Red Stripe...Hooray!

A Decent Daily Drinker

Gosh. It would be easy to rip into this beer, but I’m finding that’s not really possible, since it isn’t all that bad for an over the counter session beer. Sure, their commercials are vaguely racist and I’ve often thought that the only reason for this beer’s existence is to supply single bottles for those multi-pack “beers of the universe” boxes, but what the heck.

I’ve had Red Stripe before but sat down to contemplate the single from a multi-pack of 10 international beers. Another blogger compares Red Stripe to Pabst Blue Ribbon or Miller High Life (I refer to it as High Life by Miller…I’m old school that way.) and I think I agree with that appraisal. Beyond that, not much else to say. Good beer for a hot day. You can pound a bunch of them under the shade of a friendly tree, pull your Rastafarian beanie down tight and get your nasty groove on (I guess. That’s what the younger folks tell me.).
Smells of cereal with a weak head and medium beading in the glass and little or no lacing with this one. I suspect, as with all beers, this one tastes better when you’re closer to the source, but until such time as I wake up and find myself in Kingston Town, I might grab a six pack of this now and then just for fun!


By the by...Happy Birthday Dane!

Beer Moment

You might call this one Beer Moments

I’ve had two distinct pleasures over the past approximately 11 months. (Oh, I’m sure there were others, but two are distinct.) There was the pleasure of having my daughter and granddaughters stay with the missus and I while the son-in-law visited a lovely country called Iraq. More recently, I had the slightly more distinct pleasure of helping the kids move happily and safely into a new home just under 30 minutes away from where the missus and I live.

Lately, any effort around here winds up involving beer – usually as a nice after action refreshment so to speak, but occasionally as a middle-of-the-job pick me up as well. I hauled an early load of household goods over to the kid’s place a week or so before we rented a u-haul for the big move. I’d provisioned their fridge with a six-pack each of Rolling Rock, Mirror Pond Pale Ale, and Black Butte Porter. The Rolling Boulder is for my son-in-law who prefers lighter refreshment, the Black Butte is for me because I know my son-in-law will leave it alone and the Mirror Pond is a nifty compromise that we both can enjoy once our own favorites are gone. (Have I mentioned that I have liked every beer that Deschutes puts out? That’s an amazing fact, I think. It indicates a level of consistency that is probably important in the brewing business, right?)

With the move complete, I set about helping the kids make those little adjustments that are always needed in a new home; bracing shelves, hanging curtains, and so forth. In the process I sampled some of the beer from the fridge of course but I also picked up a six pack of Sierra Nevada Summerfest, which proved to be a good beer to sip while working, but not one of those beers you want to waste much time pondering over.

Now, with much of my work winding down at the kids place, I’m gearing up to perform some of those neglected tasks around my own place – there’s lots of yard work to be done and it doesn’t help that the temperature here is now hitting 110 degrees daily. My son-in-law is coming over this morning to help me knock out a bunch of tree trimming before the sun gets too high. Suppose we’ll have a cold beer or two as well.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel at their moving out, but I know I’ll miss having the girls staying with us. It’s certainly been quieter here and I don’t find myself stepping on toys the way I once did. The flip side of it is that I’ve got a bit more peace and quiet to enjoy my beers. Ah, who am I kidding? I’m going over to the kid’s place for a Mirror Pond.

The joy of having grandchildren around....

"Take a picture of my cup, too, Papaw!"

Session. Session? What Session?

Great Divide Hibernation Ale

Never one to keep up with what’s trendy, I’ve managed to miss posting a topic-related post for every installment of The Session since I began my beer blog earlier this year. I always have the best of intentions, but then things come up or I begin to feel that my contribution to the discussion will be trifling and not especially useful, and I fail to post a session-related entry month after month.

The most recent installment of “The Session” dealt with drinking beers out of season. More to the point, I suspect the beer masses mean drinking heavier beers during the summer. I missed posting on the appointed day. That’s no excuse to flop down and wail like a wee baby. I’m a dark beer kind of fellow and I like it even in hot weather and even a belated excuse to sample dark, strong beer is reason enough to do so.

With temperatures pushing over the 110-degree mark here, I moved a bottle of Great Divide Brewing’s Hibernation Ale from the bullpen to the refrigerator and come 3 or 4 in the afternoon, with the day’s temperature pushing its maximum, I popped the top and poured it out.

