Everydave Life

March 21, 2020March 21, 2020

Boffo Beer Blog, Week 10 : Walking On The (Virus-free) Moon

“Walking on the Moon” was a minor hit record for The Police. Was never their favorite song for most, but with all this Corona virus news, I bet it might be soon. Feels like the moon might be the only place we are safe these days – and if someone gets within six feet of us, we will have those heavy helmets with glass shields in front of us to block those nasty germs!

In keeping with that , this week I popped open a Moonwalk Brut IPA from Texas’ Real Ale Brewing. Like several of the other microbrews I’ve savored so far, Real Ale began out of a couple’s love of good beer and relative lack of it in their stores. This drove them to make their own in their kitchen… or in this particular case, the basement of a small store in Blanco, Texas. That was 1996.

At first they brewed a couple of a couple of ales, Brewhouse Brown and Full Moon Pale, and sold the limited quantities in 22-ounce bottles. By 2000 they’d begun adding varieties and putting out their brew in six packs of more conventional 12-ounce bottles; by 2006 they’d opened up a new large brewery in town and soon after, a taproom to enjoy it in (now closed due to the virus, of course.)

Their popularity, and product line kept increasing and by 2013 they were producing 50 000 barrels of their 14 regular varieties per year. In 2017, they expanded to open a distillery which produces gin and whiskey. Their current line is highlighted by the big-selling Fireman’s #4 Blonde but includes such quirky offerings as Pin-setter Amber Lager, a tribute to bowling (beer and bowling go together but how a beer can reflect the sport, you’d have to ask them!) and Commissar, a Russian stout still put out in hardy 22-ounce bombers, comrade.

One thing all the drinks have in common is a minimum of ingredients, which are all GMO-free and a manufacturing which reflects their philosophy of “minimal processing produces maximum flavor.” Unfortunately, as of right now, Real Ale only sell in their homestate of Texas, saying their production isn’t even enough right now to satisfy thirsty Texans and they don’t think their beer will stay fresh enough to meet their own standards if transported a long distance.

Moonwalk is described by them as an “extra dry, ultra crisp, out of this world IPA” with a flavor of “ripe berries and soft fruit, with a champagne like finish.” The brew comes in at a slightly strong 6.0% alcohol.

I popped open the bottle to enjoy with a big ol’ cold cut sub. The beer was surprisingly frothy when poured, making an extensive and thick white head over its effervescent, hazy golden liquid. As beers go, this was a nice-looking one. But the visuals matter little if the drink isn’t good. Thankfully, Moonwalk is good… maybe not quite “out of this world” good, but pretty darn good anyway.

At first chug, the impression was quite strong, and the word “Aromatic” came to mind. A little bitter, but pleasantly so. The bubbles and fizz felt nice. there was a subtle, but definite layer of mild fruitiness underneath, although I couldn’t really narrow down what fruit. I would have guessed something citrus, rather than the berries they mention. Anyway, it was a good taste.

With the sub sandwich, the hint of sweetness seemed to disappear and the flavor was rather dimmed, although not erased…this is a flavorful drink, but not a wildly strong one.

Bottom line – a good, pleasing drink that might be a good compromise for people wanting a beer with more kick and “oomph” than say, Bud or Miller but not as bold as a locomotive in a glass. I give it an 8 out of 10 for strength, 7 out of 10 for flavor and overall…

four out of five Clorox-wiped rockets.

March 11, 2020

Boffo Beer Blog, Week 9 : Weisse N Easy

Well for this week’s new adventure on the beer frontier, I made a return visit to that brewery as close to the hearts of many a Texan as bluebonnets and bucking broncos – Shiner. You might recall I looked at one of their winter drinks, Frost, and mentioned how the little Spoetzl Brewery from the town of Shiner has a big footprint in the Texas market. And funny commercials. Well, this time around the curiosity got the better of me and I tried their new Weisse & Easy.

By “new” I do mean new; it appeared on local shelves just last month and somehow hasn’t been added to their website yet. As an interesting promo, Shiner (typically a glass-only company) offered it in specially-priced, one-gulp mini-cans, but I rolled the dice and went for a normal 12-ounce bottle.

