A Good Beer Blog – Page 128 – Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )

Extreme… X-Treme… X-Tre-m… XTRM… ?

Hub-bub. That is what is going on. There is hub-bub afoot these days about “extreme” beer. Here is what I know, though things may be changing on the fly, minute-by-minute as it were:

The Independent in England goes all yikes over BrewDog and other new strong beers even categorizing their article under the “health news” beat. Best ‘fraidy cat panicky quote: “alcohol campaigners have complained that drinkers may be unaware of the strength of the new products, a single 330ml bottle of which is enough to make an adult exceed their daily recommended alcohol intake.” Deary deary. Let’s hope know one in England under 40 has heard of gin either because I understand that, too, can get you tipsy.

Then Pete Brown goes yikey-doodles in response laying it on thick and hearty in return, due to the article’s reliance on his own work to create the “health news” in question. Best Pete-flips-lid quote: “[the article] creates a master class in hypocrisy that would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that it might damage brewers I care about who spoke to me in good faith.” Look, I know as a good North American I am supposed to think the residents of any EU nation are nothing but big daft socialist softies but I still find it hard to believe that anyone who might actually have chosen to try an extreme beer would be deterred by this “health news” – and suspect, for that matter, that many more would take it as an opportunity to explore the big brews mentioned.

And, then, Stan asks the musical question – with a lot less of the yikes – as to what “extreme beer” actually means to you… and to me. Specifically, he asks:

What I’d like to know is if the term “extreme beer” means something specific to real live beer drinkers. I’ve never heard a customer at a bar say, “I’d like an extreme beer, please.

Good point but since the advent of extreme beers I have also never heard a customer say “I’d like to try a few more of all these wonderful new experimental session beers you offer, good publican.” That’s because extreme beer has had this Vulcan Mind Meld on so many craft brewers that all their explorations are based on turning to the volume to eleven, too often to focus on quantity of taste as opposed to quality. There is no room for modest balance (or modest price for that matter) where all on offer is extreme.

What’s it all mean? My comment at Stan’s begins extreme beer means nothing to me and that is as honest as I can put it. Mainly because it is really nothing new. Experimentation with very strong beers like Samichlaus or Thomas Hardy Ale well predate the X-TR-M label. Experimentation with odd and intense ingredients has been going on in home brewing well before Papazian’s first book. While you are at it, just consider the simple fact of Belgian brewing history or even only the sour branch of it. But besides all that – aside from the claims to new and exciting – for too much of the time extreme beers simply disappoint because they taste like you’ve just sprayed aerosol furniture polish in your mouth or because you really didn’t want to revisit the undergrad skull splitting headache the next day. Yet it has been latched upon as a means to market, to increase price and perhaps forgo value in a way that ignores that the adjective “extreme” has become a bit of a joke in other areas of pop culture.

X3M09? One year later and I still feel now as I did a year ago – the push for more ends up feeling like nothing so much as branding and hyping and inflating of a particularly tedious sort. A little like those ads aimed at “off-centered” people, I really look forward to the day that we look back at “extreme” brewing as we do the song stylings of Rick Astley. Must I quote the Scottish play? Has it come to that? Extreme beers are…

…but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

None of which speaks to the quality of any particular beer. Some are wonderful and lovely. But for all the US strong beers I have enjoyed I have disliked more… and more than once felt a bit ripped off. And I suspect most feel this way – though both the panicky health nuts on one hand and the craft marketing hype machine on the other might not like to admit it. The trend is not for death by ale, is not for beer that could sterilize surgical instruments while tasting like steak sauce or shoe leather, is not for the 25 dollar bottle that captures the essence of a thousand hop blossoms. And, because of that, it does a disservice to the bulk of more moderate craft beers and the vast majority of beer sales and buyers.

Were there that North American beer consumer lobbying group, I would expect that a backlash against the focus on extreme might have started some time ago. But we have none so it’s not begun. Maybe it should.

Of Course – It Was The War On Red Tape!