This beer’s very name conjures up images of dark winter. The label depicts a solitary figure in silhouette trudging through a snowy landscape. Brrrr. Certainly there are animals that hibernate in the Sonoran desert come wintertime – toads and snakes mostly, but hereabouts, the animal life really tends to lay low in the summer, trying in every way to avoid the heat of the day. It’s not so much hibernation but simple self-preservation. You cavort out in the sun and heat for too long, you’re a cooked goose. So, Hibernation Ale is appropriate to our lifestyle here in the desert if one considers staying indoors and in the air-conditioning a form of hibernation.

The Tasting
If I could use just one word, three times to describe Hibernation Ale, it would be “coffee, coffee, coffee.” It pours dark but clear with medium beading. If Starbucks made a beer, they would simply be ripping off the taste of this beer and putting it in coffee cups. And not just “coffee” but coffee with creamer and a touch of sweetener, too, along with a mild liquor bite. This one warms you slightly as you drink it and finishes quite dry.

I enjoyed this beer a lot. I suspect its warming properties will be especially nice come December when I can take a seat on the back patio as the sun sets and there contemplate what Santa might have in store for me - I shudder at the thought. In the meantime, Hibernation Ale sampled nicely in the comfy climate controlled environs of my home, with the blinding heat miasma circling about each window like a rabid wolf.

Here’s the Hibernation Ale page at the brewer’s website:
Great Divide Hibernation Ale
Gosh, a “collectible” beer. Makes me almost wish I hadn’t sampled this one quite yet. I never use or throw away anything that might be of value and to know that I popped the top on a beer that might have some value as a collector’s item, well, I’m a bit sad by that notion.

The folks at Beer Advocate chimed in with a grade of A- for Hibernation Ale. No summer school for this beer; and no hibernating either!

Okay, this installment of The (Late) Session is over.

Beer Mapping: You Can Get There From Here

In my work as a low-level government functionary, I have occasion to work with maps and plans, aerial photos and a little bit of GIS stuff. I’ve always thought those things are cool. I can read and write a legal description and scale things on a map or a set of plans. It’s kind of cool to get paid for that, I suppose, but it is work after all.

Imagine having the job of mapping beer related stuff. Wow! Now that would be cool. Someone, somewhere, has begun such a project and they've mapped the locations of brewpubs and breweries scattered throughout the Rocky Mountain West. It’s really neat, but browsing through it only serves to remind me that I need to get out more, which reminds me that gas is more than four bucks a gallon!

Well, beer’s cheaper. I’m staying home.

For you beer/map geeks who want more, here’s a map of the US indicating the excise tax for beer in each state. Ooooooh, riveting!

My thanks and kudos to Chipper Dave for hosting a link to the beer mapping project on his blog Fermentedly Challenged.

A Deschutes Trifecta

I’ve already stated somewhere that I like everything I’ve tried from Deschutes Brewing out of Bend, Oregon. That’s never happened and I suppose it’s time I actually elaborated on which of their products I have tried and to give some background, right?

Mirror Pond Pale Ale
My first experience with this beer and this brewer was during a history symposium at Grand Canyon National Park a couple months ago. Mirror Pond and Black Butte Porter are available in the cafeteria-style restaurant of the Yavapai Lodge on the South Rim. Nice.

I had a couple of these during our lunch breaks, and found them to be very refreshing and just dark enough to be attractive. (I’ve mentioned already that I have an affinity for darker beers – equating light color with weak taste, rightly or wrongly.) Mirror Pond makes a nice lunchtime accompaniment.

Since that first experience I’ve purchased a couple of six packs of this and it was especially nice to have around when I helped my daughter and her family move into their new home recently. (I stocked their new fridge with three six-packs of beer: Rolling Rock, Mirror Pond and Black Butte. My son-in-law is on a Rolling Rock kick, for which I can’t fault him since I was there once myself. I bought the Deschutes beers thinking that the Porter would be too dark for my son-in-law so he’d leave it alone, and the Pale Ale would be a happy medium that he might be willing to try. I think he tried it, but I’m not going to hold his hand for heaven’s sake, and I’m not going to wait forever before finishing the six-pack!)

Black Butte Porter
This one smells faintly of chocolate and grass in the bottle. It pours as dark as coffee and has an initial faint sweetness to it that builds ever so slightly to caramel. It is mildly warming as you work your way through a glassful and isn’t so heavy that you couldn’t enjoy a few in a sitting. I think if I’m going to convince my son-in-law to step over to the dark side of beers, this will be the beer upon which he takes that first tentative step. (C’mon lad, you can do it.)

Cinder Cone Red
Based on the positive experience with both the Mirror Pond and the Black Butte, I snagged a single bottle of Cinder Cone Red at the local cigar and wine emporium and on tasting it, immediately wished I’d hunted down a six-pack.

