A Bobcat Walks Into a Bar…

Yeah, it’s a bad joke that probably ends up with Marlin Perkins and “Jim” arguing over who’s going to buy the next round.

In the real world, in the real Wild West, wild animals do still belly up to the bar I guess. In Cottonwood, Arizona, right up the road from Beer Rant HQ a rabid bobcat attacked some local saloon patrons. You can read the story here. I also see that a couple of news stories have already made the YouTube circuit and they include camera footage from the incident. Cool.

When A-1 Wasn’t Just a Steak Sauce…

I happened to snap a photo of a neat old beer sign while visiting another remote Arizona town a week or two back. A-1 beer has been out of circulation for years but this sign looks to be fully functional and in great condition, atop a pole outside a building in Aguila, Arizona.

I posted a piece about the A-1 women’s baseball team awhile back. You can see it here. You can also visit A-1 Beer Prints for a great history of A-1 beer. My last recollection of A-1, is drinking it warm out of cans that sported images of famous figures in western history. I think the mountain man Bill Williams was on the can I last had – wish I’d saved that can.

Four Peaks Brewing evidently offers their Sunbru Kolsch as an homage to A-1 beer but you’d be hard pressed to figure that out in looking at their literature. (Not much of an homage if you don’t tell people!) Maybe I just dreamt up that whole homage thing. Here’s my earlier take on Sunbru. I didn’t know of its link to A-1 at the time I wrote this post, so I’m more inclined to try Sunbru again and will next time I visit the Four Peaks outlet near me. (Probably should quiz the server to see what he or she knows about Sunbru’s connection to A-1. Probably get a blank stare…I’m used to that, I have kids and grandkids.)

But while we’re on the topic of Arizona sites, here’s a picture of the original Four Peaks covered in a dusting of snow.



(More) Last of the Winter Wine
As I compose this, I’m drinking what will likely be the last glass of Gordon Biersch Winter Bock until much later this year. The label indicates it was bottled on November 5th, 2008 and it has held up well these few months, squirreled away in a cabinet out in the garage. But, with temperatures here starting to climb, I’m not eager to let this one weather the elements for too long so the option was bring it inside or drink it now. I’ve been busy with a lot of things – not this blog, that’s for sure – and as a bit of a wind down, I’ve decided to drink it today.

Watch out for them bobcats.

Lump of Coal. How Ironic.

File this under “Ungrateful Bastard” If You Like.

Where I work, there really isn’t such a thing as a “promotion.” If an opening occurs above you, you must apply for that job and interview alongside the myriad other desperate folk, eager to make their way in the organization.

I’ve been “promoted” a few times over the years, but I only remember my last real promotion. It must have been about 1986. I was in the hallway of a three-storey barracks building in far west Texas, making my way outside to stand in morning formation. My sergeant stopped me in the hall and said, “Smitty, you’re out of uniform.” (My goodness, doesn’t every platoon have a “Smitty”?) Panicked, I looked myself over and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Smiling, Sergeant Nikita said, “You’re wearing the wrong rank. You’ve been promoted to E-4.” He then handed me two of his old Specialist-4 rank insignia. Ah, those were the days.

Well, I’ve been “promoted” in my current job, which is to say I applied for the job vacated by my now-retired supervisor and I’ve been chosen to take his place (big shoes to fill). Problem is, part of me is unhappy about the salary they’ve offered. The other part of me is telling the unhappy part of me, “Man up and be glad you’re not completely out of a job crybaby.” So I’ll let it go at that. Gee whiz.

In honor of today’s step up on the job, I finally popped open that bottle of Ridgeway Brewing’s Lump of Coal Stout. I’d like to say I was really, really impressed by Lump of Coal, but all I can say is that it’s the best of the Ridgeway products that I’ve had in the past few months.

Today’s tasting notes read thusly:
Dark coffee color, not opaque. Malt smell. Dry with a hint of chocolate but very faint. Medium to thin mouth feel.

I would also add that there’s a hint of licorice or other spice in the finish, especially as the beer warms in the glass. Not a bad beer and one that I’d be willing to track down next yuletide.

