Author: Stephen Body

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GrowlerWerks: The PouroMancer at Home

What I’m setting out to write here is a big damned subject, with tangents and tributaries and tentacles. This could, very easily, go on for the same length as a novelette. And I – not exactly someone who is known for brevity – has to try to keep it some length that you can read without taking a nap in the middle.

Wish me luck…

About five years ago, I started to get inquiries – a lot of inquiries! – from folks who were intrigued/confused by the new and booming subject of steel thermal growlers. There were not many of them available, at the time, and I finally got enough emails, asking for my recommendation, that I began to read up on them. Curiously, about that same moment, makers of these started sending queries, asking if I would be willing to try theirs and maybe review it. The coincidence was hard to ignore, so I started replying and saying yes. Three arrived right away. The first of them was just a flat-out Fail: hard to close, harder to open, imperfect seal, didn’t keep beer effervescent for more than a day, broke easily. The third was better but still tricky to use and dented if you looked at it. Fail, Part Deux.

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Beer, Wine, & Spirits: The Dominance of The Middle Class

Observation…

Recently, when students walked out and protested, I’ve been seeing a lot of memes and commentary comparing them to sheep and claiming they are simply being encouraged by teachers or parents. Anyone even remotely familiar with teens knows if parents or teens encourage often teens reactions are the opposite.

Did some follow a trend, or the crowd? Yup. What’s new there, huh?

I studied to be a teacher and was a sub for a while so I have mixed feelings here. No teacher should ever encourage any student to skip school, no matter what the cause. If I were principal, yes, I would give them ISS or detention, but not because they expressed their opinion. It’s a matter of consistency. However if it was an attitude problem: a student walking out out of disrespect, the penalty would be more severe.

There’s a balance here: respecting and encouraging them to have opinions, think through opinions which is why in classroom discussions are important.

I think those who simply want to let it go are wrong, but those who think ALL these students are mindless have forgotten the nature of teens. Teens don’t think through as well as they should sometimes, but thinking and expressing are the best avenue to adulthood. So just calling them names and insulting their intelligence is no more than demanding they DON’T think.

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Fort George Brewing of Astoria, Oregon: Relentless

This year, on that mid-February weekend that’s been, well, illuminated for the past four years, I just could…not…do it.

I attend ONE beer festival, in the course of each year. One. Carefully selected, pushing all my buttons, done better than any other beer event – of any size and any type – that I ever attended, back when I was doing such things. And something which fills a cranky old hillbilly like me with almost agitated excitement and anticipation. And I had to say, “Pass“.

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Weihenstephaner: How to Pronounce It and Why You REALLY Want to Drink It

Okay…that’s how you say it. No, as is the case with a lot of Germanic names, it refuses to roll off most American tongues. It took my wife almost six months, back when we ran our wine shop, to learn to even remember the word “Gewürztraminer”, and then maybe another eight months to learn to say it. She did, finally, but I think she may actually have sprained her tongue twice. (FYI: “Guh-VERTS-truh-meener”)

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Deschutes “The Abyss”: Santa Intervenes…I Hope

I know I haven’t written to you in a few years…well, okay, quite a few years. Oh, alright, the last time was during the Eisenhower administration. Whatever. The point is, I apologize.

It wasn’t because I forgot you or that I ever doubted. When I was lying in bed, my daughter’s head resting on my arm, trying to get her to go to sleep because, “Hey, Santa won’t come if you’re awake!”, I wasn’t thinking that it was going to be me drinking up that God-awful Kroger store-brand egg nog. I was telling her what was in my heart. And, besides, I knew my wife would suck it up and drink the egg nog, if I bitched long enough. And cut it 50/50 with brandy.

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Crux “Tough Love” 2017 [Banished] Edition: The Ultimate Refutation of the Asshole Stout

We’ve all seen this before:

American-style Imperial Stout, 30-weight, insane final gravity, totally opaque in the glass, laced with additives, barrel-aged, and, these days, aggressively hopped.

There was an old car joke, from my high school days: “Why do you call a Pontiac GTO an ‘asshole’? Because everybody has one. ”

Same deal here. Everybody has one of these wood-aged assholes and, many times, they really don’t taste much different from their racy analog. When you get hold of a great one, you know it, instantly…I do, anyway.

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Cooking with Beer: Aged Gouda and Doppelbock Fondue

Not long ago I went on one of the more stellar culinary journeys of my life. Mortadella and bowls of tagliatelle di ragù in Bologna. Mounds of culatello and Parmigiano Reggiano in Parma. Vitello tonnato and carne cruda all’Albese in Alba. Every kind of snail dish imaginable in Cherasco, home of the Cherasco Worldwide Institute of Snail Breeding. (Bet you didn’t know there was one).

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Snoqualmie Falls Brewing “Bunghole”: The Greatest Brown You Never Heard Of

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Good Lord, the sad Brown Ale…for years, now, I’ve tasted Browns that seemed to be made as an afterthought; something the brewery decided to do mostly because they had run through the entire British Ale canon and said, “Oops, we forgot to make a Brown!” The Brown Ale, that delightful little roadside attraction between the Pale and ESB and Porter/Stout Territory, used to be something that was made with as much care as any IPA or Stout or Sour. Breweries took pride in their Browns. Rogue’s “Hazelnut Brown”, Lost Coast’s “Downtown Brown”, Big Sky “Moose Drool”, Bell’s “Best Brown”, Duck Rabbit Brown Ale, even Dogfish’s flamboyant “Palo Santo Marron”, all made a splash when they were introduced and those – along with the best of the lot, Cigar City’s epic “Maduro” core ale and its daring variations – should have pointed the way for a logical continuation of what was shaping up as a lasting evolution of the style, but then…Nothing Happened.

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Deschutes “Jubelale”: An Autumn Revelry, Bitches

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I’ve been drinking Jubelale ever since the second edition of it was released, back in the vacuous 1990s, and it was then and remains still the beer that I would choose about 99 times out of 100 when I just want to enjoy the sensual pleasure of consuming a perfect beer idea, perfectly made. And that one time out of that 100? That’s usually a time when I can’t get Jubelale because, defying all logic and reason, Deschutes Brewing sniffily insists on not making Jubelale year-round. (the lazy bastards) I’ve amassed cases of Jubel and nursed them along until summer, many times; even into September, in 2010. Yeah, yeah, HopHead fanatics will cringe at that and whimper than my hops had receded(!), but I Do Not Care. 97% of perfection is closer than anybody else is coming.

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Resuming The Pour Fool: An Aggravated RANT

Just yesterday, I had a very unpleasant back ‘n’ forth with a small brewery (which shall, of course, remain nameless) in the Western part of the US. I had planned to visit the brewery next week and then saw a post from them on Facebook.

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