In the bottle, the vegetable smell is somewhat off-putting, but this one pours a rich red color (of course) with a handsome cream-colored head. The taste is somewhat sweet with hints of caramel or perhaps licorice.

The bottle sports an attractive, eye-catching label that makes the product stand out on the shelves amongst the other wannabes, which may be why I spotted this amid the myriad other single craft brews on the shelf.

Curious, I skipped on over to Deschutes’ website and found that Cinder Cone is only available April through June. Naturally, I picked up two six-packs of Cinder Cone and stashed them in the closet. (I paid just a tad under 6 bucks each for the six-packs, which makes beer one of the best beverage bargains out there these days, I think.) Then, oh joy, my daughter picked up two more and brought them to me on Independence Day! Now I’ve got those three six packs of Cinder Cone (Yes, “three.” We finished one off on July 4th.) hidden away and I’m hoping I’ll forget about them until say, mid-September, early October.

Add Cinder Cone to your beer wish list and try to find it this year before the stock is gone. Otherwise, pencil it in as something to look for next spring and then in the meantime, go out and get some Black Butte Porter and Mirror Pond Pale Ale!

Links and such…

Here’s the link to the Deschutes website:
Deschutes Brewery

Here’s Deschutes’ Cinder Cone page:
Cinder Cone Red

I’m not a registered member at Beer Advocate (never was much of a “joiner” I guess), but I like to use them as the demographic dipstick by which beers are measured. All three of these Deschutes Brewing beers scored well with the Beer Advocates. Here are the individual reviews:

Beer Advocate on Mirror Pond

Beer Advocate on Black Butte Porter

Beer Advocate on Cinder Cone Red

(And while we’re on the subject of beer review websites, I’d like to give a quick tip of the hat to the guys -and gals? - at Beer Review Online . I am a member of this site and will get around to posting an entry about them in the coming weeks, I hope.)

I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to proclaim a fondness for all the beers produced by a single brewer, and having tried three of their beers, my experience with Deschutes Brewing may not be exactly far-reaching or broad-based. But I know a positive trend when I see one. I try different beers from different brewers and some I like (a lot) and some I don’t care so much about but I always try to stay open minded and sample new beers from a brewer even if they’ve disappointed me in the past. Hey, nowadays when you can buy single bottles of beer to sample, there isn’t any excuse for not keeping an open mind and trying a variety of product. The difficulty comes when you’re pressed for a quick choice and your brain freezes and you can’t recall what beers you really liked. For me, for the moment, I’ll just remember one word: “Deschutes.”

July 4th Cinder Cone Red

I enjoyed a few delicious Cinder Cone Reds yesterday, while grilling, while enjoying the company of family and while watching the NASCAR race from Daytona. A glorious day!

Grilling: chicken breasts, beef kabobs and salmon. I drizzled a bit of the Cinder Cone Red on the salmon and it glazed slightly - very nice!

What a great country we live in!

I'll be posting a more detailed entry on Deschutes and their beers in the days to come, but I wanted to document what was on the table this Independence Day weekend.

Chamberlain Pale Ale Revisited (Warning: History Lesson)

When I first tried Chamberlain Pale Ale, I made a commitment to drink it again on the anniversary of the 20th Maine’s big fight at Gettysburg. Today, I’ve done just that and I'm glad I did, because it reminds me of two things: this is an outstanding beer, and history is an amazing thing.

July 2nd dawned hot and the ridge lines and hilltops near the little town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania must have been heavy with the smoke from scattered Union and Confederate encampments, and thick with the smell of gun powder and blood.

By day’s end, the 20th Maine under the able leadership of scholar-turned-soldier Joshua Chamberlain would distinguish itself through its efforts to preserve the Union line at an as yet unknown spot on Little Roundtop.

History records the mass act of daring and heroism that occurred on that second day of battle outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. History also notes that Joshua Chamberlain was awarded the Medal of Honor for the bravery and leadership he displayed on that day.

Fading into history are those who didn’t survive much beyond the battle. Sergeant William S. Jordan of Company G was shot through the lung at some point during the battle. History does not record at what point during the battle Sergeant Jordan received his mortal wound, but he lingered until July 24th, fading slowly over the course of over twenty days. Sergeant Jordan died and was buried near the Trostle Farm south of Gettysburg. He was later moved to the National Cemetery where he lays in the Maine section, resting in honored peace.



The sun set blood red here in the desert southwest today, drawing a smoky curtain on a nearly 114 degree day. I imagine the sun was blood red at Gettysburg as well.