Do we hate “red tape” as much as before? Is there still a general feeling that too much intervention is always wrong? Not a chance. This morning I think even Stephen Harper with his recent anti-libertarian and anti- classic liberal statements would be nodding in agreement with this passage from today’s New York Times editorial page:

The financial crisis, including what went wrong at A.I.G., is not just the result of a missing regulator, a gaping structural gap in the regulatory framework. Rather, it is rooted in the refusal of regulators, lawmakers and executive-branch officials to heed warnings about risks in the system and to use their powers to head them off. It is the result of antiregulatory bias and deregulatory zeal — ascendant over the last three decades, but especially prevalent in the last 10 years — that eclipsed not only rules and regulations, but the very will to regulate.

Now, to be fair, our rural overlords in their heart of hearts want to regulate things in our private lives that mostly don’t need regulating but the point is still valid. What is the most important word up there? Deregulatory? Bias? No, it’s “zeal” – that thing that can overcome good sense wherever you go. Why would you want a zealot to structure your law – whether financial regulations or social engineering – when you would not want to sit next to that person at a dinner party? Is it not the zealot’s lack of balance that gives us terrorism, obscenely sub-prime mortgages, mockery of the deaths of the weak, bifurcation of the community and the undermining of the long standing social principles and institutions which have served us so well? And blogging. Don’t forget in inanity of blogging. Could it be plainer? Is there anything behind social instability other than zeal? So, in this time of transition and reformation, ought we not drum out zealotry wherever it may be found? Is this not the cause of the next five year?

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Great Moments In Support Staff Career Building

Monday morning. No one like Monday morning but you can bet you like this Monday morning more than a certain somebody in Ottawa:

An aide in Mr. Petit’s Ottawa office said the MP was very busy, and would not likely have time for an interview to explain his comments.

Should we not feel for the backbencher’s aide? Are these not the jobs held by friends that people initially admire until that Saturday night dinner party where too much is poured? “Too busy,” he said, “Tell them I am very busy!!!” “More wine?” “Yes. Yes, please.”

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Being A Beer Hound Without Any Sense Of Style

When I was a lad and knew a thing or two about hoofing a ball, we would arse around by playing “soccer without style” – playing the game without any of the conventions which quickly collapsed into just arsing around. I think I do the much the same thing when I think about beer as I am not really that much interested in style. I am not strongly against style like, I think it is fair to say, Ron Pattinson whose entertaining research has pretty much proven that the historic antecedents for much of what is accepted as stylistic gospel is just not there. But, even without Ron’s passion and critical eye, I am still not sure why I would care that much ago beer taxonomic classification system over, for example, assessing according to a beer’s quality control standards or a brewer’s sense of innovation. I thought about that when I read this passage from a post by Philadelphia’s own Jack Curtin from Friday (and again today):

When asked by a lady at his Philly Beer Week dinner the previous night at the Four Seasons how she could tell the difference between “stouts, porters and ales,” Fritz said he told her “it’s easy, you read the label.” He then repeated an argument that I’ve heard from him before, that beer styles are considered much too important these days, that the beer is what matters, not some arbitrary level of IBUs et al. He looked around and said it was all the writers’ fault, “you just want something to write about.” Lew countered by blaming homebrewers and I said, more correctly I believe, that it’s the fault of the Brewers Association, who need all the categories for GABF. “Okay,” said Fritz, “it’s all Charlie Papazian’s fault then.”

I came to beer in a number of ways: being a child of immigrants and wanting to try what was good in the old country, being the sort of omnivore in all respects that will pop anything in his gob and – for about five years – being a fairly active homebrewer. But I never really cared if something was to style even if I collected a small library of home brewing guides that I would pore over incessantly. For me, the interesting thing was the odd ingredient – making a pale ale…or a porter…or a Scotch ale with this hop then that one, finding out what smoked malt or torrified wheat added. I really didn’t care what style my beer matched. Interestingly, that playing with style was what I found most of all in Papazian’s guides.