Shiner describe the drink as having “all the flavor of a wheat beer but with only 95 calories. Unfiltered and brewed with native Texas dewberries…perfect for kickin’ back and taking it weisse and easy.” For those unfamiliar with “Dewberries” (like me for example), they’re apparently a small shrub-grown berry much akin to blackberries. So it was try a new beer and expand my vocabulary all in one! The drink seems a natural for Shiner since they also famously brew “Ruby Redbird”, a light beer with Texas grapefruit added.

I had it with a late lunch of a robust garden salad and a turkey sandwich. Pouring it into the glass, it was quite fizzy (“highly effervescent” as Beer Advocate correctly pegged it as) and built quite a solid head. The color was nice, but unusual, rather an almost rosy shade of gold; mainly clear and quite “effervescent.”

Having a swig to finish up the bottle, my first reaction was “Wow!” Not a “best thing I’ve ever tasted” kind of wow, but neither a “ooh! Spit it out!” kind either. Just a “Wow” of surprise, as it didn’t come across as a swig of beer. It seemed more like a red sparkling wine or perhaps a berry-flavored cooler. A little sweet, a bit tarty too but very fruity. The tartness seemed a bit more prominent in the relatively light aftertaste.

I found it rather “fresh” and that it paired really nicely with the salad veggies. I could imagine this one as a summer picnic refresher, and with the lite beer rating of just 4.0% alcohol, one which wouldn’t impair performance on any three-legged race or other funtime activity that could grow out of it. With the turkey, it seemed a little more bitter but kept its flavor, not getting over-ridden by the meaty flavor.

In short, a fairly pleasing and intense taste, but unlike the Ruby Redbird (which tastes beer-y but with a dash of citrus) this one comes across more like a spritzer of bubbly wine. So, a fine drink, but not exactly for someone wanting a conventional beer. Likewise, probably too hoppy still for a discerning wine-fancier.

Still, I rate it a 3 out of 5 for strength and 4 out of 5 for flavor and overall,

3-and-a-half Crane brothers out of five.

March 6, 2020

Boffo Beer Blog, Week 8 : Drinking For God

I decided to do God’s work for the latest beer adventure. Because I savored a beer intriguingly, maybe a little pompously even, named Save The World Agnus Dei, or Witbier. With a name like that, it would be almost sinful not to give it a go, wouldn’t it?

Turns out there’s a good reason and interesting story behind the name. The little brewery from near Austin, TX, bills itself as “a philanthropic brewery” dedicated to “making the best Texas craft beer and giving back.” They work as a non-profit, with profits going to various charities including Meals on wheels, Habitat for Humanity and ones designed to get food to under-nourished children. It was begun around 2012 by a husband and wife team, Drs. Dave and Quynh Rathkamp. The pair were both pediatric doctors in the Dallas area before they decided they wanted to do something different.

Dave says he wanted to do good but also enjoy himself and that his passion for beer was the special gift from God. He’d been a homebrewing hobbyist for over a decade and had slowly converted his wife. She describes herself as a wine lover when they got together but had been won over to “the dark side” by him and his old recipe brews. they relocated to Marble Falls, about 20 miles outside of Austin, and built a small brewery and restaurant. The latter has a selection of board games and ring toss for people to have fun with while testing the selection of brews which tend to be European-styled ales like a Belgian pale ale, a Farmhouse ale and a Grisette, a light, lemony drink.

This one is a typical wheat beer, which they describe as a “thirst-quenching rendition of the classic Belgian wheat ale brewed with orange peel, coriander and a carefully sourced third spice.” Curiously, coriander is derived from the cilantro plant, but it is the seeds which taste quite sweet and fruity, a sharp difference from the bitterish leaves Mexicans love for their sauces.

Save the World suggest pairing it with fish dishes and cheeses, but as it turns out, I had a 12-ounce bottle with a takeout dinner of fried chicken, a couple of the restaurant’s surprisingly hot jalapenos and a roll. The beer showed a nice orangey-golden color and looked, as billed a little “hazy” when poured. It didn’t have a lot of fizz or head.

