Well, another year has come and gone.
Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
- Benjamin Franklin
Here’s hoping that 2008 was good for you and 2009 will be better.
For better or worse, New Year’s Eve is a big drinking holiday. Be safe. For me, I’ll be at a party four five doors down and will probably be home before the ball drops.
I recently had my attention drawn to a (very) long and well-written account of an ascent into beer geekiness. Joel Mayer, aka “Alemonger”, is a Jersey guy, a lawyer, and had a long, convoluted path to being a self-avowed “beer nut”. All in spite of a (relatively) late start.
A sample:
My second beer epiphany wouldn’t strike for 17 more years. Like I said, that path Tom put me on wasn’t traversed with great consistency – or efficiency. After moving back to New Jersey I continued to enjoy much better beer. Anchor Steam was now generally available as was its California companion, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Those were my beers of choice and for the most part, I didn’t feel compelled to search the liquor store isles for anything else. Had I done so, I would likely have been frustrated by what was still a weak but slowly improving selection. While the store isles may still have been, with noted exceptions, barren of real quality brews, that wasn’t the case at the Tun Tavern Brewpub in Atlantic City. The “Tun”, as it is known to locals, is adjacent to the lower lobby of the Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center about four blocks from the Boardwalk. The view out the floor to ceiling front windows is quintessential New Jersey: a parking lot. This view is no Carlos & Pepe’s in Malibu but the featured view at the Tun isn’t outside at all. The featured view here is the featured brew. A bank of shiny stainless steel and copper brew kettles and fermenting tanks is encased within glass walls suspended above the island bar and along a side wall. They brew and pour about a half dozen or so styles on a given day and it was at the Tun that I truly started to take notice of various beer styles and began to appreciate the importance of fresh beer. I’m fairly certain that I had my first IPA there – the style that would eventually become my favorite – but I’m absolutely certain that I didn’t know anything about the style itself except that the numbers on the blackboard said it was a little stronger than the other varieties. I like to think that I went back for more because of the taste and not because it had more of a kick. The beer style and freshness lessons I learned at the Tun were important and certainly enjoyable but not really an epiphany. I’m fairly confident that the epiphany rulebooks all state that they can’t be experienced in a hotel bar within view of a parking lot – especially in New Jersey. For true epiphany number two I would have to head back west.
Well, my beer epiphany was in New Jersey. He’s from South Jersey, though, so I suppose he can be excused.
Good stuff. Worth a read.
Alemonger: The Crafting of a Craft Beer Geek
Last year my wife took on a little photography project in part to learn more about our new home but mostly just for the hell of it. Each day, every day, for all of 2007, she took exactly one photo on black and white film. She used film, not digital, and never had a “do-over”. Some didn’t come out so great, but some are absolutely gorgeous. Either way, she scanned them and put them online, offering an interesting look at Brunswick, Maryland and the surrounding area.
While she was doing it, it became quite a challenge to stick to the “one shutterclick per day”, but overcoming that limitation was part of the fun. My wife is unique and inspiring in many ways. She has inspired me to do a similar project of my own, which I’m unimaginatively calling “Beer-a-Day”.
That’s 365 different beers; that should be easy enough. I mean, there’s more than 1400 brewers in the U.S. alone. But it will be a bit more difficult as I can’t get all of their beer locally and I shouldn’t repeat any beer that we’ve already written up. Okay, so it will be very challenging.
So, I will attempt to taste 365 different beers–one for each day–during 2009. I envision “theme” weeks, too. Maybe all beers from a particular brewer, or seven beers of the same style.
It’s going to be tough, but I think I’m up to it…and I’m just the guy for the job.
I have a friend who actually prefers his beers with that skunky taste. Not overpowering, but likes those easy to drink, slightly skunked, European imports in a green bottle.
Not me, man. I don’t find that skunky taste easy to drink.
He also can’t stand IPA’s… way too much hops for him. But, this is not a put down and I don’t hold it against him. Truly, this friend of mine is a world traveler, enjoys fine wines, and fine food. So how can he be like this about beer? Because as I’ve already pointed out… you can’t be wrong.
Anybody who knows me knows I love books. So much the better if they’re about beer. I’ve had a number of books on my wish list for a while that I just got as a gift. I can’t wait to read them.
The Beer Journal
New Jersey Breweries
Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer
The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food
What beer books did you get for the holidays?
Whatever holiday you celebrate and no matter how you celebrate it, we here at Hop Talk wish you all of the peace and joy of the season.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp8jIPaX9BM
(video via Lifehacker)
Canada’s most-populous province has raised the minimum price of case of bottles from CDN$24.00 to CDN$26.50.
Well, in this economy I suppose that shouldn’t be any sort of a surprise. Except, apparently, it’s not economical, but rather smacks of the new Temperance movement.
