For Tuesday, July 31st – A War We Just Might Win
Really? Do you think so?
Everyone here has been saying this for quite sometime, so lose the politics and support the war effort.
The only way we’ll lose is if we quit.
Bob
I finished Harry Potter in four hours. Just haven’t checked back in.
Okay, now all I need to do is import the 10 or 12 missing posts and we’re golden. Bigwig, you may post when ready. Whenever you finish Harry Potter, that is.
Compiled with the assistance of Dale’s Pale Ale.
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The first thing I ever learned to whistle.
Like the man says, it doesn’t look like Colt 45′s marketing has improved with age.
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Just because it’s straight from the horse doesn’t make it any better.
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Quick! FREE BEER!
Made you look.
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Johnny Law says ‘You jive-cats and hop heads better cool your jets next time you come to Lucknow.”
Here is a free warning for all beer bugs, road romeos and eve teasers who prefer to gulp down a chilled bottle on the road right outside the liquor store. Next time you are tempted by any of these desires, just keep in mind that the cops might be around.
A majority of the ignorant ones who did not get this warning on time found themselves at the receiving end on Wednesday night when an entire contingent of police backed by PAC took to traditional policing methods targeting the roadside Majnus and spoilt brats from affluent families who can be often seen carrying beer bottles in their SUVs, speeding through the Hazratganj thoroughfare with their car stereos blaring at a deafening volume.
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The Beer Activist’s book gets a nice review
“Fermenting Revolution” is undoubtedly the most politically aware book I’ve ever read about beer.
A fair-trade activist and organic brewing ingredients supplier, O’Brien offers an unapologetic manifesto “for building a better world with beer.”
For the author, mankind’s beers – from the very first sips from Siduri, the Sumerian beer goddess, to that can of PBR – are a direct reflection of history and culture.
O’Brien neatly lays out beer’s centuries-long transformation from a “natural” product to a commodity – much to the detriment of our palates and souls.
“It is a democratic drink,” O’Brien writes, “but it is also complicit in the tyranny of civilization.”
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Artois! Are not!
Canadian Food Inspection Agency official said new labels appeared to have been glued over the originals on the neck of the bottles.
The bottles had also been opened and a concentrated alcohol placed inside.
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My Brain Hurts
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Russia is so alcoholic, the beer festivals run for two weeks.
The government organizers intend the event to do a number of things, firstly to support the Russian manufacturers and to encourage a beer drinking culture. This would raise sententious eyebrows in western countries like the UK, where health watchdogs and politicians generally try to discourage the consumption of alcohol.
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The Milwaukee Beer Party
The brewers are upset by a proposed Wisconsin Senate bill they claim would make things more difficult for start up breweries. The state lawmakers are attempting to update some post-Prohibition era laws. The proposed law would divide small brewers into two classes: brewpubs serving food and those who want to bottle and distribute their product.
The brewers say forcing a craft brewer to decide the ultimate direction of their brewery before the first pint is brewed is not fair and could destroy a business before it gets off the ground. The brewers protest was over the loss of freedom to make a business decision six months or six years into the life of a craft brewery to change directions and follow the market trends.
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Always order the beer the beer menu warns you about.
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Frances E. Willard would be very upset.
But DeFazio and Walden enjoy more esoteric beers. Among Walden’s favorite beers are Full Sail Amber Ale and Deschutes Mirror Pond, both Oregonian brews.
Brewing begins with cooking malt, then boiling the hops with the malt. What results is mixed with yeast, and sometimes sugar, then bottled to ferment.
Bilbray offers a tip to brewers: “Don’t boil the hops to death.”
The fermenting process can take anywhere from a week to more than a month, depending on the beer. The careful tending required for a decent brew isn’t always easy, given the busy life of a congressman.
“I gotta be home to bottle,” said DeFazio. “The [new] Democratic schedule has really cut into my beer-making.
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Malt matters.
In his Great Beers of Belgium, Michael Jackson writes about how Brother Thomas – then the brewing director at Westmalle – favored malts from Beatrice-Gatinais in France because of their softness, but the varieties he chose each year varied. That would indicate he was more concerned with quality than consistency, but that is another conversation. The point would be that he recognized that not all two-row pilsner malt is created equal.
