And so it begins

I really believe craft brewers have collectively lost 

their minds. It was 93° here today, and what do I see on the shelf staring back at me like a demon preparing to suck the life out of me? Pumpkin beer-- the scourge of the craft beer movement. And I use the term " craft" loosely in this instance.

I talked to a couple of brewers recently, and they hate making the stuff. They only do it because it sells. Why it sells, I have no idea. I guess there really is no accounting for taste. Very few styles of beer can handle being over the top with flavor, with IPA's and Imperial Stouts coming to mind here. But they at least still taste like beer. However, some barrel aged stouts (and others) are getting almost as bad as pumpkin beer in the over the top, completely overdone, in your face flavor, that tastes nothing like beer but that's a topic for another post.


Craft brewing is all about freshness and quality. Pumpkin beer made in June or July is lacking one key ingredient that's fresh, the pumpkin. The "star" of this show. Then again, maybe the pumpkin is just a bit player. More on that coming up.


All over this country brewers were breaking their wrists opening canned pumpkin paste to dump in their fermenters. I'll say that again so it sinks in, canned pumpkin paste. Doesn't sound very crafty to me. I wouldn't even be surprised if the paste was bought at Sam's Club. That's if they bother to use real pumpkin at all. Here the pumpkin isn't even a bit player. Some, it seems, just dump a bunch of spice in the beer and call it a day. So much spice in fact, that I hesitate to even call it beer. It fails to resemble beer in any way save for one-- the fact that it's carbonated liquid. There isn't even a hint of what actual beer tastes like in "pumpkin beer."


I've had samples where I felt like taking a knife to my tongue to scrape off the gritty residue of clove and cinnamon. I'm not sure why the stuff isn't just called what it really is, Carbonated, Liquid Spice.


You'd swear everyone lost the ability to chew and brewers decided to make it easier for people by putting pie in a giant industrial blender and bottling it up so everyone can enjoy a nice drink of pie.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like pumpkin pie. I just like it in November when there are snow flurries in the air, football is on TV and I've just stuffed myself into a tryptophan coma on Thanksgiving. That's a great time to eat pumpkin pie, there's never a good time to drink it. Especially when it's 95° outside with enough humidity to make a snake sweat.


Pumpkin beer is dumb. Pumpkin beer in August is on the same level of stupidity as Christmas displays at Wal-Mart in September. Come on craft brewers, don't stoop to the level of retailers taking the fun out of Christmas by shoving it in your face for months on end.


Then throw in the people singing the praises of Pumpking or The Great Pumpkin or Whole Hog, Pumpkin Pumpkin Pumpkin OMG!!!!!1!!1 FTW!!!!


Gaaaaahh! Stop the bus, I want to get off.

Hallelujah!

Corona in a can has arrived! This could be the ultimate in beer, people won't need to put a lime wedge in it to hide the skunkiness.

I have to wonder if Corona drinkers will be confused without the skunk flavor hiding in the background? Will they still put the lime in there and wonder, this doesn't taste right, what did you do to my beer?

Bartenders around the world will be ridiculed and berated because the Corona someone ordered tastes wrong. "What's wrong with this?" they will hear over and over again. Tenders will be stuck between a rock and a hard place, do they risk telling customers the beer they've been drinking has been a poor choice or do they claim ignorance and ask, what do you mean?

This should prove interesting. Besides....

Beer = boobs.

Heady Topper

    As I sit here trying The Alchemist's double IPA, Heady Topper for the first time, I can't help think about all the praise and mystique I've read about in reviews and from people who have had it. It's been called the world's best beer by some.

     The brewery sells Heady at $10.00 a four-pack to it's re-sellers, a good price for 16 oz. cans of craft beer. The "black market" can get a little out of hand for this brew, a local restaurant had a few cases and they were selling it for 10 bucks a can and there have been reports of it selling for over $100.00 a four pack in the Washington DC area. I have a hard enough time spending 10 on a bomber, but prices like that are outrageous.

     For whatever reason, brewer John Kimmich wants people to drink Heady from the can, it even says so right on the can in big, bold lettering. I'm not one to follow direction very well at times and I poured it into a glass. On one hand I could see how the brew tumbling through the opening in the can would introduce turbulance with every sip and possibly make some flavors pop. I say possibly because I've never tested that theory. On the other hand, drinking from the can doesn't let you get a good whiff from the beer and smell the various aromas. 

    When it comes to writing reviews I'm not going to write a 10 paragraph essay making up bullshit descriptors for what I see, smell and taste, it will be short, simple and straightforward when it comes to that part. With that said, here we go with my first review.

    I like to see what a beer looks like so using a glass is a no brainer for me. I also wanted to see if I could harvest the yeast from the can to use in a future home brew. The beer pours a hazy yellow with a nice two finger foamy head that dissipated fairly quickly. 

    Aroma has citrus, melon and strong piney notes. Flavor starts out a bit sweet just before you're hit with the hops, lots of hops with a piney, lemony flavor and a somewhat dry finish. And that's pretty much all I got from the flavor department.

