Sign Of The Endtimes #3378

There are some things I won’t put on the beer blog – including some new gack called “Guinness Red”. Apparently the much jiggered with recipe moves over the last few decades have done their deed leaving the brewer to consider “the brand is the asset” now that it has destroyed the actual drink:

The launch of Guinness Red is the latest in a series of slightly odd, innovative brand extensions for the famous beer brand, which has been hit with declining sales. In February, in time for St Patrick’s Day, Diageo tied up with Marmite to produce a limited edition Guinness-flavoured Marmite spread, with just 300,000 hitting supermarket shelves. The company also launched the battery-powered “ultra-sonic” Guinness Surger that enables Guinness fans to create a proper “tight creamy” head to their beer when drinking at home. Perhaps the most bizarre brand extension was a tie-up with Northern Irish bread company Irwin’s Bakery, to create – after two years of research and development – Guinness bread. Guinness Wholegrain Bread, which has 17% Guinness content, is described as “the perfect malty bread” by Irwin’s.

Stonch has it right: “If this diabolical stuff passed the taste test, I despair of the British people.”

One Man Burning Man Crime Wave!

So at Burning Man it is a crime to…burn the man. You know the free collective spirit of the communal community (that is and then is not – like the wind) can’t work without a schedule, people! Not to mention the need to do what you are told by the leadership. This is up there with that Ayn Rand Society or organization or whatever.

And always a nice touch when libertarians and anarchists call in the cops.

None

Time To Confess!

It’s too bad there isn’t an independent body to study stuff that no one wants studies that much. I would submit an application for a grant for a calculation of how much waste computers and the internet have caused:

“The issue is now you have something that seems to be genuinely irresistible because it’s such a gateway to the whole planet that’s right there on your desk and easily concealed to people passing by,” said Wallace, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Employees who cyberslack have been shown to spend most of their time emailing, and almost a third of their messages were not related to work, said James Philips, a psychology professor at Australia’s Monash University. Many workers manage finances or shop online. Popular social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are also common cyberslacking destinations. It is not uncommon to see a user write on his “status” report that he or she is “at work”.

I think that underestimates the capacity and the long tradition of people to fund ways to not do. The inclusion of solitaire and battleships on the first desktops lead to a generation of well qualified lonely card playing admirals. But we were promised a world of leisure and the three day work week when the future was first envisaged, not just jet packs and food in tubes. All that has turned out is that the food is in plastic and not aluminum and the hours of leisure are spent in a cubicle not at a cottage.

Sour Beer Studies: Grand Cru, Brouwerij Rodenbach, Belgium

There’s plenty of good stuff down in the stash but I had to think hard about what was the right beer for the Sox and Yanks tonight. I settled on Rodenbach Grand Cru as it is a Flemish Red. I previously reviewed it but that was so 2004 when I thought it was over the top in tartness.

Ah…the innocence of youth. That was before the on-set of my relationship with Cantillon. Sure this one is acidic but there is plenty of bright vanilla, cherry – though there is still a sharp vinegary catch at the back of the throat. It pours a reddish mahogany with a thin roam and rim of off white. A little less rich than other Flems of recent sipppery but there is an interesting apple and beef thing in there if you rearrange the tastes. Refreshing and revitalizing. I will save the dry gueuze for the fish and chips now.

This one could soak a mean ribeye. Strong but not unanimous BA love.

Group Project: Do We Really Need Another Leader?

None of the above. Like most Canadians, the lack of a compelling leader is either a big problem or an admission that we really do not need someone to tell us what to be, we just need someone to administer. It is interesting that many of our southern nieghbours may feel the same thing if ry is right. The Globe and Mail is running articles today examining the current Canadian leadership and gives PMSH some advice:

He should start by asking himself why they haven’t bitten so far. After all, in terms of party standings, the Conservatives are still tied with the Liberals in the low 30s. What’s holding them back? The reasons are evident in the data. A large majority of Canadians associate words such as “controlling” and “partisan” with Mr. Harper. They think he’s too right-wing. Most believe he’s too close to U.S. President George W. Bush. He’s not seen as particularly likeable. A majority don’t think he cares about people like them. And most Canadians feel his government has accomplished little during its time in office.

