Aromatic Cutlery

A.K.A. Benzene Sword...



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Roland Fantom

Oh... Puhleeze!

This is ridiculous:

Vaune Dillmann grew up in South Milwaukee but long ago went off in search of weed. Make that Weed, as in the city in northern California.

In 2004, Dillmann opened the Mt. Shasta Brewing Co. and started producing Weed ales and lagers from mountain spring water. He topped each beer bottle with a cap that reads: "Try legal Weed."

"It's a play on words," he said, and a bit of innocent fun. Same with the brewery T-shirt that says: "100% pure Weed."

The feds, not known for liking fun, recently ordered him to stop using the caps.

[my bold]

Nobody ever accused the gubmint of being overly efficient, logical or fun-loving. I'd rather the feds concentrate on important things like the immediate cessation of using our food supply as fuel. Then again, I'm generally efficient, logical and fun-loving so what do I know? I know that we'd be a lot better off if gubmint bureaucrats would just drink a beer and think outside of their silly little boxes from time to time.

Beer

Understandable

This is bad news:

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - Guinness beer owner Diageo PLC rattled an Irish icon Friday, announcing plans to lay off more than half of its brewery workers, close two breweries and shift most production to a new, high-tech plant in the Dublin suburbs by 2013.

But I think it's understandable:

Half of the riverside St. James' Gate site will be sold for private development, and the volume of Guinness brewed there will be cut by about a third - to about 500 million pints annually. This will exclusively supply the Irish and British markets, where demand has slipped over the past decade in line with pubgoers' diversifying tastes.

I would imagine the same could be said of the American beer market.

Beer

I missed it.

Crap. I missed The Session this go round. I've been really busy lately as I just started a new job a few weeks back. I'm bummed because it sounds like a really cool theme. Where it all began for me was drinking Little Kings in Toledo, Ohio. Long story for another time over a few pints of good quality beer. Unfortunately I can't really do the theme justice right now, but I heartily recommend reading the roundup at Boak and Bailey. They do a consistently good job of covering matters of beer.

Beer

Healthy Yeast

The headline is admittedly misleading, but the healthy aspects of yeast have added a new dimension:

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine are developing a novel approach to screen for drugs to combat neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, using yeast cells. In recent months a number of mutations have been found in a disease protein called TDP-43, which is implicated in ALS and certain types of frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

[my added bold]

Maybe there's more to my love of hefeweizen than "it just tastes good". "Tastes good" isn't a bad reason in its own right though.

Beer

Sometimes The Right Wine is a Beer

Now this is a wine blogger I can appreciate:

As I've said before, sometimes the right wine is a beer. And I was excited to see the latest anniversary beer from the good folks at Shiner. I've had the 96th, 97th, and 98th anniversary beers, though for some reason didn't write about them here. This is the Shiner 99 Munich Style Helles Lager, a wonderful lager with a lot more body than your average Coors or Bud.

Benito pairs the Helles with a veal meatloaf in his post. It sounds great.

And from my previous trips to the Lone Star State, I can tell you that cold Shiner Bock from the tap is the perfect thing to take the edge off a hot summer day.

Yes sir. Come on down and enjoy.

Beer

Ode To Ooze - HeadShaker

For my good friends at HeadShaker blog, I present for your listening pleasure an Ode To Ooze:



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Special thanks to Liz for the idea.

Roland Fantom

Surprise? Nah..

Assemblyman Jim Beall Junior, a Democrat from San Jose, says the tax would generate $2 billion to help health and law enforcement services pay for alcohol-related emergencies like traffic accidents, domestic violence. and illnesses.

Why does the political (most often Democrat) answer to everything always involve throwing money at any given problem? It sure is easy to be a nice, socially responsible and upstanding guy when it's other people's money you're spending. What a freakin' joke.

Beer

The Session #14 - People

Firstly, let me thank Stonch for hosting this month. I'd also like to thank him for the topic. Given the interesting question Stonch raised last year, I thought this was an excellent topic for a Session - perhaps the best yet. That question really made me examine what it is that I like so much about beer.

For me, I would have said the beer is more important than the pub. That may be a comment on me personally or it may highlight a fundamental difference between British and American beer cultures. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

Not that I'm particularly saying that one culture is better than the other here, mind you. I think beer culture adapts itself to the people, not the other way around. I have a lot of family commitments, so going on pub quests just doesn't fit in well with my lifestyle. The people in my life that matter the most are in my home. So I drink moderately around them rather than around friends at a pub. Drinking with friends in my case is usually done at home when they come over or when I go over to their homes.

