I got nothin' to say.....

...but it just got a little less funny off in here.

God bless you, Bernie.

Mr. Beer Update At One Week Plus...

I’ve been like a mother hen worrying over a clutch of eggs this past week.

I’ve not seen any noticeable activity in the Mr. Beer fermenting keg. There’s been something of a “bathtub ring” round the inside of the keg almost since day one. We’re now at one week and one day – as of Monday – and I’m concerned that something didn’t pop.

A check of the Mr. Beer Fans Forum yielded some useful advice along with frequent admonitions to be patient and leave the thing alone. Several of the local experts suggested actually pouring a bit of the product into a glass for inspection and taste testing. Per their input, if the wort still has any sort of sweet taste to it, then it’s not done fermenting. Ideally, according to the brewing guru’s, the product should taste something like flat beer.

Well, I screwed up some courage and drained a tiny bit into the bottom of a pub glass a couple nights ago. Hmmm. Looks a bit like unpasteurized apple juice, or that funky water that comes out of rusted pipes. I tasted it and at first it didn’t taste sweet, but as I let the liquid work around a bit I found it to have a slight sweet taste – perhaps that was psychosomatic.

Okay, so we’ll let it go until next Sunday and see were we stand. Some on the Mr. Beer Fans forum have stated that an additional (third) week in the keg isn’t out of the question. Damn! I can’t wait that long!

In the meantime, perhaps Johnny Southside and I need to mull over some names for this Red Ale we’re brewing. I’m thinking if it’s a failure, we call it “Flaming Red Failure,” or “Dismal Red Ale.” If that’s the case, I’ll probably take my half of the product and give it to relatives for Christmas – hey, if they love me, they’ll have to love my beer, too! Can’t be any worse than the fruitcake we trade year after year after year!

Stay tuned for more news on the brewfront.

Wait, there’s more!

Even if the actual brewing process isn’t (currently) living up to my expectations, I have to acknowledge that you meet the nicest folks as you hitchhike along the information/fermentation superhighway. Case in point, the kind fellow at Man Made Beer who not only has a nifty Mr. Beer brewing blog but who also acknowledged Beer Rant’s existence by paying us a visit and leaving a nice comment under an earlier post. Fear not, you’ll see Man Made Beer added to the list of beer blogs at left.

I'm falling behind in my beer posts. Recently I've sampled a summer wheat, a triple stout and an ESB. Hopefully I'll get 'round to posting on them in the next few days before I lose track of things!

Skull Splitter - 1 George Washington - 0

I’ll tackle a couple quick topics with this post. I tried a beer that’s listed in Michael Jackson’s beer book and I attempted something of an internet parlor trick. One worked out well, the other, eh, not so much.

I have a personal rule to never bet against someone who claims to be able to do something outrageous. (“How much you wanna bet I can swallow this watermelon?”) Odds are, they’ve already proven to themselves that they can either accomplish the trick or somehow turn the tables such that they’ll take your money without actually doing what they claimed they could do. A couple of beer hall tricks or gimmicks that come to mind are: “Betcha’ can’t find the hitchhiker on the back of this dime,” and the “What would you do if you were stranded in the desert with nothing but this camel?” using a pack of Camel cigarettes. I’m just not enough of a bon vivant that I pull these sorts of tricks off very well, perhaps because I don’t hang out in bars enough to become practiced in the art of the clever beer-drinking parlor trick.

Nevertheless, these sorts of things intrigue me when I see them or hear about them and recently I stumbled on a method that purports to uncap a beer bottle using a regular dollar bill. Following the video instructions – seemingly to the letter – I must confess that all I managed to do was release a bit of the pressure from this bottle of Skull Splitter Scottish Ale. In the end, after two or three tries with the dollar bill, I resorted to using the old tried-and-true method of simply breaking off the neck of the bottle on the bumper of my truck.

As for the beer, it’s a dandy…well not in the dandy sort of sissy way that the term “dandy” conjures up an image of a fellow whose tastes lean more toward the sartorial than the pugilistic. You follow? I mean this is a great beer.

