Category: Monthly Features

Posted on

A Podcast & A Beer – The Curious History of Your Home

You reach into a drawer and pull a fork out.  Common place.  No big deal.  But did you know that the Catholic Church at one point banned the use of them?  Obviously fork use leads to sin.  That is just one fact from The Curious History of Your Home hosted by domestic historian Ruth Goodman.

Screenshot

This is just a cool and fast paced jaunt through history via things in your home like the dishwasher or your cat and it is super fun and weird to see the evolution of wallpaper or coffee. Or specific to this blog, the May 27th episode about beer!

To pair with this podcast, you can go one of a couple routes.  You could go historical beers.  Find a Scotch Ale or a Witbier.  Or you could go further down the rabbit hole and pair a beer to each specific episode.  Gardening could you lead to a beer with say lavender or strawberry or other small garden items.

Posted on

Sports & A Beer – NIL

Name, image and likeness.  To universities and coaches, it is a bit of a curse word.  To the NCAA as a whole?  A lot more swear words.  But how will college sports really be changed by this?  Probably won’t know until a few years and college classes have gone through but I have a guess and it involves a power switch.

That switch was from coach to player.  It is on full display here in Los Angeles with LeBron James and Anthony Davis as much in charge of head coach as the front office.  It is seen in the transfer portal where athletes head out of town if they don’t play or get to play in the style they want.

This will expand, in my opinion, to those college athletes who will find that they have levers of power to pull and will start to pull them.  Who will stand in the way of a 19 year old combo guard who is making local commercials really well and whose draft stock is rising?

Not the college who has a marquee name to use as a draw. Not a coach who is on the hot seat. Not a NCAA administrator who needs to keep both happy.  Of course keeping the worker down is endemic in the US so all will keep trying to push the athlete down but they might soon find that they cannot.

Pivoting to beer, the closest analog to a NIL is IP and how breweries skirt lawsuits with beer names and labels.  Who will gain the upper hand there?  So go find a beer with a movie reference or a product reference on it.  How does name and likeness translate in the realm of beer labels?

Posted on

A Book & A Beer – The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

This one is a recommendation from my Mom and when I went to check it out from the Glendale library, I was a bit startled by how many pages it was.  Around 575.  But there are short books that are slogs and doorstops that breeze by and The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles glides by like a Studebaker on the highway.

It tells the tale of Emmet and Billy Watson.  Two brothers in the middle of the country going on a trip to find their mom who left them many years previously.  Other characters come in and out like the Duchess and Wooly, Sally and 

This was a pleasant enough book but all the characters seemed very soap opera thin. You had the noble leader, the stalwart gal, the wise younger brother, the wild card and the dim but lovable character. The crazy thing that I though of was the book reminded me of the later Back to the Future movies where everything got very broad and you could see where a scene was going to go from miles away. So if a safe needed to be cracked you knew the wild card would fly off the handle, and the preternaturally smart kid would figure out the combination.

But the end of the book threw me for a loop. I did not see that level of casual disregard to happen.

Anyway for beer the obvious way to go would be to Google the Lincoln Highway route and see which breweries are close that route and have those ready. I would add that finding some Bay Area beers would be a good choice too since the end destination is San Francisco. Maybe a Pliny the Elder would do for the wise kid.

Posted on

Sports & A Beer – Drafting a QB1

The NFL draft and all its many rounds and players is done and now we wait for the season to start and to see which of the plethora of Quarterbacks taken in the Top 10 alone will fare.  Which will play and show promise, which will hold the clipboard (or is it iPad now?) and which will pull a Zach Wilson and flame out real hard and get called out by his owner.

Bear in mind that the offensive coordinator and the receiving corps are integral to any QBs success and some of these passers will not get either and will be harder to grade because of it.  Some will not be able to scale up to the speed of the NFL. And despite more and more mental and physical tests and all sorts of AI and computer modeling, no one is any closer to predicting success.

But I will go out on a limb and give a few guesses as to who will make a mark and who might have trouble….

Good Spots

Caleb Williams the No. 1 pick is walking into a team with two big wide receiver additions in Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze to go with DJ Moore and lowered expectations from past QBs make this a great spot to to land.

J.J. McCarthy in Minnesota also inherits a strong receiving and tight end corp and will not need to put the team on his back. Just needs to get that pigskin to the playmakers.

Drake Maye in New England is following some really mediocre quarterbacks so has a really low bar to clear for success and since the Patriots have a new coach and are clearly rebuilding this can be a learning year.

Bad Spots

Michael Penix in Atlanta. Why the Falcons selected any QB after backing up a Brinks truck for Kirk Cousins is way beyond me. Then the GM says that Penix will be groomed to take over wheb Cousins contract is done in FIVE YEARS.

Jayden Daniels is the new Commanders QB and I don’t know which direction the entire team is going so I fear Daniels will be running for his life.

For beer, see if you can find a brewery from each of those five cities or you can just go get Kansas City beer since Patrick Mahomes is the ne plus ultra of quarterbacks.