Guess I’ll finish up here, prepare myself for another week at work, and be glad for it.

Beers For Smart@ss: Pipeline Porter.

I’ll try to keep this brief.

I have reports that Smart@ss is still on the no beer wagon. I’ve also heard that Smart@ss was recently wandering the aisles of a local liquor emporium, a dazed look on his face. I think Smart@ss needs a quick trip to Hawaii. Since I can’t spring for the cost of a flight to Hawaii, I’m springing for the price of a bottle of Kona Brewing’s Pipeline Porter. Who-hoo.

If you visit Musings of a Smart@ss (and I insist that you do), you’ll quickly figure out that he’s infinitely more intelligent than the head cook here at Beer Rant. (His comment about HopKnot IPA: They should come out with a beer that has no hops and call it Hop Not…who are the advertising wizards that came up with this one….I added that last part, sorry, I’m infantile.) You might also ask the question: if he’s such an articulate wordsmith when he’s been barred from drinking beer, what sort of writer, philosopher, scientist might he be when he’s on the brew? If you ask that question, log off and get the hell out of here! You think too much and ask too many questions and you’re spoiling the trip to Hawaii!

So, I’m thinking that Smart@ss has his smelly feet propped up on some convenient piece of rattan furniture on some glistening beach on “the big island” or the “second to largest island” or perhaps “that measly turd of an island that hangs out on the end of the chain,” I don’t know. It’s Hawaii for crying out loud! I don’t imagine the day is too hot or too humid since, though it’s relatively low in abv percentage, Pipeline Porter is probably best suited for a mild climate setting. The pour is coffee dark, the tan colored foam a beauty to behold. The smell is vaguely of coffee and chocolate. The taste is of roasted coffee with a slightly sooty finish. Smart@ss smiles, takes another drink and watches as the sun sets and the local surf folk amble up the beach retreating to their nocturnal haunts.

Cheer’s Smart@ss. Surf's up!

The Great Arizona Beer Festival is this weekend. I won’t be there. Why would I? Someone’s got to get Smart@ss back from Hawaii and he’s certainly not in any shape to fly the plane himself!! Geez! Do you people listen at all?

For a list of all the beers that have been “had” for Smart@ss, go over to Vbg-log where everything is way hipper than here at the Rant – he twitters! Hell I don’t even flutter anymore.

Not brief after all, huh? Suffah.

Working Class is Where You Find It: Steel Toe Stout

For me there is something of a disconnect between a beer that is hard to find or high in price and the notion of a working class guy or gal plunking down their last crumpled up wad of one dollar bills for a six pack. I think on a national scale, this is an unlikely scenario and that folks we think of as working class are probably still supporting the brewing industry by their purchase of Pabst, Bud and Coors…and Miller…oh, and Schlitz. Man, there are a lot of truly working class beers out there when you get right down to it. So, let’s leave cost out of the equation for the purposes of this conversation and deal with the availability angle.

I might consider Ska Brewing Steel Toe Stout to be a working class beer if I’m pulling it off the cooler shelf at a corner market in Durango, Colorado, but I don’t think of it the same way when I’m buying it at a national liquor store chain in Phoenix. This notion figures closely with Stan Hieronymus’s recent piece “The Importance of Drinking Local” in All About Beer magazine. Mr. Hieronymus speaks of the special experience that comes, as a visitor, with stopping by a local establishment to sample locally produced beers. I guess I’m flipping this scenario on its head and pointing out that a working class beer really only caters to the working class of the region in which it is born and that once that beer leaves the neighborhood in the back of a truck, it becomes a different kind of beer for the masses. Not a bad thing, just a distinction, folks. (I don’t include the big brewers like Miller, Coors and so forth in that equation since they are all around a different animal and have been playing both sides of the working class/white collar fence for decades.) I suppose this is another aspect of what I've been referring to as setting and circumstance.

