Drag Shows - Lupulin Brewing

Last weekend some friends went with my wife and I to a drag show in Big Lake, Minnesota, at Lupulin Brewing.  Based on some of the Facebook comments, we were wondering if we'd see some local, conservative push back at the brewery even though they serve their own beer, not Bud Light [PS F AB and their turn to 'patriotism' in their commercials at the pressure of noise from conservatives. It's the case that the loudest screams are often coming from those on the wrong side of history. They're the death gasps of people drowning when they could learn to swim and eventually do water ballet.]  My home town is nearby, and that hood isn't known for their progressive politics.

I was amused to read someone commenting about how in their 44 years in Big Lake, they'd never seen something like that [and seemed to be implying there was a moral slide]. Drag Shows are good clean fun.  There's no morality issue to consider.  I grew up on a bit of burlesque and drag.  One of my early memories is my parents being super excited about a tassel twirler on television when we were in California.  I didn't develop a [more than average] breast fixation.  I didn't develop a need to go twirl. If burlesque doesn't push you to be burlesque, drag doesn't push you to do drag.  That's a super simplification, but likely valid.

And if I was to weigh the morality and danger of drag against the prevalence of alcohol in our society, even though I love the brewery boom [note my new Books, Brews, and Bicycling series], alcohol shatters the impact of pretty much everything else in the history of our society, even if it isn't responsible for putting K9s oUt Of WoRk LiKe MaRiJuAnA. [< sarcasm, I learned that very late in my web career]. As an aside, good on the Minnesota legislature and Governor Walz for finally getting that shit legalized even more than the THC in our seltzers.  As someone who studied dystopias, I always worry a little bit about the expansion of options to keep people's attention diverted from the man [alcohol, drugs...but worse, streaming and the uninformative parts of the web like doom scrolling], but the benefits of not putting people in jail for nonsense and giving them alternatives to drinking away pain is monumental in my opinion. 

Anyway, if you're looking for moral slide in Big Lake, there's never been too far to slide when it comes to drugs and crime and heavy drinking.  If you feel sex is a moral issue, any of the "corner bars" are far sketchier than a drag show at a brewery and have been since I was a teenager, and presumably long before I could drink at them [transparency, I have been to Big Lake bars when I was considerably younger, and even have stories from my time at them and at least looking at them externally, they don't seem to have changed at all].

Or, maybe you could be more concerned about bad practices in your local law enforcement rather than a bunch of folks dancing.  https://www.hometownsource.com/monticello_times/community/big_lake/police-chief-resigns-after-city-federal-investigations-into-gun-purchase/article_f1c2b48c-7a01-11ec-ad9b-3b4b546eaee6.html 

</bit_of_a_rant>

So a few photos of the event at Lupulin.  Enjoy my wife's hair color.  I believe they discontinued it, so after a few more rounds of horded hair dye, she's going to have to change it up.  It was an interesting venue.  We were there early and could have found better seats, like up above, but weren't sure where folks would be performing.  For the most part, they moved through the audience, but a high table would have given us a better view.  Not that it's always difficult to see the performers when they're in high heeled boots like the MC. 

This photo may give the impression that it was mostly women at Lupulin, but far from it.  I met a fellow - male - Ingress player at the event because I could see him playing on the portals and he'd left his phone face up on a table.  And behind and to the left are plenty of guys there with their friends and others. The bottom photo is more representative.

I posit that between Lupulin - which has a startling variety of beer - and Willy's on the Lake [which used to be Russell's, where I once got a volleyball through my car window from the beach while at a fancy dinner at age...18....with my post senior summer g/f] my friend and I probably drank too much.  I had a power nap in the car on the way home, and apparently my friend's s/o sent my wife a photo of him passed out almost as soon as he got home.  Part of it was the infectious nature of the crowd.  It was a happy, celebratory bunch.

This photo is for my sister.  She's a big fan of the little mermaid, currently the focus of its own culture war as she's changed skin color which seems to be as far as some folks can get.  This would probably destroy them.  BTW, love that Lupulin mural.  I think it captures the logos from a number of their beers.

