It's Hop-tastic

There was a time when an India Pale Ale (IPA) was noted for being hoppy, bitter, and a bit malty. Then Dogfish Head pushed IPAs to the extreme. First a 60 minute, then a 90, and finally the ridiculous 120 minute IPA - that's 2 hours of continuous hopping for those keeping score at home.

That was the beginning of the end. Before long we had the double IPA (we won't get into the "double" trend here today). Everything is extreme. Today it's increasingly difficult to find an IPA that has hop character where you can still find the malt. So, is there a brew out there going by the IPA moniker that doesn't feel like your drinking some sort of hop-grain alcohol?

The Blue Point Brewing Company's Hoptical Illusion is retro in every way - including the label, it's psychodelic people. Behold the all seeing eye and with any luck the Free Masons are not onto this blog.

Hoptical Illusion has a hoppy front end but it's heart is malty, like a good IPA. It really is a classic American IPA. It's not going to meet the standard if you are all hops all the time. If you like hops, if you like something with character and a bit of complexity this is the IPA for you. You can have more than one (like we have tonight) and go back for more on your own accord - and not because you lost a bet.

Cheers!

Pension Plans Under Attack

Some of us have been following the fates of the American auto industry. One of the great unknowns is what happens to the pensions of retirees, particularly if you're a GM retiree.

Let it be known here that the auto industry retirees are not alone in their plight. Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Molson Coors is slashing a key pension benefit. Retirees who gave their life's blood to make beer will no longer get their 864 free beers they have been getting each year. Beginning January 1, 2010, retirees will get only 12 beers each month free. That's right, not even one per day.

The real bombshell: "In five years, the retirees won’t get any free beer from the Denver-based company."

You read that correctly. No more free beer for retirees. One employee, who asked to remain anonymous, was quoted as saying "why would I bother to work for M-C anymore? I mean, Coors beer isn't really worth buying."

They said It Couldn't be Done

It's just under a month and our baby rhizomes are showing some greenage. The "hard freeze" announced by the weather predicters in early April never arrived. Since then our region of the country has had an abundance of rain with just enough sun scattered about for good measure. We are hoping that plentiful rain is the magic ingredient if only because it helps us bear the miserable weather pattern we're stuck in.

Really, after planting we have put forth very little effort on this project. All the credit goes to mother nature. We didn't even have the decency to toss in some Miracle Grow. So far it's better to be lucky than good. If mother nature turns our expirement into a couple of towering hop vines we might start recycling.

Cheers!

March Means Beer Madness

Ripping off names of popular events for your own endeavor is nothing new (anything that ends in "apalooza" should be banned from existence). The Washington Post is doing it's own take with the bracket competition Beer Madness; not to be confused with the original March Madness, Mini-Madness, or even the English ska-band Madness.

We are not disappointed by the Post's sad attempt at naming this event. Nor are we insulted for getting snubbed as judges for the competition. To the contrary, we're just excited to see beer take an almost-front seat in a major newspaper. So, on to the highlights.

First Round
Lager Division: Gordon Biersch Marzen beats Clipper City McHenry Old Baltimore Style Beer. A chain brewpub beats out the locals from Baltimore...way to go judges.

Ale Division: Honkers Ale beats Lord Chesterfield Ale. hmmm...one sounds like an old, grumpy English gentleman. The other sounds like boobs.

Dark Beers Division: Brooklyn Brown and Kalamazoo Stout advance. We are big fans of both so kudos to the judges for getting this division right.

Specialty & Fruit Division: Who cares about beer brewed with fruit?

Tune in next time for our in-depth analysis of Round 2 winners and losers.

Love Hate Love

InBev, you continue to be the bane of our existence. You are the corporate version of that relationship everybody has once in life. She's relatively pretty or even hot, somehow mysterious (maybe it's the French accent or maybe she's goth), the sex is crazy, the partying is crazier, late nights and work hangovers are the norm. It's white hot for three minutes and you spend the next 6 months (sort of) trying to end things. Looking back you loved every minute of it. You hated every minute of it too. InBev, you are the destructive relationship we can't escape.
Why can't we let you go? It's the beer. Stella Artois (for telling the bar you are a beer snob), Hoegaarden (bitches n' hoes), Leffe (we don't know what "abbey beer" means but we like it), and Budweiser (back to our roots, American).

Why do we hate you? We gave the benefit of the doubt when you gobbled up Anheuser-Busch and you promptly thanked us by dismissing much of the St. Louis staff. Now we get the 1-2 sucker punch of price hikes and discontinued free beer at theme parks. Starting in march your prices go up a meager 3.5 percent but, in case you didn't notice, there's a recession going on (see this story on the 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008 as a primer). We don't have rugrats running around but we always assumed the best thing about kids was taking them Busch Gardens so they can hit the rides and we can get a free beer for our troubles. Thanks for ending that. Now the kids will get to spend more time in the library and at math camp.

ESB Easy as 1-2-3

It dawned on us that this blog is supposed to include a fair amount of brew reviews and we've been slacking. Why have we been less accountable than a presidential candidate? We really don't have a good reason except to say that like any good Gen-Xers, we're lazy.

So, we found ourselves at our semi-local watering hole, Franklin's passing the time watching the Flyers face off against the Thrashers because there's nothing else on. Seriously, it was that or the end of the ESPN interview of Brett Favre's wife - a disseration on the uselessness of ESPN will someday be covered by our friends at Gheorge.

This evening we decided to go crazy on Franklin's newest brew Anne's ESB. Here's what we know about the brew. Anne is one of Franklin's finest - a day manager. Some have said she's bitter, like the aforementioned ESB (or our ex-wives), but we can't confirm as our midweek drinking is reserved for the evenings. We prefer to be hungover at our 9-5, not drunk. ESB is "extra special bitter" - not exactly marketing genius but don't let that scare you. This beer is where it's at if you like a complex flavor. It's literally brewed with 6 different hops and 6 different malts and the result is 6 percent alcohol - appropriately completing the late October trifecta. We're not saying ESB is evil but the flavor is pretty bad ass - if you can handle a bitter beer and flavor too.