Harpoon's Island Creek Oyster Stout/ Piping 101

THE BREW:
One word... WOW

Allow me to elaborate: I took the opportunity to cheat on my south beach diet to try a beer that I've heard a LOT of buzz about. The beer in question is Harpoon's Island Creek Oyster Stout. While I thought that the naming convention was just a name... I realized after drinking this dark hued velvety goodness that this beverage was in fact brewed with Island Creek oysters. The brew has an initial nose not entirely disparate from that of a Guinness or a Murphy's. It has a very standard Stout Smell. The taste on the other hand was remarkable. Dry and minerally upon first sip, this stout has a bit of a coffee finish and a faint hint of blackberry. I'm not sure if blackberry was part of the process, but there's a slight taste of it in there. This is a beer possibly best had on its own, but I would pair is either with wild game or with a Tarimisu if you're going to go the dessert route.

THE MUSIC:
The Pipes have been going better than in recent history. I've been taking the time to really run through my drills and I've gotten a number of tunes under my belt... on the chanter... Being on the bag, on the other hand, is another story. I've been making some progress there, but again, it's been slow. I can get some noise out of the chanter and I can get a whole scale out, but I'm a long way off from playing regularly. I'm a bit disappointed as I have a St. Patrick's Day Parade in a few short weeks. The biggest difficulty I'm having is getting the drones and the changer to roll all at once. I think my problem has been one of conditioning. I'm trying to get the bag to remain full. Again, I'm making progress, but it's slower than I'd hoped.

Banjo: I made the move today to try to play with a thumb pick and finger pics. I think now that I have these plastic picks, I should be able to progress towards more proficient play. I've essentially had to start from scratch with my technique as playing with the picks is far different from simply finger picking. One of the things I'm looking forward to is double picking with the thumb, it allows you to make the banjo rolls sound a lot faster by playing in two directions rather than one. My hope is to be able to master the basic technique and then hopefully take on a few Earl Scruggs and Bela Fleck tunes.

Coming soon: I hope to try to get a few ideas I have down on tape. At the moment, I have access to a MacBook with Garage Band on it. If I can get these ideas down, I have a friend with a Protools studio and I hope to be able to perfect some of these songs.

As random as these thoughts are, I hope that all of you are doing well.

Best of luck out there,

Rob