Hating on Bad Beer

BrewDog has been in the news lately for it's fancy 55 percent ABV The End of History but these guys are crazy in so many ways (like free beer for life if you get a BrewDog tattoo).  Of course, this makes them heroes to us.  Thanks KS for tracking this down on the BrewDog Blog.


We hate bad beer! from BrewDog on Vimeo.

Almost Heaven, Almost Luxurious

If the world were a perfect place some brewer would put real chocolate in their chocolate stout.  Well, we may be closer to utopia than the world thinks.  Wells and Youngs Luxurious Double Chocolate Stout is brewed with chocolate malt and real dark chocolate. 

The folks at W&Y explain it thusly: "Pale Ale and Crystal malt, Chocolate Malt, a special blend of sugars, Fuggle and Golding hops, real dark chocolate and chocolate essence are combined to deliver a stout of with real credentials."  Fuggle is just a great word.

This is consistently a chocolate stout meaning you get the chocolate from the aroma through the taste and in the finish.  When pouring you might think you picked the wrong beer for mid-summer inside the beltway but the tasting tells you otherwise.  Though the head is not particularly creamy it has a Guinness feel as you watch it wind down.  The aroma is chocolate and nutty.   It's not a particularly heavy stout and the finish is even a bit thin.  You might expect this to be an overly sweet beer but it's really not.  The beer does not have the greatest balance to it as we were looking for a more bitter-sweet concoction. The carbonation is in the mid-range, which is fine despite our preference for lower carbonation.

Overall, this is a fine brew but hardly luxurious.  For our tastes, luxury should be plush and have more depth.  Maybe we didn't know what to expect and maybe we just didn't know what we were looking for.  It's the wrong time of year for heavy, meaty beers but that's what we thought we had before opening the bottle.  So, drop the term "luxurious" and you'll have a fine chocolate stout that's brewed with real chocolate.

Baron Bob Strikes Again

Thanks to @BrooklynBrewery for shedding some light on our new favorite place to shop - Baron Bob's super duper emporium.  Bob has been "crusading against the common gift since 1988".  Of course, Bob's also been crusading against modern era Web sites but that's a post better suited for the Sci Fi Sweetheart.

Below are a few of Bob's offerings.  All that's missing is the Super Bass-o-matic '76.

The Beer Belt

The "Paddle Faster" T-shirt

The Horse Head Mask

The Inflatable Van Gogh

The Undercap

The horse head mask is classic.

Snakes In A Stadium

The Canadians have created a new tradition for fans bored during the commercial timeouts of CFL games.  We're assuming CFL games are televised, at the very least in Canada, because of their funky content laws.  Let's be honest, the wave is more outdated than the desktop pc.  The vuvuzela is a fad for the other kind of football and hopefully it doesn't find its way into other sports.

Last week during a surely riveting gridiron battle between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the Toronto Argonauts fans got a little unruly and created the world's longest beer snake (apologies to Guinness World Records).  The snake, seen in the video below, clearly covers more than one section of the stadium.  Fans from within throwing distance were so anxious to participate they willing threw their glasses filled with the finest Canadian lager towards the snake.  What a thing of beauty.

You will hardly be surprised to find that the Blue Bombers did not take kindly to the behavior of the unruly fans and they issued this statement on their "zero tolerance" code of conduct.  We can't help but think that somewhere, former Argonauts owner (and funny Canadian) John Candy is smiling.

Rage Against the Beer

What kind of a maroon puts up two posts on the same day?  The same kind that can go a week without posting anything of substance (or anything at all for that matter). 

So, if you follow us on the Twitter you know that we kicked off the evening with the "super dry" Asahi at Sala Thai in Petworth.  That's right, Petworth is the new U Street corridor, bitches.  Asahi is dry but otherwise the Thai version of Budweiser - and that's not necessarily a put down.  It's not necessarily a compliment either.

With friends in tow we decided to get a little crazy, harken back to our college days and see if we could track down some crazy women with the big American breasts.  Turns out they were waiting patiently for us at the local Yes! Market.  What we found was Flying Dog's Raging Bitch Belgian-style IPA. 

