Belgium: Chapeau Lemon and Kriek, Brouwerij De Troch

Girlie Drink Drunk. There was a Kids in the Hall skit fifteen years or so back called “Girlie Drink Drunk.” It seems to be on YouTube. That’s all I can think of when I see these super sweet lambic offerings but I buy them hoping they will be more fruited than sweetened. And I didn’t mind the pineapple cousin to these two – except for wondering why anyone would want pineapple in a beer.

The Kriek is the red of warning or lollipop rather than fruit but a bright cheery red nonetheless. Pink foam and rim. Candy and cough drop on the nose. Some acidity to cut the sweet but pretty sweet, cough droppy. If this was a fruit juice I would think it too much. The acidity is more than lingering – and not pleasantly so as it leads to no sense of funk what so ever. Slightly plastic finish. The Lemon? Gimme a sec.

Slightly clouded amber ale under white rim and foam. On the nose, lemon furniture polish meets real lemon peel. In the mouth the lemon is more honest than the Kriek was a reflection – or even the shadow – of a cherry. Maybe because both have a overwhelming (added?) citric acidity. With that acid bite, there is lemon peel and lemon juice but also a little bit of wheaty cream. Still, even though this is really not super sweet, the effect is more annoying even if not cloying. Enamel stripping. Can’t finish it. Both tip the scale at only 3.5% – meaning, unfortunately, you will not have the benefit of having your senses dulled the slightest bit thoughout the entire experience.

By the way, the BAers are strangely attracted. Upon reflection I should have placed the dart in the photo one inch to the lower-left.

“When I Was Your Age, We Ate Maple Leaf Cookies!”

The New York Times has an article on strategies kids take to get by living in the most expensive city in North America. Funny how it reminds me of something:

Peter Naddeo, a 24-year-old musician, earns $15 an hour working as a temp in Web development in Chelsea, and has perfected the tricky art of stretching lunch into dinner. He moved to New York from Pennsylvania last fall and can barely afford his $80 monthly college loan payments. He listens to a hand-me-down CD player because iPods are out of reach. He pays $600 for a 10-by-10-foot room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that has one saving grace: a window that faces east. For lunch, Mr. Naddeo usually orders a $3.50 plate of yellow rice and beans from a Latin American diner on Eighth Avenue, and eats late to ward off hunger pangs. Sometimes he hits up a bar in his neighborhood where a $6 pint comes with a small pizza. Or he relies on friends to feed him.

In the ’80s this was called living through a recession and no one had pals who fed him. Though that isn’t quite true as I recall buying groceries for a roommate who was down to eating carrots only. She was getting a little orange. One pal had a bag of maple leaf cookies that were put out on a plate whenever we came over. No one liked them so it was a cheap way to be hospitable. He was on mini-wage and there was only tea, cookies, cards and hockey of the black and white when we were over there. I do like the line above about a “hand-me-down” CD player. Boo frikkin hoo.

Isn’t this just called being young? Don’t you have to be broke for at least half a decade after school? And where is the New York of Archie Bunker? I blame George Jefferson, movin’ on up and all that. Everyone wants to live like people on TV.

The Web 2.0 Ideas That Won’t Go Away

How do you know that Web 2.0 is past, long gone and uninteresting? Reading yet another article about how the law needs to be changed to allow people to do things that no one wants to do anymore:

Earlier this month, some fans of the NBC television programs American Gladiators and Medium found themselves unable to digitally record the shows on their personal computers. The reason for the blocked recordings raises important technical and legal questions about the rights of consumers to “time shift” television programs in the digital era. The blocked recordings affected people that record television programs on their personal computers using the Microsoft Windows Vista Media Centre. Most people are unaware that Microsoft has inserted a feature that allows a broadcaster or content owner to stop the digital recording of a show by triggering a “broadcast flag” that specifies its preference the show not be recorded. When the user tries to record it, Microsoft’s software recognizes the flag and issues a warning that the program cannot be recorded.