At first taste, it was very pleasing. I’m partial to wheat beers, their clean feeling and tendency to fall somewhere between the watery disappointment of big brewery lagers and weighty ales. Usually they are brewed with a bit of citrus which gives just a wee hint of sweetness. Which was exactly what this one was. Clean tasting but with a good amount of flavor, just a hint of sweetness which was more noticeable when had with the chicken. The brew did an admirable job of keeping its flavor even with the jalapeno and cutting the burn of that pleasantly. It went down easily and really seemed refreshing. It was rated at 5.7% alcohol, but left me with a tiny buzz characteristic of a stronger drink, making it seem like not a beer for lunchtime or before going out on a road trip, but a very good dinner accompaniment or watching a movie sipper.

All in all, I rate it 4 out of 5 for stength, 4 and a half out of 5 for flavor and

Four and a half halos out of five! It makes me want to see how many other ways Dave and Quynh will let us “save the world.”

March 3, 2020

No Need To Have A Corona-ry Over Corona

I think I’m getting a bit sick. Sick of hearing about the Corona Virus, that is. Or perhaps it’s more that to me the math doesn’t add up and I’m sick of people in media and government alike seemingly failing to ask questions about why that is.

So what’s the latest? It’s hard to keep up. Recently Japan shut down all of its schools for the entire month of March to prevent the spread of the illness. The country with the emphasis on education and brains doing that in response to just a few hundred cases of the virus showing up there. Seems a little hard to fathom. Some airlines have stopped flying to Italy because of around 1000 cases reported in the north of that land. And of course, China, where it originated has not only got armed guards keeping people from leaving the city of Wuhan, but has shut a very large chunk of its entire industrial machine in response. If you’ve noticed the price of gas has dropped a bit this winter, thank that virus… China’s quarantines and industrial shutdown has caused a drop of worldwide demand for oil and has left the mutlinats and OPEC with a glut of oil for the time being.

That might seem good for American consumers, but don’t be so fast to cheer. The stock market is plummeting in measures not seen in the past decade due to fears of the illness itself and subsequent worries about shortages of consumer goods and car parts that used to roll off those now closed Chinese assembly lines. And have a stiff drink if you own stock in Constellation Beverages. The company’s stock has plummeted from $207 to $172 just since Feb. 24 because of declining sales of its flagship product, Corona Beer. Some surveys show that 38% of Americans would refuse to drink it because they think its a source of the disease, because, well that’s just how clever many Americans are. Thank goodness the U.S. hasn’t closed all its schools – yet. All the while stores are selling out of things like Lysol wipes (which actually are useful at killing germs – be they corona, flu or anything else more or less) and face masks (which the CDC are screaming at us not to use and are suddenly calling useless). a trip to my local supermarket last night saw several people wearing the masks anyway and an ominous emptiness on the bread and bottled water shelves,. It could have been a truck or two delayed en route but seemed more likely to me it was the result of people panicking and stocking up for the cough armaggedon.

People are panicking and one can’t blame them entirely. No one had heard of this weird, bat-borne illness a few months back, now it’s the lead story on every TV news program and above-the-banner headline in every newspaper. Biden vs. Bernie, step aside for the Bug from China. Tornadoes in Nashville? How will having people without their homes sheltering together amplify the spread of Corona virus? What if one of the corpses in shattered houses was infected with Corona?

Of course, we’re used to the media blowing things out of proportion. They have to attract viewers and sell print, and nothing short of Jennifer kissing Brad sells like a dash of fear. Any coyote seen running away from a city park is likely to be the terrifying lead story at 6 should it be a slow news day with no escaped prisoners running loose and no slight risk of severe storms in the long range forecast. We saw a similar, if slightly scaled-down response to the less common SARS back in 2003 and to the apparently much less harmful West Nile Virus about a decade back. But government’s and public agencies are usually calmer and more rationale. To see the kind of reaction we have from various governments around the globe is rather astounding… and question-raising.