The post event applause.  I didn't enjoy the show as much as the one at Hell's Kitchen, but it was still a great time and it was great to go to a show with friends.  And it was uplifting to be at an event in my old hood that belies the news that it's the southern tip of the crazy part of Minnesota with the politicians who worry about demonology and beard discrimination [travel due north from Big Lake toward Mille Lacs and it's like a mini trip to the American south].

Gamehole Con 2021 - Day 4

Day four was our semi-relaxed day.  The plan was for us to finish up ramen and the rest of the group to finish up Indian food and meet up at the Air BnB for some outside-of-GHC gaming.

E and I started the day by doing a long stint at True Dungeon "Weird Magic".  I think I've mentioned it in the past, but True Dungeon is a bit like a fantasy themed distributed escape room with a running story and experience and equipment.  Equipment is random depending on the tokens you get.  As a n00b this can be tough because if you land on an experienced team they'll want to try fighting at a higher difficulty to pull more treasure.  On the flip side, they can loan you equipment that levels you up, gets you more treasure, etc.  That was the kind of team we were on this time.  They did a great job of explaining it better than any team we've ever been with before. They even explained the "ghost" to us that no one explained last year as a friend who was ill and couldn't attend, but they could run him through on his pre-purchased ticket and use his tokens so he'd collect treasure.  

One of the guys amusingly explained to us that there were limits to ghosts as some obsessives had taken to running a dungeon with themselves and nine ghosts for a while to maximize their treasure [at an expense].  No photos because I don't want to ruin it for anyone.  The surprise of the story and the rooms is most of the fun.  This year's theme was sort of a cyberpunk witch  thing.  We did fail at one room where we had to align colored blocks by changing their colors in a machine with glowing lights on top....boom.  Damage.  But at least it doesn't eliminate you from the game.  E loves playing the thief...each class does something slightly different.  Pushes hockey pucks for damage, traces shapes to find clues or treasure, identifies symbols [oof, memorization] to cast spells, throws two hockey pucks, and more.

We played Space Invaders with Kane.  It's a branded version of Flip Ships, so it wasn't new for me or for E.  Also, a very fast game so we finished up early and found some lunch.  This is a GREAT game if you're looking for something party friendly.  Ms Klenko was there as well - just out of frame.

Some vendor hall photos.  E threatening me with a LARP-ing weapon. 

Kitsune, for sale.  A game E, and Klund, and I hate above almost all others.  We had a HORRIBLE time playing it several years ago and I made it worse by knowingly forcing an extra hour of play when it could have been over just to troll E and Klund.

I had to ask Apong if this was racist.

I own a Xeno game - an expansion for Axis and Allies - but this is downright weird.

Eryn came away with some loot.  Breast cancer suppotive Ticket to Ride trains, as well as Ticket to Ride Europe and Ticket to Ride India from the scratch and dent which was a holiday ask, so it was like Christmas early.  A cool pin, dice [including some not shown here that bend light like fiber optic cables - enough so that I initially thought they glowed], and a few bonus cards from Kane for Fuse.

 

Celtica was our last on-site game of the day.  Very old Ravensburger game with an ironic puzzle component where you build amulets.  Get a handful of colored wizard cards.  Move the wizards on the board any spaces that are all or part of your cards.  Some spaces good.  Some bad. Some draw another card.  We played two games and play was much better on the second game once players started taking some chances to score an extra card in a color to get past a bad space. It won a 2007 children's game award, so that'll give you an idea of the complexity.

 

Beer, local, spotted cow. I think Commuter was the other option in the gaming hall.  It might have been cheaper to keep a whole six pack in the car, but I saved most of my drinking for the AirBnB.  I don't like feeling tired while gaming with new players.  The little spider dude was already at our table.  I think that might be Eryn's third smoothie in three days.  The coffee/ice cream/smoothie stand is probably the best sustenance at Gamehole Con.

 

Back side of the beholder.  I sent it to my wife and channeled Michael Scott's "That's what she said."  Childish, but I felt it was a particularly fun use of the meme.

We had dinner at Morris Ramen.  Apong went a few times after we gave him the name/location.  Maybe my favorite place in Madison.  Young crowd and absolutely wonderful food.  We had the spicy ramen.  Can't recommend it enough.

Back at the house, we sat down for a five person game of Power Grid.  That might be the best number.  Boardgamegeek does say 4-5.  Apong added that red wall across the bottom to make sure we didn't stray into unusable German territory.

Klund won this one with some spirited bidding on ecologically responsible power.

We played minimal hands of The Crew, but enough to understand the basics.  The goal is to have different players take different tricks, in specific orders, etc, cooperatively.  I'm not sure I can play with just my wife, but if we have the neighbors over I'll get it out as it gets incrementally [hand to hand] more difficult over fifty round and the general idea is easy enough to pick up in a few minutes.

And we finished off the night with a game of Cosmic Factory as E now has their own.  We reserved a few minutes for packing and cleaning so that 8:00 a.m. games didn't mean getting up at 6:30 to check out. I think I took home about 80 percent of the food I brought with me.  Definitely overkill.

Hot Summer Nights

 My new neighbor trades beer with me.  Between him and Kyle and myself, I may never have to drink the same beer more than twice unless I really want to.  I've taken to buying warm beer and storing it under the steps and I'm developing quite the esoteric collection.

This was one of the incoming trades.  I had it while playing D&D on Sunday.  I'm generally against fruity beer, but this had a seriously light taste (and light alcohol at 4.4%).  The lower alcohol level was a bonus because anything above 6% tends to make me a bit fuzzy for playing my character.

Speaking of Warbear the Invincible, Warlock, here's his character sheet.  https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/Dexter_Scootarus_I/characters/27038034.  E, Kyle, Chris, his son, and I have been playing for about two months on most weekends with a few skips.  Last time I played consistently was in the Richfield house maybe 25 years ago.  We're having a good time, although I have a theme.  Fire my biggest spell, Scorching Ray.  Take a hit, and "blow up" with Hellish Rebuke.  Either go down, or get in an Eldritch Blast and then go down.  It's not 100%, but I think it's at least a 60% go to strategy.  Mostly I'm waiting for my patron (a fiend, in this case Demogorgon) to decide he's going to chew on my brain and spit it back into my skull.  I hear that's how he makes friends.

Korean Craft Beer

Excellent article on the (South) Korean Craft Beer scene: https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/the-rise-of-south-koreas-craft-brewing-scene

Florida Beer

Orlando was very confusing because they don't sell beer in the liquor store. At least not beer worth drinking. I tried three different stores and came up empty, which led me to my iPad where I verified that there were breweries in the area, which was my recollection. A search revealed that the Whole Foods, about 2/3 of a mile from the hotel, had beer. I walked over there, figuring I'd get some sort of gluten-free nonsense, but lo and behold...beer! Lots of beer. They even had Oskar Blues, which I didn't think was sold outside Colorado. And Whole Foods sold by the can, so I could sit next to the pool and enjoy a variety of yeasty goodness.  Here's a picture of my Whole Foods purchase.  You can imagine my excitement.

Software Links V (and other articles of interest)

• 5 Books to help you become a better software engineer - I disagree about The Pragmatic Programmer, but I did enjoy the others.
• Beer Archaeologist from Long Reads - Dogfish is so freaking cool. "But will the za’atar—a potent Middle Eastern spice mixture redolent of oregano—clobber the soft, floral flavor of the chamomile? And what about the dried doum-palm fruit, which has been giving off a worrisome fungusy scent ever since it was dropped in a brandy snifter of hot water and sampled as a tea?...The truest alcohol enthusiasts will try almost anything to conjure the libations of old. They’ll slaughter goats to fashion fresh wineskins, so the vintage takes on an authentically gamey taste. They’ll brew beer in dung-tempered pottery or boil it by dropping in hot rocks. The Anchor Steam Brewery, in San Francisco, once cribbed ingredients from a 4,000-year-old hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian beer goddess."
• Nailing down non-functional requirements (Infoq) such as "General 'ilities' of the system such as scalability, interoperability, maintainability, portability, performance and security".  I fully agree about the trickiness of making this work as well as getting it in the backlog and in front of the business unit.  I'm particularly sensitive to the issue, because lately I've been tasked with handling our Open Source tracking for the department, including porting the scripting of the process from AntHillPro back to Powershell scripts (AHP keeps failing on us), considering the OWASP scanning schedule, including writing up a standard "bundle" for partners interested in our security stack, and determining the best way to automate some of our testing within the constraints of two development FTEs for half a dozen products.
• Why Most IT Departments Are Modeled After a DMV (Even Yours!) -  How to codify saying "no".  "Campaign rhetoric aside, governments have a bit of a vested interest in slowing down change in the way government works. Governments are meant to be stable, reliable and predictable -- and change opposes those goals...My problem is that ITIL pretty much abhors change. No, not on paper -- on paper, ITIL manages and controls change. In practice, IT organizations use ITIL as a blunt instrument to halt change."
• It's getting real...in the Whole Foods parking lot.   Thanks to Betsy Burton (@betsyphd). I wonder if I should form a competing gang over at Kowalski's.

Great Divide - Denver

I cajoled my family into going to two breweries while we were in Denver. The second day we went downtown to Great Divide. If a cop asks, I'll say it's just a story, but I was angling to eliminate three generations of my family downtown that day. Five people in the car, four of them talking while I was driving in a circle trying to zero in on the brewery. I sort of forgot there were things like stoplights. A few other drivers were keen to remind me they existed.

You'd think it would have been easier to find with a big beer bottle hanging off the corner of the building.


And an amusing beer truck out front.


My grandma and mother were enjoying the sun.  Keep in mind we were in the mile high city, and it was relatively toasty out, even with the snowy mountains nearby.  Compare that to a few days later when it snowed 7" in Sidney, or when it was 30 degrees for the Ironman here in Minnesota.  Grandma looks great for 95.


The bottling room.  Can you tell I spent some time in the taproom prior to the tour?  I was enjoying some of their casked beer which was running closer to the 10% alcohol range.  A few of those on top of the tasting glasses, and it was definitely having an effect.  Eryn LOVED the bottling machine.  They were loading a palate of bottles into it while we were there.  It just picks them off one row at a time and feeds them into the line.  Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!  John from work told me there's a name for it - something like "the paletizer."  For obvious reasons.  There were also kegs - whiskey kegs - in the brewery for making the casked beer (delicious).  I asked the tour guide about them, and she said they were a local brewery, Stranahans.  Kyle said he though Stranahans and Great Divide traded in kind - casks for mash to distill.  They have a tour as well, so when I go back, that's a definite destination.  Apparently they do limited bottlings (140) of whiskeys with names like "SCW Triplewood Snowflake".  If it tastes as good as the name, I bet it's wonderful.

Reexamining this picture, I really do look soused.  It doesn't help that my pants don't actually fit and I look like I need a rope belt with them sort of sticking out the top of my leather belt.


Eryn wasn't so sure she wanted me to take this picture, although she thought it was pretty funny.


She drank so much she was dancing on street poles afterwards.  I like this picture because she's smiling and cute, and there's a hidden brewery in the background as well as a bike.  Beer, bike, Eryn...definitely things that make vacation enjoyable.

Denver - Oskar Blues IV, The Brewery

After dinner at the Oskar Blues restaurant, we headed over to the Tasty Weasel, which is their brewery/onsite bar.  The guy we'd met earlier had told us tours were still on, despite Easter Sunday, but when we got there we were told it was closed, and one of the guys in charge was in his bike clothes, fat tired bike in the back of his running pick up.  He stopped what he was doing and took us inside so I could buy some beer.  I love it when you can buy beer at the brewery. There's something seriously wrong in Minnesota.  This is in their work place.


I don't think you can see one from this view, but they have a few Surly cans on the wall.  They were very complementary of Surly.  Note the live music that happens at the brewery.  Their beer is in cans, but it's delicious.