So? None of them paid a license fee for the right to record the show and, in any event, it’s American Gladiators for God’s sake. If anyone thinks we need to law of copyright to be altered so that folks can bootleg a hack summer repeat of a 1980s joke, they need their head examined. The things that have not taken off and become part of general society like mashing-up, creative common licenses, YouTube, podcasting, Facebook and (frankly) blogging as anything other than internet diarizing are not vicitms of copyright law but illustrations why we do not need to tamper with the law to respond to another short-term trend. Legislators don’t rush to fnid out what the hobbyists are up to.

And have you noticed that no innovation of the internet is not really having an effect on the US Presidential election?

Belgium: Canaster, De Glazen Toren, Erpe-Mere

can1Here is a hint when you are traveling. If, after a tiring 600 km drive (to be followed the next day by another 600 km drive) you notice contract street sweeping equipment in the parking lot, get a new hotel. Street sweepers come and go in the night, you see. After idling their massive engines for fifteen minutes or so. It was like sleeping in a public works depot.

My only consolation was the bottle of Canaster I had brought. Labeled as a winterscotch-style ale I had brought it along as a reward for being me. It’s by the same good folk at KleinBrouwerij De Glazen Toren who made that saison I had last Thanksgiving. The beer is basically a Belgian brown with plenty of round brown maltiness, burlappy nutmegged yeast and some black tea and perhaps black malt astringency. It pours a thick sheeting cream head over chestnut ale. In the malt there is date and maybe dark raisin with a bit of a tobacco effect. It could have done with another something something but it was a very pleasant 9.5% brew that came across nothing as big as that. Plenty of BAer approval.

Not needing anything was the bottle of The Lactese Falcon Flanders Sour Brown Ale I picked up at Church-Key on the way home – you know, as a reward for being me. Yum – but I like the tastes of Parmesan cheese and Flemish sour beer and here they are in one brew. Plenty of roasted beef broth notes, vanilla, pear juice, balsamic, Worcestershire and Parmesan. Herself gets only molasses on schnozzal analysis. Somewhat controversial when it first appeared, here is a beer that intends to be itself – and one that may sort the style huggers from the brave and the free. I have another put away for a long sleep. I want to make sauces with it, soak meat in it – make welsh rarebit with it.

Nothing Says “Yum!” Like Third-Category Beer

While little translates as badly as regulatory text in another language from another country, there is a special place in my heart for Japan and its “third-category” beer which are described as nonmalt beerlike alcoholic beverages. Not third-rate. Third-category. Mmmmm. But apparently the average Joe in the land of the rising sun is switching to the stuff with a new-found zest:

The recent rise in prices of food products and services is hitting consumers, who are in turn cutting unnecessary spending from their family budgets. One example of the cutbacks can be seen in April beer shipment numbers released last week by the five major breweries. The numbers show sales of popular low-priced “third-category” beer, or nonmalt beerlike alcoholic beverages, rapidly growing, while sales of regular beer plunged significantly.

In the case of beer drinkers shifting to third-category beer, a decisive factor seems to be the price of the product. A 350-milliliter can of third-category beer costs about 140 yen, approximately 75 yen less than a can of regular beer. The April shipment of third-category beer increased by 9.3 percent, while shipments of regular beer dropped by 11.3 percent in the same month.

You can consider one yen a cent. We are, then, talking the difference between $2.15 and $1.40 a can so we are not likely talking about the craft beer fan…except that this could cause a domino effect across the board leaving out the top end of the market or those planning to supply it. And this seems to mirror what Stan noted might be happening in the USA. Beer in Japan has some odd aspects but we’ve been watching this third-category stuff for some time now and have found the description a “beer-tasting alcoholic beverage” the most informative so far though “a product two steps removed from actual beer” is up there. For the unknowing, this is a brief glimpse into the steps that are those two steps away:

A vital technological issue in producing a “third beer” product is achieving the right taste and color. Kirin’s solution, for which patents are pending, is browning, a process in which sugar is added to the fermented soy protein and then the mixture is heated, caramelizing the sugar and giving the beverage the color as well as the taste of beer.

One wonders whether the same machinery and ingredients might also make beer broth or automotive lubricants. Could it be that the there is nothing to gain from comparing craft brew to this sort of product and the budgetary issues which give rise to its production? Or are we all destined one day to be hoping for a bit of the old category three when we leave our underground factory jobs at the end of another thirty day cycle, marching merrily home in unison under the glow of another blazing green sunset? Is it the future?

