Friday Bullets Celebrating The Defeat of The Spammers

Rejoice! The war is won!

You may have noticed that there has been spam recently. The move to Recapture has apparently attracted a band of manual spammers who focus on sites who use it. Spiteful bitter Romanians for the most part. Anyway, this site’s admin also allows me to customize the spam filter quite easily and yesterday I thought that I would try filtering “URL” and “a href” – the tools used to create a link of any sort. I realized only spammers link. Hans has been posting here for four years and still can’t link. And even if you do, it will just be hidden until I check. Rejoice! Rejoice!!!

  • Timekilling Update: Death from above via John Gushue.
  • Asteriskman Update: A good commentary on SI about the indictment of Bonds. I guess we don’t have to worry about whether he shows up when the ball goes into Cooperstown.
  • I should find a copy of The Cult of the Amateur – a book setting out how stunned the infiltration of Web 2.0 mentality has made us all. Here is a screaming example from Metafilter. Can you believe someone is still citing the Cluetrain Manifesto? How many times can Dan Rather get fires in the minds of dopes with bandwidth?
  • As Mohammad is to Denmark, so too are nudy Royals to Spain…except the enemy is within.
  • We are entering Senate reform season again despite “vehement objections from some provinces which insisted the chamber can’t be reformed without their consent.” It is beyond me how it is possible to provide for such change without the provinces. I pray every night for an application to be made from PEI to the Supreme Court of Canada demanding a say if anyone touches their four seats. Because if you can shift the Senate seats without consent, the Feds should be able to shift the four seats in the House of Commons.
  • If killing a cat is a crime, is stealing virtual furniture?
  • I no longer watch much NHL hockey. In part it is the strike but in part it is also that I am a Leafs fan. Damian Cox in the Star neatly summed up the Leafs this week:

    A 22 per cent return on investment can buy you a lot of things, apparently, but just not a soul or a sense of professional pride. And just think: Ontario’s teachers own the majority share.

    Good dig at the elementary school teachers, Coxy.

That’s enough for now. You’ve had a few weeks off the bullets and need to reintegrate slowly. The bends can be hellish.

Beer Shop: Bello Vino, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

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When I realized I was going to be within a reasonable drive of a 24 hour zip into Michigan due to work requirements, I had no understanding of what the place was like. When we crossed the border at Port Huron and got through the town, I thought that I had driven into northern Maine – pretty sparse for a while there. How unexpected, then, to come across Ann Arbor – one of the most vibrant small cities I have ever been in. Sure it helps that 127% of the geographical land mass of the place is filled with the University of Michigan, providing plenty of lab coat jobs generating incomes and appetites for the good stuff.

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Bello Vino is a purveyor of plenty of the good stuff. As the name suggests there is a huge fine wine selection as well as general groceries (fresh, organic, ethnic, imports – the whole thing) but what I was there for was the beer. When I asked for MI shopping hints, I got some great suggestions in the comments but when I asked Ron at Jolly Pumpkin he said only one thing – Bello Vino.

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Why is this shop so great for beer? Well, they certainly treat beer like beer. The space is built into a corner of the whole store, a bit recessed into the wall. The effect of this is the whole space is chilled to ten or more degrees colder than the rest of the place. The steel racks are cool to the hand. Plus the selection is great – especially for someone used to the New England and mid-Atlantic shops. Michigan has something like 70 craft brewers and this place has many of their brews: Founders, Jolly Pumpkin, Bell’s, Arbor, Dark Horse, Dragonmead and a bunch others. Plus, it has a massive selection of Belgians. I picked up a number of new-to-me abbey ales and lambics that I hadn’t seen before. Additionally, there is a good selection of UK brews, US craft bombers and sixes as well as even a short row of fine meads.

bv3But I think the real reason the place works so well is the guy up there in the smock, beer manager Jeremy McClelland who gave me an hour of his time, amongst helping other shoppers, to talk about the shop, Michigan beers as well as how proud they are of having the best selection in the state. I was quite surprised to see the mini-kegs and especially the mini-keg of Schlenkerla Rauchbier. Prices to my eye were fair. $10.99 for a six of Bell’s Double Cream Stout, $3.99 for Harviestoun Engine Oil Reserve and a whack of craft singles for $1.49 to $1.69. Jeremy was happy to break sixes and there was a supply of boxes there to let you mix your own.

