Can’t We Just Admit We Like Corn Sometimes?

One of the things I don’t get about beer lovers is the seething disrespect of corn – aka maize for some of you. OK, maybe not seething but my comment the other day that I now craved New Glarus Spotted Cow was met with particular surprise by Jeffery Glazer of Wisconsin’s Madison Beer Review who wrote to say that “Spotted Cow is good, but to drive halfway across the country for it? I’d be really curious to hear what was said about it to cause such a reaction.” In response I wrote:

It’s the king o’corn, baby! I like the ur-cream ale Genesee Cream but I also like cream corn, corn chowder, corn on the cob and corn chips. I think the taste of corn gets a bum steer as far as corn and beer goes. Why praise other grains yet diss the maize? I have grown corn, have watched it grow and, I have to admit, admire it privately. Stan brought the Spotted Cow (as well as a few other New Glarus) and this corntastic beer made me love it. It is clean, has the raw chew-the-cob sweetness and is also balanced and without a tinge of chemical, the hallmark of modern corn-y brew…Did I mention it comes with corn?

I asked Stan when we were sipping his giftie if it had flaked corn and he thought maybe it was just corn sugar but was not in the know. I would be surprised if there is that much unfermentable corn in it from just a powder. Nonetheless, I am here to bear witness, bretheren and the real lesson here is that cream ale like Spotted Cow is corn ale and cream ale should be great! It is just a style, after all. Corn is, folks, and corn should be more than the flakes in your breakfast bowl. As I mentioned, I understand that there are two ways to get corn into beer. The most common is through glucose or corn sugar which is derided as an adjunct gone mad in American macro lagers but praised in Belgian tripels when, as I learned from Al Korzonas in his useful Homebrewing, Volume 1, simply combined with a little fructose to make candi sugar. This sort of addition of corn gets you a little more alcohol and a little less body but not much flavour – and certainly not the creamed corny goodness that is at the heart of Spotted Cow. Flaked maize is more like rolled barley or oats, a raw grain product that leaves plenty of unfermentables to add flavour. That is what I think I am tasting in that brew.

Maybe you know more than me but where are the rest of the corny adjuncts – the malted corn, the roasted corn or the crystal corn that some agronomist or another sort of lab-coated egghead should have developed by now? Surely a grain as versatile as corn could be subject to more treatments that might make for some other great beers. Surely there is a Department of Cornology in some Midwest US state working on coaxing more flavours from the humble yellow kernal. As far as may daydreams of future beer goes, I would think that the residual sweetness of corn could work in a roasty stout. The huskineess of a dried cob might also work when blended with a little rye malt. And Jeffery pointed out that it would also fit with the local and sustainable trends we are seeing becoming more and more important.

If corn can make a fine whiskey, why not a beer? And are there other fine corn beers out there, some modern chichas, that I do not know about?

The Hieronymi Were Here…As Were Steve and John!

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So beer writers Stan and Daria and family were here getting a break from the camper on their world beer tour 2008. As it turned out, so were Steve from Beau’s and John o’ Church-key. Between them the lads drove 500 km to get here and as much to get home – nothing compared, however, to the Hieronymi land cruiser which hit the 10,000 mile mark yesterday. And, after hours of great beer and some good chow I threw together, I came away from what I will call the first Kingston Symposium on Craft Brewing realizing I pretty much know nothing about beer. Zippo.

Hanging around with such people of the beer is always a great education but listening to two such knowledgeable beer thinkers as Stan and Daria (who is also a recent winner on Jeopardy) over a whole evening with two of Canada’s most interesting young brewers was pretty amazing. Not to go blow by blow through the beers but I shared some Ontarians including our local Barley Day’s Wind and Sail Dark, some Stuart’s Natural and made some fairly snazzy scallops in a pan with a slug of Wellington Dark. Good Ontario and Quebec craft cheeses also shared the table.

We talked about beer price and value, the regulatory challenges of the Ontario market and the Canadian border as well as the opportunities a province that is trying hard to catch up to our southern neighbours provides. We also poured bottles of Steve and John’s brews including Beau’s flagship kolsche and Church-key’s West Coast IPA – as well as half year cellared bottles of Bog Water and Lactese Falcon, that beer that begs to be next to a rib-eye. Each of these showed really well and, in their comparison, begged the question as to which better expressed Ontario-ness: the traditional Algonquin Park canoe trip invocating bog myrtle or the funky blue cheese tang of the beer of the 22nd century. I just made that up. I am sure John will pick it up as the LT’s catch phrase.

