Beer is the Answer

Two Winterfest tickets for sale

drake — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 17:51:36 +0000

I’m home with the flu, so it looks like I’m not going to Winterfest tonight. If anybody wants my tickets, let me know.

Thanks!

MN Winterfest 2007

drake — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:43:01 +0000

I’ve got an extra ticket to Winterfest this Friday and I can’t find anyone that wants to join me. What’s wrong with people in this town? Why would anybody pass up on free beer?

If anybody out there wants to come along, let me know. Its happening this Friday evening at the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul. As long as you’re capable of some interesting conversation, I’d be happy to let you have the ticket for free.

For more information about the event, see the MN Craft Brewers Guild page.

A Yeasty Jamboree starring Drake’s Double IPA

drake — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:25:56 +0000

Yesterday I brewed up a double batch of double delicious double IPA. With an OG of 1.092, there’s tons of food for my yeasty little friends. It started bubbling like a mofo almost immediately, so I decided to film it:

Okay, forget I said anything

drake — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:21:07 +0000

Nevermind my earlier post about Floyd Landis– I don’t want sweet sweet beer to be implicated in any kind of sports cheating scandals.

Maybe the guy is innocent. I’d sure like to believe it’s so. Regardless, it’s become clear that despite the UCI’s efforts in the past few years to clean up the sport, its as bad as ever. So until things change, I say to hell with Landis, and to hell with professional cycling. I’m gonna go have a beer.

Beer: A cyclist’s best friend

drake — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:30:53 +0000

Have any of you guys been paying attention to the Tour de France? After Floyd Landis’ painful-looking implosion on stage 16, it looked like he had absolutely no chance of recovering the yellow jersey. When the press interviewed him about what was likely a tour-ending diaster, he was asked what he intended to do next. Here’s what he said: “I don’t know. Drink some beer? That’s what I’m thinking about now.”

For those that haven’t been paying attention to the race, what happened next was unbelievable. Landis somehow rose from the dead and rejoined the leaders. In a piece on velonews.com called Friday’s Foaming Rant: Beer me, Floyd, Patrick O’Grady described his amazing performance like this:

…Landis chased down an 11-man breakaway, killed them and ate them, built a new bicycle out of their bones, and roared away in a pillar of fire to win the stage to Morzine and jump back to within 30 seconds of the yellow jersey…

I’d say that pretty much sums it up. Landis put forth an epic effort, and when he was done he mentioned beer yet again. Could beer be an as-of-yet undiscovered energy drink? Was beer really the answer to Landis’ seemingly inescapable fate? Read O’Grady’s article. It won’t give you any answers, but it’s fairly entertaining nonetheless.

Beer Tongs… Why didn’t I think of that?

drake — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 22:40:02 +0000

Got an email today from an amateur stand-up comedian named Mark who has a particularly brilliant invention to share with the world:

Thanks Mark!

Beer Before Bed

drake — Mon, 01 May 2006 16:26:23 +0000

Thank you Married to the Sea:

The World’s Largest Six-Pack

drake — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 19:47:33 +0000

It’s the world’s largest six-pack, located in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. I discovered this bad boy on worldslargestthings.com. The cans are tanks that are used by LaCrosse’s City Brewery, so they aren’t phonies– they are quite literally the world’s largest cans of beer. According to a tour guide, it’s no small amount of beer either:

Starting the day you were born, if you were to drink a 12oz. cup of beer, on the hour, every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you’d have to live to be about 120 years old to finish just one of the World’s Largest Six Pack cans.

There’s more information about the six-pack available here. While you’re at worldslargestthings.com, surf around a bit. The huge variety of really large things out there is totally entertaining.

Ayinger Brau-Weisse

Mike — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 14:24:29 +0000

I stumbled across this bottle while I was shopping around for dopples at my local package store. It wasn’t a dopple, but it caught my eye. Its supposed to be one of the best hefes around and since I’d never tried it, I went ahead and gave it a shot. It pours light and cloudy as expected for the style and has a fleeting and thin white head made of very small bubbles. In the glass it seemed to me very much like a cloudy glass of champagne. It drank very much like one as well. The tiny bubbles may have been this beer’s most forward characteristic. They coated the mouth and lended almost a sparkling mouth feel. There was a distinct flavor that at the time I couldn’t put my finger on but it reminded me of what I taste in a white beer. Yeasty flavors… zest… but all fleeting. This may have been the driest beer I’ve ever tasted. As soon as it hit my mouth, it was gone. I was left completely underwhelmed and I don’t expect I’ll be having it again any time soon.

Festival Recap

drake — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 20:55:37 +0000

So the Spring Beer and Wine Fest at the Oregon Convention Center has come and gone, and I’ve got to tell you I was a bit underwhelmed. Despite the numerous breweries represented, the selection of beers was fairly lackluster. The vast majority of beers at the event were ones that are available at the supermarket. What’s the point of paying admission to taste beers that I could have just picked up at 7-Eleven?

Despite the disappointing selection, there were a few standouts. My favorite of the day was from Pelican Brewery, located in Pacific City, Oregon. They had a bitter that was absolutely dynamite. Other highlights included a Porter from Sleeman Brewery in Guelph, Ontario and a variety of honeywines from Mountain Meadows Mead.

Among the more disappoionting beers I tried yesterday was Pike Brewery’s Naughty Nellie’s Ale. Brian from Pike was kind enough to pose for a picture (at left), but that didn’t help Naughty Nellie to taste any better than it did. Brian described it as a refreshing and citrusy summer ale. I found it to be so sweet and citrusy that it was utterly cloying and frankly kind of gross. I really love Pike Kilt Lifter and was disappointed that Naughty Nellie was the only brew they brought to the event. Pike Brewery has some sort of a partnership with Merchant du Vin, so their second tap was dedicated to Lindeman’s Framboise. Tasty stuff, but not really all that exciting.

We sat through a cooking demonstration given by the head chef at Uptown Billiards in NW Portland. He was a bit of a douchebag, but we enjoyed ourselves because his continuous douchebaggery made for a very entertaining presentation. Between his highly compelling douchebagginess and the many food and wine samples that we recieved while he cooked, we were happy campers. Here he is to the right, cooking up flank steak with an Alaskan Smoked Porter glaze.

The atmosphere at the fest was totally weird. Not bad, just weird. There were many booths that had nothing to do with neither food nor drink, and several infomercial-type presentations for all sorts of weird gadgets. It was more like a visit to the state fair than a beer festival. One of the strangest things we saw there was a Unibomber-sized plywood shack that contained a small crowd of people chewing Skoal tobacco and playing Playstation 2. Classy!

All in all we had fun, it was just not what the kind of event we had expected it to be. It was a great way to spend a rainy Saturday and it really wet my whistle for all the really excellent festivals that are just around the corner. Up next is Blooms and Brews at the Oregon Garden and then the Oregon Homebrew and Microbrew Festival in Corvallis.