To me, medicine is a branch of science and science is at its core, rational. Mathematical. And to my eyes, there’s nothing logical about this viral event. A + B are not adding up to C. That worries me and makes me wonder what component is not what we are being told, which factor would make it all add up.

Because we have a disease which is still fairly rare. At last count there are something like 85 000 cases in the whole world. That’s a lot, until compared to the world population. There are something in the range of nearly 100 cases in the U.S.; not a huge number in a country of 310 million people; and not much of an apparent risk when those people are quarantined in secure hospitals. By comparison, the CDC report a minimum of 29 million cases of flu this winter in the country. And who knows how many countless others have had it, stayed home in bed, groaned and slept for a couple of days then got back up and at it without reporting to any doctor? At least two in my household alone. Furthermore, we’re told this year’s flu is more virulent than usual and that in any average year, it will kill around 18 000 people here and hundreds of thousands more elsewhere. Yet factories aren’t closing their doors, students aren’t being told “no classes this month” and airlines haven’t abandoned Atlanta, O’Hare and LAX to prevent its spread. why then the responses to an illness that’s claimed about 2400 victims in total?

The equation might still work out if Corona was an exceedingly grim, horrifying instant death sentence. A sort of ebola-on-steroids-but-as-communicable-as-a-common-cold. But it’s not. Here the experts differ a little, with some saying it is less dangerous than the flu while others contend that it is about as dangerous as a severe flu, but even so, they all agree that many who have it don’t even know they have it because symptoms can be so minor in many people. And based on the info we’re given, the mortality rate from it is no more than 2%… significant, yes, and scary if your loved one comes down with it, but not a major risk overall, especially if the ones dying are mainly ones with existing serious medical conditions or the very elderly.

So it leads me to worry. Not about catching Corona from some random person 100 feet away from me in a store who yesterday stood next to someone who’d gone to China last fall, but about the truthfulness of our expert sources. A + B are equaling C-squared here, not C. Is the disease far worse than we’re being led to believe? Are there thousands of deaths being covered up, and if so, why aren’t their families and friends making a noise? Or is this some kind of clandestine, weird experiment and conspiracy to test preparedness for a real Spanish flu-type pandemic or something else only the X-files might contrive?

Until we hear more reason, I say wash your hands, cough into a Kleenex or your sleeve, stay home if you’re sick and go out and do your thing if you’re not. So far, it seems like maybe the “cure” is worse than the disease.

February 27, 2020

Boffo Beer Blog, Week 7 : Mermaids And Unicorns Promise Mouth Magic

Well I tried for a truly magical beer experience in the latest Boffo Beer Blog. I sampled True Vine’s Mermaids & Unicorns beer, to go along with a bowl of beef stew and a cheese bagel. Expectations were high, especially when confronted with the mirth-filled 12-ounce can, brightly colored and bedecked with a picture of, yes, a mermaid riding a unicorn. This should be some special drink!

Unlike some of the small breweries I’ve looked at so far, True Vine is really new and still quite small. Based out of Tyler, Texas ( a smallish city not too far out of Dallas), it’s barely five years old. Inspired by reading a biography of the Guinness family, a married couple, Ryan and Traci Dixon began brewing some beer in their own garage around 2014. With good feedback from the locals, opened a tiny, 2000 square-foot brewery in town in 2014. Mermaids & Unicorns was one of their first two flavors and remains a mainstay of their small company, which now boasts about ten or so brews, all with lively, whimsical can designs. There’s a coffee porter, a peach-infused one and one that wins for the name alone, Chubby Angel Babies. True Vines say they are guided by the principles of integrity, community and love.” Hard to find fault with that.

They’re now available throughout a good number of locations in Texas, but haven’t matched the success or growth of some of their Lone Star counterparts – yet. But, like some of their bigger competitors, they recently opened a taproom and restaurant on site, with artisan pizzas being a menu star and live music on the weekend an added draw. What they don’t have yet is as detailed or complete website as many microbrews.

