Archive for February, 2008

We’re tired today. We have a meeting for the other thing we do. And we don’t have much energy after a week of not-so-much sleep. (We love sleep.) To kick off your weekend, Pop The Cap has the funniest thing we’ve seen in a while. Sean has one of those incredibly dry, English-type senses of humor. He likes a good harmless prank. Here he is holding a blind tasting at Sam’s in Durham.

Presenting:
Vic Tastes a Belgian (or a Cinema Verite in Five Parts)

The face says it all.

Oooooooo! It’s so exciting. After the Negative Nelly rant a few weeks ago, the good news for NC just keeps on coming! Empire Distributing has just picked-up a gem of a line: Lagunitas Brewing Company of Petaluma, California. Lagunitas is about an hour’s north of San Francisco. We love Lagunitas and even gave some as Christmas presents last year. Brown Shugga? Imperial Red? Cappucino Stout? It’s going to be a few weeks until the shipment arrives, but hey, that gives you all something to look forward to, right? From the website:

From landing in the welcoming arms of Petaluma, and actually getting our beer into bottles, onto the streets, and into the hands of sympathatic beer geeks, to steadily losing less money each month. From all this and more, Lagunitas Brewing Company is emerging as a battle-tested brewery capable of making great beer out of goat’s milk, brambles, and asphalt on the surface of the Moon, if need be.

Wouldn’t that be a crazy beer?

While we wait, get to know them. They did a Zappa tribute beer called Kill Ugly Radio. There’s also a good story behind the Sneak Release Undercover Shut-down Ale, but you’ll have to search the web, because we’re not giving that one up. And check their Stories, specifically A Day in the Life of a Bubble of Beer.

Good things come to those who wait, and we all waited just a little while as our friends from Pisgah Brewing Co. created their first-ever bottle-conditioned beer, Cosmos. This brew, at 9.5% abv, is of course making a repeat appearance, but this time with yeast keeping continuous happy-fun-time in the nice 750ml bottle. Corked and caged, too.

Dark and mysterious, this Pisgah beer is a tribute to Belgian tradition and our homebrew roots. Combining the rich flavor of a Baltic Porter with the subtleness of a special Belgian yeast strain, the Cosmos is born. Bottle conditioned and aged for months this authentic organic beer will cellar for years to come. Respect tradition. Love beer. Treat Yourself!

There are some days we get sick of beer. We’re kidding! Who gets sick of beer? But today we just don’t feel like writing about it. Here’s some (maybe) interesting stuff we found lurking on the Internets.

Give some water to developing countries
P&G (as in Proctor & Gamble) is doing a nifty thing with its Give PŪR® Water Project. “For every P&GbrandSAVER® coupon redeemed during March and April 2008, you can help donate filtered drinking water to children in need in developing countries.” The P&GbrandSAVER® is available in the print edition of the Asheville Citizen-Times. (Link via Mom R.)

Cartoons are still funny: Garfield Minus Garfield
The latest old/new Internets buzz is Garfield Minus Garfield. Premise: Take the original strip, remove Garfield, leaving only Jon Arbuckle. The result? “An even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life.” Funny stuff. If that’s not enough, there’s always the Garfield Randonmizer.

Today’s bizarre “Old Russia” tale
Mark Morford was introduced to me by a friend years ago. Morford has been one of my favorite columnists ever since. He’s all over the place. He’s opinionated. He’s brash, maybe rude sometimes. Today, he’s not attacking anyone or anything, he’s writing about some freaky incident called the Dyatlov Pass Accident, which occurred in the mountains of Russia during Khrushchev‘s reign. Just read it. “Accident” is probably an understatement.

Video: “If you can’t trust your shadowy overlords…”
Via Abovetheaether (via The Onion): Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early Be sure you read the scrolling bits at the bottom.

Amongst our tasting group, the general consensus is that last year’s barleywine theme took the crown for Most Ridiculous Tasting—complete with dogs, camping, cookout, bonfire, and a collective next-day headache. (see illustration above) That was until last Saturday with our favorite Kledi family. Our Pennsylvania friends trecked down with a bounty of Tröegs and the Kledi organized a “little” get-together for us to all catch-up on life and try some special stuff. And special it was, as everyone seemed to break out the big guns. (Not literally, of course.) You can see full list of insanity here. Even Asheville Beer Blog deemed it The Night of a Thousand Beers, which admittedly is much more romantic than our title. There was just too much good beer to choose from! Of course, we forgot our camera—that is the only regret. Everyone grazed on incredible food (and thanks, Deuane and Carolyn, for bringing the Pennsylvania-Dutch girl some ring bologna), went home with expanding beer bellies, and likely woke-up with a collective next-day headache. (see illustration above)

Some of our highlights:
Alaskan Barleywine 2007
AleSmith Speedway Stout
AleSmith Yulesmith
DeSchutes The Abyss 2007
Dogfish Head World Wide Stout
Fantome Chocolate
Drie Fonteinen Oak Aged Kriek 2005
Lost Abbey Lost and Found
Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut-down Ale 
Moylans Hopsickle
Old Dominion Oak Aged Millennium Barleywine 2006
Pike Old Bawdy Barleywine
Pizza Port Old Viscosity
Saint Somewhere Saison Athene
Southern Tier Gemini
Southern Tier Choklat
Three Floyd’s Dark Lord
Voodoo Brewing Voodoo Love Child

We can’t stress enough how fun it is to go to beer tastings (or host one). You get to try so many things and after all, sharing is caring! Not to mention you can learn. A lot. Sounds like fun to you? Let us know. We can help you plan.