I dunno but if I have to choose between likeable and capable give me capable. But I am not all that certain that Stephen Harper is all that capable. For me, a center-left non-supporter, he seems more like the first or second leg in a relay. Preston Manning tried to reframe the ideology of conservatism in Canada without any real plan for taking the helm and running the place. Harper has the task of proving a majority is possible but maybe he has to stand aside in a few years for that more charismatic person who can implement policies more in tune with the vision of Reform, someone who can convince me and other swing voters that meddling with actual institutions and constitutional principles is something I want them to do.

Notice I do not even speak of others as leaders even though those parties represent the majority of Canadians and are all to the left (to the left) of the conservatives. For the last two decades, whether under rural or urban overlords, Canadians have been happy to have conservative management by any name as long as enough socialism is being administered by them.

  • Has our relationship to leadership changed? Do we not need someone to frame a national vision preferring just decent management?
  • Is the place of conservatism in the US really any different after the ideological disappointments of the last seven years? If the relay analogy is apt, has the race been won and lost? Can a sensible centrist now reframe it to move it into popularity or is another puritan revival required or, if not, going to be foisted anyway?
  • Is there any major shift in the way politics plays out in North American in the offing? The conservative movement of the second half of the 20th century has been both hugely successful and an utter failure as both nations to one degree or another are reformist social welfare states with hugely successful capitalist infrastructures. What should the next ideological revolution look like? Should it not just be an admission that things are pretty robust, fair and acceptable?

There you go. Something to chew on on this quietest day in the quietest day of the year.

Considering Fred

Like the vast majority, I don’t know enough to write with any particular insight on politics…or most stuff for the most part. But this article in the NYT on Fred D. Thompson has me interested in the what might be. Specifically, someone called President Fred. I thought having a Prime Minister Steve would sound odd. And it does. Fred is one of those names that has been forever altered. In this case by Mr. Flintstone. But this Fred seems to be made of some interesting stuff.

Next month, Mr. Thompson is expected to join the Republican race for president. While he is perhaps best known for playing the tough-minded District Attorney Arthur Branch on the NBC show “Law + Order,” it is his real-life role as an investigator of government wrongdoing that has become a central part of the political biography he hopes will propel him to the presidency…Mr. Thompson rose to national prominence in the mid-1970s. As chief counsel to the Republicans on the Senate Watergate committee, he famously asked the question that revealed the existence of the White House taping system that ultimately led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation. But Mr. Thompson was also an active participant in the White House’s efforts to deflect blame from the president and discredit his accusers, plotting strategy with Mr. Nixon’s lawyers and leaking them information.

Law + Order never much caught my imagination, at least not in the way that Homicide: Life on the Street did or House has – it lacks the wit and/or performance. So the claims of an actor to leadership, as with those of ideological hack, should fall on deaf ears. It is in the doing that a person makes of him or herself what they can be.

Ontario: Grand River Brewing, Cambridge, RMW

grand3

If Canada has a hub of microbrewing, a very good argument could be made that it is in the cluster of smaller cities around Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph about an hour west of Toronto. Off the top of my head I can think of seven or eight breweries in the area. Maybe there are more but however many there are the newest is Grand River Brewing in Cambridge’s old Galt district.

grand1

grand2

grand7

 

 

 

 

We stopped in on a two day weekend zip across the Province and were very happy we did. Although they have not been open long, they already have ten draught accounts including some with the finer beer bars of Toronto – and apparently a brisk trade in growlers if our short time at the place was any indication. The brewery is housed in an old knife factory, a long and narrow building lit by sunlight. Even on the largely grey day when we were there, there was plenty to see in the large reception hall and the adjoining brewing rooms and plenty to sample, too.

grand6-1

grand5

grand8

 

 

 

 

I heard about Grand River from the discussion on The Bar Towel, like this thread discussing Grand River’s Mill Race Mild. Hearing there was a mild out there to be had was reason enough to stop to check it out given all the interest in session beers as well as my own home brewing interest in milds. But when I got there I found out from one of the owners, Bob Hanenberg, that all of their four beers are under 4.7% and that these sorts of beers was to be their focus. We tried them all and, honestly, all were among the best Canadian micros I have ever tried. Even with the area’s natural hard water, the two lagers and two ales were all rich and more-ish with the mild being the favorite. At 3.5%, it had plenty of grainy and nutty texture and, frankly, it was as big in body than most micros made in Ontario of any style. I took away a number of 15.75 CND (including 5 buck deposit so a good deal) growlers of the mild as well as their rich and hoppy Plowman’s ale, a green hoppy pale ale that was also nicely rich.