From my house this shop is a ten hour drive, about the same as the coast of Maine if I go the other way. Like with the seashore, there is enough in Ann Arbor to justify making a long weekend with the family. Like with the beers of the north half of New England, there is enough happening in Michigan craft brewing to justify planning a family vacation around the beer – and Bello Vino should definitely be part of that plan. And to help you plan, you may want to follow the newly launched blog Michigan Beer Buzz. Also pick up Michigan Breweries by Ruschmann and Nasiatka – it’s worth it just for the maps which got us where we wanted to go in plenty of time.

About Oaked Beer: Bam Noir, Jolly Pumpkin, Dexter, MI

jpbn1Just a few days after saying that I could not find copies of Celebrator magazine – I find one at Jolly Pumpkin’s store in Dexter, Michigan. I also found this Bam Noir labeled as Batch #246 even though the brewery does not list that one as a Bam Noir batch. No never mind. Numbers can have that quality.

This beer is a great introduction to the style of this brewer. The drying planks of oak are there in the glass with the tang picked up from whatever was in the pores of the wood. I find that there are hazelnut, fig and brown sugar notes with twig hops. At 4.3% it’s a great candidate for the CAMWA brew of the year. Soft water. But be warned – a full 15% of BAers reject this one. Conversely, Bam Noir makes me want to roast a chunk of fatty salmon as it would cut through that richness well.

Monday Bullet Points Celebrating Standard Time

Ah, standard time. Time to sleep. Time to get up not in a rush. Time for bullet points. What were we saving all that daylight for anyway?

  • Update: note the subtle underlying concept – no one is as smart as me and my friends:

    “I think he’s a sincere and honest man,” Mr. Manning said yesterday on CTV’s Question Period. “I think the bigger question with Premier Stelmach and the administration is one of its competence. Does it have the competence to deal with these big-picture issues?” Mr. Manning said the opposition Liberals and New Democrats display even less understanding of Alberta’s potential leadership role, but predicted they could benefit from Tory failings.

    I thought Manning was a populist? How is this not elitist?

  • The battle of the spammers continues but today was a bit of a victory with everything getting filtered. Sadly we will not be able to discuss either Miss Alba or Miss Spears in the comments now but on the up side we will not be able to discuss Miss Alba or Miss Spears.
  • Fluke or no fluke? It was quite a game with New England pulling away from the Colts at the end due to a defensive play which saw a late game loose ball lead to the exciting NFL conclusion of two minutes of non-plays. If it was any other sport, goons would be sent in to interrupt the taking of the knee, a courtesy oddly granted the soon to be victors.
  • How long before the personal computer goes the way of the console TV? I liked when my TV came with a wood finish. Can I get an iPod with a wood finish? I don’t think so.
  • A TV writers strike – do you care? I know I will have to find something else to do when Numb-Three-ERs is on, but I mainly watch news and sports. If you want know know what is happening behind the line, have a read about what Ian and Tessa think. I would offer either side my full support if they officially adopt the pronunciation “numb-three-ers“. And about that show: I know it’s Charlie – he’s the evil one.

So there you go. Your first Monday bullets. I have no idea if this will continue but I am on the road this Friday so cut and paste these ones for use then if you are really having trouble with this change stuff.

A Saturday In 2007 And Those Of The 80s

If you are interested, I wrote a bit about Halifax in the 1980s yesterday for The Session, a monthly thematic series where beer bloggers globally write on the one same topic. Yesterday was “beer and music” and that reminded me of the Halifax of my young wayward adulthood.

It also reminded me how crappy the internet is in that there are few references to things that pre-date it. This post of mine is one of the better Goggle ranked sources for information about the early 80s music scene and that is sad as it does not say that much. I was ticked off that I could not find a photo posted somewhere of the old Ginger’s at lower Barrington Street in Halifax. The equipment for the Granite Brewery was first located there and me and my pals were very willing guinea pigs. In fact, I have no photos of any of the haunts of those days. In 1986 or so I actually took a few photos of certain Halifax scenes but for some reason not the places where I actually spent a lot of my idle time, like the Split Crow with the Kenny McKay and the Swell Guys on a Saturday afternoon. The LBR on a rainy night. If anyone reading this has any it would be great to post them as an archive.

