Tag Archives: boing boing

Is chocolate beer really a mystery?

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One of my daily reads is Boing Boing, the “Directory of Wonderful Things”.

The other day, guest blogger Bruce Stewart from (among others) GeekDad (another regular read) offered an ad for a new chocolate beer from Sapporo, then seemed incredulous at the combination.

There’s beer in my chocolate! There’s chocolate in my beer! Somehow this combo doesn’t feel nearly as right as Reese’s famous mixing of peanut butter and chocolate. I drink many different types of beer, but I don’t think this chocolate beer is going to work for me. Anybody tried this?

To me, someone who drinks “many different types of beer” might have come across beer made with chocolate, or at least realize that there is a whole world of beer out there with non-Reinheitsgebot-allowed ingredients. I hope Bruce’s horizons have been broadened. Young’s Double Chocolate Stout is mentioned multiple times in the comments (I rather like it myself) but there are quite a few others mentioned.

What’s your favorite beer made with chocolate (as opposed to chocolate malt)?

Space beer too normal

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Multiple blogs and news organizations have already reported that Sapporo has brewed their “space beer”. (Beer Blog Search for “space beer”.) That is, beer brewed from barley originally grown on the International Space Station. (We talked about space beer on Hop Talk back in May.)

The funniest comment I’ve seen on this is from Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.

Sapporo’s brewing a private-edition “space beer” made from barley descended from seeds that circled the globe on the ISS. The beer is disappointingly normal and has not been reported to cause gigantism, telekinesis, or any of the other typical space-seed effects.

Boing Boing: Why homebrew is better

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I like to see article and stories about beer in the mainstream press. Consistently in the top 10 of Technorati’s most popular blogs, Boing Boing is undeniably the “new mainstream”.

How pleasant it was, then, to see a nice little article about homebrewing in my RSS feed.

Boing Boing: Why Homebrew is Better

The beer that you buy is made by pros with the goal of replicating the same recipe each time; the same ingredients, the same process, the same consistent result. If you make your own beer, you can forget the same-old, same-old. In fact, it’s rather hard to brew the same exact thing each time following home-made processes. As an amateur, you get to enjoy these small but noticeable differences. Homebrew has its own design goals, mainly exploring lots of variations that allow you to see how different beers can be.

Not to mention that in this financial climate, after your initial outlay for basic equipment, you can brew your own beer for significantly less than buying commercially-brewed.

This is the best quote though:

Brewing is fun to do with a group of people.

True, true, and something I need to explore more. Tonight is the regular monthly FOAM meeting, and I need to re-up my membership for next year.