I will give a more detailed review of the two brews that I brought home soon but suffice it to say that this is a brewery that is trying and achieving something new – lower alcohol, full flavoured beers with no compromise. Go find them.

Sour Beer Studies: Gueuze From Cantillon And Hanssens

2gueuzeGueuze. A blend of young and old lambics. I’ve had some – a couple of sweetened ones from St. Louise and Mort Subite and Lindeman’s drier Gueuze Cuvée René. All very pleasant but these two are perhaps on the more…errr…hostile side of dry. But I am here to learn so bear with me.

Before we get there, what does gueuze mean? I’ve been asking around a bit lately. Lew was stumped…and just a tiny bit sweary Mary: “Damn, no, never knew about that. I REALLY need to read some Dutch history. I keep reading around the edges of it. Thanks for the prod in that direction.” Prof. Unger of UBC of the great books on medieval beer gave me his guess when I noted the naming of a group of 16th century Dutch rebels, the watergeuzen:

…Geuze = “beggar” is a French word that only appeared in the mid 15th century and was taken over into Dutch [Flemish] in the 16th and connected, as you say, with nobles who rebelled against the crown in 1566. There was a middle French word geus which meant throat and so came to mean hungry and my guess is that the beer type comes from that meaning. Also though I will not swear to it I think geuze is a beer type of the South, that is the southern Netherlands and which does not turn up in the Dutch Republic where, if the name were connected to the watergeuzen you would expect it to be used. I could be wrong but that is my best guess at the moment.

Ron Pattinson posts about another non-source of the meaning of gueuze with today’s post entitled “Gose” about the our beer of Leipzig stating that while the names are not related that there was “once a whole family of sour wheat beers, brewed right across the North of Germany and the Low Countries, from Brussels to Berlin and beyond.” So while it might or might not be “begger’s ale” or could be more or less directly linked to the other forms of sour beer, there is this set of sourness that speaks to a former time in some way, though one always has to be careful with claims to “authentic” and “heritage” in the world of drinks as in anything.

2gueuzeaThese beers are very similar. Cantillon’s Classic Gueuze is a 2006 bottling of blended 1, 2 and 3 year old lambics (and apparently a relabelling of their Cantillon Gueuze 100% Lambic-Bio, an Organic Gueuze) while Hanssens Oude Gueuze (the “oude” being explained on the brewer’s site that features no way to link to the actual page within the site) states on its label that it is matured for over three years in the bottle. There is more of a head with the Hanssens as I think you can see from the photo to the left with a coating white froth and rim jumping up from the slightest swirl over the amber straw ale while the addition of an ounce of the Cantillon to the wine glass quickly dissipates to a fine thin white rim over more lemon tinged straw ale.

Each give off a tart brightness when subjected to brief nosal inquiry, the Hanssens having a bit richer aroma. In the mouth, there is a clear distinction with the Hanssens being not just vinegary but also somewhat creamy with an unsweetened grapefruit white thing – slight vanilla and tiny note of lime in the middle of a sea of unsweetened white grapefruit juice. The Cantillon is a little thinner with maybe pear, citrus pith and grass under the sour white grapefruit tartosity. BAers like the Cantillon a lot and the Hanssens a tiny bit more. Both lack the barnyard funk that I found so especially pungent and a wee bit foul with Cantillon’s Bruocsella 1990 Grand Cru the reaction to which was one trigger for these sour beer studies of mine.

I paid Cantillon 7.50 USD for the 375 ml Cantillon while the Hanssens was 4.99 USD. As a result, if you are going for just one of these to try a first dry gueuze, pick up the Hanssens even though the Cantillon is probably a tiny bit less tart. Someday I will sprinkle one of these on my french fries. And bit steamed or even coconut shrimp. The big question is still “do I like these beers?” When I was a teen, I played soccer for the high school team. After daily practice, I drank a litre of white grapefruit to cut the sweat and on a hot humid day these two tart ales reminded me of that. But I still want to try them on fries. Is that so wrong?

More sour beer studies here.