Who would combine a Belgian with an IPA?  The weirdos at Flying Dog, that's who.  You can pretend that these guys are crazy because it's trendy but their hero is Hunter S. Thompson and this Crazy Bitch has been around for 20 years.  And if you're honest with yourself it's part of why you love the Flying Dog.  (The other part is because you're on your fourth Bitch of the night - how often can you say that and not get in trouble?)

In our estimation this Bitch is more Belgian than IPA.  That's perfectly acceptable, unless of course you were expecting more IPA than Belgian.  However, if you're a Crazy Bitch who likes it doggie style then this brew is for you.  There really is no other good reason to drink a beer that is more than proud of it's heritage.  In fact, Steadman says you should "[w]allow in its golden glow in a glass beneath a white foaming head...it's pure Gonzo!!"

When poured this beer has the sweet innocent look of blonde hair and blue eyes.  You know, the girl next door type who eats a man's heart - and that's only the appetizer.  The head is thick and foamy but settles well.  There is surely an aroma but we've had several samples this evening so the olfactory senses are appropriately dulled. 

Combining brews is a dangerous game.  It either works or it doesn't - there is rarely a middle ground.  Today was a rather mild mid-Atlantic summer day so perhaps that impacted our view of Crazy Bitch but we're sold.  We are fans of Belgians and we're fans of IPAs so it's not a stretch to imagine this being a good beer for our pallette.  Anyway, this is as technical as we get tonight so no fancy words like "aroma", "pithy", or "full bodied" but for this beer it wouldn't work.  Raging Bitch is chaotic.  So is this post.  If you don't like it you can suck it.



The official video is for wussies.

Hey, This is A Family Blog

So, you will find no photographs directly attributable to the following news items. That said, they're damn good stories. The news just writes itself sometimes.

Mesa, AZ - Police in Mesa were called when a man claimed his girlfriend was damaging his windshield and rear window. The officers walked up to the door of her residence hoping to speak with her about the matter. "She answered the door naked and holding a beer, telling the cops she had just been skinny dipping." In her conversation with the police the woman explained that she did not cause any damage to the vehicle in question. She also called the police "pigs" and refused to answer any other questions. Also worth noting is that she caused the vehicle damage with a dog leash (read into that what you will).

Broome, AUS - Taking you half way around the world to Australia where a tourist was hospitalized after getting drunk and breaking into a reptile park in an attempt to ride a crocodile.  After being kicked out of a nearby pub, the gentleman entered Broome Crocodile Park and attempted to ride a 16 foot crocodile named Fatso (cue the Crocodile Dundee jokes).  Fatso shares his pen with two female crocodiles.  Sargeant Roger Haynes of the local police said "[h]e has attempted to sit on its back and the croc has taken offence to that and has spun around and bit him on the right leg."  Said Fatso after the incident: "there's only so much of Fatso to go around and two ladies livin' in my crib is trouble enough."  The intruder's name is not being released - presumably to protect him from the abject humiliation that will be brought down from friends and family.

For putting up with lame news stories we offer you this Muppet gem:

Because We're Homers

This Robot Fetches Beer From Your Fridge

Powered by Linux through a web interface...blah blah blah.  Who cares.  Best. Robot. Ever.

It's the Economy, Stupid

We couldn't help but steal the most overused tag line in political history to remind everybody that we're mired in a recession.  The stock market is a roller coaster and housing is back on the decline.  The new buzzword is "double dip" (it doesn't mean what we thought).

Hey, we could remind you that today's high is 105 degrees making your cubicle more enjoyable than the great outdoors. 

Is there a bright spot?  Is there a recession proof industry?  Well, there's always alcohol.*  Statistics Canada recently reported that, despite the times, the sale of beer, wine, and spirits has increased by more than 5 percent in the last year. 

Yeah, but that's Canada.  Hockey's over so what's the story inside the lower 48?  Despite the Dow Jones being down for the year microbrews are on the up and up.  Shares of the Craft Brewers Alliance, makers of RedHook, have doubled this year (Anheuser-Busch has an ownership stake in the Alliance).  Sam Adams shares are up 42 percent.  According to estimates, craft beer shipments increased by 7.2 percent in 2009. 

*Manufacturing is one industry making gains during the recession but unfortunately most experts believe this will not last.