Black Friday Beer Humor

Well, ok, these really have nothing to do with "Black Friday. But, I never participate in "Black Friday". If I ever did try to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving, it would certainly drive me to drink one or more beers.

Happy Holidays

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Not too long ago, I got an email from my Dad. I copied and pasted the text of the email below. I do not know exactly where the email originally came from. I don't know exactly how much of this is actually from Ben Stein and how much is editorialized. I do know that Ben said some of this and that he did NOT say it all.

"Urban Legends" on about.com says perhaps 1/3 of it was actually written by Ben Stein. (see http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_ben_stein_christmas.htm). Towards the end, in the analysis, the Urban Legend article links to Ben's website so you can see what he actually said.

I will point out that the end of the "Urban Legends" article, the author does make a point that the White House has never actually referred to "Christmas Trees" as "Holiday Trees". And, of course, Ben's commentary is from 2005 (4 years before Obama took office), so it would have been really hard for him to criticize the Obama administration for making that switch.

I liked the sentiment of the email (or at least the parts that I think are Ben), though, and I thought I would share:

fun picture

This is a picture of "Sue" eating 3 out of our 4 kids this weekend. Connor wisely stayed away from the vicious T-Rex.

Tasting Free the Glutens

Well, you might remember that not too long ago I talked about brewing up a #GlutenFree beer. If not, you can look back at the post: Free the Glutens! This past weekend, I tasted a bottle from the batch. My wife also gave it a try. Together, we decided it was good enough to present to the gluten-sensitive mother of the children we took care of over the weekend (for the purposes of this blog post we are going to call her "Gretchen" so I don't have to type "the gluten-sensitive mother of the children we took care of over the weekend" over and over). 

The beer model thought it was really good. I thought it was pretty good. It starts off a little sweeter and perhaps a little fuller in the body than I thought it was going to. I really wish I had taken an FG, because I sort of wonder if I should have let it ferment longer. I do think it is nicely balanced and has a pretty good citrus hop presence. The sweetness combined with the taste of centennial hops give it a little orange flavor, which is quite pleasant in this beer. It does not come across as bitter as an IPA. Naming it an APA was the right call.

Wally's my Hero

From Dilbert.Com:

from http://www.dilbert.com/strips/2011-11-16

Still More Beer Motivation

Just a continuation of the post a couple weeks ago ....

and the post from a couple weeks before that:

100 Gallons of Beer

Not too long ago, in SheppyBrew Stats Q3 2011, I mentioned "It looks like I have a shot at hitting my 100 gallon limit for the year". For those of you who don't know, it is legal in the United States for an individual adult to home-brew 100 gallons of  beer for personal (non-commercial) use. A household of two or more adults is allowed 200 gallons per year. State laws differ. Colorado's home-brewing law pretty much simply says it is legal to brew what is legal according to the federal law. There are still a couple of states that don't allow legal home-brewing at all. It sort of sucks to be a home-brewer in those states. But, luckily that is not something I have to deal with.

So, I am allowed to brew 100 gallons of beer. My wife and I together are allowed to brew 200 gallons. When I started home-brewing (way back in 2009), that 100 gallons seemed like a completely impossibly huge number to hit. The 200 gallon limit was way beyond my wildest dreams.

New Belgium Snow Day

Ever since the Beer Model and I took our tour of New Belgium Brewery back in June, I have been looking forward to the release of New Belgium's new winter seasonal Snow Day Winter Ale. You see, Bernie (our tour guide) told us that it was replacing 2 Below and that it was going to be a black IPA. If you pay attention to this blog, you might know that I am a big fan of the Black IPA style of beer (or Cascadian Dark or American Style Black or Indian Dark Ale or whatever-else-you-want-to-call-it). See "Black IPA / IDA", "Cascadian Dark Ale", "Stone Soup IDA", "Psycho Dark and Bitter" if you want to see some of what I said about the style.

Beer Flowcharts

This little bit of humor comes from Gizmodo and an article titled: Workflow Charts Finally Put to Good Use Show Fundamental Men vs Women Differences. Poking fun at the relative simplicity of the man's world vs. the complexity of how women operate. It just never gets old ... does it?

Evil Corporations

I saw this on facebook awhile ago.

One of my virtual friends had commented on it, so it ended up in my news feed. I don't know the guy who posted it, and I do not know where he originally got it (I sort of doubt he did it himself). But, it amuses me.

Click on Image to view larger version

It took me so long to actually post it, because I was going to add clever and insightful commentary on that whole situation. I never got around to it, and I don't feel like it now.

The picture probably stands on its own pretty well, anyway.

