Most Beer Blogs SUCK

Another interesting essay from The Vice Blog.

Most Beer Blogs SUCK

Everyone hates the kind of people, the kind of snobs, that drink wine and then feel the need to spend hours and hours pontificating about it. It’s why I created this blog — I was sick of how the “everyman” vocation of beer drinking had become overtaken by pretentious little tipplers. It must have reached a breaking point for me when I was reading one such beer blog. The author noted in a review that he’d actually drank a beer in his living room while watching TV as opposed to how he usually sampled a brew — by shutting himself in a dimly lit “study” alone, with no outside noises or distractions, and then quietly and contemplatively enjoying the drink. He was downright ashamed and apologetic that he had actually drank a beer in a comfortable environment, lounging on his sofa with his feet kicked up while watching the game.

Here’s A LINK

Florida Competition and More

Central Florida Home Brewers invite you to: November 12-14, 2009

Also…
AHA/BJCP/MCAB SANCTIONED COMPETITION

The 19th Sunshine Challenge is the premier home brewing competition and home brewers’ convention in the eastern United States. For more details, visit the CFHBwebsite and make arrangements to attend.

Florida Craft Beer Festival

(Friday, Nov. 13th 7:00-11:00 PM)
Enjoy THE BEST BEER BREWED in Florida…meet the Florida Brewers Guild members and brewers. Also, meet Bob Hansen of Briess this year’s Guest of Honor.  Food will be served from 7:30 – 9:00pm only and is included in theticket price.

Saturday Seminar
Saturday, Nov. 14th, 8:45-11:00 AM
Enjoy a Continental Breakfast and variety of Beerswhile listening to Bob Hansen of Briess. $8.50

Pub Crawl
Saturday, Nov. 14th 2:00-6:00 PM
This has been a favorite of out of town participants, a chance to visit some of Orlando’s pubs. This is one pub crawl you don’t want to miss!
$22.50

Saturday Night Awards Dinner
Saturday, Nov. 14th7:00-11:00 PM
This fantastic evening features a plate dinner, including beer sponsored by Florida Micro Beverage Distributor.

No tickets sold at the door. If you prefer to pay by check instead of PayPal, or if you have any questions contact us at email: sunshine@cfhb.org

Notes from the Style Pile

The following is from another beer site; an amusing tale that examines a rather exotic (for most tasters) style: Gueze. Hard to get in many parts of the country. Wiki entry blurb and link follows.

-The Professor

Courtesy of theviceblog.com
Courtesy of theviceblog.com

“I was drinking with a girl sometime earlier this summer who appreciated my appreciation of beer. She was a beer appreciator appreciator. But she didn’t really drink the stuff herself. More of a cocktails and wine kinda gal, she found beer bland. Fizzy, foamy, bloating, watery, and flavorless. ‘Not what I drink,’ I told her.”

“‘Show me.'”

“I started with a bottle of the brilliant Boulevard Smokestack Saison-Brett.”

“‘Tastes like beer,’ she said.”

“But it has funky Brettanomyces in it! Without question you have never had something with Brett it in before.”

“‘Tastes like beer,’ she reiterated.”

LINK

“Gueuze (or Geuze) is a type of lambic, a Belgian beer. It is made by blending young (1-year-old) and old (2–3-year-old) lambics into a new beer, which is then bottled for a second fermentation. Because the young lambic is not fully fermented, it contains fermentable sugars, which allow the second fermentation to occur. Lambic that undergoes a second fermentation in the presence of sour cherries before bottling results in kriek, a beer closely related to Geuze.”

“Since Gueuze is made by blending lambics, it tastes different from traditional ale and pilsner style beers. Because aged hops are used to produce these lambics, the beer has little to none of the traditional hop bitterness that can be found in most other styles of beer.”

LINK

Inspection- Grinding Sausage

A special cross post here at Professor Good Ale’s page by the author from the LTS columnist section due to content.

Inspection is a Column that’s written by Ken Carman

I just quit writing.

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Continue reading “Inspection- Grinding Sausage”

Sweetwater’s Happy Ending

Reviewed by Ken Carman

How do they get this much grain into one bottle? This ale, weighing in at 9%, is thick, chewy: a champagne-sized Grolsch-style bottle filled with liquid luxury. Normally I would type that it’s extract-y, but the complex malt mix of pale, many darker malts and a lot of dextrinous malts are so velvet upon the palette it is irresistible for those of us who desire a 2 by 4 malt weight upon the tongue.

The hops, though present, get a bit lost in all this malt, but the beverage doesn’t suffer. And it’s not malt-bitter in the way that such multi-grain concoctions can be. Debittered dark malts?

The advertising on the bottle, and some reviews, push the hops a bit too much, in my opinion. Not that they’re absent by any means, just not quite the “explosive finish” as some claim; especially for those of us who are also fans of over 100 IBU Imperial IPAs. Just enough to balance off the darker, sweeter, malt notes. So what exactly do would I call this style? Even the brewery claims it’s a Russian Imperial, but I don’t get any sense of roasted, unmalted, barley. The usual, at least slight, astringent notes are absent and, to be honest, it’s just too complex even for Imperial Stout. I think they went so far with this in the “smooth” category they went beyond Imperial Stout. Perhaps a bit more of a spin off of Baltic Porter, sans lager yeast?

Whatever it really is, it’s delicious.