Toronto Star: Ontario raises minimum price for beer
That 6.7 per cent increase in the floor price of a case, bottle deposit excluded, has nothing to do with supply-and-demand, production costs, overhead or distribution expenses.
Instead, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario sets minimum prices as part of its “social responsibility” mandate established in 1993. Translation: If alcohol is too cheap, you may abuse it.
But documents obtained under Ontario’s freedom-of-information law show that the Ministry of Finance, not the LCBO, pressed for higher beer prices – raising questions about the arm’s-length relationship between the two bodies.
“The Ministry of Finance recommends an increase to the minimum retail price for beer effective November 24, 2008,” says a memo distributed to board members for their Oct. 15 meeting in Toronto.
With only 30 minutes to approve a dozen legal issues, including the minimum price increase, the matter appears to have received limited debate.
“After due deliberation and consideration of the materials and recommendations as set out in them, a motion was made, seconded and carried,” say the meeting minutes.
The written materials distributed to board members provide no explanation of why the new minimum was required, how it fit with the social responsibility mandate, how the increase was calculated and why it was required by Nov. 24.
Instead, the documents merely set out the mechanics of the change, which also affects coolers and low-alcohol spirits, and cite the recommendation of the Ministry of Finance. The last time the minimum price for regular-strength beer was adjusted was October 2005.
Back in October we tried an Octoberfest bake off (a taste test) and it wasn’t that successful. Nice.. not thrillin’, but nice. So when a different group of my friends suggested a blind IPA taste testing, I wasn’t very optimistic; but of course I was game anyway.
Surprise! Not only was it a great evening, the winners and losers made it all that much more interesting. We scored them differently than I had done previously, not just on an overall impression like the unofficial Hop-Talk rating system is built upon, but rather a much more detailed method using a standard beer judging sheet. It is based on an overall score of 50 points made up of several categories.
Here are the results. I rounded the averages of the four of us playing judge…
My comments after the tasting go like this…
Rogue - Yes, it stood alone at the top.
Stone – One of my favorite IPA’s. My score for it probably would have been higher but I hadn’t just taken a break in tasting for a slice of Buffalo Pizza… probably not the best idea and probably affected the overall result.
Butternut – We were all surprised by this one, but me most of all as I really don’t like Butternut’s other brews. I’m going to have to go back for this one.
Middle Ages – While we all know and love this IPA, none of us expected it to rate so high. Glad to see it up there.
Sam Smith – I nailed the import.
I had a great time doing this… I don’t know if the flavors varied that much greater than the octoberfest styles, or if the method in judging was what made it so much better. In any case, the casual nature and long evening in which we took to do it was one for the books.
Special thanks to our servers, Ellie & Katie, and their scientific strategy to organization assuring accurate test results. (We will excuse the Yuengling Porter incident.)
Our good friend Max recently shared an Instant Message conversation he had with his wife.
Alyce: so does bbq beef sandwiches sound okay for dinner?
Alyce: cause you’re screwed otherwise
Max: sounds awsome to me
Alyce: I bet they’d taste awesome with a dark beer
Max: oooooo good idea
Alyce: god, I’m starting to sound like Ron and Al…
Ron’s reaction: “Good girl”
A new study links a high-activity monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene with violent behavior, triggered by alcohol.
This genetic sparkplug has already been linked to violent behavior, but alcohol seems to bring out the worst in otherwise not-so-violent people.
Alcohol and a polymorphism of the monoamine oxidase A gene predict impulsive violence
“People react quite differently to acute alcohol exposure,” [Roope Tikkanen, a researcher in the department of psychiatry at Helsinki University Central Hospital and corresponding author for the study said]. “Most individuals become relaxed and talkative, while some – particularly persons who are introverted while sober – become expansively extroverted and aggressive. A dramatic change from a normally introverted personality to extroverted aggressiveness and uncontrolled behaviors under the influence of alcohol was formerly called ‘pathological intoxication’ in Finland.”
Regarding the decline in impulsive-aggressive behavior with aging among high-activity MAOA offenders, Tikkanen hypothesized that it may be due to a correction of low central serotonin levels in the central nervous system.
Tikkanen cautioned against genetic testing for individuals who may be worried for one reason or another about their risk. “Even though whole genome scans will one day be affordable, the average person probably has very many factors that differ from the violent offenders in the study,” he said. “For instance, the average Finnish consumption is two drinks a day or 10 kg pure alcohol per year, whereas the upper 10 percent of violent offenders drink approximately one 0.75 liter bottle of liquor a day or around 100 kg pure alcohol a year.”
I think I know a few of them. They may have already reproduced, though.
No word on any genetic causes for weepy drunks, sloppy drunks, or beer goggles. I expect to hear from a representative of Mothers Against Defective DNA any day now.
The study will be published in the March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
(via Geeks are Sexy)
