The Wordless Picture Thread

Kapea

Kapea

Looking 180 degrees around:

Unsensibel

Smaug

Smaug

Kapea

Hey @Smaug, shaka is made with your thumb and pinky...

Kapea

Smaug

@Kapea said: Hey Smaug, shaka is made with your thumb and pinky...

Doh!!

Kapea

Self updating
Camera time stamp = UTC -10

Kapea

That vent and lava lake are about 250m in diameter.

Kapea

punkin

Not wordless but thanks to Kapea, 2/3rd of the fleet. :))

Kapea

Extra sharp punkin.
Wear your colors with pride!

Kapea

Pa_bon

Not good. Cat 4 right now.

HSBC

CothermanDistilling

Kapea

Kapea

Kapea

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Kapea

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Unsensibel

@kapea additions to your shed?

Kapea

Sorry for the two blank posts. I was trying to post photos via my cell phone camera from an area with limited cell coverage. I couldn't delete the boo boos, so I shortened them to one character.

Kapea

I just got back from a week in the Portland, Oregon area at an ADI whiskey workshop. A great experience! I was looking to get out of the tropics for some fall colors and ended up having a ton of fun while learning a lot too.

McMenamin's Edgefield in Troutdale and McMenamin's Cornelius Pass Roadhouse (CPR) in Hillsborough
They are making whiskey of off an amazing old French brandy alembic in an old barn at the CPR distillery. The distiller sticks an empty tin soup can to the lyne arm with candle wax during the wash heatup. When vapors start crossing over the wax melts, the can falls noisily to the floor, and the distiller knows it's time to pay attention to making the heads cut.

The photos above are from the Edgefield distillery. The still in the first photo runs their spirit runs, the second photo is their stripper, and the third is barrels stored in their onsite rickhouse.

I am definitely going back in March for the ADI conference & trade show

Kapea

Last Tuesday we went on a distillery crawl. We visited one brewing/distilling fab shop, Bridgetown Brew Systems, and seven distilleries:

• McMenamin's CBR
• Aria Gin Distillery (my favorite aria used to be Nessun Dorma, now it's Aria Gin)
• Bull Run Distilling Co.
• Clear Creek Distillery
• House Spirits (their American Single Malt Whiskey - Westward - ROCKS!)
• Rolling River Spirits and
• New Deal Distillery - New deal had numerous open fermenters with pear brandy wash at high krausen - the aroma was exquisite!

Our classes took place in the McMeninman's Edgefield brewery, distillery and hotel.

I took about 10GB of photos. I'll put some more up if you guys want.

crozdog

@Kapea said: I took about 10GB of photos. I'll put some more up if you guys want.

Sounds like a great trip.

Post some more pics!

zymurgybob

The McMenamin brothers are my heroes. Their business model is to take every place in Portland that I loved as a kid, but that was kinda sinking into the trash heap of history , and put it back on the tax rolls as some combination of hotel, brewery, brewpub, conference site, and/or distillery.

I'm guessing they cut some kinda deals with whatever municipality controls whatever site they're looking at acquiring, and offer to bring the (usually old) facility up to good safety and health standards, without trashing all the gorgeous old architecture and fixtures that make the (did I say old?) place special, while adding a taxpaying profit center to the community.

I don't know how many facilities they have now, but maybe 15 years ago it was 51, ad they're adding new ones all the time. Last night I was at a "Distillery Festival" at one (a rescued elementary school) in Bothell, Washington. They've converted hotels, county poor farms, Masonic lodges, roadhouses, taverns, dance halls, schools, movie theaters, and god-knows-what-all to very successful businesses.

Sorry if I'm going overboard about McMenamin's, but they're rescuing history, and their best tool is beer. How could you not like that?

Kapea

Not meaning to be contrary @zymurgybob, but the McMenamin's you, Bushman and I went to up in rural Seattle when we toured Bothell and Woodinville before the 2014 ADI conference seemed more like a refurbished TGI Fridays in a strip mall. I remember you commenting at the time that it was not at all typical of what McMeniman's usually does. I also remember the beers there were quite good.

I wholeheartedly agree with your enthusiasm though; the McMenamins' in Troutdale and Hillsborough are national treasures.

zymurgybob

Yup, that one was a serious dud, but they have since closed it and opened up the rescued elementary school, which is way larger, and a typical McMenamins. Our distillers festival was not held in the part where they serve the general public, so I don't know what that part's like.

Almost all of them are national treasures. By the way, the Edgefield on Troutdale used to be the old county poor farm. Beer makes everything better.

Kapea

This is in a frame on a wall in the Bull Run Distilling Co. tasting room.
Alcohol was not completely illegal in the US during prohibition: