Dark Hops

CSA's new brewery Beer Here

Bringing back a bit of beer talk (and a bit of talk in general) to the ol’ Beercellars blog…we’ve got Broken Social Scene playing along with Beer Here’s Dark Hops.  No question at all that this beer is DARK!  It is completely opaque.   Dark as the night…which reminds me of a Blind Willie Johnson song that I wrote a paper on in college called “Dark Was the Night”.  A singularly transcendent piece of music, from the American South in the late 1920s.  Blind Willie Johnson influenced a lot of European rock musicians in the 1960s and 1970s.  Led Zeppelin borrowed “freely” from him (as well as many other blues musicians), namely “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” and “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed” (see Zeppelin song “In My Time of Dying”).

I’ve added “Dark Was the Night” to my life soundtrack.  It isn’t something I’ve listened to a lot, but whenever I play it, it is much more than background music…and there was that night when I was writing the paper that I listened to it a few dozen times.

Anyway, the beer?  Well, I’m not sure that it has much to do with Blind Willie…maybe Led Zeppelin.  Hop resins dominate the nose, though there is a dimension of roast and chocolate under there.  The beer is 8.5% ABV, so it is rather beastly, but it isn’t thick or sticky…which I normally count as a good thing.  It isn’t extremely bitter either.  It is fairly dry, with what I might even call a light body…and a lot of resin and roast at the end, mingling together.  I end up rather liking it, though I keep wishing that the hops weren’t so piney, but in the nose and the finish.  Almost just a bit too much.  Maybe it needs some age.  Flee from me keepers of the gloom.

This little trek through musical memories now actually has me listening to Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy.  I don’t think I’ve freely chosen to listen to Led Zeppelin for 5 years at least.  Probably more.  But this is life soundtrack stuff.  I think that Houses of the Holy is the first CD I ever owned…6th grade…1988-1989 or so.  I was way into the last song on there, “The Ocean”.  –Got four already, but now we’re steady, and dead they wed–

They won’t let me embed this one, but here’s a link to a live version of “The Ocean”.  I watch this and think “Man, these guys are LAME.”  But, when I was barely a teenager, this shit rocked my world.  I can’t add it to my life soundtrack, however.  Not without buying the full download, which I really don’t need.  But this made me think of the Muddy Waters song that Zeppelin ripped off for “Whole Lotta Love”…“You Need Love”…and I couldn’t find a live version of that, but I found the guy that wrote it (Willie Dixon) jamming out on his bass, which is pretty freakin’ cool:

Life Soundtrack

My boss has been all about his life soundtrack for almost the last year.   Turning 50 can do that to you I guess, but I’ve got to say I find it rather interesting and fun to consider.  I can’t sleep, so I’m sitting here at 3am doing what I used to do until late in the night: listening to music on headphones.  Instead of having a Walkman and a pile of 90-min mixed tapes (only high-bias tapes, of course), I have an MP3 player with a few thousand songs on it.  And I’m searching my collection for those “blasts from the past”.

Early '80s wood paneled Jeep Wagoneer

The first track, “On the Road Again” by Willie Nelson, is the first song I can remember really loving and getting excited about…I have a distinct memory of riding in the back of my friends’ Jeep Wagoneer, and hollering at his dad “Turn it up, this is my favorite song!”.  I don’t have any memory of why I might have liked it so much…it was probably something I heard quite a bit, I think it was a pretty big hit for ol’ Willie back in the day…sometime between 1980 and 1982 I guess.  I would have been 4-6 years old.  It probably would have been on both the jukebox at my parents’ bar and the one in our basement.

John Denver's Greatest Hits

John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” is another one from about that same time for me…probably more like 1980 or so.  It was my first trip to Colorado with the family, and I was awe-struck by the mountains as we drove up to Estes Park…we stayed at the Hobby Horse, which still stands, though it appears to have been renamed.  Years later, Laura and I would stay there for a night or two while on vacation.  I was totally fascinated by the fact that there was this guy called John Denver (the capital of Colorado, as I understood it) who sang in a sort of magical way about the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.  I’m sure I made them play that cassette over and over…I remember feeling like it simply had to be that way.  I thought I was going to see John standing on the side of highway or something…when I dug this song out, the same feeling came back to me.

Old Ford LTD coupe...a monster

“Upside Down” by Diana Ross. I definitely recall hearing this in my grandparents’ massive, yellow, LTD…and I used to play on the jukebox in the basement and spin around in circles as fast as I could until I fell over, nearly puking…it just seemed like that was what Diana was commanding me to do!

OK…that’s a start.  More to come on the life soundtrack including some of the “rules”…as it is 4am and I’m still awake, and it is thunderstorming, I’m thinking about grabbing a beer and listening to some more tunes…while my eyes bleed from lack of sleep…

Underwhelmed by an Overwhelming Selection or Vice Versa…

Mad River Serious Madness

I took a late night trip to the local super grocery store tonight…ostensibly to get some tortillas so I would have something to eat tomorrow…but I was also thinking I’d grab some beer, something strong and dark, so I could stay up late and work.  I had this idea I would get the North Coast anniversary ale, which is their Rasputin Imperial stout tossed into a bourbon barrel.  I figured I’d give it a shot…but as I was standing there, holding this $20 500ml bottle in my hand, I just couldn’t do it.

What an overpriced piece of shit.  I wonder how many thousands of bottles they produced of this.  I’d be surprised if it was less than 12,000.  After talking on the phone earlier with a small artisanal brewer that I really like (and respect), I just couldn’t shell out this kind money for such an uninteresting beer.  An imperial stout in a bourbon barrel…for $20 a pint.  What did they do, pour 10oz of Buffalo Trace in each bottle?  Gimme a break.  And I’ve heard people complain about Jolly Pumpkin being overpriced at $13 for 750ml.   You can’t compare the scale or the artistry between these two…so I’m left wondering what gives.  Why the injustice?  Should craft beer even be sold in super-mart grocery stores?  I mean, that isn’t really the place where careful consideration is given to the contents of the purchase, or the source of those ingredients…or even what the hell those ingredients actually are.  What matters are price and packaging.  But the Rasputin flies in the face of that first one.  It isn’t a good price.  It is ridiculously over-priced.  Besides the bottle itself, which is unique in that it is a 500ml bottle made to look like it is a 750ml bottle, the label is totally bland.    So what the fuck?

Then I was eyeing this O’dell’s Woodcut…a 750ml for $25.  I figured if I was thinking about paying $20 for 500ml, $25 for 750ml seems like a good deal…but I just couldn’t shake my feeling of nausea while reading the description on that one…the beer is so special because they put it in “virgin” barrels…meaning it is going to taste a lot like wood.  Yuck.  They got into this flowery description of what a beer soaked in untreated wood will taste like…and it doesn’t sound good to me: toffee and vanilla.  And it doesn’t really tell you anything about the beer itself, except the strength and that it soaked in wood.  I’m guessing that is because you can’t really taste a beer that has been soaking in untreated wood.  You taste the wood.

So I’m looking around at the literally hundreds of beers in this grocery store, and I’ll be damned if I can hardly find a single one that I actually WANT to drink!  There is Saison Dupont rotting over in the corner, but I just had one of those…so what else?  Monchshof Kellerbier, but I had just had one of those as well.  There was this thing called “Whole Hog” which just sounds fucking disgusting, but brewers always think that putting some sort of animal on their beer will guarentee them some sales.  Sadly, that is often true.  Pigs seem especially annoying on beer labels to me though.  I can dig dogs, and maybe the occaisonal bird or wilderbeast or Eutruscan Water Moose…but a pig?  Why?  This whole hog beer probably didn’t actually contain pork, which is what initially entered my mind.  It proclaimed itself an “Imperial Pilsner” which is a pretty stupid thing as well.  So two strikes of stupidity:  hog and Imperial Pilsner.  I was still more curious about this than I was the wood & whiskey soaked over-priced gimmick beers…but I thought it would be disgustingly sweet like the Odell’s Imperial Pilsner was…like a barley wine.   I had never had anything from the brewery (Stevens Point in WI) and I wasn’t about to take a risk on something so confoundingly dumb as an Imperial Pilsner called Whole Hog.

So I went with this Mad River nearly one year old seasonal, Serious Madness.  And I’m still trying to decide if I think real, artisanal craft beer should be sold in these super stores.  I don’t think I like it.   But I wonder if turning away that possible business in order to avoid having unknowing clerks present De Ranke next to Piraat is a net gain.

Pardner, there’s a tiger in these tight fittin’ jeans…

Well…I’m running low on time…so this is the best the ol’ Beercellar’s Blog can do right now.  Conway Fuckin’ Twitty.  No joke.  Just like a beer at a beer festival, somebody will say this is the best song ever.  I guess You Tube must be the web’s incarnation of a beer festival, one big bad never ending beer festival.  Drunk on tastelessness and stupidity, MerThePoet says:  “This is probably one of the best songs in all of history!”  The thing is, what you remember from a beer festival is that dumb ass that raved about how one of the worst beers there was surely the BEST beer ever!  Or you remember the guy poured 3oz of the dump bucket into his glass and drank it.  I suppose that is really the level Conway Twitty is on for me.  Drinking 3oz from the dump bucket.  That guy’s friends thought he was a hero…but he was really just trash (ed).

I can’t help but put this up.  The hair.  The suit.  What the hell is he doing with his right hand!?!?

Attack of the Mass Produced Craft Beers!

A few days worth of drinking, caught on camera

OK…the Guldenberg and the Jolly Pumpkin are definitely not mass produced, and you could probably convince me that a couple others aren’t…but these are mostly mass produced beers.  We chuckled about the claim on Anchor’s label that it was one of the smallest breweries in the world.

This mass craft exploration happened because we didn’t want to drive all the way across town to the one place we knew to have Kulmbacher Edelherb (my favorite mass produced craft beer).  Instead, we went to the local liquor store.  They had no decent pils beers in 6-packs.  We couldn’t even get a 6er of Paulaner Pils…unless we bought it loose…so we made a mixed 6 with some things we either hadn’t tried, or hadn’t tried in a long time.  Then, two days later, I did the same thing again at the local super grocery.

The results were interesting…kind of.  Not much on that counter will be purchased again if I have a choice.  The Paulaner was probably one of the better beers.   The Left Hand Polestar Pils was good…tasting like blueberries, which I’m not sure was intended or normal, but was nice.  The Shiner bock was OK, the biggest surprise of the group I think.  The Sierra Nevada Kellerweiss was very nice.

There were two really bad beers.  Each one got dumped for different, yet similar reasons.  One I expected:  Redhook Sunrye.  I took a chance because I’ve been homebrewing some light rye lagers and have really enjoyed them.  I thought maybe Redhook could handle it.  I can’t really describe the taste.  There wasn’t much there.  Fizzy and watery…I did get a hint of rye, but then the finish made me nearly gag.  I’m not sure what they did for hops on this, but I don’t think there were any there…just a taste that reminded me of adjunct filled lagers…Dumped.  Save the liver.

The surprise was a beer from a real craft brewery that I had pulled from my cellar.  Midnight Sun Sockeye IPA.  I seem to recall liking this when I sampled it at the brewery back in January, and I was looking forward to trying it again.   My initial reaction was that it had a very similar character to a marijuana beer I had brewed early this year.  The weed gave the beer a very peppery, earthy bitterness…almost like dirt in a way.  It was subtle in mine.  In the Sockeye, it was all I could taste.  Overpowering harsh, dirty bitterness.  American hops at their worst.  I couldn’t get through my glass, not to mention the 22oz bottle.  Dumped.  Save the liver.

I’m so glad I have a visual record of all the work and dedication I’ve given to this blog since Tuesday.   I hope you are happy, blog.  I drank beer and took pictures for you!

Brazil

This is pretty goofy. I do love Brazilian music, especially stuff from the 60s and 70s.

Photograph – Antonio Carlos Jo…

Dissapointed with the State of Things…

Ringling Brothers Clowns meant to scare small children and nervous adults

No, this isn’t directed at President Barak Obama.  I’m talkin’ bout myself.  I’m dispointed with what I’ve allowed Beercellar’s Blog to become.  Ronnie fucking Milsap?  Really…The Harold Klemp thing was good…Detlef Schrempf…well….OK…But Ronnie Milsap?  I have more self-respect than that.  Thanks to Shaun Hill, a guy I’ve met only twice, very briefly, in less than sober circumstances…I’ve been forced to look a little deeper at my blog.

It started with a plan.  It was supposed to be intelligent, but tongue in cheek, mocking anything, but with a purpose…not just mocking.   Morposeful pucking.

Shaun is doing quite a bit with reflection.  I think he’s doing a great job with it.  The form could be a bit better, but the content is there.  Reflection was something I was pretty good at working with when I used to love the idea of being a writer.   I started writing free form while listening to music and forcing myself into odd memories of non-existent animated feature films that may have simply been acid flashbacks or confused memories… I fell in love with the Beats, discovering a movement based on dedication to writing…Skipping class in college to sit in my car in the parking lot listening to REM or Eric Dolphy and writing about missiles and destroying the world and having tea and sex.    The blog was supposed to recapture a bit of that, but be smarter and more socially conscious…and be a sort of critic of pop culture, and just modern Western culture in general (Harold Klemp).  I’m a rebel, beer rebel.

Instead of being something thought provoking, it has degenerated into distraction and laziness…even stupidity…Ronnie Milsap.  I mean that is rock bottom.  Does it get any worse than Ronnie Milsap?  I don’t know, maybe like N-sync or something…but that doesn’t even count as music.

Here’s to the future of Beercellar’s Blog.

About Time I said Something About Ronnie Milsap…

Well, really?  I’m not sure, but here is a little gem for your viewing and listening pleasure.  I love the way he shakes his hair.  And of course you can’t beat the glasses.  Dig the comment inserted at about 3:50 “When Ronnie jumps up from the piano it scares the hell out of the band.”  You can’t beat this stuff.  Also, I’ve added more Franconian pictures.  Almost done, only 65 more pics to go through from Day 12.

Maybe the best thing is this comment from Blade636x:

This is a beautiful song. I have just lost the love of life & the words are killing me today 7 Making me cry. I cannot stop thinking about her, I loved her so much and we got on so well but it was just forbidden love i was never going to have. Three other great songs to listen to, are Even Now by Barry Manilow, Real World by D-Side, Scarlet Ribbons by Sinnead O ‘Connor. My heart is hurting so much today and I hope the pain goes away but the love will always be there….

Man, I hope that kid is still alive!  Forget the heart ache over what was “just forbiden love”, I’d kill myself if I was turning to songs like this for comfort and inspiration!

While I’m at it, and just to prove I’m not only mocking blind guys and heartbroken teenagers, here are a couple of other country gems from around the same time period (note that the Ronnie Milsap tune is from about 1980, but I couldn’t find any video from that time):

This one is about 8-10 years earlier, but some great hair and glasses, just the same:

I guess you can learn things on YouTube.  This is apparently the original version of this song, sung by Walter Brennan, a racist:

This one is a version by Wolfsheim, a German group, which I guess somehow relates back to Franconia, though I doubt these guys have spent much time in Monchsambach!

Stashtastic: This is YOUR new word, world. Get used to it.

KR responds to ATISSA Detlef Schrempf with this:

Nice ’stache.

http://www.olenagraphics.com/jenandbrent/gallery/large-1001.html

Here’s a recent pic of me from my sister’s wedding. I’ve hacked it back a bit since then, but it’s still stachtastic. Oh and I love the Band of Horses, though I’d say my favorite song on that album is Cigarettes, Wedding Bands.

Cheers,

KR

I’m liking that linguistic devices, and it seems others are into similar devices.  In response to ATISSA Harlod Klemp matt says:

I think I need to start digging for some of my own eck! This guy is ecktacular!

We’ve got “taclular” and “tastic” between those two, making nouns for growth of facial hair on the upper lip and a spiritual path to the sound and light of god into adverbs, and possibly adjectives.  What you are witnessing is the evolution of language, right in front of you.  I can’t decide if that is happy or terrifying.  You decide for yourself, that’s the only choice.

I might argue for Stachetastic, keeping more with the tradtional spelling for “mustache“.  I might even go Stashtastic, which would also work for something you pulled out of your stash and was awesome, not a dud, dude.  Like, old beer that is really good could be Stashtastic.  Another Stashtastic pull from the archives…an old song that you hadn’t listened to recently, but hear it and the fall in love again for the first time.

I dig “Weed Party” by Band of Horses.  Not on the same album as “Detlef Shrempf” or “Cigarettes, Wedding Bands” (live performance in Montreal), that’s for sure.

