Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Time to look back at the first six months of the drinking year and tease out sone fun statistics about what I have been drinking.
16 breweries were brand new to me.
I still drank more West Coast IPA’s than Hazies 69 to 43
Smog City was the most drunk from brewery with 19 followed closely by Firestone Walker with 17
Firestone Walker leads with best beers of the week with 3. Lagunitas and Radiant each have 2.
Of 327 total beers – 156 were IPA, 24 Pilsner/Lager, 23 Barrel-Aged and 11 Sour
I have been on a classics kick of late. Read some Dickens, Wells and Stevenson and now onto Jules Verne and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. This is going to be a weird admission but I always thought leagues meant depth, when in fact it means length of the voyage.
This book really is light on action and character development and is pretty much just straight up geography and descriptions of underwater life. The lead character of M. Arronax is just about as milquetoast as they come and Captain Nemo just up and disappears for stretches of time. I did like how Verne described the functionality of the boat which was surprisingly close to what a submarine now does (with some exceptions of course). But overall, this screams movie adaptation where the sights could be fully displayed and actors creating more dimensional characters.
Oyster stout would be one choice or a kelp beer if you want to be truly obvious but I would suggest finding beers from around the world and matching that part of the Nautilus voyage with a beer from nearby.
Series Three of Gangster Capitalism has arrived and it is all Falwell all the time. And a boatload of sex.
After tackling the fun topic of the NRA financial situation last time out, now they are following Jerry Falwell Jr. and his escapades and dirty with a capital D deeds at Liberty University. This series starts off with a pool boy in Florida and doesn’t let up after that.
Anchor Brewing Liberty Ale would be a good start or any summer ale that you would normally choose for a by the pool or at the beach day but instead let’s find beers from a women owned/brewed business. Because after hearing about how women are thought of and treated, you will really want to move the needle in the opposite direction.
Thanks to City Beer Store of San Francisco, I snared a couple beers from Ruse Brewing in Portland.
Static Equation – pours a hazy yellow color. label claims apricot, grapefruit and dankness from the Citra-Simcoe-Mosaic hop trio. I get a dank Meyer lemon taste with a pillowy feel to it. Bit of a hazy burn at the back of the palate.
Ghost Coast – clear and yellow in color. has a good strong lemony bitterness. lot of malt chewiness here as well. gettin a bit of grassy character as well.
Thought Frequency with Great Notion – lightly hazed yellow color. quite spicy and herbal driven. light in texture. pine aroma to me. a bit of a toasted malt character here that is different from most hazies and not what I expected from a Great Notion collab.
Here is your next recommendation for helping women during this reckoning on abuse in the craft beer world.
Acknowledge it.
Acknowledge that it has happened, is happening and will happen again. This is an ingrained problem but to many it is either invisible or not “that bad”. You don’t have to throw out innocent until proven guilty but you DO have to allow the case INTO court.
So whatever you can do to acknowledge privately and publicly needs to become second nature. If your favorite bar is considered unsafe by good friends, you would believe them, right? It shouldn’t matter if these good friends are all big burly dudes or petite women.
Once we men acknowledge the problem, we can ALL then tackle the problem. We can’t spend all our time stuck at the beginning of the process, we need to move forward.
During the downtime between Doctor Who seasons, there has been a whole Time Lord Victorious series encompassing books, audio, video games and even escape rooms. I recently read my second book from this saga, All Flesh is Grass and will try to review it as a standalone book as well as part of a larger story.
I really like the villain of the piece, the Kotturuh. Partially because they are not typical. Not to the level of, say, The Silence or The Weeping Angels but certainly more layered and actually dangerous than many one show creatures.
I did also like the interplay between Doctors 8 and 9 and I wish the book had been just them so that more depth and detail between that pair could be explored. I am a big Tennant fan but I feel his arc is a familiar one. Played out effectively already in The Waters of Mars. His function in the narrative could have been played by a sub big bad on my opinion.
I do like this story and maybe parts of it will come up with the current Doctor.
Now I could pair this with some Tardis blue slushie smoothie beer but instead I suggest getting all three colors of Chimay beer to accompany this book to match the three Doctors.
I can just picture this pitch meeting. Some marketing and swag VP cracks a joke about shoes being the first iteration of can coozy. A higher up laughs and then barks for a lackey to call his counterpart over at New Balance and thus….
A) It looks like something you would put on a horse for a Disney kids movie
B) I know Lite MUST be drunk cold so that you can freeze your taste buds but do I want the aroma of shoe leather?
Verdict – So not needed
For those who have not heard My Dad Wrote a Porno. Well, you have five seasons to catch up on because book six just dropped. And the trio behind the podcast teamed up with Alphabet Brewing Company on a trio of beers befitting the most porny podcast out there .
Now, the UK brewery isn’t shipping to America but you can substitute by finding a beer in your area made with chardonnay grapes, pomegranates or aged in gin barrels to drink along with the sexy adventures.
Generally, I am not a fan of IP appropriation but in this case, Long Beach Beer Lab has done a great job melding their style and signature animal to great Bond affect. Reminds me more of Pink Panther in that way.
This shout out is for the beers themselves over the labels Anyone that uses Sorrel in a beer and then turns around and does a coffee Schwarzbier is to be commended. Thanks Guinness – Open Gate.
Two shots down and the world is opening up. Took more time to get here than I thought last year but plans for trips are already being made and they will probably include some beer. Now let’s take a trip into what is coming up on the blog.
~ e-visits to (3) breweries NBA Playoff cities.
~ special featured reviews of beers from Eureka Brewing
~Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events (not as far in the future now, events)
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ A Book & A Beer reads Time Lord Victorious – All Flesh is Grass
~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to My Dad Wrote a Porno
~ Great Beer names and Best Beers of the Month
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.