Jackson describes how important this was to Brother Thomas: “In discussing a malt from elsewhere, widely used by other brewers, I asked whether he thought it was perhaps a trifle harsh. ‘It’s brutal!’ he replied, thumping the table.”
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Whatever happened to Sumerian beer?
Initially, the future of beer in Babylonia seemed assured, because the new rulers of Mesopotamia, like all good conquerors, usurped the achievements of the vanquished for themselves. The Babylonians continued the Sumerian tradition of making beer, yet they could not leave well alone. While beer in Sumeria was mostly a matter of religion and economics, beer in Babylonia became mostly a matter of politics. That shift in vision found its manifestation in a novelty that has since been imitated by just about every government, even to this very day: The Babylonians were the first to institute beer regulation.
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Qingdao!
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No, it’s not Budweiser.
‘Anyone who drinks this beer is likely to suffer stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea.
”It is possible that whoever stole the beer has already started drinking it and will already be feeling quite ill.”
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Beer. It’s still good for you.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see why this is anything to be proud of.
And as brewmaster, it was my job not just to keep it running, but to make each of the 125 million cases brewed there every year taste just like a beer brewed on the other end of the country.
Might as well be in charge of hamburgers at McDonalds.
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Get yourself some man-sized pleasure.
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Lucky man.
Leffe Brown. Leffe Blonde. Orval. Duvel. Rodenbach. Westmalle. Achel. Some I’ve never tried. Some I can get here in Rochester, but nowhere near as fresh. It was like a candy store. Except the candy was Trappist and abbey ale. The beers that American beer lovers would savor and cellar here in the USA consumed as casually as Miller Genuine Draft by the Belgians.
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When in Bordeaux, drink beer.
It is quite fashionable to suggest that France is the land of wine – from Bordeaux to Provence, to Alsace and Burgundy – there is no doubt that wine is held in high regard by the French. But to suggest that finding a good beer is hard to do, to propose that there is a lack of ale houses, to assume that there is only wine in France would be, and is, quite utterly, wholly absurd! For one need only to step one little toe-pinky inside Paris, open the eyes and see that beer, beer is everywhere! From blondes and wits, browns and stouts, beery boissons are pouring forth from cafes, bars and restaurants.
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New hop. Bravo!
Countless new hop varieties are created every year, so many in fact that they are given only a number. A hop has to really prove itself worthy before it actually gets a name. For example, Hop #01046 began its life in Prosser, Washington at the Golden Gate Roza Hop Ranches. During the summer of 2000, a female hop known as Zeus was cross-pollinated with a male known simply as #98004 (whose mother is in effect Nugget hops). Its lineage, therefore, is “50% Zeus, 18.75% Nugget, 25% USDA 19058m, and 6.25% unknown.”
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Brew Reviews:
Rose de Gambrinus
Pinked amber ale under a slightly blushed fine white head, no doubt aware of the circumstances it found itself in. In the mouth, mild vinegar sour over Granny Smith. Not that much barnyardy poo in this one thankfully. There is a bit there but it melds with the over-riding under-ripe gravenstein apple effect. There is raspberry in the way that there is raspberry in raspberry vinaigrette except that there is no sweetness. After, though, you are left with an echo of the raspberry.
Wailua Wheat
Flavored with Hawaiian passion fruit. Unique flavor; light gold yellow and clear. Clean grainy smell with a hint of fruit/sour. Crisp wheat with a definite tropical sourish fruit character.
Palo Santo Marron
The name comes from the tree used in its aging process, the palo santo (holy wood). It is a tree native to parts of South America and is prized for its artistic and medicinal uses. Because of this, it is harvested a lot and that has led it to become listed as “conservation dependent” by the IUCN. What this means is that our friends from Delaware had to smuggle some up from Paraguay, risking life and limb to bring one of the finest beers ever crafted to the Mid-Atlantic.
Kapuziner Schwarz-Weizen
The schwarz weiss is as smooth and tasty a beer as you can get in any color, once again showing that dark beers get the shaft from many American consumers who don’t understand that a dark-colored beer simply means that some of the grains used have been roasted longer.
It’s no different than coffee makers roasting beans longer to make darker French roast or espresso styles — roasting the beans longer does not add more caffeine, just as roasting beer grains longer does not make it stronger in alcohol.