He couldn't get into the beer cabinet, and had to go find me some from the back.  But this had a nice display of their cans.  Next time I buy a beer fridge, I'm getting a glass door.


This is what happens to all the leftover cans.  Those blocks are hard to move.


I don't know what to make of this.  I didn't want to hold him up, so I didn't ask.


These were brand new.  They like to keep the kids busy while the parents are on the beer tour.  And I imagine they're fun to play if you're there drinking, or if you're an employee.  We need these in the basement at my workplace where the developers have shared workspace.


It looked like this at Schell's when they bought Grain Belt and all the leftover can stock.  But the black cans are much stealthier looking.


Second picture of Eryn and I near the equipment, the outer wall of the in-brewery tap room in the background.  Great brewery!  I want to go back some day when they're running the tour or just having happy hour.

Denver - Oskar Blues III

Very cool - Oskar Blues has people who just meet up to play blue grass and drink beer.  Eryn liked it that there were so many guitars.


This doesn't look comfortable at all.  But my wife would probably prefer it to my kitchen drawer that achieves the same historical perspective on my drinking history.  Maybe all those nubbins are deceptively comfortable, like a full body massage.


More fountains made out of kegs...I have a keg.  I should try this.


See...purdy.  I wonder if my neighbors would approve.


The Oskar Blues tower.  A giant can of beer.


Finally, a picture of the front of the restaurant.  Eryn loved the ribs.  And the pulled pork. And the wings.  Reminded me quite a bit of the food and ambiance at Dinosaur Barbecue in Rochester, NY.

Denver - Oskar Blues II

The women's bathroom had Flash Dance on the door.  The men's bathroom was a plethora of old album covers.  I listened to the soundtrack from 2001 repeatedly as a kid.


And the soundtrack from Close Encounters!  Someone at Oskar Blue's is a serious nerd.


Quite the collection to look at while you're taking a whiz.


But there's more.  Art...beautiful, wonderful art.  This is fuzzy, so I suspect you can't tell it's Sheryl Crow.


Alison Kraus is a bit closer to real life.


And the point here isn't Amanda Bynes half dressed, although she was very good in Easy A with Emma Stone as the Bible banger.  The point is the Ten Fidy, which was delicious, though very thick, and that Fat Squirrel, from just over the border in Wisconsin, was another placer in the top 25 new beers.

Beer...

There's a bit of a ruckus going on lately with Surly's plans to attach a brew house to their brewery. I don't see a problem with it, despite the desire of Minnesota middle men to maintain their hold on distribution no matter what common sense dictates. Many breweries outside our state have a similar set up such as Goose Island and Sierra Nevada (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) and there's no appreciable impact to beer sales I suspect. It wouldn't surprise me if having a local brew house doesn't contribute to beer loyalty in the area and more sales. Just moving a tavern down the street is silly.

I did enjoy that the MLBA states that they oppose lower BALs for DWIs and smoking prohibitions (as if that has anything to do with them if they truly embrace a three part system). And they've already updated their site to reflect that they, "Fought back attempts to weaken the “Three-tiered” alcohol system."

That said, I DO see the advantage of not selling beer in grocery stores. I've been to Tucson several times, and finding a good liquor store can be a bit of an effort. If you allow grocery stores to sell liquor, then you get grocery stores that sell Miller and Bud and cheap wine and completely ignore variety. The end result is to take away the primary revenue stream from small liquor stores that helps fund their interest in variety. You lose the likes of Blue Max and The Cellars and are faced with nothing but beer from major breweries and only the most mainstream of local beers (Summit - which I like, but I want a choice). You're not robbing from grocery stores, they can still set up a liquor store if it's separated from the main store by a wall (Kowalski's and Byerly's), or by a parking lot (Cub Foods), and the separation forces them to compete in variety.

Town Hall

I've been at Town Hall twice in the last two weeks. That's as many times as the last two months. Actually, probably more than the last six months. I went with the Tech Ops guys right after WRAP (our release process), and with our training guy and a few people from my group (extended) last week (when Greg-not-in-the-picture-below got a $42 parking ticket at what was probably 5:59 p.m. when the metering for the block ceased at 6:00). I snapped this picture of Greg.