Maybe there needs to be a joint archive of that sort of thing as a reference guide.

Session 9: When Beer And Music Shaped My Life

sessionlogosmA bit like Greg, when I thought about the topic for this month’s edition of “The Session”, hosted and proposed by Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey, I was initially disappointed as this one’s generality seems to be taking us another notch farther and farther away from the beer and nearer and nearer to a free for all, allowing for a drift towards that glaring lack of attention to detail that any good beer blogger should fear.

Yet the posts so far today have dispelled my fear as has just wallowing in a bit of recollecting. I have to go quite a ways back to a time when music and beer were more closely associated for me. Not as background music either – when one older brother came back from a trip to family in the early ’80’s, his most telling remark was that the British pubs he had visited all seems to have jukeboxes compared to our last trip, the summer of punk in 1977. And they were all playing “Born in the USA”. That’s not music. That’s music in a can.

hfx1-1Stephen Beaumont’s post for the session – or one of them – makes a very good point about the music in a bar being a huge part of the
experience but it is also important to note that canned music is a fairly recent introduction into a lot of bars – a reality of only the last 35-25 years. Even in my youth of the early 80s many Halifax taverns were still only either loud with conversation or had live music. And it was that live music we sought out because we sang, too. Maritime Canadians like me have a capacity for shout-singing a good shanty with the best of them and we sang them in the taverns like the Lower Deck with certain songs being somewhat obligatory like “Barrett’s Privateers” by Stan Rogers and, of course, the cultural anthem “Farewell to Nova Scotia” which usually brought the house down in pubs like the Lower Deck with the long tables being hammered and dimpled by beer glasses keeping the beat, students and guys in the navy sharing their benches and trying to out do each other on the chorus:

God damn them all
I was told we’d cruise the seas for American gold
We’d fire no guns, shed no tears
Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier,
The last of Barrett’s Privateers

hfx2The music was real and I was making it, the tavern was on a Halifax pier and the beer was then, for the most part, locally brewered draft by regionals Keiths and Moosehead even if a few imports were popping up like Newcastle Brown and the oddly present but welcomed Frydenlund lager from Norway – both also coastal brews. Stephen shares a bit of the flavour of Halifax that from that time, too, in his post:

Then there are times when beer trumps music, as it does in this story told to me many years ago by Kevin Keefe, founder of eastern Canada’s first brewpub, the Granite Brewery in Halifax. Winning Maritimers over to British-style ales wasn’t the easiest of tasks for Kevin, but in doing so he recognized that he would create for himself a sort of captive audience. And so, one by one, he convinced the locals to switch from the regional lagers and bland, blonde ales to his unique dark ales and best bitters, including, eventually, one long-time hold-out we’ll call Alan. Alan was for many months skeptical about the appeal of the Granite’s ales, Kevin told me, but after numerous tastes and talks, finally came around and began to drink the Best Bitter on a regular basis. This continued for some time, up to and including the evening when a hugely popular band was playing in a rival bar, attracting away the bulk of Kevin’s clientele.

Funny. The Alan I knew in the mid-80s of Halifax (me), the one hunting out the best place to belt out the best song at closing time, was starting to enjoy craft beer in a Halifax brewpub that actually pre-dated the one that came to be called the Granite Brewery. As I went on about back here, their equipment was originally at a sort of down at the heels place called Ginger’s which was a few blocks, a few rougher blocks nearer the train station and the docks, south of where the places now called the Granite and Ginger’s sits today. We’d also another source for early craft beer from a southern New Brunswick brewery, Hans House, that I do not think made it into the 90s.

But Kevin Keefe is right. It was the place as much as anything that made learning about his early efforts at craft beer so attractive and so different – whether that first harbour town tavern or later, at the Henry House, the new sort of upscale pub that he introduced into the scene that made for the setting. And those places of his had, for much of the time, something hard to find these day of mainly canned tunes or those days of table thumping massed messed choirage – the peace of no music at all.