Hard-to-find working class beers probably grow out of the old days when there were more local brewers who catered to the local working folk. I believe that situation is coming back into vogue in places like Oregon and Colorado and perhaps parts of California. Local working men and women latch onto a particular local brand of beer that’s made by the brewpub or microbrewery in town or just down the road. These are truly working class beers in the original sense. I think where the disconnect comes is when a beer leaves it’s neighborhood and receives wider distributorship; it becomes too much of a novelty in the other places where it’s offered. You can’t be working class, rare and quirky at the same time and (though I’d promised to leave price out of this discussion) you definitely can’t be all those things and expensive.

What about the beer, dummy?

I can’t say that I was bowled over by Ska’s entry into the milk stout category; it was good enough I suppose. I'm partial to all stouts and porters anyway. My notes from last Friday state: “Dark coffee color, almost opaque. Quick tan head with medium lacing. Faint coffee taste, slight sour finish then gone.” I suspect that, served on tap in some dimly lit bar in southern Colorado, this stuff is dynamite. I'll buy this again, if the price is right. I also like Ska's website and suddenly wish I could be in Durango today – especially since it’s going to hit 90 degrees here at Beer Rant Headquarters this afternoon! Browsing Ska's other beers, I’m also feeling inclined to go out and find some of their imperial porter!

See you 'round the jobsite!

Too Much Information....


Which brings me to the whole “working class” handle. I wear steel-toed boots every working day of the week. (Those are my clod-hoppers in the picture.) Am I working class? I have a college degree and spend about as much time in an office as I do out in the field. Am I white collar? I was summoned to a state senator’s office to explain a constituent issue a couple years ago; does that make me white collar? I wore steel-toed boots during my visit to the capitol; does that make me working class? During the introductions, when I gave my name, the senator indicated that I was the guy on the hot seat. I looked around the table and then at the senator and said, “I think I’m the lowest paid guy here, so that makes sense.” Does that make me working class, or just stupid?

Gonzo Imperial Porter: Honoring Doctor Thompson One Bottle at a Time

(Warning: This is a long post and it contains some editorial content. If you're only here for the beer, skip down and read the last three paragraphs, I'll understand.)

I’ll be the first to admit; I know damned little about Hunter S. Thompson. I think I read his Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas while I was in the army, maybe before. I know that I read his Hell’s Angels while I was in the army because I remember that my section sergeant asked to borrow it and my paperback copy is hammered from traveling inside an alice pack during field duty. I’ll also admit that for a time, Doc Thompson was an appealing figure to me. I aspired to be a writer at one point and I believed, mistakenly, that the road to literary success traversed a vast wasteland of drug and alcohol abuse. I bought into the notion that the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Thompson were great writers because of their addictions. Now, I know they were great writers in spite of their addictions and because of the times in which they lived. Thankfully, I managed to survive my little sabbatical from sanity having sampled nothing stronger than the odd guzzle of Everclear and MD20/20. Unfortunately, I didn’t turn out to be much of a writer either, but it isn’t because I wasn’t drunk enough or high enough; I’m just lazy.

I still have a warm spot in my heart for Thompson and I must confess to being mildly uncomfortable with the close connection between Flying Dog Brewing and Hunter Thompson – mostly because, like Elvis, Hunter Thompson is living somewhere else these days.

How is Flying Dog connected to Thompson, you might ask? Thompson, the alcohol and drug addled “gonzo journalist” evidently introduced “artist” Ralph Steadman to Flying Dog founder George Stranahan in Aspen, Colorado. You can read the details at the Flying Dog website here.

Monumental figures attract hangers-on like “free beer” advertisements attract drunks. Unquestionably a monumental figure, Thompson appears to have attracted his fair share of folks who seemed content to warm themselves in the reflected glow of his notoriety, picking up the odd scrap of fun and profit along the way. In my opinion one such example is Johnny Depp – whose hipster, cynic, doper-expatriate persona will never live up to his royal Gonzo-ness - but I won’t go into further detail regarding that except to say that when the likes of Johnny Depp can serve as a surrogate for a Hunter Thompson, we’re seeing a real dumbing down of coolness, folks.