To finish, we popped the tangy spicy dry and quite fascinating Fuego del Otono, a seasonal chestnut beer which is also very under-priced from Jolly Pumpkin. Stan and Daria had passed Dexter on a Saturday when the brewery was not open so it was fair to include it in their year-long continent hopping search for the essence of global local beer. By the way, that last beer is one of the ones that make me think there should be a web based auction for craft beer where beer lovers could set out what they would pay for a beer. If Ron at Jolly Pumpkin would set me aside a mixed case of beer like Fuego del Otono for pick up when I am in the neighbourhood, I would definitely pay $11.99 or a bit more compared to the $8.99 I paid for this one last fall at the ever excellent Bello Vino of Ann Arbor. Other beers of the moment might not get such a price boost from the set you own auction, if my suspicions are correct.

In the end, one in the morning came far too soon and, as with the best gatherings like this, I came away having added understanding as well as happily convinced in how little I still really know. There is so much to learn about good beer. For one thing, I now crave New Glarus Spotted Cow and may have to drive to Wisconsin just to get me some more.

Notes From A Stay-cation

I don’t mind “stay-cation” except that you can’t spell it without the hyphen. Better than being called an unimaginative twerb who can’t get it together enough to take the family camping. I have excuses – I always have excuses. First, family reunion on Saturday. Then, the annual vintage base ball game that got rained out yesterday. Today, a beer writer or two visit as part of their multi-continental trip. So even though we are at home, we are getting something of an edjification.

I hope I don’t just watch TV but the twisted back makes that a possibility. I watched the ESPYs last night, thinking they would be lame. Best TV awards show ever. Justin Timberlake was a dreamy host – I say no more for fear of affecting my cred. Now, on a Monday morning in July, I hunt in vain for reruns of Mr. Dress-up and The Friendly Giant. What the heck has happened to the CBC? Thank God, I can at least look forward to Elwood Glover’s Luncheon Date at noon to go with my egg salad and parsley sandwiches.

Friday Bullets Without The Pain…Except For The Pain

I need a new back today. Despite the sit up and other exertions of unbelievable dedication, the back still goes. And it is quite prepared to go before just before the summer holiday begins. Such is life. Good thing I plan to do nothing.

  • Nevermind those who 3% of folk who think George W. Bush will be well remembered by history. He’s going to be considered a goofball if his final words to the G8 are anything to go by: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” He has to plan that sort of thing. That can’t be what he’s coming up with off the cuff.
  • I wish Google had reviewed the whole fewer and better ads thing with me. See that over there down to the right? Who am I to complain about who give me that big $350 bucks a year?
  • The Mets: 10 for their last 10.
  • I have never liked Paul McCartney that much so I guess I am with that 0.3% of Quebecers who are unhappy. Surely he is not the biggest act in the world, surely they could have gotten Plastic Bertrand.
  • Kottke noted a great illustration of the disutility of information technology this week. Because the information was not sortable by the critical factor, availability of restaurant seats, the application is practically useless.
  • No other politician generated more dancable tunes, though no ska that I know of. Happy birthday, Nelson!

My got to explore the home pharmacy some more. I understand one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. But which is which?

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The Barenaked Witness Statement

I sometimes wonder why Canadian news media report on the reporting of things. So often the CBC or major papers go out and find out what person X thinks about or can explain about what happened to person Y. There is a level of abstraction that isn’t the case elsewhere. As you likely know, I watch local Watertown NY news in the morning – initially for a better sense of the weather and now for all those fun police reports. It’s amazing how much pre-conviction detail is set out for the public, servicing as both information about the workings of the court justice system as well as a conduit for that oft stated goal of justice, general deterrence.

The arrest of Barenaked Ladies singer Stephen Page in nearby Fayetteville, NY, an easter suburb of Syracuse, is a good case in point. The Globe and Mail include excerpts from the statement given by Page’s girlfriend’s roommate while The Star gives only a summary. Syracuse’s Post Standard, however, has a far fuller and more detailed account:

Ford’s statement to police provides the following account: The two women walked to the bar about 10 p.m. About 11 p.m., Page showed up. “After about 30 minutes, Steven and Christine got into a huge fight because Christine was flirting with another guy. Steven left the bar and I followed him back to the apartment,” Ford told police. Page said that he was going back to Canada, but Ford was concerned because Page had been drinking. Back at the apartment, Page lay down on the grass and Ford sat on him so he couldn’t drive away. “While we were on the front lawn, Christine showed up and started yelling at me not to take Steven’s side. I’m not sure how it happened but Christine ended up with Steven’s keys and drove away in his car leaving hers in the middle of the driveway,” Ford said. Page and Ford went inside the home. Eventually, Ford found Page at the kitchen table with a bottle that said “calcium” and contained capsules with white powder, but the rest of the label was in French. “There was a pile of white powdery substance on the table, near one of the capsules,” Ford said. “There was a Canadian bill on the table which Steven rolled up and we used it to snort the white powder. “We never discussed what the white powder was but I thought it was cocaine,” she said.

