Dual Purpose trip to Germany

I was recently in Germany for two purposes. The first was for the 'Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms' conference at Dagstuhl Castle in Saarland Germany. This was a joy as I was able to focus nearly entirely on my PhD research and dissertation progress. At this point I'm in the home stretch.. I think I have two provable theorems sketched out and a set of new tractable items to explore to finish off the meat of the dissertation.

The second week in Germany was a beer tourist adventure through Bavaria and Bohemia. We hit Munich on day one and drank expensive tourist beer, then took a train to the Czech Republic to see Plzen (home of Pilsener beer) and Budweiss (Ceske Budejovice - original home of Budweiser beer). Plzen was very interesting and Budweiss was an adventure of train & bus travel. Two days later we took a train back into Germany to Bamberg. Bamberg is stunningly beautiful and is the home of a wide selection of locally crafted smoked lager beers. More on this trip in future posts.

Seattle Beer notes

My september trip to Seattle included stops at Kells. I really loved the Roslyn Brookside Lager from Roslyn Brewing. It has a wonderful fruity complexity to it, which is unusual for a lager (more like a Kolsch). A quick email to the brewer and I learned that he ferments it warm with a lager yeast.

I also enjoyed the Baron Brewing Helles Bock served at the Palace Kitchen. Great malt flavor. Great food at PK at reasonable prices.

On this October trip to Seattle I loved the Feierabend Pub. They have about 18 beers (all German styles) on tap. I tried/sampled about 5 kinds of Octoberfest and several other lagers.

Tap House Grill, 160 draft beers.. need I say more? This place was impressive. I tried two more Baron beers (Pils & Uber-Weiss) and the Brewery Ommegang Hennepin Farmhouse Saison. It's good, but my taste buds still prefer the New Belgium Saison.. the NB has a nice earthy taste.