AMERICAN (craft beer week)
Welcome, all, to American Craft Beer Week! I’m a day late on this announcement, but only because the internet was a day late on drawing my attention to this news. According to Craftbeer.com, the official home of American Craft Beer Week (ACBW) … ACBW will be recognized May 14 – 20, 2012 and offers an exciting opportunity for small and independent craft brewers and the community of better beer retailers to celebrate the ever advancing beer culture here in the U.S. Plus, tens of thousands of today’s beer beginners, beer enthusiasts, and hard core beer geeks make time to toast the week. What the f**k did I tell you last week? Drinkers- especially those of beer- looove to celebrate things. Can’t say they’re reaching for it in this case, either. Though I once worshipped the cheap stuff, smaller breweries with more complex- and admittedly slightly pricier- beers have held my hand along the transformation… Read More »
The Other May Day
Many attributes can be attached to we drinkers: degenerate, wasteful, ridiculous, perhaps most definitively, debaucherous. Now those are all good and fun, but I like a positive spin when picking my adjectives, so I just refer to our community as immensely celebratory. St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Independence Day, Memorial Day, Bastille Day if you’re feeling cultural. Any time of the year, drinkers will find a reason to justify their habit. Most of the time, it’s a stretch (“Columbus day? Really?”) But every now and then, things work out so perfectly- line up so very precisely- that you shouldn’t even feel a twinge of guilt for day drinking. Ladies and gentlemen, we are on the eve of one such time. Tomorrow is: Cinco de Mayo: A celebration of heritage commemorating the Mexican army- outnumbered 2-to-1- against the occupying French army’s attack on Fort Puebla in 1862. Also a celebration of tequila,… Read More »
“Today’s Beer Geek”: John Smith Strikes Back
The highest honor a blogger can receive occurs when something you’ve found on the internet turns around and finds you. Of coursel, there are probably actual awards out there that are more honorable, but I don’t see them coming my way any time soon so we’ll settle! As you may or may not remember, I posted about 5 weeks ago about a series of viral videos that poked fun at- as the video itself calls them- “Today’s Beer Geek”. It’s a clever little series that seems to have one unifying message: “Quit getting so high-and-mighty about your beer, people.” A few days ago, I was delighted to find that the creator of these videos, under his pseudonym “John Smith”, left a thorough explanation of each of the videos (including 2 new ones: http://vimeo.com/38795581) along with a bit on why he made the videos to begin with. (UPDATE: He copied and pasted… Read More »
Why You Should Know About Reinheitsgebot, But Don’t Need To Celebrate It
496 years ago today, beer history was made. In Bavaria, two dukes passed the Reinheitsgebot- or purity ordinance- to impose regulations on the creation and selling of beer. The crux of it, or at least the bit which it’s famous for today, is this: Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that in future in all cities, markets and in the country, the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance, shall be punished by the Court authorities’ confiscating such barrels of beer, without fail. I know you’re upset by the talk of confiscation of beer, but let’s backpedal for a second. Barley, hops, water. Nothing else. Anyone who knows a thing or two about brewing (or science) may notice an important ingredient missing: yeast. Now, I don’t know anything about science, but I’ve only heard of yeast… Read More »
AMBAR ALERT: Think before you drink DOS XX Ambar
I don’t always drink beer. But when I do, it makes microscopic lacerations in my esophagus on the way down. Less than 24 hours ago, HeinekenUSA announced a voluntary recall of Dos XX Ambar and a handful of other brands they handle. They posted the following to their facebook page: Recall Alert: Through routine quality inspections, we found a defect on some of our Dos Equis Ambar brown bottles. As a result, we have made the decision to issue a partial, voluntary recall of these affected products. Please view the following video or visit www.HeinekenUSA.com for more information. It’s no reason to panic as the number of affected bottles is believed to be below 1%, but we at Boozin Blog advocate safe drinking and would hate for any of our fearless readers to try to enjoy a beer with “small grains or particles of glass … [separated] from the inside lip… Read More »
007′s First Alcoholic Drink EVER.
