunshine, Peril – Spring Fever is the perfect session beer and should be put in 12oz cans. I love DS but I still prefer Heady or any of the Hill Farmstead DIPAs all day long, but Peril really stole the show. This is Double Sunshine kicked up an even further notch and the 11% ABV is completely unnoticeable.
• Alpine Exponential Hoppiness – we really should have drank this first. The Lawson’s beers really shamed the hell out of this.
• Captain Lawrence Rosso E Marrone – light and milder than most for the style, but I expected that and most say to age this one and wait for it to get more tart.
• DuClaw Retribution – a great BA Stout, but after a long winter of the bourbon beers we’re all ready to move on the the lighter stuff.
• Allagash FV13 – My First of the Allagash sours. Will have to trade away some Rosso to get the others since this was phenom.
• Panil Barriquée – this bottle could have used some more age on it, but still a solid Flanders Red.

And of course with it being Cinco de Mayo we needed a mexican beer to get this year’s badge, so Dave ran over to Mobil to grab this gem. Most entertaining $3 ever spent on a beer after the remaining beer geysered out of the top and the bottom exploded shortly thereafter.

Among a bunch of other running around my Saturday morning also brought me to the Homebrew Emporium for their Big Brew. I took a ton of pictures for the crew there and should have those up later tonight. Cheers!