Anyway, the real topic here is beer people, so on with it. The person I chose passed away early in 2007 unfortunately. I homebrew because it fits in well with my lifestyle which is, as I described, centered around my home. So who is the guy I'm talking about? Ken Rich is his name. He owned the homebrew shop closest to me. It was called The Brew Stop. Sadly, nobody kept the place going after Ken's demise.

Ken was a really cool guy; somewhat quiet, but very helpful. I sampled many of his beers on tap at the shop and I was the recipient of a lot of good brewing advice from him. Probably the best advice he gave me was on a batch of mead I made.

Ken Rich was a short, round sort of fellow, with bushy, graying hair and thick glasses. My wife always said he reminded her of an aging frat boy. The rest of the fraternity had moved on to careers and families while Ken stayed faithfully behind, maintaining the homebrew business. Perhaps that's not an entirely accurate picture of Ken. To be honest, I really didn't know him well enough to accurately assess him as such.

There's probably a lesson to be had for me in there. Beer doesn't make itself. People make beer. People drink beer. So maybe in the context of it being about the people more than the beer, I could see where the pub would be more important. Thinking of it in terms of the inhabitants rather than what they're drinking makes perfect sense. It doesn't fit my lifestyle, but certainly it does fit the lifestyles of some.

I often don't take the time to get to know people as well as I'd like and that's the lesson I would take away from the life of Ken Rich. Get to know people while you have the chance. They might not be there once you realize how little you know about them and finally set yourself to the task of learning about them. May God rest the soul of Ken Rich and give peace to his family.

Beer

When the sun comes up...

... on a sleepy little town
Down around San Antone
And the folks are risin' for another day
Round about their homes

Well we made it back from San Antonio. Of course the Doobie Brothers weren't talking about Shiner, Texas in the song above, but they could have been. Shiner is indeed a sleepy little town. It's typical small town Texas except for the fact that it's home to Spoetzl Brewing, who makes Shiner beer. You knew there would be a beer angle to this trip, right?

We stopped in on the way home from San Antonio and took the brewery tour. Our tour guide was Anne, and she did a fine job. She gave us the history as well as a good overall explanation of the current brewery configuration. I asked a question about the yeast slurry added in to the hefeweizen at bottling time and her immediate question was, "are you a homebrewer". She razzed me a bit and of course, I counter-razzed. She told me I was the first person who had ever asked her for a yeast sample. Heh! Fat chance. It was funny though. Here are a couple of pics from the brewery (click for the full-res versions):





Ahhh... good times. Great memories. Even the kids enjoyed the tour. The fact that I bought them some Shiner merchandise from the hospitality room probably didn't hurt. I got my son a frisbee and my daughter a T-shirt.

Also, while we were still in San Antonio, I happened upon one lonely six-pack of St. Arnold Christmas Ale in an HEB grocery store. Woo-hooooooo!!! I drank a couple of them there, but I still have some left. Here I am enjoying one in our temporary home away from home:



I am a lucky dude. Good kids. Good family. Good beer. Good trip all the way around. BTW, Anne told us that Shiner is discontinuing "Flip" (the frowny/happy face on the hefeweizen) so if any of you have merchandise or bottles that still bear that logo you should probably hold onto them. I already had a shirt with Flip on it, but I now have some coasters and a fresh six-pack with that design. Life is good.

Beer

Taking A Break

Everyone needs a break sometimes. Time for family bonding is an important part of life. Work is important, but so is family. So we're heading off to San Antonio for Spring Break. It's a small trip, but one were all looking forward to. I'll be back, hopefully refreshed and relaxed.



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Roland Fantom

They Are Out There

Oh yes. They are.



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Roland Fantom

The Session #13

I've been pretty busy lately and didn't have any time to put together an entry for this Session . To be honest, I've not looked into organic anything at all, let alone beer, so I wouldn't have had much to offer on the subject other than a bit of a conservative "harumph" anyway. I suppose I'm somewhat of an anomaly in the craft beer world as far as my political views go. Oh well. I make no apologies for it. If organic beer interests you though, Chris O'Brien of Beer Activist is the host this month and he has the roundup here.

Beer

The blind leading...

... themselves to a beer with the help of this idea.

Soda cans, beer cans, canned coffee... in Japan, it's not always easy to distinguish one from the other with your eyes closed. With that in mind, Japanese brewers have begun stamping patterns of raised dots on top of their beer cans. In Braille, the dots read "alcohol" though some of Kirin Brewery's cans spell out "Kirin Beer". If Kirin was really smart, they'd put Braille labels on their beer vending machines before competing brands do!