It was an interesting visit in that after we'd arrived, three ladder trucks and about six other fire trucks appeared and tried to wedge themselves into the seven corners area, which is designed to accommodate two ladder trucks at most, if they don't have a posse. After much tado, it appeared that they were there to rescue the jumper on the top of the Holiday overlooking the patio where we were drinking. Many people stopped to stare up, concerned about his well being. When he was done doing the phone work on the upper level, he unstrapped his safety gear and went inside. Oops.

There were some real jumpers in the vicinity. A colony of tent caterpillars was involved in a diaspora immediately over our table. We spent quite a bit of time shooing them away. Knocking them out of the air as they rappelled down, and covering our beer when they cut loose to drop the last few feet. When the opportunity presented itself, we piled them neatly for the birds.

Local Beer Flow Chart

Heavy Table has a local beer flow chart. I end up at the Bulldog or the Bryant Lake Bowl sometimes, but mostly I end up at Town Hall. Mmmmm....Town Hall.

Postpourri - Agile, Bananas, Breakfast, Beer, Memes

Been a while since I did a postpourri, but I had a few things queued up that I found enjoyable:

1.) How to open a banana at viral video. Perhaps Mean Mr. Mustard can benefit from knowing how to open those bananas he stores in his banana bunkers.

2.) Know Your Meme - in case there's an internet meme you don't understand or missed. You can't be expected to function in polite company if you don't know about Om Nom Nom Nom or the Keyboard Cat.

3.) Conner posts a link to the beer flow chart which advises you what to drink (hmm...this link might work better).

4.) Metro magazine reviews breakfast. I ordered a subscription to their magazine after reading their breakfast articles. They review the bacon independently. That's good journalism.

5.) How to turn your chest freezer into a chest fridge (why? because it saves you a lot of money when the cold stays in the fridge, and you can stop yelling at your kids, "QUIT STANDING AROUND WITH THE DOOR OPEN!")

6.) Boing Boing has a quote on their site from 8 years ago quoting Joel on Software talking about the MBA mind that I found highly amusing if you work with Agile at all:

"People who aren't programmers are just looking at the screen and seeing some pixels. And if the pixels look like they make up a program which does something, they think "oh, gosh, how much harder could it be to make it actually work?"

The big risk here is that if you mock up the UI first, presumably so you can get some conversations going with the customer, then everybody's going to think you're almost done. And then when you spend the next year working "under the covers," so to speak, nobody will really see what you're doing and they'll think it's nothing.

Phartz

I went up Kyle's way yesterday to have breakfast with him at Lynde's in Osseo. It used to be sort of a run down looking house, but last summer they fixed it up and made it larger and more modern. We invited Ming as well, but he was at a Boy Scout event all day and couldn't go, so Kyle had a pancake for him.

That is one big pancake to layer on top of a three egg omelet full of hashbrowns. Truth be told, he ate more of half a pancake for Ming. I had the meatsa omelet and made the mistake of putting salt on it before I took a bite. I should have known an omelet full of bacon, ham, and other assorted meats wouldn't need any additional salt.

When they upgraded the building, one of the things they didn't get rid of was their old beer can collection. This one, Milwaukee Phartz, is my favorite.

Nutbuster: The Ballet!

I haven't been willing to post about this for several days, because I just don't know what to say about it. In the City Pages, there was an advertisement for Nutbuster! The Ballet at the Bryant Lake Bowl. This seemed to be one of those things that would amuse me. After all, the idea that Drosselmeyer is some sort of drunk ruminating on the holidays and having a Nutcrackeresque fantasy - it's all in his mind, not Clara's - is an idea that I feel could be ripe for interesting commentary. Eryn disagreed. She was a bit disgusted with me for thinking that might be fun, although she wanted to know all the details after I went.

