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.
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.
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.
It is easy to get caught up in March Madness. The sheer amount of games, the buzzer beaters and the Cinderella teams, Stetson Hatters anyone. Also the fun of busted brackets, yes fun, no one wins so it is truly a game to play.
The only thing going against March Madness is that a good chunk of games each passing year are played in April. But compared to the shitshow that is the college football behemoth and their three super conferences, college basketball is as pristine as the driven snow.
And making this an even more interesting year is that there is no real consensus best player except for Caitlin Clark. And as much as the boy’s bracket will be tough, the Women’s bracket will feature Clark and the Hawkeyes of Iowa, defending champs LSU and new powerhouse South Carolina. That Final Four will be great games.
There are two ways you can pair craft beer with games. One is to find a brewery that corresponds with each of the four regions and when you watch a game from that region crack one open from that part of the country. You could also select beers based on where games are played.
Another route would be to pick beers from the cities / states where the #1 seeds hail from or if you are here for the upsets, find the #16 seeds instead.
I have been reading a lot of Percival Everett lately. Dr. No, Erasure, So Much Blue, his latest James. But today it is The Trees.
The trees are referencing hangings. Lynching of black men. Right away there is a heaviness and sadness and anger surrounding this tale. Ostensibly, it is a murder mystery set in Money, Mississippi but Everett is extremely skilled in both humor and sarcasm which you can see by the names chosen for various characters (Junior Junior / Red Jetty) and also by the slapstick plot point and buddy cop banter throughout.
When I hear that a book is funny, most of the time, that is an exaggeration to me. But this book is funny, sad and violent and has a history lesson too. I read one synopsis that had Tarantino films as a comp. I agree with that.
One passage (of many) that struck a chord is the following between the two detectives on the case:
Ed said. “Here we are. The Lorraine Motel. There on that corner of that balcony. I was ten. That’s why I’m a cop.”
“It’s a museum now,” Jim said.
“And it shouldn’t be,” Ed said.
“Why not?” Quip asked.
“It’s just a motel. That’s what it is. That’s all it is,” Ed said. “People should rent out that very room and sleep in that very bed and step through that very door and stand on that balcony and realize what happened there. People should know, understand that not all Thursdays are the same.”
excerpt from The Trees
This is a novel that will stick with you and keep you thinking.
For beer, keep your thinking cap on. Get to researching minority owned breweries and buy their most complicated beers. The ones with the most added ingredients. The aged beers. The beers that are decocted. The beers with history about them.
Staying local for March and also canvassing a wide array of styles so that your palate does not get stuck. And yes, I do not approve of green beer and the first selection is a green hued beer, but, in my defense, it is also a sour. So that means less of a points deduction.
Far FieldMade With Luck Sour – 4.1% – “As luck would have it, your favorite clover-green sour ale returns to our shelves and draft lines just ahead of St. Patrick’s Day.”
Creature ComfortsSpring Belgian-Style White Ale – 5.1% – “We’ve got Spring Fever. Our fresh take on the classic Belgian-Style White Ale is brewed with orange peel, coriander, and local wheat from Day Spring Farms.”
Enegren BrewingDoppel Valkyrie – 8.2% – “a double version of our beloved flagship altbier, Valkyrie and a throwback to some of our first anniversary beers. This strong, dark ale has rich flavors of dark fruits with hints of dark chocolate and rum, balanced with just a touch of Mt. Hood and Herkules hops.
This month we listen to stories of Mezcal at Heritage Mezcal with host Chava Peribán.
It is a unique spirits podcast in that the coverage is wide ranging and not just mezcal. Rum and coffee are talked about but so is overall happiness and logistics and just the general vibe around mezcal.
Peribán has a good solid agave knowledge and is very enthusiastic to the point of partially getting in the way of some interviews but in a charming way. He even sometimes asks questions and says you don’t have to answer.
To pair with this podcast, I would be as eclectic and bubbly in the beer selections. Have a sparkly pilsner and then a rum barrel-aged beer or pick up a Mexican craft beer or a cocktail beer. Anything goes.
The Maryland outpost of Guinness has had some drinks that made me want to be on the East Coast and one such brew is Luck of the Dragon, brewed for Lunar New Year. It is a “5.0% ABV ale is infused with dragon fruit powder and orange purée, giving it this stunning fuchsia color.”
If that wasn’t reason enough, sales of the lucky beer goes “to support the extraordinary artists at Baltimore’s Asian Pasifika Arts Collective, a nonprofit organization dedicated to using art to promote the representation of Asian Americans in everyday life and build connections across communities.”
Springtime in SoCal as we move into what I jokingly call “early summer”. Hoping to find some bock beers, either strong or dopple would be nice plus the following features this month….
~ e-visits to (3) breweries from the newer cities in the NWSL
~ special featured reviews of a potpourri of beers
~Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ A Book & A Beer reads The Trees by Percival Everett
~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Heritage Mezcal
~ Sports & A Beer returns with Thoughts on March Madness
~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.
I have been over the Olympics for many cycles now. Corruption played a part. NBC never not showing figure skating, even during the summer games a part. But another aspect was the fringe competitions that popped up and then disappeared. I’m looking at you, flag football.
Ever since Dodgeball the Movie introduced us to ESPN8, The Ocho, it seems your cornhole, your darts, your curling are now considered athletic competitions. Now before you say I am clinging to an outmoded way of sports thought, they are competitions sure. It takes skill to throw a dart with pinpoint accuracy but it also is more math as you need to know where to throw it to get the right point total.
Flag Football is a competition but it is more an anti-concussion one. And curling is literally sweeping meets ice Bocce Ball. What’s next, axe throwing as sport? I know that the streaming platforms are desperate for sports content because unlike the Harry Potter movies that have been on every platform, sometimes at the same time, sports are unique individual events. But they are not going to boost the subscriber base with a mega niche offering like Quidditch.
I have to say that these outliers may be fun, but you will never see Usher playing the halftime show of the Cornhole Super Bowl.
This is an easy beer pairing because we won’t be pairing these psedo-sports with beer. The next time a dodgeball contest is on and you are watching because you were intimidated by the nearly three hour run time of Part 1 of Mission Impossible, grab yourself a hard seltzer or a smoothie beer that pours like a slurpee from 7-11 and enjoy the weirdness that is the “sports” landscape in 2024. Or you could really zag and find a beer/wine hybrid, that would be the classy way.