Anyway, I popped open the can full of expectation, and poured the brew into a frosty glass. Although the brewer itself doesn’t seem to detail their drink online, Specs says it comes in at 5.5% alcohol and features a “malty, bready (flavor) with hints of peach and orange.” Upon pouring, it looked a pleasant enough golden tone, slightly cloudy, but seemed to have little fizz and produced only a minimal, thin head. Waiting to be ridden away to beverage utopia on a unicorn being hugged by Splash-era Daryl Hannah, I expected something wildly different and wonderful.

The unicorn turned out to be more of a run of the mill donkey and Daryl nowhere to be seen or felt. The first impression of it was that it had a relatively mild flavor with a noticeable bitterness. More sips did reveal a tinge of citrus, but a very subtle one. It was fairly “smooth” to use that million-dollar beer buzzword, but nothing out of the ordinary in any way. It paired fine with the stew, but didn’t noticeably bring out the flavors of the food or drink; with the cheese bagel somehow the drink’s bitterness seemed a little amplified.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression this is a bad beer. It’s not. It’s perfectly acceptible and a unicorn’s horn above some of the mass market convenience store competition. The can is a keeper for collectors and the drink worth buying it for. What it is not however, was particularly memorable or distinctive, let alone magical. I’ll grade it about 7 out of 10 for strength, 6 for flavor and all in all….

three unicorns out of five.

February 21, 2020

From Hitler To Drunken College Girls…Only Malcolm Could Make Sense Of It

It’s nice that over time, sitting here typing on my computer, looking out at a Texas suburb, I get to know some of you well enough to feel you’re not a stranger – even if I never met you in real life. And as many of you know, some of my favorite books this century have been from Malcolm Gladwell, a fellow alumni of the University of Toronto, albeit a stranger. But one who’d be a tremendous person to have dinner with, I’m sure.

Gladwell has found his niche making psychology and human nature interesting and combining a number of eminently interesting, but seemingly disparate case studies tie together in million-selling books. Blink showed us how it can often be useful to believe our first impressions. His mammothly-successful breakthrough The Tipping Point suggested how some things get to be successful and popular – from old-fashioned hipster boots to VD in Baltimore – and other things don’t. His Outliers suggested that to be wildly successful, you need not only talent but a dedication to spend about 10 000 hours honing your craft, be you Wayne Gretzky and your vocation hobby, or the Beatles and your thing… well, being the Beatles. Music!

So, the latest book he wrote, Talking to Strangers, is surprising only to those who don’t know his work. Because those people would surely wonder how anyone could tie together stories about Hitler, ponzi-scheme ripoff artist Bernie Madoff, drunk college girls and midwestern police manuals and make it seem coherent. Which is what Malcolm does this time around. Oh, and did I mention, the war between the Mayans and the Spaniards?

Talking to Strangers does what he does – interesting case stories told well and briskly – loosely tied together.The overall theme is that we, people. as a species, do terribly when having to deal with strangers. We can assume the best of them, and risk the consequences (as thousands did with trusting their savings to Madoff or Olympian girl parents did with the respected Dr Nassar, gymnast doctor to the stars) or assume the worst of them (as police using Kansas City’s old crime-reduction suggestions do) and risk casualties, wrongfully-tarred civilians and worse.

The book is bookended by the story of Sandra Bland, a young woman who was pulled over by a Texas state trooper for making an improper lane change, and ended up dead from her own hand in a Lone Star jail days later. People tended to see it as Bland the victim – Black woman being profiled by racist White cop – or the cop as being vilified – officer pulls over a person and is polite, to begin, but is subject to provocation and verbal obscenity while feeling in danger himself. Gladwell is in the Bland camp, but is observant enough to point out the valid arguments from both… the world is complex, and knowing strangers is difficult. The officer was trained to feel that she was a potential murderer, but she was trying to go about her life and do good. Alas, he doesn’t have any catch-all, solve-all solutions. That’s for the reader to try to descramble in their own brain. An organ under-challenged by most mainstream media these days, so hats off to Malcolm.

