This post is a continuous of yesterday's post that covered the first part of my run-up to the 1,000th entry in my Brew List as well as my trip with my mother to Colorado to visit my sister and her family. As a reminder, number 996 was a single-hop pale ale from Left Hand Brewing Company located in Longmont, Colorado.
Following the visit to Left Hand's tap room by my sister April, her husband Christian and myself, we hit a local Indian restaurant for dinner. With dinner, I enjoyed a big bottle of Kingfisher Premium Lager which was the 997th entry on the list. Christian called it the Budweiser of India, and I think that is about right. Kingfisher is a product of United Breweries Limited or the UB Group. I added another Indian beer from UB Group, Flying Horse Royal Lager, to the Brew List last year.
Number 998 was a can out of my sister's refrigerator. The can was Craft Lager from Upslope Brewing Company located in Boulder, Colorado. I spent the whole day playing with my nephew and niece, so I think I rightly deserved that beer.
The runner-up to number one thousand was a bottle from April's fridge. I assume it was from a Rocky Mountain Sampler pack from Breckenridge Brewery. Number 999 was a bottle of Fresh Hop Pale Ale from Breckenridge's Mountain Series. I have had several brews from Breckenridge on previous visits to Colorado.
Now a drum roll, please. Number 1,000 was a bottle of Wolf Picker out of a sampler pack from Odell Brewing. Quoting from the bottle, the beer is an "Experimental Pale Ale," and it is part of their Roots Release series. I enjoyed it on Christmas Eve during a family gathering at my sister's house. Last year, I had two drafts from Odell at the Denver airport while heading back from visiting my sister. I had their IPA and 90 Shilling Ale.
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Friday, December 26, 2014
Round Numbers and Letters, Part I
This year is nearing its end, and so far, I have managed to publish a measly five posts. I have been cheating you dear imaginary reader. I hope to make it up to you at least a bit by the end of the year. This post will be first of two post that will combine two possibly independent topics. The first possibly separate post would have covered the run-up to the one-thousandth entry in my Brew List. (By the way, I changed the name of the list from "Beer List" to "Brew List" because it contains ciders and meads which are not beers along with the normal ales and lagers. I do not plan to add other fermented beverages to the list although I do enjoy wine, some sake, and the hard liquors.)
However, that particular milestone just happened to occur while I was on a trip with my mother to Colorado to visit my sister and her family. In the past, I have published a post (or several posts) about my now-annual visit to that great beer-loving state. While I did manage to add several new Colorado brews to the list and visit another brewery, this Colorado trip was definitely more about family.
I will start my updates back in North Carolina prior to my trip to Colorado. The last time I updated my list, it stood at 988 entries. Therefore, I knew the big four-digit milestone was quickly approaching. That is why I will start with number 989 which was a draft of Christmas Eve At A New York City Hotel Room (I did not know it was foreshadowing at the time) from Evil Twin Brewing. That brewery made appearances in the posts about both brews #500 and #900. I have discussed quirky Evil Twin in the past, and I just noticed on the "About" page, that they use ten different contract breweries.
Moving on, the 990th entry in the list was Old Chub Nitro from Oskar Blues. Old Chub is a Scotch ale, and the nitrogen gives it a smoother, creamier mouth feel. I had it on draft and not in a can which contains a widget for infusing nitrogen into the beer.
The 991th and 992th entries were both from Short's Brewing Company. Their brews are produced in an industrial park in Elk Rapids, Michigan. A friend of my girlfriend Sara returned from a trip to Michigan with a six-pack of different beers from Short's for her and I to try. The first four bottles were previously consumed and duly cataloged. Number 991 was Wowee Zowee which is (and I quote from the bottle) a "Golden Ale brewed with fresh mint and mango." I remember it being a generally fruity-tasting beer but not tasting overly like mango or mint. Number 992 was Alter Spalter which is (again quoting from the bottle) "A True Old World German Ale."
Now we fast forward a few days. My mom volunteered to babysit my nephew and niece while my sister, brother-in-law and I went out for drinks and dinner. We stopped by the tasting room of Left Hand Brewing Company in Longmont, Colorado. The city of Longmont was greatly affected by the floods that hit Colorado last year. According to my brother-in-law, some roads have only recently been reopened after being closed for repair for over a year. Getting back to less sobering news (pun intended), I enjoyed a four-beer flight of single-hopped pale ales from their Safety Rounds. Therefore, beers numbers 993 through 996 were single-hopped Safety Round beers with Chinook, Comet, Centennial, and Apollo hops, respectively.