What have we learned? The abstraction of celebrity and perhaps a measure of national embarrassment, things I think may be fueling the abstraction in the Canadian press, are not there. But neither is the unspoken menace. It’s a pretty banal scene and the participants appear co-operative. People are trying to do the right thing, keeping the incapable off the road, while doing the wrong thing. The comments to the Syracuse news article are interesting as well.

This may well be a more serious matter than we are learning about in Canada. The are articles about how the business of the band will be affected, a matter Canadian media is somewhat invested in given all the spin-off radio and TV shows the band have generated. Is that projecting an actual Canadian cultural point of view? The view from Fayetteville Village Court is likely less engaged in that respect. And look at this opinion piece from 2007 about sentencing inequality in New York – a ten gram possession appears to attract years of incarceration, though this snippet may indicate months. This may be a far more serious matter than we are being told.

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Following The Hieronymi Around The World

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I have to admit that beer blogging has given me far more than I have ever given it. Through beer blogging I have electronically met a particularly rich seam of the most gracious and generous folk in the English-speaking world. One of the finest is, of course, our pal Stan Hieronymus, author of Brew Like A Monk as well as a bazillion articles on brew – not to mention the blogger-in-chief at Appellation Beer.

Stan and the family are on a round-the-world tour trying all the local beer they can meet and next week I have the honour of hosting them for supper (and maybe more if the RV fits) as the south-easter Ontario representative of all things beery. I have put away a few fine local beers – including that growler or two I plan to snab at Sackets Harbor NY, my actual most local brewer as the crow flies. We’ll be over there next Sunday for the return of the annual 1870s vintage base ball game. I have invited a couple of interesting brewers to join in a small backyard symposium but am still a little at loose ends, trying to figure out how to make the moment worthy and fun.

Well, lo and behold, I just found an extra way to do the right thing by Stan – they’re keeping a blog of the trip called The Slow Travelers. More about big roadside attractions and less about about beer but that is good. It will help us get a sense of Stan, the family and my pleasant duties of their host. As far as I can tell, I need to make a giant paper mache dinosaur and place it by the curb to truly make the date a hit! We may have to see about that one.

Out! Out! Damn Tiny Substances!!!

We live in a time of great fear. Terrorism. Financial instability. Food security…or is that now “nutrisekur”? Well, here’s one more – tiny substances:

A blue-ribbon scientific panel has waved a yellow flag in front of a rapidly expanding number of products containing nanomaterials, cautioning that the tiny substances might be able to penetrate cells and interfere with biological processes…Their small size, the report says, may allow them “to usurp traditional biological protective mechanisms” and, as a result, possibly have “enhanced toxicological effects.”

Yeeouch! Bad enough that they may have toxicological effects but these ones are enhanced! I really hope this is not all about the industrial dusty cheesy coating on snack foods. That stuff is really tiny but tangy and tasty, too. Note that one conclusion of the study is that “there are inadequate data to inform quantitative risk assessments on current and emerging nanomaterials.” Hmm. So they may not really know. Note, too, that there is no apparent reference to that Wired magazine article from before a few bubble economies ago called “Why the future doesn’t need us” in which Bill Joy argued that 21st-century technologies like genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) would be so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. It’s always a good bit of reading for those wanting to get scared out of their skins what with sentences like: “if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn’t we proceed with great caution?”

Yowza! But what about my cheese dust? If we are witnessing the end of life on earth through our own incompetent worship of the blind progress of science, I want cheese dusty snacks on the way out.

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The Government Said The Public Wasn’t Ready

I didn’t realize I wasn’t ready. Do you have to be a libertarian wing nut to pause and shake your head?

The system would be more open, flexible and convenient for consumers, the panel concluded. The government could restrict the number of stores and their hours, and also retain the current $24-a-case minimum price, to discourage excessive drinking. And it could focus on enforcing existing laws preventing the sale of booze to minors. The government said the public wasn’t ready.

I can drive 45 minutes to New York state and be ready. I can drive two hours to Quebec and be ready, too. Heck, I can go to a small town 30 minutes outside of the city and be ready at an agency store, too. Can anyone explain how I was assessed as not being ready?

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