BoW a-thon LIVE!: Founders Porter

Okay, so an aside - it seems all the beers I brought home are pretty high gravity. This next one's 6.5%, and it's one of the "lighter" ones. Yeah....prolly not making it through all of them tonight.

Anyway, Founders does it again. These guys from Grand Rapids, Michigan can do dark beer. Their Breakfast Stout is one of my new favorites, and apparently their porter is no slouch either. Somewhere between an oily, super heavy Baltic porter and the coffee-carmel richness of the best English porters, this is officially good stuff.

Roasted barley drowns the nose, but there's a touch of dark chocolate and malt under there as well. The palate really lines up with the nose, with sweet malty barley hint-o'-chocolaty goodness. Some might say that makes it less complex, but I really enjoy my mouth and nose having a simultaneous...well, you get the picture. 8/9, just shy of Sinebrychoff. Yum.

Word to the wise, though - I haven't been terribly impressed with Founders reds or pales and such.

BoW-a-thon LIVE!: Victory Hop Devil Ale

As often happens, I was sitting on the patio at a nearby bar downing an overgrown Bell's Two-Hearted when suddenly inspiration struck. Go to the liquor store, and grab a sixer of singles you haven't tried before. Review them. Live.

(Okay, either I'm not getting through all of them tonight, or the last reviews won't be worth reading...fair enough.)

First off, we have Hop Devil Ale from Victory Brewing Co. out of Downington, PA. The master brewers are German-trained, but you wouldn't know it by their beers - they are quintessentially American style microbrews. Even their pilsner is hoppy. But, I likes me some hops. However, while Hop Devil is an IPA it is surprisingly balanced. There's no missing the hops, but they don't overshadow the rest of the beer either. Maybe it's due to Victory using whole-flower hops. Maybe.

On the nose, Hop Devil is heady and yeasty, with a hint of fressh grass that reaffirms my commitment to IPA's as lawnmower beers. Once again, the hoppy bitterness is there but mild, and there's a lot of citrus fruit. Maybe a bit of grapefruit?

7/9 overall. Certainly nothing breathtakingly unique, but certainly tasty and refreshing.

Beverage of the Week - Water

That's right. Water.

I've been cutting back on the alcohol lately*, and when I was thinking up potential BoW's it hit me - wouldn't it be neat to just talk about water? I mean, it's THE beverage. 

For starters, it's a fundamental ingredient in every alcoholic beverage. Take whiskey, for instance. It's a well-understood fact that a large amount of the character of a given whiskey depends on the water used during fermentation, as well as the water added to most before bottling (to "cut" them down to standard alcohol content). Islay scotches, for example, get much of their peat and smoke because the island is covered in peat and salty ocean air. The streams at Lagvulin are so peated the water literally looks like strong tea. Other whiskey's pick up crisp mineral notes because the local water runs through granite beds, softening it up.

But water isn't just a condiment for my future liver condition, either. No mater how much I love a good lawnmower beer, straight water is certainly the most refreshing thing around. Research has shown that a simple glass of water leaves you more alert than a cup of coffee. Wanna make life easier on your heart and kidneys? Drink plenty of water. And I swear to you, from personal experience, ensuring you drink that eight-plus glasses everyone talks about is the simplest thing you can do to ensure instant-gratification, obvious health benefits. Most of us inadvertently stay relatively dehydrated; you will feel better if you drink more water.

Chemically speaking, water is amazing stuff. Water is pretty much the only liquid that expands when it freezes (most shrink). And it's also because of its unique molecular structure that so many solids, like salt for instance, can dissolve into it. Your blood is full of such substances, and because your blood is mostly water, they dissolve and flow wherever needed - rather than just settling like gravel in the creek bed of your veins. Likewise, the chemical ability to put things into solution is why adding a bit of water to a glass of whiskey can "open it up" and bring out flavours you might miss. Try adding a few drops at a time.

Water. It's delicious. It's neat. Go have a glass on me.

* In my world, that means I'm down to about twice the normal rate.

diePod

Everyone worth knowing has one or two pop-culture obsessions. Quirks, to put it nicely. Mine are a) Ninjas and b) Zombies. This post has nothing to do with ninjas.

Sunday morning I headed out to the local Panera for coffee-flavored work. Heading to my usual table I discovered a good friend had beat me to it - I started to say hello, then noticed her plugged into the iPod. I decided to perform an experiment. Sitting down at the table behind her, I decided to see how long it would take her to detach from the iPod and notice me (or anything). But then The Wife came around the other way with our coffee, and walked right in front of her. Certainly she spotted her, and I thought no more about it - until an hour later, when Leah turned around and jerked in surprise as she noticed us for the first time.

I think you see where I'm going here.

If someone made a movie where 85% of people were plugged into some device, totally unaware of their surroundings, everyone who watched would be horrified by such a dystopian future (though you might still take the blue pill). But Steve Jobs and Co. have slowly zombified America, and everyone's more worried about the features/style/price of the new iPhone than the fact that sounds of conversation have drained from every street, waiting line, and tram station. I used to ride the bus to campus every day, and it was bloody creepy - perfect rows of filled seats, everyone looking at their shoes, wires running into their ears...I had to either stop riding or go buy a shotgun. Just in case.

Seriously, though - I don't know if their is some strange, modern desire to remove ourselves from the world around us, or if it's just apathy induced by all the semi-satisfying artificial contact we're inundated with. What I am sure of, however, is that this is not a good point in human history for impersonalization and disconnection. Darfur, Somalia, nuclear proliferation, insane dilettante dictators testing ballistic missles...not to mention the economic mess - like unemployment and thousands of nearly unemployable retirees forced back into SlaveMart as unbridled capitalism robs their savings and pensions. I suppose riding the iPod mothership to a mass exodus from personal involvement should come as no surprise....But the impetus to confront such problems is exponentially higher when confronted by a human factor like an 80 year old grandmother talking to you on her bus ride to inspect receipts at walmart, rather than data from an NPR podcast. Meanwhile, millions of people literally walk around with cotton stuffed in their ears...

Music is great. Just take the headphones off and enjoy it with someone. If for no other reason -I'm pretty sure the Ultimate Bad Thing that results from generalized civil apathy is the Zombie Apocalypse. And with only a sawed-off shotty between me and the brain-eaters, you shoe-staring iPod junkies don't want me getting confused.