I will cover the 997th through 1000th entries to the list in the next post.
However, that particular milestone just happened to occur while I was on a trip with my mother to Colorado to visit my sister and her family. In the past, I have published a post (or several posts) about my now-annual visit to that great beer-loving state. While I did manage to add several new Colorado brews to the list and visit another brewery, this Colorado trip was definitely more about family.
I will start my updates back in North Carolina prior to my trip to Colorado. The last time I updated my list, it stood at 988 entries. Therefore, I knew the big four-digit milestone was quickly approaching. That is why I will start with number 989 which was a draft of Christmas Eve At A New York City Hotel Room (I did not know it was foreshadowing at the time) from Evil Twin Brewing. That brewery made appearances in the posts about both brews #500 and #900. I have discussed quirky Evil Twin in the past, and I just noticed on the "About" page, that they use ten different contract breweries.
Moving on, the 990th entry in the list was Old Chub Nitro from Oskar Blues. Old Chub is a Scotch ale, and the nitrogen gives it a smoother, creamier mouth feel. I had it on draft and not in a can which contains a widget for infusing nitrogen into the beer.
The 991th and 992th entries were both from Short's Brewing Company. Their brews are produced in an industrial park in Elk Rapids, Michigan. A friend of my girlfriend Sara returned from a trip to Michigan with a six-pack of different beers from Short's for her and I to try. The first four bottles were previously consumed and duly cataloged. Number 991 was Wowee Zowee which is (and I quote from the bottle) a "Golden Ale brewed with fresh mint and mango." I remember it being a generally fruity-tasting beer but not tasting overly like mango or mint. Number 992 was Alter Spalter which is (again quoting from the bottle) "A True Old World German Ale."
Now we fast forward a few days. My mom volunteered to babysit my nephew and niece while my sister, brother-in-law and I went out for drinks and dinner. We stopped by the tasting room of Left Hand Brewing Company in Longmont, Colorado. The city of Longmont was greatly affected by the floods that hit Colorado last year. According to my brother-in-law, some roads have only recently been reopened after being closed for repair for over a year. Getting back to less sobering news (pun intended), I enjoyed a four-beer flight of single-hopped pale ales from their Safety Rounds. Therefore, beers numbers 993 through 996 were single-hopped Safety Round beers with Chinook, Comet, Centennial, and Apollo hops, respectively.
I will cover the 997th through 1000th entries to the list in the next post.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Number 900
This is a quick post to chronicle my approach to the 900th beer on my Beer List. Number 898 is Of Love & Regret which is a saison-style ale from Stillwater Artisanal Ales. Stillwater is a located Baltimore, Maryland. I consumed this beer at the Wine Merchant in Cary, North Carolina.
Number 899 on the beer list is Pickup Line Porter from Bombshell Beer Company. Bombshell is a relatively new brewery located in the Raleigh suburb of Holly Springs, North Carolina. Interestingly enough, Bombshell made an appearance in my post on entry number 800. Their Polished Pilsner was number 801.
Cuing the drum roll, the 900th addition to my beer list is from Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck but is not a variety of their more well-known Kasteel line. Number 900 is instead St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition which is a lambic, specifically a geuze. It is a very sour beer. By the way, Van Honsebrouck is located in the city of Ingelmunster, Belgium. This beer was also consumed at the Wine Merchant as were the next two brews on the list.
Number 901 on the beer list is another brew from Stillwater. This one was Why Can't IBU. For my imaginary readers who are not up on their beer jargon, IBU is an abbreviation for International Bitterness Unit. It is a measure of bitterness. Not surprisingly, this beer is quite hoppy.
Finally, number 902 on the beer list is I Love You With My Stout from Evil Twin Brewing. I have previously commented on the vagabond nature of Evil Twin.
Number 899 on the beer list is Pickup Line Porter from Bombshell Beer Company. Bombshell is a relatively new brewery located in the Raleigh suburb of Holly Springs, North Carolina. Interestingly enough, Bombshell made an appearance in my post on entry number 800. Their Polished Pilsner was number 801.
Cuing the drum roll, the 900th addition to my beer list is from Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck but is not a variety of their more well-known Kasteel line. Number 900 is instead St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition which is a lambic, specifically a geuze. It is a very sour beer. By the way, Van Honsebrouck is located in the city of Ingelmunster, Belgium. This beer was also consumed at the Wine Merchant as were the next two brews on the list.