Not his best book, probably not even in his top three. But in a world of relationships defined by The Bachelor and power illustrated by late-night tweets from the Oval Office, it might be the most important one yet from him. If you’re a person, and there are people in your life you don’t know … strangers … it’s a book worth your time.

February 18, 2020February 18, 2020

Boffo Beer Blog, Week 6: Stone Cold Good. Or Stone Good Cold!

To borrow from Guy Fieri, this week we took our taste to “Flavortown”… Little Big Flavortown. Or perhaps, Big Little Flavortown. This week’s sampling was Stone Brewing’s Stone IPA, the flagship brew for the California-based brewery. In a little over twenty years, Stone has established itself as one of the biggest micro-breweries in the land. Or one of the smallest “majors” depending on how you look at it!

Stone Brewing began brewing in 1996 when Greg Koch and Steve Wagner decided they loved rock music and beer. However, their careers in music weren’t going anywhere exciting, so they decided it was time to make some music for the mouth instead. They began in San Marcos, California, the pair and one other employee making 400 barrels of India Pale Ale that year. Their mission was to give people an option other than watery, yellow big-brewery lagers. They picked their gargoyle logo since, they say, gargoyles ward off evil and they wanted to keep “warding off cheap ingredients, chemical additives” and other things that ruin a good beer.

Obviously, they did just that and people approve. Twenty years in, they’d managed to add over 1200 employees to their team, and were brewing some 388 000 barrels a year. They have a number of taprooms where you can sit and enjoy, including San Diego Airport and most intriguingly, Shanghai, China! They expanded their California operation and recently opened a brewery in Richmond, VA to lessen transportation times to eastern locations – useful since they’re one of the very few small breweries which now sell in all 50 states. Through the years, they’ve added new drinks to their menu including Xocerveza, a stout “inspired by Mexican hot chocolate” and Russian stout, “fairly well known style but in the 1990s… practically unheard of.” However, their bread-and-butter has always been robust India Pale Ales, and the Stone IPA is not only their best-seller, but the gold standard for their roster of over a dozen varieties.

They describe it as a beer with “bright hop fruitiness, piney vibrancy and a pronounced tantalyzing bitterness”, utilizing eight different types of hops. They further consider it to have “medium body and no perceivable sweetness”…which sounds a bit contradictory for a “fruity” drink, but maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, I popped the cap off an attractive 12-ounce bottle out of their Richmond brewery and enjoyed it with a dinner of “Goulage” (actually a hearty pasta-based meal with beef and tomato sauce mixed in) and a cheese sandwich.

Pouring it, it displayed a nice, rich golden color, deeper than regular mass market beers but not as dark as many an IPA, and found it really foamed up in a thick, frothy head. The first taste showed its hoppy bitterness and quite a strong flavor. Not unpleasant but strong, fitting for a brew with 6.9% alcohol. Having it along with the meal though, it was better yet, pairing very well with the pasta meal, which diminished its bitterness a little. It had a little aftertaste, but not a very strong or displeasing one. What’s more, it still worked well with some tart green grapes I ate for dessert, with the beer cutting the tart feeling in the mouth a wee bit while the grapes added just a hint of that missing fruity sweetness. I didn’t chew on a pine cone to see if that added the “piney” nature, although somehow it did seem like an “outdoorsy” kind of beer that might be a good camping companion. Stone itself recommend pairing it up with a range of strong-flavored foods from tacos to Asian salads or jambalaya, all of which seem like palatable suggestions.

A strong but likable drink, although not for someone who favors things from the Big Brewery Lite aisle. I give it 8 out of 10 for strength, 7 out of 10 for flavor and all-in-all

Four spiky-haired chefs out of five!

February 11, 2020

Boffo Beer Blog, Week 5: A Christmas Story In Your Glass

December 25th may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to keep the Christmas spirit going. And in this week’s Boffo Beer Blog, we’ll have a Christmas “spirit”… Karbach Brewery’s Yule Shoot Your Eye Out Seasonal ale.

