I'll be the first to admit that I have a difficult time understanding all of the variables in the health care debate. Andrew Sullivan offers this piece where he presents some info from several other bloggers. It doesn't come as much as a surprise, but it sure is frustrating and disturbing.
ATK-occasional Greg happened upon some of Long Trail (Vermont) Brewing Company's Double Bag Ale. He described it as, eloquently, "pretty good!" He passed me a couple of bottles and I am thrilled to give it a shot. It is described as an American Strong Ale, which is essentially a barleywine like I reviewed last week. And I like a good barleywine.
Double Bag poured a beautiful, crystal clear copper with a thin but resilient head, eggshell white, that faded to a lovely lacing across the top of the beer. The thin lace clung to the sides of the glass all the way down to the last drop. I never expected to see a barleywine so beautifully clear, and the high alcohol gives the beer a visible viscosity.
The aroma holds so much enticing promise. Apple cider. Caramel. A whole range of floral aromas. Toffee. And to top it all off, a lovely alcohol ester, heady and spicy. This had all the sticky-sweet aromas of a pastry shop; tiramisu and other boozy sweet surprises.
Big rich chewy malt greets my tongue, toasted grains, all fading to a lingering sweetness. The sweet is tempered by a tangy hop that tips the balance towards bitter. Not quite citrus, not quite earthy, but sharp on the tongue like black tea. The toasty grain and malt flavors hang on throughout the beer with the leafy hops as the fumy alcohol warms the body of the beer along the way. The beer, despite being served cold, is as warm and inviting as my best friend's dinner table.
The beer has body, but isn't syrupy. The alcohol is warming without being solventy, and lightens the body of the beer a bit, helping it be as drinkable as it is. Scrubby bubbles cleanse your tongue between quaffs, but just enough to add to the flavors of the beer. It is just a tad watery for a barleywine, but that's only a small mark against this otherwise very fine beer.
I really enjoyed Double Bag Ale. It was all the appropriate parts grainy, malty, bitter and warm. I can't figure out what the hell the label has to do with the beer, but maybe if I was a Vermont native I'd get it. Regardless of the label, this was a fun ride!
It’s a miracle.
I really miss Mike's commentary on the economy and especially his take on Geithner's machinations. Hopefully, we can expect something from him when things settle down at work. Until then, I saw this on the Daily Show and thought it was pretty good.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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I am prepping a post on the whole birther phenomenon. I am not going to debunk that myth; many many many others have already done so. Mine instead will be a discussion about why this is happening, and what happens to a political party when the only people left in it are nucking futz.
But my dreams for such a heady post were shattered this morning...by this.
Today is the day that President Obama hosts Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and his arresting officer, Sergeant James "Mr. Crowley" Crowley. The President quipped that he would invite the two to the White House and have a beer to cool things off. What beers will they serve?
Professor Gates said he liked Red Stripe...[sigh] OK. Red Stripe. So the POTUS will supply some Red Stripe for Professor Gates. Sgt. Crowley?
Sergeant Crowley mentioned to the president that he liked Blue MoonOh dear. OK. So Sgt. Crowley likes Blue Moon. It's starting to look more like a collegiate tailgate than a relaxed conversation in the Prez's back yard. How about the Prez? Will Obama pick a Dogfish Head? Stone? Could he know about the fine beers we have here in Michigan and go with a New Holland or Founders or Shorts? Will he go with the highly-visible Sierra Nevada?
"The president will drink Bud Light," [White House Press Secretary] Mr. Gibbs added.NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! SAY IT AIN'T SO!!! I had such, oh, what's the word...HOPE...that Obama would choose a beer that supports American workers, American brewers and American beer! Is this guy even American?
"We would hope they would pick a family-owned, American beer to lubricate the conversation," said Bill Manley, a spokesman for the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., a California-based brewer that happens to be family-owned.Fellow keggers, I need you to write President Obama and express your disappointment in the fact that he has chosen not only 3 foreign-owned beers, but 3 mass-produced beers as well. So much for family-owned small American businesses. So much for American craft beer. Urge the President to support American craft beer. Local communities and small businesses are counting on his leadership to show America that craft beer isn't just a fad, it's a Presidential priority!
Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Co., which brews Samuel Adams, decried "the foreign domination of something so basic and important to our culture as beer."
Genesee Brewery, Rochester, N.Y., released a statement congratulating the president for having beer at the meeting but adding: "We just hope the next time the President has a beer, he chooses an American beer, made by American workers, and an American-owned brewery like Genesee."
...
For the past several days, David von Storch, co-founder of Capitol City Brewing Company -- which owns a brewpub just a few blocks from the White House -- has been lobbying the administration to serve his company's "Equality Ale."