Number 901 on the beer list is another brew from Stillwater. This one was Why Can't IBU. For my imaginary readers who are not up on their beer jargon, IBU is an abbreviation for International Bitterness Unit. It is a measure of bitterness. Not surprisingly, this beer is quite hoppy.
Finally, number 902 on the beer list is I Love You With My Stout from Evil Twin Brewing. I have previously commented on the vagabond nature of Evil Twin.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Deleted Drafts
I just deleted three old draft posts that I never got around to finishing and posting. After I deleted them, I thought I could do a little summery of what each of those posts would have been. Of course, that would have been a much better idea before I deleted the draft.
One of the draft posts was to be the promised follow-up to this post from back in 2011. That post covered a couple of radical realignment proposals for Major League Baseball. The title for the post was to be "Bottom-Heavy Baseball" since it focused on the proposal that put 18 of the 30 teams in three six-team lower-tier divisions. Based on a related spreadsheet, I was going to focus on maintaining traditional rivalries (New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants). I accomplished this by averaging the player salaries of the two rival teams when assigning the teams to either the upper or lower tier.
Another now-deleted draft dealt with the Ten Commandments from the Bible. Basically, a book I was reading at the time had an example that involved how many of the commandants people remembered. I think the example showed that people who were asked a question involving a moral question were more likely to chose the high road if they were first asked to recite the Ten Commandments. However, the number of commandments they could recite (which perhaps reflected how religious they were) did not have any affect on their choices. Basically, it was thinking about the Commandments that made people more moral and not actually knowing the Commandments. I wondered if the Commandments that I remembered said anything about my personality and my moral values. I believe "Ten Strong Recommendations" was the title I was using for that post.
The most recent draft post was going to compare two seemingly unrelated topics. One topic was homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and the other was corporate logos on athletic jerseys. In general, both topics tend to pit more traditional, more conservative, and older segments of the population with younger and more liberal segments. One specific thought I had was that both issues were generally more accepted outside of the United States. I also think it is interesting that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are more accepted in the northeastern and western region of the country which are known to be more liberal while corporate logos are embraced by NASCAR which is popular in the more conservative Southeast and Midwest regions.
One of the draft posts was to be the promised follow-up to this post from back in 2011. That post covered a couple of radical realignment proposals for Major League Baseball. The title for the post was to be "Bottom-Heavy Baseball" since it focused on the proposal that put 18 of the 30 teams in three six-team lower-tier divisions. Based on a related spreadsheet, I was going to focus on maintaining traditional rivalries (New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants). I accomplished this by averaging the player salaries of the two rival teams when assigning the teams to either the upper or lower tier.
Another now-deleted draft dealt with the Ten Commandments from the Bible. Basically, a book I was reading at the time had an example that involved how many of the commandants people remembered. I think the example showed that people who were asked a question involving a moral question were more likely to chose the high road if they were first asked to recite the Ten Commandments. However, the number of commandments they could recite (which perhaps reflected how religious they were) did not have any affect on their choices. Basically, it was thinking about the Commandments that made people more moral and not actually knowing the Commandments. I wondered if the Commandments that I remembered said anything about my personality and my moral values. I believe "Ten Strong Recommendations" was the title I was using for that post.
The most recent draft post was going to compare two seemingly unrelated topics. One topic was homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and the other was corporate logos on athletic jerseys. In general, both topics tend to pit more traditional, more conservative, and older segments of the population with younger and more liberal segments. One specific thought I had was that both issues were generally more accepted outside of the United States. I also think it is interesting that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are more accepted in the northeastern and western region of the country which are known to be more liberal while corporate logos are embraced by NASCAR which is popular in the more conservative Southeast and Midwest regions.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Number 800
I apologize to my faithful imaginary readers for I have recently been forsaking you. I have been posting pictures of beer on my Facebook page instead of posting those photos here. I hope this peace offering will help rectify the situation.This photo is a bottle of Thirsty Dog Brewing Company's
Siberian Night Aged in Bourbon Barrels. Thirsty Dog is located in the world-famous vacation locale known as Akron, Ohio. I was going to go with "tropical paradise" in reference to Akron, but I used that in a previous post where I won a bottle of Thirsty Dog's Bourbon Barrel-Aged Wee Heavy.
I am almost finally caught up on updating my Beer List which now stands at 801 entries. Assuming I can ever figure out which version of Left Hand Brewing's Fade to Black that I had the other day in order to be able to add it to the list, Siberian Night Bourbon Barrel Aged should be number 803.