The Houston brewery offers up a few year-round favorites and a variety of seasonal offerings, available throughout Texas and the south-central States. “It’s all about the beer,” they say, suggesting “we don’t take ourselves seriously but you can be damn sure we take our beer seriously.” They use “classic German techniques to make beer for everyone to enjoy.”

Among their regular brews are Hopadillo, with its colorful armadillo-adorned can, and Crawford Bock, whose cans have the now questionable distinction of being dressed up like a Houston Astros jersey. (Tap your can once for fastball, twice for curve…) You can try them out in the city at their brewery and restaurant, which offers a variety of dishes that pair well with beers of every stripe, including fish and chips, king-sized pretzels and of course, Texas chili. They periodically have special events, including a “Galentines day” later this week with a “market and movie night” showing ’90s cult fave The Craft.

Among their seasonal varieties are a chocolate stout and the one I tried, Yule Shoot Your Eye Out, for winter offerings. Of the Yule beer and its 5.6 % alcohol rating, they say it’s a “red ale brewed with orange peel (and) loaded with smooth caramel malt and a citrus twist. We triple dog dare you to find a better holiday ale.”

Cracking open the 12-ounce, leg-lamp adorned can is nearly as exciting as opening a wooden box to reveal a “major award.” Pouring it reveals it does indeed live upto its billing as a rather festive clear, reddish drink which produced a thick, bubbly head. The beer itself seemed a little more fizzy than some and had a decent aroma.

Now, this one is a bit different than the past three beers I sampled here in two ways. One is that it’s a yuletide offering, and I’m sampling it in February. This is about the end of the run for it this winter, as according to Karbach, “oh fuuddge! It’s only here for a limited time.” And I found I actually was consuming the first one on the very “best before” date printed on the bottom. So, while certainly not stale nor flat, it’s entirely possible “Yule” get a better feel for the drink if consumed closer to the production date, around the time Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick is bringing pink bunny pyjamas to good little boys far and wide. Secondly, this one I actually purchased a six-pack of rather than just one individual bottle or can.

I mention that because I actually cracked open the first at night, having it after dinner while watching some TV. I had another the following afternoon with a light dinner of some left-over roast ham in a kaiser and a jalapeno or two. I found the environment seemed to make a difference and it seemed slightly different between the two sittings.

Drinking it on its own, I found it a little unusual and not what I’d expected. Not a lump of coal in the stocking, but not a Red Rider winner either. It seemed a little watery and while it left a slight, not too unpleasant bitter aftertaste, I could really detect the caramel of the malts. It almost made me think of the effect one would have if downing a typical mainstream lager a few minutes after sucking on a Werthers candy.

Paired with the lunch, it fared a bit better, The sweetness was cut and the flavor seemed to hold its own nicely against the sandwich and cut the heat of the hot peppers a little. Perhaps that’s why Karbach recommend having it with stews or “game”. What it didn’t seem was a typical strong ale.

All in all, it won’t make you cuss like a faulty, smoking furnace would but it might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you have to write about what you want for Christmas! I give Yule Shoot Your Eye Out a 6 out of 10 for flavor, 7 out of 10 for strength and

three leg-lamps out of five!

February 4, 2020

One Perk – More Time To Read?

Dear Friend,

the latest book I read was the famous the perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. The little novel was a best-seller when it came out around the turn of the millennium and received renewed interest when it was made into a movie in 2012. It was famous but somehow I never picked it up until late last year when I found a copy at a clearance sale. Guess I was too busy trying to make up for lost time from when I was a high school wallflower before.

The book reads like a diary, in fact it harkens back to the series of books that were the “Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole” back in the ’80s. However, the protagonist of this one, Charlie, writes not in his diary but in a series of often-lengthy letters to an unnamed friend. Charlie is a socially-awkward high school kid who turns 16 during the year-long course of the book and deals with those things a boy turning 16 and who is socially-awkward would. He falls head over heels in love with an older girl, Sam, makes some friends, loses some friends and has the usual stresses of school and home, which in his case is a middle class Pittsburgh family. He gets his first girlfriend, loses his first girlfriend, begins to smoke and dabble in drugs and deal with the pressures of his own puberty and of being the brother of a star football player. He gets embarrassed by his family. He reads and is obsessed with The Smiths. Oddly, and a wee bit creepily, his best friend seems to be perhaps a literary English teacher who gives him books to read and invites him over to his place. All things considered, he doesn’t cope with the stresses of growing up very well.

