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Because he likes to try new stuff he's always asking what style we want him to make.
I keep saying "scotch ale!"
Since I demanded it, he insisted I come "help".
I didn't do much helping, mostly just watching and kibbutzing.
I learned a bit about brewing too.
A few years ago, Mr Fleetwood bought me a drinking horn.
It's cool as fuck, but unhandy.
That's because you can't set your drink down.
He apologized for the place he got them from for being out of stock on the stands.
I finally remembered to get a stand!
Awesome!
Kinda reminds me of Gerb...
Harvey found a vid where someone, effortlessly, opens a beer with a butter knife.
They tap the neck twice, then the body twice then sweep off the cap.
Sensing bullshit, we gave it the ol' college try.
The taps do nothing.
Any motion that brushes the cap will just knock the bottle over.
HOWEVER!
I remembered how to open champagne bottle with a saber and the same technique works with a beer and a butter knife.
It is also, like a saber with champagne, impervious to being filmed.
I opened three bottles of champagne with a saber at a wedding, with a wedding photographer trying to capture it, and he didn't manage to catch the moment even once!
The same thing happened with Harvey trying to video it. As soon as she hit stop, with me flailing away, I hit the sweet spot and off the top of the bottle flew!
With the death of Schlitz I am thinking of other brands that have disappeared.
I remember my dad being a fan of Olympia.
Schmidt (imported from St Paul!) was popular among the bikers when we lived in the Twin Cities.
What other beer brands do you remember?
The tagline was, "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer."
Pabst has decided to stop brewing Schlitz, bringing a 177 year old brand name to an end.
This is kind of a bummer for me, it was one of my favorite American style beers, you just never saw it in the stores down here in Florida and I once found some in Iowa on a visit.
Amusingly, based on the tag line, I kept the last bottle from that Iowa visit, so I'd never run out of beer. It's, at least, 8-years old. I'm afraid to open the bottle now.
Prior to getting the new tires, The Beast was getting 16.5 mpg in town, on average.
This week's mileage is running right about 19 mpg.
I can't help but think that's because tires that are actually ROUND resist rolling less than tires that are ovoid.
I don't think I'm driving any differently.
Sort of related:
I went on a quest to find some of the Grillo's and Pabst Pickle beer.
The web site said in stock half an hour from here, so I fired up The Beast and headed out.
It was a perfect drive. Almost no traffic, hit all the lights green, Sirius was playing good music, perfect temperature to run with the windows down and cruise...
Got cheap beer from one brewery and free beer from another.
Didn't have to use my AK.
Gotta admit: it's a good Friday.
Dissent Brewing in St Pete is closing.
They did some serious pandering for Black Lives Matter.
Their beer was decent, but I can get beer that's just as good without a lecture about how guilty I should feel for being Caucasian.
Yet another business that failed to recognize who was spending the money to keep the doors open.
The history of beer!
I'll drink to that!
Beer is civilization and a polity that claims to be a civilization without beer is savages aping the forms of civilization.
A friend of mine is trying some home brewing.
He said he was writing down recipes and I decided to be facetious and quote the ingredients from the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot of 1516.
Water
Barley
Hops
You need yeast too, but I guess Zie Bavarians assumed it would happen on its own, brett style beers use whatever yeast is flying around the kettle after all.
To make sure I got that list right I looked up the law and I discovered that the 1516 law had less to do with the purity of the beer and a lot more to do with keeping brewers from competing with bakers for grain for bread and thus to keep the price of bread down to something the normal folk could afford.
I didn't know that!
A local brewery closed its doors tonight.
I was there for the soft-opening and the grand opening.
I was there Sunday for the going away party and tonight for the grand closing.
I did not frequent it as much of late as I had when they first opened.
There's a different brewery I prefer is all.
But they aren't going out of business. They're moving up the road and going from being a small business to a medium business and going from renting to owning their building.
Big steps.
I'll prolly swing in for the grand opening and keep going to the place I like better...
My favorite, local, brewery is coming back from the dead tomorrow!
I am thrilled!
The reason it died is a sordid story, and it's not my story to tell.
But one dissolved partnership, one new incorporation, new lease, several new licenses under the slightly different company name and et viola!
Liquid Garage Brewing Company is open!
Huzzah!
A small, local brewer, just up and died on us today.
Ed Schultz of Krazy Eddie's Garage will be sorely missed.
He reminded me a lot of my bro, Ray.
I cannot claim to have been his friend, but his departure is affecting people who are my friends.
It is a sad day.
It's been mentioned in a couple of articles that, now defunct, Anchor Steam Brewing unionized in 2019.
They just closed the doors, putting 61 people out of work.
A lot of articles are blaming a rebranding in 2021, but I wonder.
There's a pattern with small shops owned by larger corporations, Sapporo in this case, going out of business shortly after unionizing.
The press, being pro-union, does not investigate this pattern.
Founded 1896
Sold to Sapporo 2017
Unionized 2019
Rebrand 2021
DEAD 2023
I posit that Sapporo would not have bought a failing brand.
I also posit that nobody does a rebrand on a healthy brand.
One of the benefits of living near Tampa is the abundance of breweries.
Many of them put their stuff in cans for taking home.
Tonight was a run to Cigar City.
A pleasant trip with the roads nearly devoid of traffic, so I set the cruise, cranked the tunes and relaxed!
Happy day!
There's a Tim Pool video where he says that Yuengling beer has sponsored a drag show for kids in a deleted Tweet.
So far he's the only source of this information.
Yuengling is opening a restaurant here in Tampa and I expressed, on Facebook, that I wouldn't get too excited until I knew if they'd really sponsored a kids drag show, or not.
I got replied to that I could stay in my mom's basement and would be safe there.
Which brings up, for me, again: Why is it so fucking important that children be at drag shows?
Why is it paramount that anyone who questions the wisdom of doing so be attacked?
The responses don't make one naturally come to the conclusion that it's innocent fun, but something nefarious.
Innocent fun doesn't need that kind of defense.
Yet...
So, I await more information from Yuengling and I'll just keep ignoring the groomers.
I'd remind Yuengling that, just like Bud Light, there's LOTS of other beers that don't do anything sus with kids.
Stuttgart has a brewery named Hofbräu.
This is not to be confused by the more common Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in München.
The local pico-brewery, Liquid Garage, makes a Czech pilsner named "Czech, 1, 2, 3," which tickles my taste buds the same way as the unobtanium in the USA Stuttgarter Hofbräu.
It could be time playing tricks on me, it has been 33 years, but this is nice.
Despite buy-one-get-one deals, the Anheuser-Busch products are sitting on the shelves at my local Winn-Dixie.
Other brands, especially the local craft beers, are severely depleted.
And I remember hearing that boycotts would never work...