Working backwards, the 802nd entry on the list will be a draft of Hop On Top from the Lynnwood Brewing. Besides being a stupid name, the Lynnwood Brewing Concern is the relatively new brewery associated with Lynnwood Grill which is a bar in my neck of the woods. I previously mentioned Lynnwood in a very odd post comparing love and bars.
The 801st entry will be a draft of Polished Pilsner from another new local brewery. Bombshell Beer Company is located in Holly Springs. The Raleigh suburb of Holly Springs is also home to Carolina Brewing Company (not to be confused with Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill but I have covered that particular topic before).
Moving on to a nice round number, Jurata Baltic Porter would be the 800th addition chronologically to the beer list. Jurata is a cross-continental collaboration between Coronado Brewing Company located in Coronado, California and Cigar City Brewing located in Tampa, Florida. (Tampa is nicknamed the "Cigar City.") These types of brewery collaborations continue to increase in popularity. The first collaboration brew that I had was Hopfen-Weisse which was originally a collaboration between Germany's Bräuhaus G. Schneider & Sohn and New York's The Brooklyn Brewery. Reunion Ale, a collaboration between New York's Shmaltz Brewing Company and Georgia's Terrapin Beer Company, is now on its third annual release.
As I stated above, these numbers all depend on getting the bottle of Fade to Black that I consumed added to the list. That beer would be entry number 799.
Siberian Night Aged in Bourbon Barrels. Thirsty Dog is located in the world-famous vacation locale known as Akron, Ohio. I was going to go with "tropical paradise" in reference to Akron, but I used that in a previous post where I won a bottle of Thirsty Dog's Bourbon Barrel-Aged Wee Heavy.
I am almost finally caught up on updating my Beer List which now stands at 801 entries. Assuming I can ever figure out which version of Left Hand Brewing's Fade to Black that I had the other day in order to be able to add it to the list, Siberian Night Bourbon Barrel Aged should be number 803.
Working backwards, the 802nd entry on the list will be a draft of Hop On Top from the Lynnwood Brewing. Besides being a stupid name, the Lynnwood Brewing Concern is the relatively new brewery associated with Lynnwood Grill which is a bar in my neck of the woods. I previously mentioned Lynnwood in a very odd post comparing love and bars.
The 801st entry will be a draft of Polished Pilsner from another new local brewery. Bombshell Beer Company is located in Holly Springs. The Raleigh suburb of Holly Springs is also home to Carolina Brewing Company (not to be confused with Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill but I have covered that particular topic before).
Moving on to a nice round number, Jurata Baltic Porter would be the 800th addition chronologically to the beer list. Jurata is a cross-continental collaboration between Coronado Brewing Company located in Coronado, California and Cigar City Brewing located in Tampa, Florida. (Tampa is nicknamed the "Cigar City.") These types of brewery collaborations continue to increase in popularity. The first collaboration brew that I had was Hopfen-Weisse which was originally a collaboration between Germany's Bräuhaus G. Schneider & Sohn and New York's The Brooklyn Brewery. Reunion Ale, a collaboration between New York's Shmaltz Brewing Company and Georgia's Terrapin Beer Company, is now on its third annual release.
As I stated above, these numbers all depend on getting the bottle of Fade to Black that I consumed added to the list. That beer would be entry number 799.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Beer List 2013
As I continue to catch up on my backlog of entries to my Beer List, I have finally made it to the end of 2013. Obviously, the calendar year ends on New Year's Eve, and I was at a New Year's Eve party on December 31, 2013. An interesting thing about using Twitter to track the beers that I consume is that I know exactly which beer was my last for 2013 and which was first for 2014. My last beer of 2013 was a bottle of Old Engine Oil which is a porter from Harviestoun Brewery located in Alva, Clackmannanshire, Scotland, United Kingdom. The first of 2014 was a bottle of Newcastle Cabbie which is a limited-edition black ale (as opposed to their famous brown ale).
Returning to the Beer List, I drank 148 different beers in 2010. I found a missing beer in my Twitter feed from 2011, so the number of different beers for 2011 has risen from 150 to 151. In my post on the Beer List for 2012, I figured that I had consumed 150 different brews which would bring the total to 449 after correcting for the missing beer in 2011. I have gone back through the beer list and added dates where I could (which is how I found the missing beer from 2011). Unfortunately, I do not have a standalone list for 2012 and not everything had a post on Twitter, so I know there are several entries from 2012 that are now mislabeled as 2013. Up to the end of 2013, the Beer List stands at 756 entries which means I drank 307 different brews in 2013. That probably helps account for all those extra pounds I have accumulated.
