Author: Alan

Massachusetts: Beer Of The Gods, High And Mighty Beer

botg1What to have for the day Obama gets to grasp the brass ring? Something from a blue state, that’s obvious. And something that doesn’t look like one of those designer beers. And one with a name that speaks to hyperbolic hope. High and Mighty’s Beer of the Gods passes the test on all counts.

At a pleasant and prudent 4.5%, this take on “kolsch meets alt” works wonders. The beer pours a slight lemony light amber with a snow white billowy foamy head. There is plenty of steely-twiggy hopping going on as well as a lighter yet creamy touch of malt all within a fresh moreish body. In the malt there is light plum and apple and plenty of grainy texture. A great session beer.

Ridiculously good value at $5.50 for a 22 ounce bomber. BAers are oddly not amused.

Seven Things For Happy Confusing-To-Canadians Day!

OK, this is when it gets a bit embarrassing to be a Canuck. Things like knowing your own history, celebrating your own country and its traditions or celebrating what you have in common is all so, you know, blurry around the edges for us. We need to have a sit down on a day like this. Heck, we get confused if someone offers us a Dr. Pepper, worrying so that it is far too American for us. So, seeing as I was tagged by Dandy Dan the Dandy Man, had the computer eat the draft a bit ago to tell you seven things about myself and, because of the day, I am going to make them seven things about me and the USA:

  • We traveled to Cape Cod from suburban Toronto for a number of summers before we moved to Nova Scotia when I was seven. Crabs nipped at my toes. The Holiday Inn in Utica had a kidney shaped pool. My mother needed to see the sea and as a result I think that real things happen near the ocean. Not sure about mid-continent though the Great Lakes help.
  • One year we didn’t go east. We drove to California. I think I was three. I still recall the horror of driving through the desert in a station wagon and watching the crayons liquify in the sunlight through the window.
  • I have more relatives in the US than in Canada – more in South Africa, the UK and Australia for that matter. The Canadian wing of the clan is a bit of a blip of the tartan diaspora of ’56.
  • I enjoy watching Canadians being served northern US unsweetened iced tea about as much as anything else. At the Irving truck stop in Calais Maine there is a non-stop performance of screwed up faces, confusion and head shaking on display all for the price of your own lunch and a chair in the corner.
  • When I was ten, I saw my only Red Sox game at Fenway and it was perfect. Tiant pitching versus the Yanks, I sat in the top single bum seat of the bleachers, saw the game won in the tenth inning with a home run over the Big Green Monster. I have an untold affection for my Boston cousins because of the opportunity to have that memory.
  • I went to Washington on the same trip as the Fenway game. Saw the Smithsonian and bought astronaut toys when the Apollo missions were on. Space was cool when I was a kid, before the Canadarm, before Marc Garneau. No one bitched about the US when it was about space.
  • Seven….seven….seven…hmmm. Oh yes, Americans make far better beer. Some of it quite nearby.

There you go. Hug a Yank today. Learn your own history and thank them for the difficult and wonderful friendship we share. And did you know that our great friend Damian is already over in Afghanistan? Don’t you dare forget to donate.





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Group Project: How Americanified Do You Feel?

Being in a border town where I can see another nation out my office window, I suppose it is not odd that I am affecting by doings down south. But sitting here between the AFC and NFC championship games and the Superbowl as well as the day before the inauguration of their next President, this is a pretty USA-ified point in the calendar. Heck, they even have a holiday Monday today. Am I jealous of that? Of course. But am I also jealous of their strength of affiliation to the football, to the republic? Do I wish I was a Yank? Some days, I think I do.

This is supposed to be a hard thing for a Canadian to admit or even imagine. Sure, we are grateful to the nation to the south for the military security blanket – you know, ever since it stopped being about smothering us into capitulation. And we should thank the Lord for the economic power they extend to us as their greatest trading partner, even during a recession. But should we seek to even be closer? Do you want to? Frankly, ever since we Canucks stopped caring in any way for a national championship in any sport – do we deserve our own country? Plus, given all the tepid but easily tossed around separatist movements – Quebec, western and even Newfoundland – not to mention the lack of respect, dignity and even administrative skill that is the hallmark of the Federal government these days, what is left to love to fill that nation of love of country? What is left of that chip all Canadians got somewhere along the way that told us no matter what we are better. Than America.

Dontcha wish when you called yourself a Pittsburg Steelers fan there wasn’t that little cringe inside that you weren’t talking about the Ti-cats? Dontcha really wish you had the pomp and ceremony of the new Presidency to call your own? How jealous are you of the folks down south? And even if you aren’t jealous, aren’t you really culturally speaking 98% American now anyway.