Your Mid-Autumn Beer Magazine Update

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I have written about beer magazines before but a recent stop at a book store made me realize that there are more magazines out there than ever and that it was maybe time to do some comparing. And, along with that, some consideration of what the deal is as I’ve always wondered who buys these publications. Maybe even though there is way more information about beer on the internet that is more up to date, we all know that you look like a dork taking your lap top when you go for a hair cut.

  • All About Beer: This is the elder statesman of these five magazines, well into its 28th year of publication if the volume numbering is anything to go by. I have the November 2007 issue which sports the natty and welcome new layout and design. It has articles, flashy ads, columns by a number of the usual suspects, reviews by a number of the usual suspects as well as the fantastically useful “Buyers Guide For Beer Lovers” or BGFBL. The BGFBL in each issue takes a large number of known examples of a style, ranks them and give notes for each. A very useful information packed magazine that has taken a good look in the mirror and freshened its look. A small amount of gratuitous cheesecake in the vital 34 word article on America’s sexiest bartender. Audience: the US beer geek over 30 who maybe once was a frat boy.
  • Beer: This issue is the first and will be the last I buy. It really isn’t aimed at the craft beer buyer – though it may be aimed at the young krappht beer fan. This issue has plenty of short articles that include trade PR cuttings from two months ago, a piece on how to tell one macro industrial brew from another and interesting bit about how to get a bartender to give you free beer. Oddly, there is plenty of cheesecake but much of it, even on different articles, seems strangely to be from the same photo shoot. Audience: the US frat boy with aspirations of one day being a beer geek over 30.
  • Beers of the World: this UK beer mag now in its second year contains ads, now old trade PR cuttings, a lot of articles of three to five pages with a UK and European focus. My October 2007 issue has a good regional focus on Wales, notes from a visit to Bamburg, as well as a history of hops in under around 700 words and one by a usual suspect describing all of pale ale that might hit 1200 words…OK, I didn’t count. My only complaint is that articles of this length rarely get too deep or provide information that you have not seem the same author repeat elsewhere. But the review section at the end is the best in all five magazines as it is written by the same one guy issue after issue creating a consistent body of work. Plenty of bright photos and really no skin. Audience: the people who read Stonch’s blog yet who want to also learn more from a source that does not include his pal’s body functions as recurring characters.
  • Beer Advocate: I am happy with my subscription to the Beer Advocate magazine. It is likely the most focused of the group and the least cluttered with ads. This is a mag for the 5% of the beer market into craft beer in the USA. There is no cheesecake – unless a very bald Alstrom head counts…which it might. There are stale trade PR cuttings, which is a bit of a disappointment, but there are good long articles following the given theme of any issue. The reviews are very well done, logical and comparatively lengthy. It sort of has a new cast of usual suspects which is good if you are reading more than one magazine. It tends to present itself as relating to rocking out. Audience: former frat boys in their 20s and 30s who still wear black t-shirts and want to go one a beer tour with Stonch and his pals.
  • Draft: Thank God for a magazine that doesn’t have “beer” in the title. Except it seems to have a sub-title and even a sup-title as the full name is “The Beer Enthusiast’s DRAFT: Life on Tap”. Things are a bit cluttered up there on the cover. This one has been publishing for a year as of the September/October 2007 issue and also has beer page after page of huge ads, articles, some trade PR clippings and a well laid out beer view section. The articles are fairly long for a beer mag – not National Geographic but sometimes you have to turn more than two pages. There is a good focus on beer and food over a number of items as well as an odd cover interview of Randy Quaid in which I learn he likes golf. No cheesecake. Audience: people in their 30s and 40s who can name three Randy Quaid movies, who really don’t think about the frat that much and like to drink craft beer and other stuff.

In the end, I have to make choices. I won’t buy Beer again. All About Beer and Draft may become a once every six months thing. Beers of the World will get my money three to four times a year, mainly due to the UK content, and I will renew my Beer Advocate magazine subscription every year. One big problem I would face committing to more is the necessary high level each takes to ensure the largest potential geographical audience which leads to a certain generality. And, while they all have nice beer porny photos, it would just cost too much to get them all and, after all, blogs are giving it away for free.