Returning to the Beer List, I drank 148 different beers in 2010. I found a missing beer in my Twitter feed from 2011, so the number of different beers for 2011 has risen from 150 to 151. In my post on the Beer List for 2012, I figured that I had consumed 150 different brews which would bring the total to 449 after correcting for the missing beer in 2011. I have gone back through the beer list and added dates where I could (which is how I found the missing beer from 2011). Unfortunately, I do not have a standalone list for 2012 and not everything had a post on Twitter, so I know there are several entries from 2012 that are now mislabeled as 2013. Up to the end of 2013, the Beer List stands at 756 entries which means I drank 307 different brews in 2013. That probably helps account for all those extra pounds I have accumulated.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Son of the Palmetto State
It has been almost four months since I last published a post. I am also months behind on updating my Beer List. I recently started working to add all the backlogged brews to the list. The list is currently up to 725 entries, and I have worked my way up to November 14. On that Thursday, I attended a college football game. My sister April was in town. We grew up in South Carolina, and April went to college at Clemson University. The Clemson Tigers had been recovering nicely from a disappointing blowout loss three weeks earlier to rival and eventual national champion Florida State. April and I drove down to Clemson to watch the Tigers continue that recovery with a blowout win over Georgia Tech. The game was broadcast nationally on ESPN. Clemson would go on to finish their 2013 season with a 11-2 record, ending the regular season with loss to their intrastate rivalry game with the South Carolina Gamecocks, and then a win in the Orange Bowl against Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State.
However, this post is about cleaning up the backlog of Beer List additions. The 726th entry will be a draft of Son Of A Peach from RJ Rockers Brewing Company located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. While Georgia is the Peach State, South Carolina is actually second in the United States for peach production, ranked behind California and ahead of Georgia. Therefore, it is not too surprising that a South Carolina brewery has a peach-flavored brew. The interesting thing about this beer is that it will be the first from a South Carolina-based brewery to be included to my list. I currently live in North Carolina, and as a point of comparison between the two states, of the 725 brews currently on the list, 145 are from the northern neighbor. Represented on the list are 26 separate breweries located in North Carolina: Aviator, Beer Army, Big Boss, Boone (aka Blowing Rock), Carolina Ale House, Carolina Brewery, Carolina Brewing, Deep River, Duck-Rabbit, Foothills (including brews from the former Carolina Beer), French Broad, Front Street, Fullsteam, Gizmo (previously Roth), Green Man, Highland, Lonerider, Mash House, Mother Earth, Natty Greene's, Olde Hickory, Railhouse, Raleigh, Red Oak, Triangle, and White Street (whew!).
Interestingly enough, Son of a Peach is not actually the first beer on the list to originate from the state of South Carolina. As I mentioned in a previous post, Evil Twin Brewing is located in Denmark and/or Brooklyn, New York. However, their beers are brewed by Westbrook Brewing Company which is located in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. The gypsy nature of Evil Twin is addressed in an article from USA Today.
However, this post is about cleaning up the backlog of Beer List additions. The 726th entry will be a draft of Son Of A Peach from RJ Rockers Brewing Company located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. While Georgia is the Peach State, South Carolina is actually second in the United States for peach production, ranked behind California and ahead of Georgia. Therefore, it is not too surprising that a South Carolina brewery has a peach-flavored brew. The interesting thing about this beer is that it will be the first from a South Carolina-based brewery to be included to my list. I currently live in North Carolina, and as a point of comparison between the two states, of the 725 brews currently on the list, 145 are from the northern neighbor. Represented on the list are 26 separate breweries located in North Carolina: Aviator, Beer Army, Big Boss, Boone (aka Blowing Rock), Carolina Ale House, Carolina Brewery, Carolina Brewing, Deep River, Duck-Rabbit, Foothills (including brews from the former Carolina Beer), French Broad, Front Street, Fullsteam, Gizmo (previously Roth), Green Man, Highland, Lonerider, Mash House, Mother Earth, Natty Greene's, Olde Hickory, Railhouse, Raleigh, Red Oak, Triangle, and White Street (whew!).
Interestingly enough, Son of a Peach is not actually the first beer on the list to originate from the state of South Carolina. As I mentioned in a previous post, Evil Twin Brewing is located in Denmark and/or Brooklyn, New York. However, their beers are brewed by Westbrook Brewing Company which is located in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. The gypsy nature of Evil Twin is addressed in an article from USA Today.
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