While Charlie is at times inexplicably dumb for a “smart” kid and very often annoying in both his attitude and self-defeating ways, he is real and Chbosky has painted a very believable story that somehow grips you and becomes a page-turner. At the end of the school break, and the end of the book, you wonder where Charlie will go from there and wish he’d keep writing those damn wordy letters!

the perks of being a wallflower somehow seems relateable to those of us who weren’t the “cool kids” back in high school, and perhaps worse yet, is probably more so for today’s Snowflake generation. Charlie all but set the template for today’s anxiety-filled, sexual ambivalent, politically correct cohort… and did it all without staring at an I-phone no less. That said, it knowingly looks back fondly to Generation X with its references and its’ Douglas Coupland-esque randomness and lack of Upper Case Themes.

I think it’s not a bad book for youth of today who feel a bit cast adrift out to sea … and for us oldies who remember what that feeling was like.

Love always,

Charlie’s reader

February 3, 2020

Boffo Beer Blog, Week 4 : Dogfish 60 Minute IPA

Another week, another craft beer to savor. This weekend, I chose Dogfish’s 60 Minute IPA to try.

IPAs are “India Pale Ales”, an old style of beer developed in Britain in the 19th-Century but most popular on our side of the Atlantic. The beer involves using more hops than lighter beers, and roasting the barley more to give it more flavor and strength than a typical lager. The Brits began brewing it for troops stationed in India, hence the name, and found this style was not only popular with them, but stood up to long periods of storage (as would be necessitated by shipping to India from England then) better.

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, I find, is an interesting piece of the coastal Delaware landscape and economy. It’s a micro-brew sure, but offers more. Like their own restaurant and bar, but more uniquely a cool, 16-room inn you can stay at! And when you wake up, you can brew some Dogfish coffee… yep, they have their own line of breakfast bevvies too! Dogfish seem to revel in their quirkiness and have metal artwork decorating their grounds and commission “off-centered” artists to design fun labels for their various beers.

There are quite a few brews on the Dogfish roster, but most seem to fall into the “IPA” category. Among them is “American Beauty”, a drink put together with the co-operation of the Grateful Dead. That’s one to look out for on a future Boffo Beer Blog. Today’s 60 Minute IPA is said to be their most popular drink and differs from the 90 Minute IPA in how long they boil the hops. They began making it over 20 years ago, and describe it as having a “bold, timeless flavor…pungently, citrusy, grassy hoppy and floral” It checks in at 6% APV, a bit stronger than your routine brew. They use “northwestern hops” which apparently are stronger but not necessarily more bitter than most other varieties.

I cracked open the 12-ounce bottle to have with a late-afternoon meal of a salami sandwich and finger food veggies from olives to celery. I poured it to find a thick, long-lasting head on it and a mildly cloudy, rich amber color. It looked rather like many popular wheat beers.

Tasting it was equally pleasant, if not more so. Dogfish got this right. I’m not sure what “grassy” would taste like, nor if it would be a positive trait for the tastebuds, but this drink does indeed exude hops and a touch of citrus yet lacks the intense bitterness many “hoppy” drinks have. It left my mouth a wee bit tingly, and while it seemed to keep its strong yet not too bitter qualities in the aftertaste. It offset the spicy heat of jalapenos and the sweetish bell pepper slices equally nicely. Indeed, it was unusual in having such a strong hoppy flavor without being bitter like a pre-ghost-visit Scrooge.

Dogfish say this is “most balanced IPA on the market.” I think they may not be too far off the mark saying that. Overall, I’d say this would be a pretty good choice to go with a number of meals or situations. I give it 8 out of 10 for strength and 9 out of 10 for flavor and all-in-all

four-and-a-half out of five dancing teddy bears.