The following BoozinBlog post is brought to you by… Exclusiv Vodka. We try to stay impartial here at BoozinBlog because we do enjoy all alcohols equally, but when someone sends us a bottle, we might talk about it. And when we LIKE that bottle? We’re definitely gonna give you beautiful folks a heads-up (You are beautiful, right? We can’t totally tell. We’ve been drinking vodka.) Though the name might imply red velvet ropes and disapproving looks from wealthy people, Exclusiv, from Moldova, is actually well within my price range (which means it’s definitely within yours) at just over ten bucks for a fifth. Here’s what I know: It was smooth and tasty, even enjoyed straight. I could take a stab at picking apart the flavor minutia, but I wouldn’t be half as skilled as our friends at WineAnthology.com: “Clear. Faint aromas of anise, dried citrus, and pastry with a soft,… Read More »
Heineken Shakes Up Bond
Calm down! Calm! Calm down. Okay, cool. I know you’re upset for two reasons: (A) I’ve been away for a second. (B) James Bond. Heineken. What gives? As for A, my apologies. I had a beerathon last weekend and it was canceled and it left me distraught. FYI: If you’re ever signed up to take part in a seemingly unorthodox beer tasting event (26 different beers at 26 different bars), shoot the event organizer an e-mail to make sure they’ve squared away the proper permits. In this case, they hadn’t. They pulled the event the day before. It was devastating (and also totally the thing I was planning to blog about last weekend). As for B, I know, right?! For those of you who aren’t beer geeks or Bond nerds- shame on you- there has been quite the internet ruckus over a recent article in AdAge, where Eric Schultz reports: In… Read More »
Bicentennial Woman
You know that feeling you get when you find something so amazing, so damn impressive that you simultaneously love and despise it? You’re so happy it happened, but just cripplingly frustrated that it wasn’t you? You want to explode, or maybe just sit still to bask in its glory, emotional diarrhea haltingly at odds with emotional constipation? Yeah. That’s me right now. Because at midnight last night, Stephanie Stark, senior at Ohio University, concluded her week-long documentation of a spring break challenge: The Bicentennial (Visit the blog here). I’ve expressed my love for running back when I let you guys know how overjoyed I was that such a big-name brewer as Sam Adams acknowledged the unspoken tie between beer and running. And if you read that article, you know that I have a minor masochistic obsession with mixing the two (beer mile, 24-24-24). With all this in mind, The Bicentennial… Read More »
The Scathing, Hilarious Beer Geek Critique You Never Knew You Wanted
Tonight started with my planning to do a little edu-taining article about beer styles, tackling the seemingly obvious, but truly head-scratching task of clearly defining the difference between ales and lagers (I swear I’ll do it soon, but in case you’re antsy for some learnin’, those are the wikipedia links. Cut out the middle man.) Finding the task unmanageable on March 18th (happy day after St. Patrick’s), I went internet hunting for more -taining, less -edu things that would require less thinking on my part. I’m glad I did, because without my laziness and willful narrow-mindedness about beer, I never would have found the below series of videos that pokes fun at beer lovers who are… lazy and willfully narrow-minded about beer (Thanks to John Smith for creating the videos and Beer Pulse for finding them). Enjoy. [I’m having trouble embedding, but do yourself the favor and click through. Don’t let the… Read More »
Beeracketalogy
Well, I just filled out my bracket. As with every year, I picked mostly at random, only letting myself justify a decision when I really, really wanted a friend’s favorite team to lose. Even though I’m not quite as into sports as I know I’m supposed to be (I write a damned beer blog, after all! Manly things! Tim Allen!), I do love March Madness. It’s a time for people to get irrationally competitive, distracted from other facets of their lives, and generally hilarious to be around. Watching a good friend get exceedingly upset over something entirely unimportant is surely the eighth wonder of the world. All this being said, I get caught up in the competition myself because… well, there’s just something about brackets that makes everything more exciting! So imagine my ecstatic yelps of joy when I discovered The Washington Post’s… Beer Madness. For the sixth year in… Read More »
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