So do you buy beer mags? Which and why. Confess.

Again With The Beer Price Points And Cost Inputs

Friday’s interesting discussion has spun-off other posts. Stan has posted twice to develop some ideas from the comments and Greg supports the valuation of the premium in beer, suggesting I may be a wee bit of the cheeky contrarian in this – which is of course in part true, but I prefer “The Inquisatron” as that is what the logo on my green cape reads. One other place the post has been followed up is in this very good discussion at ratebeer mainly drawing off of this comment by Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey. This ratebeer-er of the Chama River Brewing of New Mexico, codename “erway”…unless his name really is erway – Stan?, makes some excellent observations about packaging and storage time:

The bottles add to the value of the beer in many customers minds. Maybe not to yours, but those 375s that Vinnie is using just look cool. JP is not going through the same aging that RR and LA beers are. They are a great product and cheers to Ron for getting his process down so well, but he can produce a lot more of the vaste majority of his beer than Tomme or Vinnie can of theirs.

…and I think he posted it about five minutes ago. This internet thing may have a future.

Anyway, that is exactly the sort of detail we drinkers need more information about. I am not the slightest bit interested in being a ticker of beer, claiming that I have had 2,376 different beers while lowly you has had only “experienced” 1,932 (both consuming most in one ounce portions for efficiency’s sake). No, I want to know the why and how decisions are made and why they are decisions that deserve the premium I will be asked to pay. That was one of the things that popped into my mind when I read this from Tomme Arthur:

I needed to purchase glass for our Older Viscosity. The bill for the glass was 8K. This beer will retail for $10 per 375 ml cork finished bottle. It certainly is expensive. Yet, the bottle costs almost $2 for the glass, cork, hood and wire and label. That’s before we even put an ounce of the 12.5% ABV 8 months in a new boubon barrel beer in the bottle. I think it’s too cheap given the amount of effort to produce this.

For me that is a stunningly refreshing disclosure even if “effort” alone, though a great thing, has to be well placed in any enterprise – effort in itself is not cause enough for reward as many folks with dead end jobs will tell you. No, I want to know even more than that. Would it offend to ask that the costs of aging be quantified. Is it possible that, as it was with most things, that I be offered the storage opportunity (and the responsibility bear the resulting cost) by selling me a demi-firkin young just as I can buy my bottle of vintage port young for decades of home aging? And was I really aware that 20% of a beer’s cost might be the bit I throw away, the wrapper? Why is that a good decision when almost twice as much bourbon barrel aged high test ale can be bought from a brewer like Weyerbacher? Sure the corked bottles “just look cool” but if you can cut a buck off the cost of a unit of the fluid by putting it in the 22 oz bomber, please do. Why not give me a choice and treat that premium packaging of a corked bottle as a special edition just as you would with a little wooden crate?

This has nothing to do with Lost Abbey whose fine brews are simply geographically beyond my reach and jurisdictionally beyond postal sampling, seeing as I live in Canada and our wonderful residual blue laws. And, of course, many craft brewers certainly do give packaging alternative, even though I still wait for the invention of the quarter-gallon growler. But if I had more of an idea of the options in this aspect of what goes into putting the bottle on my table, I would be able to make better informed decisions and support brewers whose decision making meets my needs. Why can’t more craft brewers be a little more unlike other producers of goods, take the risk of opening the books and put as much information out into the public sphere – as a great brewer like Tomme Arthur has here and on his blog and as a brewer likeSmuttynose puts on its website. It has nothing to do with checking with a brewer drives a Rolls. Simply put: better informed drinkers are more loyal drinkers as far as I am concerned.

Does such information matter to you? What do you want to know about your beer?

[And… original comments!]

Stan Hieronymus – October 28, 2007 2:39 PM

http://www.appellationbeer.com/blog

Alan – Have I mentioned that I’m wondering if your little “Are you human?” questions know me. Friday “journalist” was one of my words and later our daughter’s name came up.

So far no “erway” though. But, to answer your question, that is his surname.

