“Beer Sage” over at My Beer Pix got his geek out and tried to measure the most popular beer blogs in the blogosphere.
Using a combination of Technorati, Google, and Bloglines, he devised an algorithm that, as a fellow geek, I am quite envious of.
That Hop Talk came in at number 5 is nothing short of amazing.
It’s not really true, of course. The numbers are skewed. If he’d tried this three weeks ago I doubt we would have been on the radar at all.
Still, it’s nice to be recognized.
There are those who say that Lutherans “are often stereotyped as beer-lovers“. I suppose, then, it’s appropriate that the Old Lutheran Gift Shop offers beer glasses and other beer paraphernalia.
My father and I suffer from the same “affliction”. I’ll be enjoying a beer and working around the house. Then I’ll get distracted and start working on something else. Next thing I know, I’ve lost track of where I’ve left my beer.
So I walk around the house, holding my hand in front of me as if I’m holding my glass, trying to use sense memory to remember where I put it down. My wife usually looks at me like I’m crazy.
I suppose that if I drank my beer straight out of a can the Beer Pager would be helpful. Pop your brewski into the cozy-like container. Then, if you lose track of your beer just press the button on the remote control and you’ll be alerted by the belching and the flashing lights.
(via Gizmodo)
It was my birthday a couple weeks ago. It was one of those “milestone” birthdays that engenders lots of greeting cards with the phrase “over the hill” on them. While my thirties are now behind me, I don’t feel compelled to buy a Corvette and cruise bowling alley parking lots for barely-legal girls. Still, there is a bit of ennui; I’m not getting any younger, after all. Fortunately, I have good friends. And beer.
So, while I was on my British Beer kick, I did pick up a bottle of Old Man Ale from Coniston Brewing Company, “hidden away behind the Black Bull“, a four-hundred-year-old Inn and Hotel in Coniston, England. They’re most famous for their Bluebird Bitter (which I also picked up).
Here’s what they say about it:
A rich classic ale ruby red in colour with a subtle yet strong fruit aroma. Full bodied and balanced with a hing of the finest Challenger hops, Old Man Ale is named after the Lakeland mountain at the foot of which sits Coniston Brewery.
Well, my bottle doesn’t pour “ruby red” but is a nice light caramel color. The head is made of up fine bubbles that reduce to a thin layer of foam and leave only a little bit of lace on the glass. The fruit aroma is subtle, but I don’t know if I’d also characterize it as “strong”. The mouthfeel is light to medium and, for a bottle-conditioned beer is not hazy nor does it have that “chewy” yeast flavor to it.
Admittedly, I may be missing some of the more subtle flavors because I’m drinking it at the wrong temperature. As it says right on the label:
Best served at 58°F in a straight pint glass at the Black Bull Inn, Coniston, Cumbria. The home of Coniston Old Man.
As I wend my way down the glass, though, I find myself enjoying it more. At 4.8% ABV it’s right in the range of a session beer, although I think I’d find it a bit too heavy for the 95°F weather we’ve had for the last couple of days. Drop the ambient temperate about fifteen degrees and this would be just fine. Worth a try.
[rating:3/5]
BNSF Railway workers lost control of thirty-odd railcars that rolled downhill and crashed into a parked locomotive. Two tanker cars lost their contents. One, asphalt. The other, Coors beer.
No one was hurt and BNSF Railway mainline operations were not affected.
No comment as of yet from Pete Coors.
Original Associated Press story
(via N2K News)
Update: Flickr user Seetwist has about two dozen photographs of the aftermath.
You just can’t go wrong with Tom Jones singing over your commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65-fp-_9FVs
Flying Bison Brewing out of Buffalo New York surprised me with their Buffalo Lager. I’m not sure why I wasn’t expecting much out of their beer, but I wasn’t, so it was quite a nice surprise when I poured the Buffalo Lager and received a billowing head of foam that stayed there long enough for me to get my camera out and lingered until I finished the beer.