I think my lack of style continues in these my days of being a beer hound. I do not want to take a beer judge course nor become a cicerone. Neither do I tick or rate. I don’t think that this makes me just a poor fan of beer, either. I truly do just want a good beer in my glass, whatever that beer is, and I trust no one but me to make the final assessment. It takes some effort, as with the sour beer studies, to hunt out and learn what “good” might mean to me but I fully expect that one day a stout laced with the essence of roast lamb might interest me as much as those historically accurate Victorian ales Ron has been toying with developing. All I care about is whether the beer is interesting or not… and, I suppose, whether its level of interest to me is reflected in the price I have to pay to consume it. Does that leave me adrift of the norm? A voice in the wilderness? I don’t know. But, given there are so many things that I can say that about, it does give some comfort. After all, there is only one person who can swallow a beer for me.

Friday Bullets For The Golden Age Of Orange

It was 1:22 am when the game ended. I only made it to about four overtimes listening on UConn’s radio AM 1080 out of Hartford but Syracuse won. So that was good. I thought I was staying up late to watch Cramer on John Stewart but that was a fold. I kept waiting for Cramer to say “but you don’t exactly treat your subject matter with full seriousness.” Nada. He rolled over and asked to have his tummy rubbed.

Dalek For Sale Update: “once. i. built. an. evil. em. pire. made. it. run. made. it. run. against. time…“
“Why Doesn’t The PM Understand?” Update: Apparently PM Harper takes the wrong road and blames consumers for the economic collapse…but then refuses to confirm that is what the secret speech was all about. Not the finance industry and certainly not economists. Average people. Nice.
I love this photo. It’s like Zep cross the space time continuum and left messages in the Italian sky of 1527.
Speaking of Cramer and who is to blame, I think these people are to blame. Blame the eggheads.
For all the gloating about new media, note how many papers are in trouble because of debt. And often debt that was incurred by non-news-people taking on newspapers. Blame convergence as much as anything.
Nice to see Joe grew up. But is this the biggest loser of a guy taking a “personal day” ever?
All of Charlie Brown is now online. Rejoice.

Gotta run. Up way too late.

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My Seemingly Obligatory Thoughts On St. Patrick

Have a thought for Saint Patrick, the actual guy. Taken as a teen age slave from his native Wales to Ireland, familiar with all the details of Druidism from whose bondage he was destined to liberate the Irish race, able to paralyze those who would deter him from his mission and all we can do is get pounded in his name. Isn’t the 17th of March now a bit of a sad legacy given, at least in certain places, the celebrations reach a pitch which would make a Druid blush?

Craft beer fans seem to object to the St. Patrick’s Day as a general thing. Andy Crouch is turned off by the exploitation by big American breweries, the push by Guinness for a holiday is seen for the commercial exploitation that it is and slightly excruciating efforts are made to find another angle on green beer.

But not being Irish, not being American, no longer being a regular Guinness drinker and not being a person to go out and get sloshed in bars like some cheese-eating frat boy…what’s the harm? Isn’t the cheeriness associated with the day and the doings somewhat compelling? Aren’t there peoples from Patagonia to the Republic of Palau who ache with jealousy at the good PR the Irish get out of it? And, given all the free press about beer this time of year – if we are like Patrick to be evangelists ourselves – isn’t this a great opportunity for a teaching moment? Isn’t this, frankly, the sort of beer holiday that craft brewers would dream of making up if it didn’t already exist?

Saint Patrick can be associated with bringing the gift of civilization, of the pluck to take on an impossible task, of the enduring drive to achieve passion’s dream. These all seem great values you can associate with hard working craft brewers. Take back and take on the day, I say.

Either Really Healthy Or Really Weird

One thing that I think the internet may have done is tempered local weirdnesses about bad things. When I was a kid in the Annapolis Valley, the local AM radio stations would broadcast the fire alarm announcements as paid advertising. So, thirty four years ago, right in the middle of hearing the theme to The Greatest American Hero or “Island Girl” there would be the sound of a wind up fire alarm, the statement “the fire alarm in the Middleton Area is brought to you buy Smith’s Chev-Olds” a little ad and then the news that Mrs. Muldoon’s chicken shed burned down due to little Johnny playing with matches. If the fire news was good enough, people would get in their cars and go have a look see. When the Greenwood mall burned, the gawkers packed the highways and byways, likely impeding trucks providing mutual aid from outlying communities.

I thought of that when I heard about the new French-language obituary channel that is starting up in Quebec.

