Say, you have a 16oz can of La Suerte from Eagle Rock Brewery. It is a big 14% beer. You should share it. And this little gadget, which I hope can be found online to buy, can help you pour evenly.
Quite the creative idea from Grain Belt Beer.
Straight from the Barrel
No scientist am I and when I see phrases like “restrictor disc” and “N2 pressure to a heat exhanger” or going even further to “inline liquid & gas infuser”. I do not think of craft beer. Seems more like mechanic lingo to me.
But it is part of the mechanical engineering for the draft system called AeriAle which is a byproduct of a team-up between Dogfish Head Brewery and AC Beverage.
The end goal is to drink barrel-aged beer directly from the barrel at the proper temperature and pressure levels.
I am not going to tell you that I understand the process. For that I would need an extra brain and a side by side comparison of the same beer from different taps but I do applaud the creativity and nitro dispense in the US could use a boost.
Maybe this is it. And if an East Coast Eataly restaurant has one, maybe the new Eataly in Century City might too.
On your Tap
TV Tap. ‘Cause we need more screens in our lives. Take a regular tap handle and add a screen to it for photos or brief videos.
I am both surprised that is has taken so long for this to happen considering frames have been rotating photo slideshows for years. But I also sense that Anonymous could hack the hell out of it and make a real hash of your carefully crafted message.
My other worry is that most tap handles aren’t all that close to the consumer and those that will get the brunt of the video will be the bartenders. You would probably see many beer drinkers leaning over the bar to see what the image is as well.
It might work better as decoration outside the tap area. As a changeable board of what’s on tap.
On Tap – shirts
It seems that every year after Christmas, I hear about some cool idea that would have been good as a gift.
This year’s winner is Shirts on Tap.
It is one of the latest wave of monthly boxes. You get a custom brewery shirt, a coupon for beer from that brewery and a sticker. Right now they have the “Big 3” of cities Portland, Denver and San Diego but hopefully they will roll over to Los Angeles. We have enough breweries to do 4 years worth of shirts without any repeats.
The Hops are Mad
For a company called Mad Hops, it is duly noted that of the three flavors that I was sent only one is associated with hops. And then only in pale version. No IPA to be found.
But I truly wanted to see if Mad Hops had cracked the code. I believe in science.
I used Foster’s Premium Ale for a base because I couldn’t bring myself to buy Bud or Coors. It is crisp and simple and light. A good base to squirt flavors into. I then proceeded to add each from my group of three to my taster flight.
I started with the Pale Ale which did not really taste of hops. The drop did add some fullness to the brew but it was cloying. Not sweet but kind of chemically with a weird not real citrus taste. If I had tasted this blind, I would have told you that the beer was off somehow. And if you squirt too much, that last sip, all you get is the added flavor. That leads me to…..
You really need to measure the dosage and you have to stir them in though which sort of goes against the grain of the “on the sly” super-easy doctoring of a plain beer.
The cherry wheat again has a chemical component to it but my overriding taste is 7-11 Slurpee. Neither of which is what I want from a beer. There is also a slight manure tinge to it. Yeah, I said it.
Moving on to the Irish Porter, the smell is a lot better and the coloring is right once stirred. But that flavor is no where near what I call Irish Porter. It is much more coffee milkshake. Mocha light. Still pretty sickly sweet though. I tried the Irish Porter in a fresh glass with a smaller squirt but that didn’t show a marked improvement.
Of the four beers, I would easily take the regular Foster’s. And if someone at a party was just serving Budweiser, well, I would honestly tell them that I drink craft beer and reach for a water. It almost feels more beer snobby to attempt to surreptitiously add Mad Hops to a beer than to be honest.
Oak in a Bottle
Most of us don’t have either the contacts or the space to have a barrel at home and the amount of beer to fill it. Unless you are a home brewer, of course.
Now, with the aptly and simply named Oak Bottle made from ‘Merican White Oak, you can perform ale experiments and without waiting for years. The smaller bomber-esque vessel with the slim shape “accelerates the traditional oak aging process … in a matter of hours not years.”
Right now there is only the one version. No bourbon-barrel or extra charred or anything. But for $79 bucks it is a good entry level for testing out what Oak does to different beers.
Review – Beer Soap from Swag Brewery
If I wasn’t a beer blogger, I just might write about soap. There are parallels to make it less weird than it sounds at first.
Both can be expensive and twee. Both can be artisanal or mass produced. Both can have wonderful aroma.
So when the fine folks at Swag Brewery (who also sell candles and other fun beer related gifts) offered to send me three beer soaps, I jumped at the chance to test out a real shower beer.
Shortly thereafter, I received a box with Breakfast Stout, Tropical Lager and Hard Cider soaps in the shape of a hockey puck. My brother-in-law has brewed both beer and cider so, immediately, I knew that I would be sending the Cider accented soap to him. My beer buddy Richard had just returned from Hawaii, so another obvious gifting opportunity was right there.
That left me with the preferred Breakfast Stout soap to scrub with. Truth be told, I did smell the soap and I was not transported to the floor of a brewery. The pitch black soap smelled very manly. Leather and a bit of chocolate and vanilla. I particularly liked the little abrasive touch that the texture gave.
These are fun and useful gifts that show that a person is thinking beyond your next beer.
Later, I will try these hot sauces. Will my tender palate survive Roasted Chipotle?
A Use for Bottlecaps
This looks like a fun way to chuck your used bottle caps into the trash or into the eye of someone who cancelled out your vote yesterday.
If you need a new bottle opener, click HERE.
Watch AND Drink (at the same time)
Is it hard for you to binge watch Luke Cage while sipping on a hazy NE IPA? Well, thanks to what I call “As Seen on TV” gifts, you can have your haze and not miss one single second of riveting debate coverage or Real Housewives of Walla Walla, Washington.
The TV Beer Mug has a “patented” sloped edge which probably doesn’t help the aromatics but certainly helps your longer range vision.
Multi-taskers everywhere will now be able to spit take even more.
A Temporary Measure
Those swag temporay tattoos that you pick up at beer festivals or brewery taprooms might have an additional use in the future if scientists at UC San Diego can make their new technology affordable enough for single use.
The research is part of developing a more reliable and quick measurement of blood alcohol levels. Their temporary tattoo includes microscopic sensors that are coated with a substance that stimulates sweating. Once the full cycle is run, the results are sent wirelessly to a smart phone.
You can read more about the “tattoo” HERE and I certainly would volunteer to test drive it, pun intended, because I would really like to get quantifiable data on when I am over the limit and when I am not.