Cool idea!

Beer

Surprise Surprise

I'm not normally one to do tasting notes here; not because I don't like them or don't enjoy reading the impressions of others. It's mostly just because there are already sites like Beer Advocate and Rate Beer that do a fine job of it and condense them all into one place. But this one is an exception for me because it took me by surprise:

I was surprised by it because I read nothing about the beer before I tasted it. I honestly expected an American Hefeweizen, similar to Pyramid's. But what I tasted was reminiscent of bananas (that's "bananners" for some of you folks in the NE).

So I realized I was actually drinking a German Hefeweizen. Very nice. I like this style quite a bit. A bit of the clove note was evident there as well, but the bananas dominated for me. I'm one who swirls the bottom bit of the bottle before adding it to my pour. I love to get the yeast in suspension and from everything I've read it's actually pretty healthy for you to drink - in addition to tasting good IMO.

I haven't tried this one with a lemon wedge - I may still do so - but for starters I wanted to taste it as-is. I was impressed, as I always am, with Flying Dog.

Beer

R.I.P. William F. Buckley, Jr.

Today we mourn the passing of an intellectual giant. I can think of no better tribute to Mr. Buckley than the one paid him by the editors of the publication he founded in 1955.

William F. Buckley, Jr., R.I.P.

By the Editors

Our revered founder, William F. Buckley Jr., died in his study this morning.

If ever an institution were the lengthened shadow of one man, this publication is his. So we hope it will not be thought immodest for us to say that Buckley has had more of an impact on the political life of this country — and a better one — than some of our presidents. He created modern conservatism as an intellectual and then a political movement. He kept it from drifting into the fever swamps. And he gave it a wit, style, and intelligence that earned the respect and friendship even of his adversaries. (To know Buckley was to be reminded that certain people have a talent for friendship.)

He inspired and incited three generations of conservatives, and counting. He retained his intellectual and literary vitality to the end; even in his final years he was capable of the arresting formulation, the unpredictable insight. He presided over NR even in his “retirement,” which was more active than most people’s careers. It has been said that great men are rarely good men. Even more rarely are they sweet and merry, as Buckley was.

When Buckley started National Review — in 1955, at the age of 29 — it was not at all obvious that anti-Communists, traditionalists, constitutionalists, and enthusiasts for free markets would all be able to take shelter under the same tent. Nor was it obvious that all of these groups, even gathered together, would be able to prevail over what seemed at the time to be an inexorable collectivist tide. When Buckley wrote that the magazine would “stand athwart history yelling, ‘Stop!’” his point was to challenge the idea that history, with a capital H, pointed left. Mounting that challenge was the first step toward changing history’s direction. Which would come in due course.

Before he was a conservative, Buckley was devoted to his family and his Church. He is survived by his son Christopher. Our sadness for him, and for us, at his passing is leavened by the hope that he is now with his beloved wife, Patricia, who died last year.

You will be missed, sir.

UPDATE:

Perhaps even more impressive than praise coming from those that worked for you and generally agreed with you politically is praise coming from those that generally did not.

Bar Flew

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Roland Fantom

Gathering Place

This seems like a cool idea. I got an invitation from Rich to join in the fun. I took him up on the offer and I am now member #209 at Democracy's Drink.

Democracy's Drink is a social network for Beer Drinkers.

I love the internet and its ability to bring people from around the globe to a central place for a common purpose.

Beer

Robo Rave

Like many kids around the globe, my kids are video game hounds... major video game hounds. I think back about how it was for me as a kid, and the level of sophistication in home gaming systems was not even close to what my kids have available to them now. We now have a Wii, and both kids have a Nintendo DS. The Wii and DS offer wireless connectivity, and now that I've hooked them up, they can trade Pokemon characters with other kids all around the world. The degree to which the world has been flattened really hit home with me when I observed my son doing Pokemon trades with other gamers in Japan. It's amazing to me.

Anyway, that was a roundabout way to get to the real point of this post, which is music. A genre of music about which I really have a lot of curiosity is soundtracks. Pursuant to that, watching my kids (and listening to them) playing video games sparked my interest in the background music to those games. It's just kind of back there, not really jumping out at you, but burrowing its way into your head just as surely as any earworm you hear on the radio. So here is my shot at the genre:



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Roland Fantom

Playing around...

... a little more. I need to take more time this year to learn the intricacies of this keyboard...



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Roland Fantom