A Quebec businessman believes he has the perfect business to suit ageing, Baby Boomer viewers – an obituary channel. The country’s first television channel dedicated to funerals and mourning could start broadcasting as early as this summer, after the CRTC granted a licence for a regional Quebec cable channel called Je me souviens. The French-language station would broadcast obituaries, notices of hospitalization and messages of thanks and prayers.

It may come to English Canada, too. What a boon for the disaster mongers currently stuck cursing the sunny days on the weather channel. Guaranteed negative news to cluck over. Apparently the developer of the concept “the idea of putting obituaries on television came after he attended several funerals over the years that left him longing for more.”

There is something odd about this. And not just the obvious oddness. Does anyone think this is actually a bad plot of a sci-fi show and that somehow somewhere this will trigger the undead to be walking the streets?

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One Thing That Happens When A Movement Collapses

Are the profiteers all that are left? Ben relishes the self-promotion of one who will go nameless or the other who will go nameless but US conservatives seem to have fallen to the point that these are all there is left. In late 2004, I posted a few half based things about recovering the moral majority and one of the key points was to a regain a communications strategy on message. Obama may have done that with the hope, with the change and now well see how all that plays out in these the days of just the spare change. But those who go nameless are now pinching the last few coins, an echo of the departed, the voices of the hollowed hollow men, those who gifted the globe economic collapse. Having been built up by the cause they have nothing left once the cause is gone – and aren’t they, in fact, now more a barrier to the cause? The Flea doesn’t see it yet but no one would imagine Bush debating Michael Moore in 2003 out of some confused idea that promoting another’s self-promotion equates with national debate. The converse, especially after the collapse, is far less appealing. As Cheney would know, no one debates clowns.

So, how will they be asked to leave? When will their inertia leave them bound to Newton’s first law, still drifting along but slowly further away, receding after the tack turns the boat around? Who will be the spokes-folk for the next conservative agenda?

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Adam Dunn Apparently Does Not Suck So Much

It was one of the best games I have ever attended in any sport. Bizarrely, this morning Canadian sports media are not covering it as their lead story. Had Bay hit the run and Canada gone on to win, the nation would have gloated for years. But the outcome was immaterial to the quality of the game. Perhaps Canadian sports fans can’t appreciate the glory of achievement even in a close loss. If so, that wouldn’t be the case for those who were there. Conversely, the New York Times appreciated the moment the US reliever Putz faced in the ninth: “From the start, though, Putz could tell this game would be different from any he had experienced in a decade of professional baseball. The Rogers Centre throbbed with noise — it was the loudest crowd Putz said he had ever heard.” That is the big moment up top in the ninth – a man on second, two outs and Jason Bay at the plate fighting off pitches only to fly out in the end. The place had been going crazy for an hour up to that point after Canada’s minor league relievers twice got out of bases loaded situations. Heroic moments.

My children learned new words and new ways to use words. Many of those words were directed at USA right fielder Adam Dunn who spent the first half of the game parked in front of us before sending the game reeling with his three run homer. But I knew he did not suck as I saw him at Cooperstown in the home run derby in 2006 jack more than one out of the park. I have a deep belief that seeing sports live in a crowd is a very good thing and an important part of childhood. Fodder for character and an education that your classmate junior peewee “elite” soccer players are pretty much being led down a path.

Seeing a fan of the other side slagged by your crowd mates and then seeing him turn on them victorious and finger pointing is a life lesson. Seeing ultimately good natured but rough talk between adults should be shocking spicy thing. Watching reactions to great achievements and huge disappointments provides a foundation for future personal experience.

“This Column Is By A Finance Crime Convict”

Why doesn’t the National Post point that out as part of the byline on Conrad Black’s musings? I mean at the end of my fellow blogger Stephen Taylor‘s NP posts on the same “Full Comment” feature it states in sort of a footnote:

Stephen Taylor is a scientist, political analyst and a Fellow at the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, an institute founded by Preston Manning. Read more at his blog, stephentaylor.ca.

If that is the right thing to do – and it is – should Conny’s at least state that he is n the hoosegow for corporate finance crimes the sort of which were indicative of and generously larded the years leading to the current worldwide economic collapse? Seems only reasonable to me.

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