    Did it live up to the hype? No and I've found most beers can't, it seems the hype comes more from scarcity than anything else and this beer helped reinforce why I don't chase trophy beers. Is it a good DIPA? Yes it is but it isn't something I'd go out of my way to get either, I've had better, more easily found DIPAs. I'm glad I didn't go to the restaurant that was selling these for 10 bucks a can, I would have been pretty upset had I spent that much on a beer that isn't worth half that.

Up for Whatever, Except Bud Light

I’ll admit right up front, I’m new to the beer game. It’s been a little over a year since I’ve started my beer journey, and though I’m enjoying craft beer as much as the next person, I’m guilty of drinking light beer on occasion—like when I want something cheap that I can suck down quick without “feeling it” after a couple of beers. Generally, my go-to has been Bud Light, which, while it’s certainly not the most delicious thing in the world, I found to be more palatable than Miller or Coors.

However, due to some carelessness, bad marketing, and (honestly)  pure idiocy, Bud Light has lost me as a customer, and not because I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I’ll only drink beer from a micro-brewery, as many craft beer drinkers choose to do. I will no longer be supporting Bud by purchasing or drinking their beer, because of one of the latest phrases included in Bud Light’s #UpForWhatever campaign. #IHateTheNameAnyway #HashtagsHaveAPurposeOnTheInternet #NotOnBeerBottles #YesTheseHashtagsAreIronic. For those of you who are unaware, Bud Light has semi-recently started putting short, catchy sentences on their bottles, followed by the hashtag “up for whatever.” The purpose is supposed to be playful and lighthearted, though one of the latest installments is anything but. Currently circulating throughout bars, homes, and frat-houses all over the country are bottles with the sentence “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.”

If this were a video blog I would take a long dramatic pause and shake my head with my lips pursed, so just imagine that I’m doing that.

I’m going to start off tackling this issue by saying that I want to believe that the person who came up with this sentence didn’t have any malevolent ideas in mind when they slapped it on a beer bottle. They were probably thinking something along the lines of “Don’t say no to having one more beer with the friends you haven’t seen in months,” “Don’t say no to trying something new, and potentially exciting,” “Don’t say no to having a night out when you’ve been stressed and stuck at the office all week.” The point was probably to try to get people to have fun, de-stress, and live a little, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, the execution of those ideas by telling people to remove the word “no” from their vocabulary can have some idiotic implications at best, illegal at worst. Sometimes, the word “no” is good. Like when someone says something like “we should totally go pee on that guys car right now,” or “I think you should steal the wallet hanging out of that guy’s back pocket,” or “You should go slap that girl in the middle of this bar for sleeping with your boyfriend,” or “We’ve been here for a while, let’s have another drink or two and then get out of here and go back to my place.”

Of course, most people won’t read their Bud Light bottle and think “Yea! I’m gunna go pee on a car!” But that’s not the point. The point is that Bud Light is disregarding the importance of the word “no.” We live in a society where one in five women is sexually assaulted, with a countless number of those occurring on college campuses (and I feel confident is saying that college students are probably some of the biggest consumers of Bud Light in the country). We can’t have catchy slogans that tell us that we shouldn’t be saying no because “come on, lighten up, it’ll be fun” can turn into “I said no and they didn’t care,” and “just a few  more drinks and then let’s get out of here” can turn into “I was too drunk to consent.” Because no means no, and yes only means yes when you’re sober and can give consent. “No” is not a drink away from “yes,” and getting people drunk so they say yes is sexual assault.

I’m sure there are people reading this that are rolling their eyes, thinking I’m too uptight because “that’s so not what they were actually going for. It’s not a big deal, lighten up.” However, I’m not the only one who read that sentence and thought it was kind of rapey. So, if there are numerous other people in the country who are reading it the same way I did, I guarantee you somebody somewhere who works for Bud Light read it as that way too, and just didn’t care. And that, in my opinion, is the problem here—that people just don’t care. You’d think, that when marketing is everything, a big corporation like that would never want to release something that could be read as having implications of sexual assault. Someone at Bud Light read it that way though, and thought “oh well, I’ll let it slide, it’s no big deal,” just like the person who sexually assaulted a drunk person thought “oh well, it’s not a big deal” because they didn’t use force. Just like way too many people hear the story of the person who was drunkenly sexually assaulted and think “oh well, it’s really not that big of a deal” because there was no bruises or because there may have been a drunken “yes.”

Well, Bud Light, to me it’s a big deal. Because choices are important. Because language is important. Because marketing does affect our attitudes towards things, even subconsciously. Because this campaign which was meant to encourage fun, shouldn’t have sentences that sound like it’s encouraging sexual assault.

I know I’m just one person, and Bud Light probably doesn’t care that they’ve lost me as a customer, but if they continue down this questionable path, I’m sure they’ll be losing more.