Posted on

A Podcast & A Beer – Into the Tardis

The 15th Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, made a memorable entry and then followed up with goblins at Christmas and is set for his first full season of adventures starting this month.  But if you need more Doctor Who, the place to go for a prolific amount of content is Big Finish which produces audio stories of all the Doctors.  Want more Paul McGann than just one TV movie and cameos?  They have some. Looking for more Christopher Eccleston?  They have it.

Up until now, you had to buy it but there is now a podcast version which will give you a taste of the danger and whimsey just minus the visual effects.  Into the Tardis is hosted by Colin Baker and it also includes little snippets of behind the scenes info.

For an ale accompaniment, I would suggest the easy route if finding some British beers either from Britain like Samuel Smith’s for instance or if you can find that rare American made mild or bitter, go for that. If you wanted to dig deeper, try to get some Scottish beer (just not Brewdog) to honor the heritage and accent of past Doctors and the current one. More American would be Single Hill’s Partner in Time IPA.

Or if you into that sort of thing, there are quite a few blue hued beers. Great Notion is one purveyor of non beer colored beers.

Posted on

The Firkin for April 2024

Whenever economic figures for craft beer are powerpointed and then later dissected, it always seems to be in a tone of grimness.

Maybe people thought the high flying double digit days were never going to cool or that another alcoholic beverage would ever possibly have its time in the sun.

But that somber news story is exactly that, a story, one of many. And the side of the story that I wish would be focused on more is that of the sheer amount of breweries in the United States now.

The number is close to 10K. And that is amazing. Who would have thought back on 2000 or 2010 that there would be that many. Remember that back in the 80’s that there were barely any and the regional players were on life support. Even if this is the plateau, that is such a turn around.

Yes, closures may soon outpace openings but even so 10K! I have one taproom that I can walk to and three breweries that are super short drives to.

It may not be confetti in the air but this is still a good time for craft beer fans.

Posted on

A Book & A Beer – The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

If you have the actual Specter of Death in your book, you better make the most of the character and Elizabeth Gonzalez James does in the time sprawling The Bullet Swallower.

There are two tracks in this book, one set in 1895 with Antonio Sonoro a restless bandido and the swallower of a bullet off to rob a train and then in 1964 with descendant Jaime Sonoro, a singing cowboy. And of course, death is along for the ride as well.

I have a hard time deciding if one half was better to me than the other. 1895 was very action-y but Antonio was not a super likable character to me as much as the people he encountered. Whereas 1964 was a slower pace but I truly liked the inquisitiveness of Jaime.

For beer pairing, I would suggest finding a brewery where past brewers have left to start their own breweries and having one from old and new. Or if you know of a brewer that has brewed at multiple stops, find beers from each stop. Then you can track changes and see which you prefer.

Posted on

A Podcast & A Beer – A Crispr Bite

Cultural anthropologist Dr. Lauren Crossland-Marr hosts the five-episode spanning podcast A CRISPR Bite. It takes a look at gene editing with a critical eye but also with hope too.

I like me a limited podcast series where a topic can be presented and a deeper dive can be made and this cleverly titled food podcast does just that as it clears up the difference between GMOs and gene editing as well as discussing the long term implications of changing, say, tomatoes to have more of a certain vitamin. The episode about creating cows with no horns was particularly thought provoking.

Since this topic is in the agricultural weeds, I have three drinking suggestions for you. First is cider, second is mead and then third, a little harder to find, a single malt or hop (SMASH) beer. Anything that has an easy link to nature.

Posted on

The Firkin for March 2024

Maybe it should be changed to seller beware.  Cigar City Brewing in Florida famous for Jai Alai IPA and Florida Man beer has had brewing shifted out of state to Brevard, North Carolina.  With a lamentable loss of jobs as Monster Brewing Company shifts production.

As much as I understand the desire to flee that state, this shows yet again that no amount of assurances before an owner signs on the dotted line can be expected.  Owners have to foresee that new owners will do what they want and you have to be ready to either buy back or walk away, both at a moments notice.

It is 2024 and corporations keep telling us they don’t give two shits by raising insurance rates, selling our data or shrinking packaging to barely anything so we simply cannot be surprised when a corporation chucks away people and brewing history.

My suggestion for brewery owners about to sell is to lawyer yourself a way to retaining ownership of the brand name if certain conditions occur such as moving brewing or changing mission statements.

Posted on

Best Beers of March 2024

Time to get into the time machine and tab the top beers of March before we head into the April drinking session.

Honorable Mentions go to Long Beach Beer Lab for their Brewte (Brut) IPA, good to see this sub-style pop up on tap and this was a nice executed crisp, dry and pear version. Next to mention is the pilsner High 10 from Highland Park Brewery. The menu board had re-brews of past years and there were many High 10s to choose from but I really liked the West Coast Pilsner. I also quite liked the latest Short-Lived IPA from MadeWest brewed with Firestone Walker. Crisp and biting with nice fruit notes.

The March winners was the strawberry whipped Infinite Wishes from Smog City Brewing. Filled with berry notes and a slight touch of vanilla, it was luxury when paired with a bourbon barrel imperial stout.