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Is Saranac thinking about brewing a Pizza Beer?
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Brew Debut:
Kirin Nippon Premium
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The previous Carnival of Beer may be seen here.
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The Carnival of Beer appears every Tuesday and Friday. If you’ve an item you like to see appear, let us know via bigwig AT nc.rr.com
On the plus side, I don’t have to clear out reams of junk spam comments.
Stripers can be habituated
Fishing for striped bass near the East Bay town of Rodeo was slow for the 25 children on a Marin fish camp holiday until a Fish and Game hatchery truck pulled up on shore.
State crews hooked the tanker truck up to a pipe leading to a dock and began pumping 130,000 salmon smolts into the bay.
All hell broke loose in what seemed like a heartbeat.
As the frantic fingerlings skittered across the surface, platoons of birds attacked from above, and waves of striped bass moved in from below.
Circling the frothing spectacle were anglers on several dozen private boats, flanked by four or five party boats, and many were hooked up immediately, decking scores of stripers.
It’s a killing field in which the salmon and striper fisheries take it on the chin because state crews don’t take the time to rotate release sites for hatchery smolts..
Lazy, unimaginative government employees? I for one am shocked, shocked I tell you–though it seems at least equally as likely that those in charge of the salmon smolts are indulging in regular releases for the benefit of friends who fish.
If you wouldn’t try this at home, why would you apply the same philosophy to a larger arena?
The next time someone uses the phrase “root cause,” point out that people who worry about root causes are trying to understand why their pants are wet. They think placating trumps punishment. But try to use that on your girlfriend. “Honey, I know you caught me cheating, but we should really address the root causes of why I did what I did.”
Postscript: If you get the title, you’re a geek.
With apologies to the Police*
Once that you’ve decided on capitulation
First you make a stone of your heart
And if you find that your hands are still willing
Then you can turn surrender into art
If you don’t really care about the bloodshed
You just do it with a little more finesse
If you can slip a benchmark into legislation
Then it avoids an awful lot of mess
It’s surrender by numbers, one, two, three
It’s as easy to learn as your ABC
Surrender by numbers, one, two, three
It’s as easy to learn as your ABC
Now if you have a taste for this experience
And you’re flushed with your very first success
Then you must try a twosome or a threesome
And you’ll find your conscience bothers you much less
Because surrender is like anything you take to
It’s a habit-forming need for more and more
You can yield to every zealot on the planet
And anybody else with whom you war
It’s surrender by numbers, one, two, three
It’s as easy to learn as your ABC
Surrender by numbers, one, two, three
It’s as easy to learn as your ABC
*Who should have never broken up, but, once they had, should never have reformed.
via AMCGLTD
As fun as the culture jamming was, I think this lady was more effective.
Early in January 2002, I began taking an Arabic language course online for eight weeks from the Cairo-based Arab Academy, which, that autumn, I supplemented with an intensive Arabic course at the State University of New York at Buffalo. As I learned more Arabic, the jihadi websites opened for me. Certain individuals stood out for either their radicalism or the information that they sent. I followed and tracked these individuals and kept notebooks detailing each website and person of interest.
Gradually, as I put to use the knowledge and skills I was developing of the Arabic language, I started posting messages on Internet forums and message boards. However, it was not until I was able to find an Arabic language translator through an online translation service who was willing to assist me with constructing contextually accurate messages that I began to elicit responses from individuals at these Internet sites. As time went on, and through the process of trial and error, I eventually figured out what to say and how to say it to start the process of passing myself off as a jihadist sympathizer.
I created my first terrorist cover identity on the Internet on March 13, 2002, to communicate and interact with these targets. In my first chat room sting, I convinced a Pakistani man that I was an Islamist arms dealer. When he offered to sell me stolen U.S. Stinger missiles to help the jihadists fighting the U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, I used the Persian Gulf dialect of Arabic to ask him to provide me with information that I could use to confirm his claims, such as stock numbers. Within a couple of weeks, the missile identification numbers were in my computer inbox.
via Powerline
For July 11th, 2007 – Moving Forward In Iraq
This seems to track pretty well with what I’ve seen so far.
Bob