Boozin’ Blog

You’ve probably seen those ads, usually written copy, where some shithead marketer entitles the piece “Free beer!” Then he launches his pitch with “Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about anything but free beer.

This isn’t that. This is really about free beer. It’s available, people! It’s really out there and I know how to get it. Over the next few days I’ll be sharing with you the strategies that I’ve found over the years to get free beer. Some are easy and some take real commitment but in the end you will have free beer.

First, though, let’s talk about what free beer means. It means beer that you don’t pay cash for. Most of these strategies will require that you spend time but not money. Got it? Good.

Probably the easiest way to score free beer is to take a brewery tour. I have toured dozens and dozens of breweries all over the US and in only one instance did I encounter a brewery that didn’t offer me free beer at the end of the tour.

The time commitment in this free beer strategy isn’t much, usually 20 minutes to an hour. Breweries like Anhueser-Busch in St. Louis, MO offer very rote tours led by college kids who don’t actually know anything about brewing except what they’ve memorized for the tour. At the end, you get one or two small beers then you’re herded out. That’s fine for what it is.

The best tours that I’ve been on have been to smaller breweries, especially those that don’t offer tours during set times of the day. Usually their website says something like “tours available by appointment.” So, you call ahead and arrange a tour with one of the brewers at a time when the brewery isn’t running. You show up, do the tour, and then retire to the taps. This is when it’s really fun. The brewer will drink right along with you and the more you chat the more you drink. There’s not really a limit, it’s based on the brewer’s discretion. I’ve tasted beers the brewery doesn’t actually sell, I’ve tasted beers that are in development, once I even tasted a beer that wasn’t done fermenting because the brewer was so excited about it.

As with most of these free beer strategies, this isn’t really a good thing to do if your only goal is to get loaded on free beer. You can and I’ve seen it plenty; people stumbling through their third tour of the day to get to the free beer at the end. But, you’ll end up making an ass of yourself and that is against our policy here at Boozin’ Gear.

So, that’s the first way to score free beer. More strategies coming soon.

Universal truth #1: Youth is wasted on the young.

Universal truth #2: Alcohol’s anti-aging properties are wasted on the boring lab worms.

You don’t know what I’m talking about? Where do you get your science, not Yahoo! News?

Your loss, because now you don’t know about the elephant that got fit for contact lenses, the mummy with cancer, or the detachable penis spider. And you surely don’t know about last week’s report on C. elegans, a tiny worm that increases it’s life span with a drop of the sauce. Not only does it’s life span increase, but it more than doubles from 15 to 40 days!

As with any academically merited news I share, there is much more “legitimate”, “academic”, “nerdy” content available in the source article, but I’m going to gloss over all that that for an unimportant, pseudo-made-up detail:

This worm is no fun at all. It hangs out in research labs all day; I can deal with that. It is “non-harazardous, non-infectious, non-pathogenic, and non-parasitic”; a lot of worms can’t say that, so good for him.

But the thing that really get me is that these researchers gave the C. elegans all the booze their microscopic little livers desired (NOTE: They might not actually have livers; I haven’t checked), and the worms “…didn’t pig out on all that was there”. It was like this:

Scientist: Hey man, you want another brew?
Worm: Nah, I’m good.
Scientist: What, you got work in the morning?
Worm: Hm? Oh. No, I don’t have a job. I’m a worm.
Scientist: Oh, so you’re sober d or something?
Worm: …

Yeah. Mr. Alcohol-is-my-lifespark is also Mr. I-have-no-reason-not-to-drink-other-than-I’m-a-condescending-douche. Well, good riddance, Mr. Condescending-Douche. I’m going to go read about that detachable penis spider. You think being in control of your drinking habit is a party trick?! Tell that to guy who takes off his own dick.

~Don Julian OUT!

PS I promise never to sign off that douchily again; It just felt right with the tone.

REFERENCES

http://news.yahoo.com/drink-alcohol-live-longer-193615870–abc-news.html

http://news.yahoo.com/spiders-detachable-penis-finishes-without-him-000803041.html

This is a continuation of the events discussed in  my post about Starbucks rolling out beer and wine in Atlanta (and L.A. and Chicago). You can read the original post here.

Though I have many friends- oodles, thousands, bushels; measure them how you like- very few participate actively in my Boozin’ Blogging. Thankfully, my dear friend Rob isn’t as chronically passive as so many of you.  Other friends, the gauntlet has been thrown.