And, last I knew, you could get Port Brewing’s Old Viscosity at beerbistro.

Alan – October 28, 2007 2:55 PM

Excellent. I will have to check next time I am in downtown Toronto but, unfortunately, that may be many a moon from now. I am in Michigan in two weeks and need to hunt out some beer shops there for the 24 hours I have at my disposal for Mid-west beer shopping this year.

Alan – October 29, 2007 10:35 AM

<i>…I love the information on the Smuttynose website. But for a brewer to give full disclosure of their costs could really hurt their business…</i><p>Great comments! You know what my immediate reaction to this line I am quoting is? If that were true, then I think brewing is not an art at all. If it is the individual expression of the brewer that is in there that makes these new high end brews worthy, then it would not matter if they list costs and ingredients because, as I understand the beer=art argument, it is all about technique. <p>I could sit and watch Picasso paint but that would not make me Picasso.

Alan – October 29, 2007 1:14 PM

Another discussion has started at Beer Advocate.

Alan – October 29, 2007 8:25 PM

And Tomme has followed up at the BA with a longish comment that is well worth reading.

Keith Brainard – October 30, 2007 9:06 AM

http://www.brainardbrewing.com

I was more referring to the totality of costs, way beyond just the ingredients. Part of the cost of beer is the malt and hops and other raw materials. But there are also costs such as energy, rent, salaries, insurance, etc. etc. All of these are part of the cost of the beer (or any product) in some way.

I totally agree that brewing is an art. Even for more common beers, the brewing of those beers is at least part art. This is part of the reason that we can have homebrew clone recipes and it doesn’t erode sales of the brewers of the original beer. Echoing your Picasso sentiment, just because I have a step-by-step of how to make a particular beer doesn’t mean I can make it just like the original brewer.

Stan Hieronymus – October 30, 2007 10:45 AM

http://www.appellationbeer.com/blog

Hi Alan –

In your reply to Tomme’s post at BA you wrote: “What I was responding to was the commentary triggered by Lew, Stan and Stephen discussing your beers as well as others in the new price range and how the market should bear whatever the consumer will pay.”

I will admit that the two threads have reached the length I’m not going to scour them for the phrase that the <i>market should bear whatever the consumer will pay.</i>

I’m pretty sure I never wrote that. I think there are some beers we should pay more. A lot of the $7-$8 6 packs and some of the higher priced beers. Not because that is what the consumer will pay, but because it is a fair price.

And I agree there are beers that are not worth the price on the bottle. A lot of these are in $6-$12 large format bottles. They may be justified based on the amount of ingredients, labor and time involved but you can’t taste the difference. Or worse, you can and it is bad.

I think we should pay for the difference we can taste, but there isn’t a formula we can plug a bunch of numbers in to and come out with the proper price. Part of it is personal – like if I’m saving up $60 to buy a pretty bottle of vodka.

Alan – October 30, 2007 10:58 AM

It’s not so much what you said as what you three, in the early posts that triggered all this, did not yet get the opportunity to elaborate – which I was merely helping with!

I think we have sussed out that there is a definite price sensitivity to craft beer and the new range of prices does have to justify itself, not just be subject to pure market force. If you want my 20 bucks for a single bottle, I want more back story than a nice corked presentation. Consumer oriented brewers will have the story because it will be true.

Sour Beer Studies: Oro De Calabaza, Jolly Pumpkin, MI, USA

A busy day today that will hopefully continue but the one point of agreement seems to be Jolly Pumpkin beers and – oh, happy day – I have one in the stash. I have been known to Bam and Oro de Calabaza is the strong golden ale by the same happy gourd of a brewer.

Wow. It’s like a cross between Duval and Fantome. Plenty of grain texture but a acidic, farm yard funk that leans towards a Flemish red. Plus, a whirlwind of fruit in the malt – yellow plum, pear, sultana. Black tea hops with a bit of white and black pepper. Fabulous. Golden light amber ale under a massive egg white head that keeps growing – it’s alive.

I am heading in two Fridays to get to Jolly Pumpkin after a morning presentation in London Ontario to learn more. 100% of BAers are stunned by the quality.