At a tad over 8% abv, this isn’t a session brew, but it’s alcohol bite isn’t off-putting like some of the current slate of hopped up IPAs on the market. It produced a pronounced warming effect and will probably be something I’ll seek out come wintertime.So, while I’ve managed to check off another beer from the late Mr. Jackson’s great book, I’m still struggling with how to uncap a beer bottle using a dollar bill. I think the trick is to take the dollar bill, go to the store and purchase a cheap church key.

(Mr. Beer Brewing Update: We're at week one with the Mr. Beer Red Ale experiment. The keg has been kept at a fairly constant 76 to 78 degree temperature but shows little sign of brewing activity that I can detect. A thin layer of foam about 1/8 inch thick did form on the top and has now begun to float to the bottom. I'll admit to being a bit disappointed, but with another week in the keg, perhaps things will begin to look up.)

Beers of the Axis

I suppose it had to happen, what with my tendency toward history and the historic, but before I go off on this somewhat tongue in cheek tangent, I probably need to point out (to the 1 person in 100 who will somehow take this wrong and brand me a hater) the fact that this is good natured beer discussion with an admittedly awkward historical slant. I don’t mean any disrespect to the citizens of Japan, Germany or Italy, nor do I mean any disrespect to nations who might have fought with or against these nations in any wars past, present or future. Finally, having said that, I don’t think this is the last installment of this topic you’ll see here at Beer Rant. Like it or not.

Also, I’m not pretending for a second that the beers sampled for this post were beers that were produced in or by the Axis powers during World War II – I’m too lazy to verify if these beers were produced during the war.

And so, with the disclaimers out of the way, I bring you….

Beers of the Axis

Germany, Italy and Japan; the powerhouse triumvirate of the 1930s and early 1940s. Beating up on weaker or dumber neighbors, mass killing on an unprecedented scale and war crimes – real war crimes, documented the world over by the way. Ahh, the good old days.

In September 1931 Japan invaded Chinese Manchuria and in October 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia and in March 1938 Germany moved into Austria and into Poland by September 1939, thus finally setting off the spark that started what came to be known as World War II.

I’ve often wondered why historians don’t set the date further back, like with Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia or farther back still, to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s give Japan its long-denied credit for having taken the first steps down the road to all out, worldwide war in 1931. In my book, when it comes to World War II, Japan was the trendsetter so let’s start with a (supposedly) Japanese beer, shall we?

Sapporo Premium Beer will represent the land of the rising sun in this review of Beers of the Axis. It smells of vinegar in the bottle and pours a golden yellow with a weak head. Very little taste; indeed of the three Axis beers in this post, this one rates the lowest for taste and get this: the label states that it’s brewed in Canada! (Well, Canada did help win the war, so it stands to reason.)

If Japan is to be credited for lighting the fuse that lead to the explosion of World War II, then next in line comes Italy, with its invasion of Ethiopia, where Italian tank crews fought valiantly against out-gunned locals. Ah, inspiring, isn’t it? Well, what of their beer?

I selected a bottle of Birra Moretti from a multi pack Beers of the Galaxy box that’s been sitting around Beer Rant HQ. Birra Moretti smells a bit sour in the bottle and pours a golden yellow color, producing little head but active beading. The taste is a bit sweet and gone quickly. Nothing much to this beer, really. It’s probably a good session beer and the figure on the label of a hat-wearing fellow seems pleasant enough; he doesn’t look like someone who would instigate a military conflict with a weaker regional neighbor; just some mustachioed fellow sipping a cold beer while he waits for his pizza.

Finally, an example of German brewing prowess that I’m sure most readers and visitors to Beer Rant have heard of, Spaten Oktoberfest Ur-Marzen. I’ll confess that this one was my favorite of the three – I’m partial to Marzen’s for some reason and have had this one on more than one occasion in the past. It’s confounding that the same nation that brought us the Reinheitsgebot purity law governing the production of beer, also managed to concoct a set of regulations that dehumanized vast segments of the population, leading to the extermination of millions…but I digress.

Spaten Oktoberfest Ur-Marzen has a grainy smell in the bottle and pours a light tea color with a weak head and medium beading in the glass. The taste is vaguely of roasted nuts with a quick caramel finish. While I’m happy and proud that the allies kicked the snot out of a nation of people who allowed the Holocaust to take place I’m also glad the Reinheitsgebot remains in effect; this beer’s a keeper.