But there was no interesting commentary. Rather, after talking Kyle into going with me, we watched a late 40's to early 50's guy dance around the stage for over 30 minutes. Sometimes with a little girl's doll. Sometimes with a bottle of vodka (Kyle and I discussed the similarities to his infamous vodka + knife + phonebook + cement floor incident when we lived at Riverside Plaza. If you look at the picture in that link, we were on the top floor, close to middle, of the building facing you in the photo). Sometimes with a nutcracker. Sometimes with a blow up doll (although he stabbed her at one point and she deflated - I don't remember that scene in The Nutcracker). The only talking was over the pa system at the beginning of the Nutbuster during which John Munger (playing Drosselmeyer) discussed his inspiration for Nutbuster, which evolved out of a lonely Christmas where he wrapped himself three presents, hung out with his cat, and then went to see Dune at the local theater. Given that Dune was released in 1984, I'm going to up my guess of his age to mid-50's.

To capture the feeling of this one man play, I'd have to go with, you know when you see something that's so sad, it becomes funny? And then it becomes sad again? And then you have a moment of disbelief that you're still sitting there watching it, so it becomes sad for you, then sad for them again, and then the whole thing is funny because it's all so sad. But not really in a good way. That feeling. Sort of A Clockwork Orange with your eyes toothpicked open feeling, but more melancholy before the uncontrollable laughter sets in.

On a positive note, the beer and my dinner, three cheese tortellini with shrimp and lots of vegetables, were very good. I had enough Surly Furious to smooth over the strangeness of almost anything, and a good Anchor Porter thrown in the midst of some post-ballet drinking with Kyle made it all worthwhile.

B is for Beer

B is for Beer by Tom Robbins states on the cover "A Children's Book for Grown-ups" on the left and "A Grown-up Book for Children" on the right. A quick summary of this book, which takes about an hour to read, is, "Six year old girl gets drunk on a beer, throws up, and has visions of The Beer Fairy who takes her on a tour of the history of beer, the production of beer, and the esoteric, new-agish magic that is beer drinking." It was thoroughly amusing, although it needed another 120 pages to get the full Robbins feel to it and pull in a bit more humor and a bit more fact. There's plenty of beer humor out there that could stand an interpretation under Robbin's pen (see 14 fun facts about beer which includes, 'It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month", or what we know today as the "honeymoon"').

An extra tidbit, B is for Beer did provide me some fodder for an interesting discussion in my row at work today about the origins of beer being in Egypt or Iran/Mesopotamia. Robbins states beer really started in Egypt and that anything that came prior to that was really just muck, not craftsmanship.

And I can't find any online references to Vinegar Eels living in the sides of beer steins, but there is a reference to nematodes that live only in the mats upon which Germans set their beer.

Back to Brewing

Last weekend, when I felt it was far enough past the software release that I could travel outside Eagan city limits, the family and I met Kyle for breakfast at the Uptown Diner (four egg greek omelets are two damn big, and I use the word two purposefully in reference to the eggs) and then went over to the brewery store to ponder a homebrew kit to make for the first time in many years.

This week, Kyle came over and I broke out my Father's Day present from 3+ years ago - a deep frying kit - to cook up the Cream Stout kit I purchased last weekend. It's happily burbling away behind me as I type. It's a very healthy noise for a carboy full of proto-beer.

Here's Kyle. He was in charge of the gas flow. The outdoor cooker is excellent for fine tuning the heat. On the flat top stove in the kitchen I can barely get a boil. It was one of the reasons I quit brewing, because nothing would cook right.


Here it is, boiling energetically. When I state I couldn't get a good boil on the flat top stove, I mean I couldn't get a good boil with half this much liquid. Being able to boil up several gallons makes for a better tasting beer because you don't have to add (much) water on top of the mixture, it all gets cooked up together.


And this was my makeshift cooler. I have a copper cooling coil, but dropping it in the pot makes a huge mess. This seemed like a great way to cool it down and water the yard at the same time. I know - there's some dirt, but it never came near the pot. It's the fastest I've ever cooled a pot, and it was twice the usual liquid.


So in two weeks I should have something I can bottle or keg. I'm looking forward to my first drinkable production in many years.