A few days ago, Rob alerted me to a dicussion in the Beeradvocate* forum where beer-lovers were discussing the alcoholic additions to Starbucks. As with any internet forum, much of the discussion descends into circular, mindnumbing argument about barely relevant tangents, in this case the value you get when you buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks (My favorite line: After one user explained the itemized costs that go into a Starbucks cup of coffee, he boasts,”Ask me how i know what SBUX wholesale price breakdowns are.” Ask, him, bro. See what happens).

But outside of the mindless macchiato arguments, there were 3 highlights I’d like to share:

1. According to user gtermi, he has spoken to the manager of a Chicago Starbucks, and Budweiser is the only beer they’ve confirmed they’ll carry so far. Beer is beer is beer, and I wouldn’t say no to a StarBudweiser, but let’s hope they decide to support local breweries as well (According to the L.A. Times, one Portland Starbucks carries Rogue Dead Guy Ale, so I think we can keep our hopes up).
2. In case anyone’s wondering if Starbucks will brew their own beer, (a) I don’t know and (b) hopefully, because they’ve done it in the past! Red Hook Brewery, who shares a co-founder** with Starbucks, brewed a Double Black Stout using Starbucks coffee. No reports yet on whether this or similar products will be rolled out in-house.
3. Finally, user cmmcdonn was able to look at the bigger picture: “This will add 3-4 stops on my next bar crawl.” At a time when when many are focused on how and why, cmmcdonn realized the most important thing this trend brings us:  More beer.

~Don Julian

REFERENCES

*Beeradvocate.com, in case you don’t know, is one of the premier sources for beer news and culture pieces. I steal many of my topics from them and they distract me for hours on end when I should be writing. An excellent time-waster because it’s educational and lends some culture to our favorite vice.

**Find an interesting Seattle Times interview with co-founder Gordon Bowker here

http://beeradvocate.com/user/profile/gtermi

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/24/business/la-fi-starbucks-beer-20120124

http://beeradvocate.com/user/profile/cmmcdonn

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18134/55

Atlanta, we’re in a fight.

No! Nnno! Get… your grubby hands OFF OF ME!

A back rub won’t get you out of this one.

You get to enjoy Ludacris’ Chicken and Beer destination at Hartsfield-Jackson. I get that. He’s an Atlanta rapper, so it’s only fair. Same reason I- as an LA resident- get to enjoy Tupac’s mortuary, Who You Callin’ Dead?!. 

But this is different. In December, intrepid boozin’ blogger Rick Kirby reported that Starbucks would be rolling out locations that serve beer and wine. As only eleven of the eleven thousand Starbucks in operation were expected to go alcoholic, hoping for one in your town was like hoping for the golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory: chances were slim and even if you got one, you’d be too much of a brat to enjoy it.

But apparently Atlanta is the Charlie F***ing Bucket of the simile because, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Starbucks “…said Monday it plans to begin serving beer and wine at four to six metro Atlanta locations this year”. The only comfort I take from this is that, even with four to six serving locations, it is Starbucks so there’s a decent chance they’ll all be located within one and a half blocks of each other in some traffic-y corner of Midtown or Buckhead.

On a serious note, the company “…selected wines and beers [that] will reflect customer tastes and preferences in each locality”. I’ll be very interested to see what beers they end up stocking in Atlanta. Sweetwater? Red Brick? Maybe something a little further away like Terrapin?

What do you guys think? Can you not wait to get drunk at a Starbucks?? Er- can you not wait to get drunk at a Starbucks without getting a deathstare from the barista??

By the way, Atlanta… I’m sorry. I lost my temper before. Plus, I just realized the article clearly says that the roll-out will also occur in Chicago and Southern California… the latter of which might include Los Angeles. Forgive me? No?

Back rub?

~Don Julian

REFERENCES

http://www.ajc.com/business/starbucks-to-sell-beer-1313968.html

http://www.boozingear.com/blog/2011/12/12/starbucks-beer-wine-coming-soon/

I hope one of my roommates walks in right now.

You know what celiac disease is, right? People who suffer from it are basically allergic to gluten, a protein that’s found in lots of grains, including barley. That’s why in the last few years there’s been a growing line of gluten-free beers available. Brewers of all stripes from Anheuser-Busch to Dogfish Head to small regional brewers are making gluten-free beer.

The challenge has been finding a good replacement for barley. Malted barley is one of the most basic ingredients of beer so taking it out of the recipe can be challenging. Sorghum is a poplar alternative but the resulting beer just doesn’t quite taste like beer. Even so, it’s better than nothing.

Beer lovers with celiac disease have been glad to see the growing number of gluten free beers on the market. They don’t have quite the same selection as regular barley beer in terms of style and quality. However, a new study that came out last month just might ruin the party.

The specific type of gluten found in barley is called hordein. For some reason it’s difficult to test for gluten in malted products so some brewers. Negative or inconclusive results have led some brewers to believe that the brewing process removes some if not all of the gluten from the final beer. However, in this study researchers found that testing specifically for hordein revealed significant amounts of gluten in regular beer and even a couple of the “gluten free” beers

Kinda makes you wonder about all those light and low carb beers, doesn’t it?

You’ve heard the saying “necessity is the mother of invention,” right? I’ve long believed that, if that’s true, then booze must be invention’s father or, at least, it’s weird uncle. How many times have you been out drinking with your buddies when some sort of group think mode sets in and you collectively create the perfect solution to one or another problem? Sure, the next morning it’s probably going to seem perfectly silly but at the time it seems like the most elegant invention of all time.

The website kickstarter.com seems to be proving me right. If you’re unfamiliar with KickStarter the concept is pretty simple. It’s a site where entrepreneurs can go to seek funding for their business or project ideas. In return for their support, funders are offered tiered prizes based on the amount of the contribution. It’s fun to wander about in the site and see some of the strange and wonderful business ideas out there.

So, what’s this got to do with booze, you ask. It’s striking how many of the ideas revolve around alcohol and how many more seem inspired by it. For example, this proposal for a student film called Boozetown is clearly about and inspired by booze. In the introduction video, the kid explaining the movie idea gets increasingly hammered as he knocks back shot after shot. And, naturally, the plot revolves around booze. One of the prizes for contributing to the project is a hug. I have a feeling that the guy would slur, “I love you, man” in your ear.

Then there’s Freakers USA, one of my favorites. The proposal is for a product that’s basically a knitted koozie. The advantage of a knitted koozie is, apparently, that it’s stretchable and therefore one size fits all. Also, the makers promise that Freakers put an end to bottle sweat so no more damp hands. My favorite part of this proposal, aside from the freaky little hippie dude who’s running the show, are the funder prizes. They range from the predictable offers of one or more of the product being proposed to the not quite so predictable grilled cheese party that is apparently served out of a boxtruck.

The booziest product I’ve come across on KickStarter is Battleshots. Think about that name for a moment and you’ll know exactly what it is. That’s right, a drinking game based on the board game Battleship. All I can say about this idea is that if you decide to play the game I hope you know a good cure for hangovers!

“Who’s foot is this?”

“Who’s butt is this?”

“GET YOUR FOOT OUT OF MY BUTT!”

Hot tubs are great.

They keep you warm in times of cold, they keep girls bikini’d in time of sweaters, and they keep everyone sickeningly close in times of societal standards for personal space.  And on top of all that, they are hands-free and thus, pro-drink.  This weekend, I’ve had the pleasure of staying with friends at a beach house in Folly Beach, SC and- call it the scientist in me; call it the creepy friend who pays attention to stupid things in me- I’ve noticed some trends:

BEER
Opposites attract. Sweet ‘n Salty Chex Mix is clearly the greatest. These are indisputable truths. In the same vein, whatever part of us that takes glee in simultaneously enjoying two diametrically opposed forces can’t help but fall for the IcyHot-esque combination created by a cold beer in a hot tub.  It’s a standby, a favorite, and the best drink to spill if you want to cover up the fact that you just peed in the small amount of water you’re sharing with other human beings.

BLOODY MARY
Beer may be the quintessential hot-tub drink, but sometimes you want to go for something more nuanced, tailored to your situation. Bloody Marys are enjoyed only by the elite AM Tubbers.  Those who have nothing better to do when they wake up than hop into a large, heated cesspool with your loved ones.  Luckily, my friends are just these people. Hot tub bloody marys are best enjoyed with soggy omelettes and passive-aggressive comments about who was in charge of getting up early to make sure it was heating up.

CHAMPAGNE
In case you live under a rock or are above the age of 35, let me enlighten you: our generation takes all of our recreational cues from rappers. Big blunts, fast cars, flashy clothes, tax evasion… and of course, champagne and hot tubs.  

THE JIM BEAM FOOT CHUG
This is more of a game than a drink, but worth noting. As many of my friends are scientifically-minded researchers and med students, it was quickly discovered that the buoyancy offered by the water makes it easier to perform certain feats. Feats that make drinking exciting and acrobatic. Feats like using your feet to pour whiskey into your own mouth. Or as one of these future doctors so eloquently put, “In the hot tub, you can float. So you can drink Jim Beam with your feet around it!”

Vodka OJ Limeade
This is clearly an unremarkable drink. It’s simple, cheap, and even a bit girly. But it was, for whatever reason, one of the most popular drinks imbibed this weekend. I’ve included it as a reminder: lists like this are not exhaustive. Most of the time, they’re bullsh*t.  Look to them for ideas and inspiration, not rules and laws.  If you want to drink a martini in the hot tub, go for it.  If you want to chug a Four Loko, I encourage it!  The only take-away message here? Spend time in a hot tub.  It’s impossible to get foot-butt action without it.

~Don Julian

Wish you were beer.

I remember fondly the first time I used beer as a mixer.

Okay, that’s a lie, but I do believe it was three or four years ago and it involved vodka, Milwaukee’s Best, and a desire to be classy enough for cocktails, but not classy enough for anything that remotely resembled a cocktail (Though I’m sure there was a whole lot of fondness going on).

Philistine as my attempts have been — from “vodkabeer” to sake bombs and all the way to my love affair with a little thing called Whiskaliburr – beer cocktails need not always conjure thoughts of binge drinking, poor choices, and puke.

On the contrary, they can be artisanal, technical, and — most surprisingly — enjoyable! In fact, on January 3rd, with the very mission of spreading this message, http://beermixology.com/, went live. A collaboration between a number of mixologists and beer academics, the website aims to share recipes, spread beer cocktail awareness, and push my drink ideas to deeper and deeper levels of relative gross.

The collection even has things for drunk schlubs seeking just a smidge of culture (beermosa, bloody beery), conveniently grouped into a section title “Beer Mixology 101″ (BONUS: 101 also has a few articles with tips on making your own and the history of mixin’ beer).

Because f**k champagne

 

If you’re looking for something a bit more complex, Beermixology definitely has that too.  I’m planning on trying the yummy-as hell Serranodipaty, a drink that incorporates mezcal, serrano chiles, and a Double IPA.  Of course, I’m looking in my fridge right now and all I have is vodka… and I assume I can sub a Beast for a DIPA, right? Right. And the other ingredients- well, they can’t be that important…

~Don Julian

PHOTO CREDIT PROPS: Doug Brumley, http://www.fledglingbrewer.com/

File this one under “even I think it’s a bad idea”. And if I’m being honest, file it also under “can’t say I won’t!”

Scotch in a can, ladies and gentlemen. The future is here. Well, not right here. The future is currently puking in the bathroom. Because the future just finished a 12-ounce, non-resealable aluminum can of scotch whisky.

On February 1st, a Ft. Lauderdale spirit company, Scottish Spirits Imports Inc., “hopes to have its cans [of f**king scotch] on shelves in major American markets … for $5 apiece”. Details are shady as to which markets exactly, and I’m especially curious because it looks like similar stories were running January of 2011 as well, but a few different sources corroborate the February 1st rollout (If anyone has information on stores or markets that carry these cans, please do pass it along so I can share with everyone else).

As disapproving as I may sound, I can’t say I’m not giddy at the idea of having a scotch receptacle that snugly fits into my favorite koozie. Thus, I have compiled a list of other alcohol-container combinations that I can only hope SSI might turn to next.

1. Rum in a tube.

2. Beer in a shoe.

3. Absinthe in a box (with a fox).

4. Gin in a stranger’s armpit.

5. PBR in a Tecate (For when you want to look like a hipster, but drink like a hipster).

6. Vodka in a resealed can of Wal-Mart brand tuna fish.

7. Everclear in a urinal (urinal cake removed).

8. Everclear in a urinal (now with urinal cake for a smoother finish!).

9. Bourbon in an empty jar of peanut butter that still has some gunk in the nooks.

10. Energy in a colorful, fruit-flavored malt liquor drink. Oh, wait-

~Don Julian

REFERENCES

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/02/scotch-in-a-can_n_1175256.html?ref=food&ir=Food

http://www.scottishspirits.com/default.html