There you have it, a thumbnail sketch of three beers representing the Axis powers of World War II. Next time, perhaps, a posting on Beers of the Allies, who knows.

(My posting for The (Late) Session will be in a few days by the way.)

Product Review: Vacu Vin Rapid Ice Cooler

This product claims to be able to cool a bottle of beer in 5 minutes.

Sort of, but not really.

I’ll confess to feeling a bit duped by this one. The instructions indicate that after storing the rapid ice cooler in the freezer for six hours you can then place it around a bottle of beer and cool it in five minutes.

The devil is in the details here folks. The instructions don’t specify exactly how much colder the bottle will become as a result of being wrapped in this little icy vest. I tried it with a room temperature bottle of Cinder Cone Red and after just over five minutes I poured the bottle to find it wasn’t quite as cold as I typically like my Cinder Cone.

My plan for this product in the future is to use it as a wrap for bottles placed temporarily in the freezer – you know, for those times when you bring home room-temperature beer and want to sample it right now. Wrapping this little gizmo around the bottle, then placing it in the freezer should speed that process a bit.

Another use: I bashed my knuckle over the weekend and this thing came in handy as an ice pack to keep the swelling down.

I won’t be buying more of these – one is enough.

Beer Cooling Alternatives

Here’s a quick-cooling method suggested by Dumb Little Man. Hmm. Doesn’t seem so dumb to me. He even thought of cooling beer and “soda.” Evidently MythBuster’s did a segment on this and proved it works. The ice apparently changes the freezing temperature of the water that surrounds the beer thus driving the….oh, I don’t know, they proved it works, okay?

There’s also a video tip floating around the Net showing how to cool down a can of beer in about 30 seconds using a can of compressed air. It might work, but it’ll end up costing you a fortune in compressed air.

Meet Mr. Beer

The 50th Beer Rant Post and a Confession

Ah, my fiftieth post at Beer Rant. This is nice. Didn’t think I’d get here this fast. Didn’t think I’d sample so many new (and old) beers in such a short time and still manage to muddle along largely hangover-free.

There is one trick to the “hangover free” part: Don’t buy whole six-packs of beer you know you only want to sample and if you do, don’t feel compelled to finish the whole six pack, trade it off or give it away. Just make sure you have notes so you’ll be able to remember if it was a beer you want to try again. (I didn’t figure these things out on my own, really. I’ve picked up a ton of great knowledge, largely by visiting the beer blogs that are listed here.)

I don’t suppose folks have logged on here to learn my beer sampling secrets so let’s get right down to confession time. I’m brewing a batch of beer using the Mr. Beer Home Brewing System! It’s a long story and I can already imagine true beer snobs and real “fermentarians” sniggering and looking down their noses…well, if that’s you, go ahead and log off now.

Brief synopsis of events leading up to brew day: The Mr. Beer kit belongs to Johnny Southside. Johnny Southside received it as a gift and hadn’t tried the system. We had discussed home brewing kits in the past and Johnny Southside mentioned he had an as yet unused Mr. Beer system. I proposed that we do a test run at Beer Rant Headquarters and he kindly agreed to loan me the system. I purchased a new set of basic brewing ingredients online at Mr. Beer, the ingredients that came with the kit having long since expired. I chose their Bewitched Red Ale and to round out the brewing experience, I bought a set of their plastic bottles and caps for bottling the end product.

I’m an all-or-nothing sort of guy a lot of the time. When I become interested in something, the interest borders on obsession. I noodled around the Internet and found a Mr. Beer users forum that proved to be a font of good information on the process. One of the first things I found out was that the brewing times listed in the Mr. Beer literature are minimum times and that most regular users of the Mr. Beer system double the time so that the wort is in the brew keg two weeks, in the bottle two weeks, then lagered in the refrigerator at least one week. Well this posed a difficulty once Johnny Southside and I consulted the calendar; we didn’t have enough weekends free to commit to a brewing schedule, so we kept putting off the brew day.