Another Variation On Nutty Nutty World Of Fearmongery

This stuff is too unbelievable to not post for your consideration – with a big tip to Paul:

In a letter to the company, the Portman Group has warned that BrewDog’s products are potentially in breach of its official code of conduct. David Poley, the Portman Group’s chief executive, told The Scotsman: “We have asked this company to take remedial action to address potential problems that have been highlighted to them. “If a company fails to remedy the perceived breach, the matter will be formally referred to our independent complaints panel and, if a case is upheld, we will issue an alert advising retailers not to stock the product until it has been amended.”

Whew – what’s that smell?!? The only issue I have with the article is the claim that BrewDog’s beers are in Canada but as to the rest of it, crazy. Note that the Portman Group is a trade organization which will mainly represent firms who may be losing market to the innovative if cheeky lads from BrewDog. A very good point is made as well as to who is responsible for making cheap booze available to the market – other members of the Portman Group.

You know you are doing something right when this sort of stuff comes crawling out of the woodwork. Read BrewDog’s full response here.

 

 

Victoria Day Weekend’s Very Own Bullets

May two-fer. That is the level to which the legacy of England’s fourth best
Queen has been relegated. Drunks at the cabin. I know one. He’s there already.
While I prepare to go to my day’s labour. It’s going to rain all weekend, too.
No gardening for me and less fishing for the man in the cabin with 56 cans of
beer to work his way through.

  • Update: isn’t the proper discription “murdered child with bomb strapped to body”? When we rightly speak of the Canadian role keeping schools open, it’s this kid that we are trying to keep in the school.
  • Computer solitaire is the most successful program of all time. Who knew?
  • Be warned. The CRTC is rethinking it’s lack of justisdiction over the internet. In 1999 they realized they should have nothing to do with it but they are now fudging the point holding:

    services consisting predominantly of alphanumeric
    text and those with the potential for significant user customization do not “involve the transmission of programs for reception by the public and are,
    therefore, not broadcasting.”

    If we could all just stick to the keyboard please. I can’t imagine the botch the CRTC would create.

  • Bad week for the control freaks in the PMO:

    In any other time, these would be the most incompetent politicians. Sadly,
    they are only #2 in that race. But for the Liberal policy of letting the Tories
    hang themselves. Seems to be working.

  • Realist Caesarian art found in river because who wanted to be associated with Julie after the assasination.
  • Jesus won’t like this.

Read some McGonagall today if you have the time. A fitting celebration of Victoria’s gift of repression of all that is good.

Wired’s Good Summary Of Price Inputs Got Me Thinking

It’s just a short article in Wired but it provides a good summary of where we are with the hop and barley price jumps and gets me thinking about that other elephant in the room – value:

“My jaw hit the floor when I saw the price,” Ansari says. And next year, he’ll have to reformulate his brown ale Bender beer, a blend he described as a “flagship” flavor requiring the “Willamette” hop from the Pacific Northwest. “We were informed by our supplier that next year we can’t get that hop. It’s just gone,” Ansari said. “We’re going to have to make changes. Everybody,” he says, “is crossing their fingers there is going to be good hop crop.”

I haven’t got my copy of the May Beer Advocate magazine yet but I understand this issue has an article on prices (as Andy discussed in March) that takes some bars to task for the degree of price increase they are asking customers to bear. The Alstrom lads have been addressing the question of price and value fairly consistency with their recent articles on the monks of Westvleteren wanting the inflated reselling of their beers to stop as well as their raising of the issue of paying for beer fest beers.

As you know, I’ve been thinking about it, too, but even more so this weekend as I realize how much of the bitterness in those low-priced, thirst-quenching Sam Adams Summer Ales over the BBQ is from those wee grains of paradise – and how I don’t mind at all. The Wired article mentions how 21st Amendment brews a Watermelon Wheat with virtually no hops. It will be interesting to watch how this crisis becomes for some a reason to unreasonably soak and how for others it will be an opportunity to innovate. Do you plan to reward the innovators with your support?