#I’llHaveAYuenglingLightPlease

1001 Arabian Beers

For the past two years I've been a regular at my now favorite watering hole, The Backyard Ale House. It's a place with an eclectic mix of people, young, old and everything in between with great food on top of the over 500 different beers they stock with a knowledgeable staff to guide a customer.

Every Tuesday they have what they call the 545 Tasting. It's five 4 oz. samples for five bucks of whatever beer they happen to choose for the week. Sometimes it's a mix of different styles and other times it's a theme, recently it was five DIPAs. Another time it was five "pumpkin" beers (it's the only tasting I've never partaken in for reasons I will surely post about in the future).

A couple of weeks ago I sampled my 1000th different beer in the past two years at the BYAH. I'm not really sure how many more I've had at different places, probably a few hundred if I was forced to guess. To some that may seem like a lot and I'm sure to others it isn't that many. Without any specific data, I'd say to someone who likes to try different beer it's probably a middle of the road amount.

This is a great way to discover different beer, you don't have to worry about dropping a fiver on a draft or 10 or more on a bomber to only find out you don't like it. I think I've only pushed away a handful of those samples because they were just bad beer. I remember one in particular was a gluten free beer, it was just plain disgusting, undrinkable. If I had issues with gluten and this was typical of the style I'd give up beer outright. I won't say I liked every one that wasn't pushed away, in fact I know I haven't but most were good examples of the style and not cheap bottom of the barrel swill. Those do occasionally sneak in but I don't think it's something put there to get rid of stock. At least I hope not.

Regardless, pushing away a handful of beers out of a thousand says a lot about the people putting this out for their customers, four guys who love beer as much as anyone.

As an aside, I've asked one of the owners to join us here at Brew Conspiracy as a contributor, I hope he says yes. I think a bar owner could add some insight into beer selling as well as writing about beer in general.

In the Beginning...

"I hate the taste of beer."-me, 1993

I was at a kegger party on the campus of a university mostly known for it's partying.  My friend, to whom I just uttered that phrase, responded with "We ALL hate the taste of beer.  But it gets you drunk."

And there it was.  Accepting mediocrity (lower than mediocre, actually;  I believe it was a keg of Natural Light) to get drunk.  So I acquiesced and became the typical college freshman.  But I didn't like it.

Fast forward one year, I was working in a bar as a barback. In conversation with one of the bartenders, it came up that I didn't like beer.  He matter-of-factly told me it was because I didn't KNOW beer, and took it upon himself to sit me down and teach me.

He started with Guinness on tap.  After shift, he poured us each a pint, and watched me wince as I took the first sip.

"We're going to do this every night until you like that."

And we did.  After each shift, we'd have a pint of Guinness and talk about beer. And talk about what we're tasting, mouth feel, nose (or lack there of, in the case with Guinness).  Once I started getting an appreciation for Guinness, we moved on to other styles; ales and lagers.

He taught me a incredible amount in a relatively short time. But most of all, he got me out of the college-mindset of drinking to get drunk (granted, I was still college age at the time, so well within my "right" to have that mindset).  He taught me how to ENJOY beer, and it's something I've never forgotten.

Life's too short to drink bad beer.

A 20+ year Journey

My beer adventures began over 20 years ago. Not long after my daughter was born, my late wife, Kathy, and I started frequenting a restaurant called Cooper's Seafood House. She worked second shift at a hospital and every other week my mother-in-law would have my daughter over for a sleepover.

That would coincide with my wife's every other weekend shift. Kathy would get out at 11:30 PM and I would pick her up and we would head out for some food and drink. At the time I pretty much stuck with the Big Three and we would spend a couple of hours talking and having a few drinks, beer for me and mixed drinks for her, have some apps and then head home.

At some point I decided to try something different in the beer department, it may have been a German or Belgian, I'm not sure, it was a long time ago. What I do remember is being astounded by how much more flavor the beer had as compared to what the Big Three had to offer in the states.

This ritual of every other week at Cooper's continued for a few years and every time we went I would try to have two or three different beers, some in bottles, some off the tap. I gravitated toward Belgians and the malty side of the spectrum. I could unequivocally say, at the time, that Corsendonk's Monk's Brown Ale (I believe it's called Abbey Brown now) was my favorite for quite a few years, the dark fruit aromas and flavors really hit the spot for me. Kathy even enjoyed it and she hated beer. It wasn't long after that when I "forced" her try some stouts, she being a coffee and dark chocolate nut, that she actually started liking beer. She would always say she didn't like beer and my response was always that this is different. When she finally relented and took a sip she saw the dark side. The malty, dark, coffee, chocolaty stuff and lambics, especially framboise, turned out to be her favorites. It got to the point where our favorite tender, John, would give us a beer without us even asking for the beer menu, he knew what we liked.

I haven't intentionally purchased a Big Three beer since that first German or Belgian or whatever it was in the 20 plus years since then, they just became flavorless.

Those were fun times, it was full of great conversation and good beer.