Finally, a window of opportunity presented itself and we boiled up some product, placed it in the brew keg and tossed the yeast yesterday. The wort is now in the keg, stored in a moderately cool room at Beer Rant Headquarters. The hard part begins: waiting.

Perhaps for my 60th or 70th post you’ll see a review of some Beer Rant Special Red Ale or some such! In the meantime, guess I’ll just have to keep sampling these other beers I’ve got stored in the refrigerator.

Thanks for visiting by the way!

Good Trade

Widmer Brother's Hefeweizen

It was late fall of 1988 and I was passing through the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona, driving back to Arizona after a brief working sabbatical in a tiny mountain town west of Denver (just over the divide from where Hunter S. Thompson ranted and raved in his Woody Creek compound). I’d been out of the army a little more than four months, held a full time job on a highway project on Berthoud Pass, dated a nursing student who got busted for selling cocaine, climbed to the top of Torrey’s Peak, drank boxes and boxes of Rainier beer and spent far too little time actually appreciating my surroundings. The snow began to fall at our job site well before Halloween and then it reached the cabin I was renting in that little mountain town, and I realized things weren’t going to improve weather-wise, so on election day, and in the midst of a snowstorm, I loaded up the pickup truck and pointed it southwest.

I recall it was somewhere outside Kayenta that I spotted a stooped old man trudging along beside the road, a ragged looking dog following close behind. The wind was not so much cold as it was persistent and the mutt seemed to be seeking shelter in his master’s wake.

I pulled over and waited as the old fellow trudged up beside the truck. Leaning across the cab, I opened the passenger side door and offered him a ride. He nodded, not saying a word and stepped back as if to climb into the bed of my truck, already piled high with what few possessions I carried and stacks of Edward Abbey books in Rainier boxes.

I beckoned him join me in the cab and, shrugging slightly, he – and the dog – climbed into the cab with me and I pulled back onto the deserted highway, the persistent wind no longer a burden.

Eager to make conversation I asked, “Where you headed?”
“Flagstaff,” came the brief, blunt reply.
“You have family there?” I asked.
“No,” came the reply.
“What’s your dog’s name?” I asked.
“Doesn’t have a name,” came the reply.
“Pretty cold today, huh?” I asked.
“Yeah,” came the reply.
“Let me know if the heater’s set high enough for you,” I said. “I don’t have the setting’s just right ‘cause I’m not used to this truck. I got it for my girlfriend.” There was no reply and we drove on for a few miles, my companion gazing through the windshield at the onrushing empty highway, thinking.

Finally, he said simply, “Good trade.”

(I’ll leave it to you to decipher what part of the foregoing story is bullshit.)

I worked a deal with Johnny Southside this week wherein I traded him two of my precious Deschutes Cinder Cone Reds for two Widmer Hefeweizens. I have to confess that I regretted making the deal about five seconds after having made it, but having made it, I stood by it and things worked out nicely, I have to say.

Widmer Hefeweizen smells faintly of citrus in the bottle, which is strange because I did not detect a noticeable citrus character in the taste. It pours an attractive opaque golden orange and a quick swirl of the bottle will release the sediment and give you nice finish to the pour. I garnished the glass with a slice of orange, in keeping with the illustration on the label only to learn later that it’s lemon they suggest. (This is the danger of not researching beers before I sample them, but it’s a procedure I must adhere to religiously, no matter the risks.) There is a strong taste of wheat in this one and I imagine the citrus slice need not be a requirement to make this a nice refreshment. I enjoyed my first one after mowing the lawn at 4:30 on a hot afternoon, with the temperature above 100 degrees. I enjoyed the second one, at a more leisurely pace right after the first one.

Visit Widmer Brothers Brewing and check out their nifty Brother’s Day promotion. I’ve got a couple of brothers – maybe I should send them an email on Brother’s Day.

Here’s a feature article on Widmer Hefeweizen on Beer Advocate. Ouch, “training-wheels beer.” That’s harsh. I like it and I don’t much go in for hefeweizen’s so I guess that’s me riding the trike.

Here’s what the Beer Advocate Poll Numbers show for Widmer Hefe. Not high marks.

I hope Johnny Southside is as pleased with the trade as I.