So, “hanger-on” might be a way I’d describe the whole line of Flying Dog beers, but that would be wrong since most of the folks who are drinking Flying Dog products probably don’t have the foggiest idea who Hunter Thompson was – or is, depending on your propensity to buy into conspiracy theory. (Hell, Thompson is, this very second, partying with Jim Morrison in Africa!) It may be more apt to say that the Flying Dog people have used the Thompson persona as something of an inside joke, pulling back the beaded curtain just enough to let a few of us squares have a peek from time to time and their Gonzo Imperial Porter is perhaps the best example of that little trick.

And, in honor of this day in history, I offer my sampling notes for Gonzo Imperial Porter:
Smells like a stout in the bottle. No alcohol bite in the smell as I’d expected. Pours dark with a thin head and light lacing. Chocolate/sweet tasting with a thick mouth feel at first. Perhaps a hint of licorice in the finish. I expected an off-putting alcohol bite but I’m happily proven wrong. This beer is one I’ll try again.

Why honor this day in history? On February 20th, 2005, Doc Thompson, reportedly bummed because the Super Bowl had come and gone for another season and figuring his best days were behind him, and perhaps contemplating a sink full of dishes, took his life by shooting himself. Like Hemingway, but not like Fitzgerald. Not fade away, as the hipsters are want to say, right?

For something regarding Thompson’s “accidental outlaw” status, check this out. For more stuff on Thompson and the myth of Thompson, do your own search, but don’t futz around with that so much you forget to go out and buy some Gonzo Imperial Porter – perhaps like so many things associated with Hunter Thompson, it comes at a fairly high price but it’s worth it.

Hope to see you 'round, Doc.

Last of the Winter Wine?

The holidays are definitely over and it seems that some of those special winter beers that I'd loved so much - and so well - are long gone. I can't tell you when I last saw a bottle of Shiner Holiday Cheer and though I was tickled to find six-packs of Anchor Christmas beer on sale for $3.99 a couple weeks ago, I had the sad duty of pouring the last of that six-pack last night. I still have a couple bottles of Gordon Biersch Winter Bock, even as their local outlet is announcing the tapping of their most recent seasonal (an alt if I remember right).

So, imagine my indescribable joy when I stumbled upon six-packs of Pyramid Snow Cap on sale at the local grocery store this afternoon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'd wandered in there hoping to score a carton of Sam Adams' Blackberry Witbier. Didn't find the blackberry but the two cartons of Snow Cap will (hopefully) dribble away slowly over the next few months and, as their shelf life of June 2009 approaches, I'll sit in the shade of the back patio here at Beer Rant HQ and watch the grandchildren grow and the summer seasonals march by. I think it will be grand. I'm almost looking forward to the hot weather that spring ushers in! Bring it on!

Old Engine Oil: Of Traveling, And Following

Traveling.
My little pick up truck turned over 100,000 miles this week; not while on the way to some exotic vacation destination, or while en route to perform some heroic deed, just simply on the way to work at 4:45 in the morning. Just me, my truck, and a few anonymous travelers on southbound I-17. I think my dad would have thought that was cool.

So, to honor the event, I sampled a bottle of Harviestoun Old Engine Oil Black Ale this week. This one has a definite chocolate smell and pours a dark brown with a lovely tan head. It’s altogether a great looking beer with a quirky name to be sure. Old Engine Oil has a burnt sooty taste with an initial hint of chocolate. It reminds me of Mackeson Triple Stout, but at quite a higher price. I like this beer enough to buy it again, but probably won’t because of the cost. Hey, I’m the guy with the truck that’s got over 100,000 miles. Call me frugal. Call me cheap. Just call me!

Following.

Hey! I note with happiness and pride that I have 9 followers to this goofy little beer blog! That’s really nice and I try to reciprocate by visiting the blogs and webpages of the wonderful folks who sign on to follow Beer Rant. Hopefully in an upcoming post, I can acknowledge each of you and include links directly to your blogs and so forth, but for now, just a big thank you for stopping by to visit now and then – I know you have better things to do with your time.