The beer was pure gold (though a bit cloudy) and had a mild malt sweetness that was nicely balanced with mild hop bitterness. Hop aroma was present, but not strong. It finished very clean making it quite drinkable.
If you look over at Beer Advocate, there is quite a discrepancy of opinions on this beer. I suspect there is a quality control problem with either their brewing process, or distribution, to create such a disparate view of this beer.
The lagers I sampled also had some trub settled at the bottom of the bottle; however, lack of information from the brewer doesn’t discern if this beer was bottle conditioned or not. This is another reason to suspect quality control issues.
Along with the lager, their variety six pack also comes with Aviation Red and Barnstormer Pale Ale, both of which were very nice. I want to go back and revisit those brews again, but it was the lager that stood out and I give it 4 on the unofficial Hop-Talk rating system. Yet, I worry that my next purchase will yield something completely different.
This blog is a hobby of mine. I’m not in it to make any money, nor do I really expect to. I am not a “ProBlogger”. What few ads I do have on here are simply to help defray the costs of hosting. (We’ve been very happy with BlueHost, by the way. I recommend them.)
Recently, however, I got my first blogging “perk”. Someone at work mentioned this little blog to Alex, another co-worker. Alex checked it out, prompting a discussion between us about beer (of course) and imports. It turns out Alex’s cousin owns a beverage import business. While the cousin’s business specializes primarily in Georgian wines (he and Alex are originally from the Republic of Georgia) he also imports liquor and beer from all over Eastern Europe.
(Slight tangent: Half of Russian adults are regular beer drinkers.)
So, Alex asked me if I would be interested in trying some beer from that region. Of course, I said. I’m always willing to try new stuff. I then promptly forgot about it. (Lots of deadlines to meet, you know.)
Then, a couple of days ago, he shows up with seven different beers from Russia and the Ukraine. Needless to say I hadn’t even heard of most of them. Heck, the names are in Cyrillic characters, so I don’t even know what it says. (Except, of course, for the U.S. Government-mandated health warnings and the bottle deposit values.) Even the one (three, actually) from Baltika I only think I know because I probably saw it in a store.
I’ll be sampling them over the next little while and letting you know what I think.
I love blogging about beer.
The Long Shots, made and distributed by the Boston Beer Company, are beers formulated from the recipes of home brewers. But, not just any home brew… the winners of the Long Shots competition making these beers (supposedly) the best of the best home brews.
The three winners of the 2006 competition were a Boysenberry Wheat, the Dortmunder style Export, and an Old Ale. I recently purchased a six pack of the Long Shots which includes two of each. All are finely crafted beers and all are true to their style. The boysenberry wheat had a strong boysenberry aroma and the not-so-sweet berry flavor added to the bitterness of the hops. The strong ale was deep red in color and was super sweet with malt. It had little hop bitterness and almost no hop aroma. The export ale was clear and crisp with a great golden yellow color.
That said, I hated every one of them. The boysenberries were much too strong for my tastes and it smelled like my daughter’s shampoo. The strong ale was too sweet for this hop-head, though the proper food pairing might balance it out better… perhaps some sauerbraten. The export ale was too sharp, though I have trouble describing whatever that sharp tastes was.
I hate to have such a sour opinion of these finely crafted ales, especially because the recipes come from some obviously very talented home brewers who love good beer; but, that is just how my tastes are.
I also don’t like the possible misconception one might come away from sampling this six pack of home brewed beer. It seems to me that the Boston Beer Company has chosen three beers that represent the more extreme uncommon side of beer styles. I would hate to think that people who have been considering home brewing might assume that home brewing is a way to make strange beers. This is of course not true, though home brewing does give you the ability to make whatever you want, including something that maybe only you will like, such as a broccoli bock. One might postulate that the Longs Shots were chosen specifically so that they would not overlap any of the styles of the Samuel Adams’ brand.
I’m curious as to what other people thought of these Long Shots, and how well they represent home brewers.
I wish craft beer makers had the deep pockets of A-B.