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The Birth of Japan’s Third-Category Beer Explained

Wow. Just imagine the thrill I felt this evening when I came across a summary of the history and taxation based reason for Japan’s dai-san biiru or third–category beer, as you know a minor fascination of mine. Thrill along with me to the genesis of the substance caused – as we see all too often – as a response to taxation regimes which create both hardship and opportunity:

In 1994, Suntory began marketing beer-like happoshu with malt content of 65 per cent, while Sapporo developed happoshu containing less than 25 per cent malt. Each attracted lower tax rates, and hence could be sold much more cheaply than real beer. From 1996, however, the government responded by hiking the tax rates for both types of happoshu. In 2003, it also raised tax on happoshu with 25-50 per cent malt content. However, its tax and that of happoshu with less than 25 per cent malt remained less than that on high-malt happoshu or real beer. In 2004, Sapporo and Suntory responded with a zero-malt dai-san biiru, which incurred an even lower tax, and hence retail price, than any happoshu.

Previously I believe I have called third-category beer happoshu. I have failed you. I have failed the honour of beer blogging. I am but a grasshopper the ways of Japanese beer categorization. We also continue to await a brave reviewer who has documented the way of dai-san biiru. Life is so rich, when you think of it.

Not “Seven Things” – Instead the CBC and Nortel

I just lost the seven things about me post that I was tagged with doing after a power flicker at 6:45 am which was 95% done so I am not going to recreate it as I am too bummed out about the whole thing. It was tender and evocative. Challenging yet funny. I can never recreate that this morning. I will have to think up a whole new list and get back to you.

Meanwhile, why do I have the same reaction to the news that Nortel now wants a bail out and that no one much is signing up for the CBC’s “new fun game show” about being Canada’s next Prime Minister. As far as I am aware, Nortel has been moving towards its own demise for the best part of a decade. And, I think at least as far as my listenership and watchership goes, the same applies to the CBC. As evidence, I provide you with one one hand the story “Nortel Restatement To Slash 2003 Earnings” and on the other Sounds Like Canada. Both were untouchable monoliths for most of my life whose actual machinations of operations were beyond the ken of most Canadians. As a result, I think any bail out for Nortel needs to be tied to a reorganization of the CBC’s broadcast line up. My demands include:

  • creation of a compelling continuing dramatic series about an urban WASP male,
  • broadcast of a English language continuing sitcom based on and making fun of yet making a compelling and accurate case for the views of a family Quebecois separatist family,
  • making a public apology for the failure of CBC to broadcast Montreal Expos games and an admission that this failure directly led to the Expos leaving town and the country, and
  • making another admission that the extended run of the Air Farce was due to nepotism, blackmail or something that could possibly explain what the heck that was about.

Without meeting my demands, no money for Nortel.

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Hail To The New Sponsor – Scotland’s BrewDog!

771It was an intense stretch of negotiations. I begged. They were repulsed. I whined. Then…they pitied and came on board. We of A Good Beer Blog are always thrilled when a new sponsor signs up and we like to explore all sorts of ways to get along all in the cause of what might be thought of an alternative take on craft lagers and ales. The fine folk at BrewDog cover a few bases – they make incredibly good and innovative beer while meeting a sensitivity to the emotional needs of a North American bound fan of the Greenock Morton. It’s good to be in such a relationship. I’m all a giggle at the idea of them joining people like the hoteliers of Prague and, of course, the good good people at Ontario Craft Brewers. I think we’ll float the ad in the tops stories for a while. See how that works. Click on it and you will no longer even be here.

And this is part of a big plan we call the big plan. We are always looking for these sorts of new pals. It’s kind of like a support group for this one beer fan with a writing problem who finds himself bearing the full weight of a jurisdiction with monopolistic beer practices of limited variety, overly taxed price structures and friends who ask “can I have another one of those?”. Proceeds go to beer travel by car and beer acquisition by hand picked selection at some of the nicest stores in Quebec and the US north-east. That’s right: cash = stash. Simple math. And we dicker and we try to figure out a bazillion ways for you to join in whether by an ad or a sample or just by that Google ad cheque in the mail. Why? Because we love what you the beer hound, beer maker, beer writer, beer vendor and beer bar owner do. All proceeds include the tax man’s share (at least five ways if I was to think about it) and acquisitions go in part to the local beer nerds I am cultivating…though in larger part to me. Gotta be honest.