Connor at the Museum

Tyler had a couple of birthday parties today. Mom took him. Connor decided that he and I should go to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Here are some pictures from the day:

More Beer Motivation

Just a continuation of the post from a couple weeks ago:

Happy #StoutDay

So, here it is International #StoutDay. I hope you are having a good one. I'm hoping my sister can forgive me for saying this: "Happy #StoutDay!".

To be honest, Stouts are one of those styles that it took me getting into brewing to really appreciate. I would try one from time to time ... mostly as part of sample platters in brew-pubs, but would hardly ever get myself a pint. I never purchased stouts from liquor stores.

But, SheppyBrew has brewed a few Stouts, and I'm really beginning to seek them out more. And the more I drink, the more I like them.

I think most non-beer-geeks (at least here in America) think Guinness when they think Stout. But, "Stout" is a pretty wide range of beers, many of which are really unlike Guinness. Personally, I've never really been a big fan of Guinness. I still think the lack of carbonation make them taste too flat. I prefer more carbonation than the nitrogen smoothness I guess. I would say that I'm much more a fan of American Stouts than other types.

Arrogant Bastard tidbit

I was listening to the Sunday Session with Pizza Port's Jeff Bagby last Wednesday night while working out.

Jeff used to work for Stone and has brewed Arrogant Bastard. In fact, he was part of brewing the very first batch.

At the end of the interview, Tasty snuck in the question about what specialty malt was used in Arrogant Bastard. Jeff gave a hint that it was one high crystal malt ... not special B. He even said that 150 is about right. He also mentioned that the recipe is incredibly simple with one specialty malt and one hop.

Blogging Away

So last month, I mentioned that I didn't think October would be able to match September's page view stats (see 3218). I was wrong. October was the 6th month in a row of record-breaking page views. It didn't beat September by much, but it did none-the-less.

The theme remains the same: "If beer and women aren't the answer, then you're asking the wrong questions."

Here are the most viewed blog posts for the past 30 days:

#StoutDay Week

This week on Thursday is International #StoutDay.

What is International #StoutDay? I'm not sure I really know. The best way to describe it is #IPADay only instead of celebrating boring old IPA's, we are celebrating the rich and diverse style of Stouts.

I realize that if you don't know about #IPADay, my description doesn't make much sense. If you are a twitter tweeter and a beer geek, you know about #IPADay. If you are not, you don't really care and won't care about #StoutDay either. At least I don't think so.

Female vs. Male Brain

Here it is Friday again. Time to share some more humor, I guess. We are back to the spirit of the wildly popular "Visual Explanation of Women" series of posts.

Analyze and enjoy. Let me know if you LOL or ROFL.

Free the Glutens!

Image from Papazian's article

Glutens are nasty little creatures which hide in wheat (and wheat related) grains and attack an unsuspecting tribe of people know as the Celiacs. The Glutens perform bio-attacks on the Celiacs causing auto-immune reactions which are very unpleasant. Glutens are evil!

Actually, personally, I have nothing against glutens. I probably can't even begin to list the things that I enjoy eating and drinking that have lots of gluten in them. I doubt there is a day that goes by in which I don't consume multiple glutens. They are yummy. I'm glad I don't have to avoid foods that contain gluten.

One of my favorite sources of gluten is beer. Barley is full of gluten. So is wheat and rye. There are gluten-free beers out there, but they are sort of hard to find. I am told they don't really taste all that good either.

Bottling Hoptoberfest

So, I've mentioned that I bribed the people I work with in an attempt to get them to donate to the 2nd Wind Fund. It worked, so I had to brew up more Stouticus American Stout (darn!). I also brewed up a beer that I called Hoptoberfest , which is a Vienna Lager with much more late addition Hallertauer and Crystal hops than you would traditionally get in a Vienna Lager. You could almost call it a love-child between my 15 Year Anniversary Amber Ale and my Rocktoberfest Lager. It was designed with lots of Munich and Vienna malts, fermented with lager yeast at (mostly) lager temperatures, but hopped like the 15 year. Sounds absolutely yummy ... doesn't it? The sample I had certainly tasted like it would be good.

Beer Motivation

A few weeks ago, I started posting "Friday Humor" on my favorite online forum.  It started with the wildly popular post "Visual Explanation of Women" and continued for a few weeks in that same sort of theme.

The past two weeks, I skipped the Friday Humor and replaced them with "2011 #GABF Session 1" and the also-wildly-popular "Sexist Beer Labels"

Surprisingly, apparently a couple of my virtual friends made comments that make me think they miss the little Friday Humor feature of the blog.

I've stolen and posted funny motivational posters before on this blog. They amuse me.