"What better beer to have them drink than the only beer brewed in the District of Columbia, Capitol City Brewing Company Equality Ale!" Mr. von Storch wrote in an email he sent Tuesday to several White House staffers.
...
Dan Kenary, president of Boston-based Harpoon Brewery, said he wanted to make a run at getting some of his beer into the meeting but couldn't find any intermediaries with close White House contacts. "I think just showing up at the gate with a case of Harpoon would make them look at us funny," he said.
Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew, The Story of American Beer," said that by holding the summit, the President risks criticism from groups working to persuade the public to drink less alcohol.Huh? Lemonwhat? Was somebody talking?
For instance, there is the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which led the fight for Prohibition in the early 20th century. Rita K. Wert, the group's national president, said her organization is disappointed that the president is serving beer at all. "There are so many other beverages he could have chosen that would have served just as well," she said, mentioning lemonade or iced tea.
Since most of us on ATK can read, we should all know that Sarah Palin formally stepped-down this weekend. As we have also mostly heard, her speech was a disjointed trainwreck. My personal favorite was the part where she criticized the MSM for "making stuff up" when by all accounts she herself made up most of what she said during her campaign. And we all still suffer from the aftershocks of the crap that was made-up during the last election.
Cole on Balloon Juice sums it up nicely: "Twenty years ago she could competently descibe a dog race, three years ago she could articulate a position on the abortion issue, and this weekend she composed a resignation speech by throwing culture war stock phrases into a hat and dumping it upside down on a copy of The Paranoid Style in American Politics."
But this video here is so perfectly satirical of that portion of her speech where she tried to wax poetic about Alaska that I watched it multiple times just to relish in the joke. Enjoy.
She was almost our veep.
UPDATE
Due to copywrite crap, I had to ditch the YouTube clip and go with an embed from NBC. Nazis.
I have been aging a bottle of Weyerbacher's Blithering Idiot, which is their Barleywine Ale. A Barleywine is the opposite of a Double or Triple IPA; where those are hop bombs, these are typically malt monsters. But like a DIPA or a TIPA has malt to provide a hint of balance, barleywines should have some hop presence for that same suggestion of balance. Funny enough, my mother in law picked this up for me on a trip to Florida recently because she thought the name and the bottle were funny.
I poured the beer into an Imperial pint glass. It was a light muddy brown with ruby red hues when held against the light, with some dusty sediment (perfectly fine and natural for a beer like this) that got stirred-up when I opened it. It poured with a thick, fluffy meringue-like head, but unfortunately it dissipated very quickly to almost nothing but some lacing on the top.
The aroma packed a wallop of massive dark, ripe fruit esters: dates and figs and plums. Another smell yielded chocolate. Yet another: brown sugar. But after a few good whiffs, my head spun from the unmistakably dominant alcohol. The booze in this beer, at over 11%, provided peppery spice and an unfortunate solventy aroma to the beer. It wasn't quite "dark fruit and sugar covered in turpentine, but it was approaching that.
My first quaff stung my tongue with alcohol. My taste buds were assaulted by massive dark fruit backed by a huge alcohol burn. This beer is Darwin's dream: only the strongest and fittest flavors survive the alcohol onslaught. Massive malty sweetness, almost cloyingly so, competes rum, raisins, dates and coffee; no light flavors here. Remember the days of jungle juice at a college party, where all you tasted (if you were lucky) was fruit soaked in booze? That's this beer: big dark fruits soaked in rum and vodka. Carmelized brown sugar pokes through the mess as well. And there, somewhere, was a lonely hop screaming for help, drowning in a sea of maltiness. Not even enough of a hop to add bitterness or balance; just a lonely little hop, as if someone begrudgingly added hops because beer is "supposed to have them." This beer is a malt hammer on the anvil of my tongue.
The beer had a massive, creamy mouthfeel with light carbonation. The heavy malts added lots of body to the beer, and the alcohol, while predominant, was still pleasantly warming all the way down like a shot of scotch.
I should have cellared this for a lot longer, like a year. Perhaps the alcohol would have subsided a bit and some of the bigger flavors would have mellowed. At 11%+, this is a beer that can handle a cellar for a loooong time and maybe even benefit from it. It had qualities that I enjoy in a big malt bomb barleywine, with all the sugars and big fruits, but the alcohol just rode roughshod all over everything. This barley field just got trampled by heavy cavalry. I would have liked more hops to provide the illusion of balance and perhaps they would show more if I aged it. Perhaps not. I will definitely get another bottle, and just store it.
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