Do you have what it takes to sponsor or otherwise the support the program of good works we are undertaking at A Good Beer Blog? I bet you do. I do.

He Had Learned Not To Pay Attention

I suppose you want to have your leader struck with an unfailing confidence but there are bits of yesterday’s final press conference by outgoing President Bush that do make you wonder about the man:

Mr. Bush said he was not certain why he had become so divisive. “I don’t know why they get angry,” he replied to a question about those who disagreed with his policies so vehemently that it became personal. “I don’t know why they get hostile.” He added that he had learned not to pay attention. “I don’t see how I can get back home in Texas and look in the mirror and be proud of what I see, if I allowed the loud voices, the loud critics to prevent me from doing what I thought was necessary to protect this country,” Mr. Bush said.

That is a lot of “I don’t know”. Here is the full transcript, see if you can count how many there are. I don’t know myself what to make of the man but in the end he is done and others will see if they can pick up both the threads and the pieces. Defenders will always say there has not been a second attach on US soil as a response to any criticism of the Bush administration but is that the answer to any fault? It is pretty clear now that the enemy lacked the capacity to make a repeat of the events of 9/11 or had a different focus. In a way, the war in Iraq could be seen to have caused that by creating an off-shore setting, either a quagmire or a playing field depending on your point of view. Once Iraq is settled and the US removes its troops (unless North Korea is mirrored) does this shift the focus again? Like the exiting President says, I don’t know.

There are unfortunate sentences that will be repeated like “not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment.” He didn’t really mean that. I think this was an interesting passage that did show what he was about:

I believe this — the phrase “burdens of the office” is overstated. You know, it’s kind of like, why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch? It’s just — it’s pathetic, isn’t it, self-pity. And I don’t believe that President-Elect Obama will be full of self-pity. He will find — you know, your — the people that don’t like you, the critics, they’re pretty predictable. Sometimes the biggest disappointments will come from your so-called friends.

He has been both a character and a man with character even if it isn’t always your brand of character. I’ve been wondering about the role his post 9/11 statement about going out and spending had on creating the personal credit crisis. People did spend. And spend and spend and spend with not enough regard for their ability to pay for the spending. They seem connected to me but I don’t know if Mr Bush would connect those dots. I just don’t know.

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Porter 2006, Burton Bridge Brewery, Burton-Upon-Trent

Time. For the most part beer’s enemy is time, specially for a beer with only 4.5%. But in 2000, as I’ve mentioned a few times, I clearly remember having a Burton Bridge Porter that was overwhelmingly bitter and pleasantly foul due no doubt to its utter mishandling and disregard. Some time ago I resolved to recreate the effect through the powers of experiment and stuck away two bottles for aging. Tonight, I pop the older of the two, this one carrying a best before date of December 2006 to see what is what.

Findings? The bottle pops with a merry pffftt! and gives off a little of the aroma of an East India sherry. The cream head quickly dissipates to a floating froth. In the mouth, the beer is more watery than a fresh bottle but pleasant enough though sadly not soured. There is a Orval quality to the bittering hops, lacy and lavender-ish, with some residual milk chocolate but none of the roasti-toastiness.

Verdict? Pretty much an entire waste of the effort which went into this experiment except for the fact that it really cost me nothing in terms of time, money or energy. It is somewhat impressive that it was so stable as to be more than drinkable. I am, however, not that impressed with stability as a general thing.

Twitter Hacked – Who Cares?

I am using Twitter more and more. I am enjoying the ability to quip, to note, to park an idea. It is a veritable hotbed of fifth-rate wags like me. But there is trouble afoot as the BBC reports:

Micro-blogging site Twitter has admitted that some of its most high profile bloggers have been targeted by hackers. It announced that 33 accounts had been hacked, including those belonging to president elect Barack Obama and singer Britney Spears. It follows a phishing scam on the site which encouraged users to click on a fake Twitter homepage.

Tragic. Imagine the world thinking that a quip by Britney Spears (or rather a junior assistant in her PR firm) was actually not a quip by Britney Spears!!! Hackers are so bad. They might figure out a way to make the background behind the home page of Britney Spears look like the background behind the home page of someone else. Fantastically disasterous. Temple walls coming shattering down clacklily about one’s ears.

The success of Twitter is in its fundamental unimportance. How else can you explain it’s ascendency over Facebook, that millstone of webby obligation relatively speaking? Twitter is what it promises. Nuttin. Hack away.

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