No mustache, but this picture is Stashtastic:

Montreal Sailor

Coffee Beer in the Brewing (aspiring brewers and coffee freaks take note) !@&%)(*

Mumbys Highway 6 & 81

I have an internet conversation going on with Jason (started in Montreal, home of Dieu du Ciel, as coincidence would have it).   I said some shit about making a beer with coffee, to which Jason replied:

The coffee question is a good one. If there is a way to add cold extracted coffee, I think it might

keep the freshest flavor. Maybe shoot high on OG, and cut with cold extracted coffee?

I don’t know. Ian at Cultiva knows how to cold extract.

Cheers,
Jason

I don’t know exactly what I had originally said about the beer (I’m sure I was drunk or at least hung over as I was in Montreal), but below are some thoughts on it…I’m just making this conversation public for the whole damn world to see.  Why not.  I’ve heard from many of the prominent brewers doing coffee beers about how they use coffee in their beers.  Nobody is doing what I want to do.  Can’t say they haven’t tried, but the beers that lots of people know about that use coffee aren’t using beans in the brewing process.  This is important shit, I figure.  Here is what I was going to send Jason in response, but instead decide to just post here:

Dude,

I’m interested in this cold extraction…but I don’t know if that’s the way I want to go.  I get these ideas, ya know…

Here’s the deal:

I don’t drink coffee.  I like it, like the taste…but I had a couple coffee benders during college which must have somehow been worse then the alcohol benders I have even more regularly.  Coffee makes me a bit nauseous, but also really jittery.  I’m more of a downer guy than an upper one.  Uppers are scary, because the depressants actually seem to stimulate me…in an ecstatic sort of way.

(santas)BUTT….

I want to impart colour, flavor and bitterness into the beer with the coffee.  I want it to be “brewing” with coffee, not  “adding” coffee.  I don’t want to add a flavor.  I want it to be part of the brewing process, and even more importantly part of the fermentation process.  I can deal with coffee and alcohol together, in little bits…and especially early in the morning, and late at night…which I think are the same thing.  So, your idea to “cut with” coffee (which sounds like a term inspired by some other sort of stimulant) doesn’t really fly with me…unless Ian can tell me that they sell cold extracted coffee as a drink somehow, and that a person that wants “coffee” might drink something cold extracted.  I think of cold coffee and “cut” and I think of sugar: dextrose, lactose…and maybe fructose.  Maybe that isn’t true, but that is my impression:  a sweet, sugary drink…a bunch of flavors blended together…does not a characterful beer make.

Plus some cocoa.  I think that helps the whole thing.  Pure cocoa powder, maybe some cocoa butter.  Some oats too.

I suppose I didn’t mention that the idea was to make this without hops??

Dry hops, yes…and dry coffee.  Maybe hops in the mash, if I have pounds to burn.  Maybe a bit for ceremony and filtering in the kettle…but the bitterness comes from lots of coffee and some cocoa…This is to be a 4% ABV schwarzbier, getting its colour from coffee and cocoa.  Its bitterness from coffee and cocoa…They called Allen Iverson “The Answer”.  He wasn’t.  This is the fucking answer.

I’m obsessed with bitterness in beer.  Check out these lyrics and the following really bad bottleg of the song “I’m Not Bitter” by Minus 5:

I’m Not Bitter

When someone wants me to listen, I can’t

If I’m supposed to do something, I won’t

It’s hard to tell if I can get along

But I’m not bitter

I’m not bitter

Not at all

Just a lot

I walk around the block to avoid you

And that’s when I’m in a social mood

It’s just my head that hurts me right now

But I’m not bitter

I’m not bitter

Not at all

Just a lot

I try to think back on the happiness and fun

It doesn’t make much sense to blame you

For the wreck my life’s become

Bitterness is reserved for stupid people

Not for someone intelligent like me

I don’t have time to feel that way

I do things backwards when I say

That I’m not bitter

I’m not bitter

I’m not bitter

I’m not bitter

Not at all

Just a lot

Now check out this country tune about bitter:

As if that wasn’t enough, I have also found this wonderful clip of some real amateur dudes riffin’ on some bitterness…lordy, isn’t the WWW wonderful!?

Really, and is that wasn’t enough, this is the absolute worst.  Shit, I wish I was partying with these guys! no, not really.  This is the shite, right here.  Let me just set the decriptives for the video:  mustard yellow shirt meets black leather sunviser meets mullet meets a dude walking down a highway smoking a cigarette: