I Fought The Beer Law, And the Law Won

I Fought The Beer Law, And the Law Won

There is a lot of places where the law is the law is the law. Not everyone likes the law, but you sort of have to follow it. Well, in some places, following the law is a tricky thing.



I live in Pennsylvania. To buy beer by the case, you must go to a distributor. A distributor can also ONLY sell cases. To buy quantities less than a case, you must go to a bottle shop, or a pizza/sandwich shop. Also, our beer is not sold in most grocery stores not named Whole Foods or Wegman's. We also cannot buy liquor and beer in the same place. At least the beer distributors and liquor stores are now allowed to open on Sundays now.


Virginia is an ABC state, so we have special state run liquor stores which are the only place to buy liquor. That said beer and wine can pretty much be sold anywhere and in whatever quantity so I'll take that. We just recently passed a law allowing breweries to sell full pints out of their tasting rooms instead of just samples, so all in all we are moving in the right direction.


Mississippi just recently (July 1), change the law that limited ABV in beer to 10.2%.
Previously is was at 6%.

Much better, but still lower than it should be.

fff

Texas is so screwed up that I can't possibly remember them all, but:

(1) No one ships to TX, at least not legally
(2) Stores that sell beer and liquor have to close by 9pm, and stay closed all day Sunday. Grocery stores, etc., that don't sell liquor can't sell beer on Sundays until after 12.
(3) Companies that want to distribute their beer here from out of state have to purchase an expensive license to do so, which therefore means a LOT of companies don't distribute their beer here!
(4) Labeling is a huge pain in the ass for local brewers - TABC has to approve all labels, the process is extremely slow, and I know it used to be more stringent than it is now in terms of what exactly could be written on bottles.
(5) Breweries can't sell their own beer on-site: 3-tier system. So you can go to a brewery and sample their beer, but if you want to buy some, you have to then go to a store and buy it.

There's a lot more, but I'm starting to get angry just typing these.....

Bicycle Riding Cat

Bicycle Riding Cat

Now this is pretty awww inspiring. Time to have your heart grow a couple of sizes right here.

Learning To Drink Like a Man

Learning To Drink Like a Man

Having Thanksgiving dinner with your family has probably pushed you to drinking heavily. Now what you need to do is learn how to deal with this new embraced hobby. For example, you may be new to scotch and whiskey drinking and wondering what you can actually afford on a budget without looking like some dirty hobo. Good news! 

Good news! You can drink on a budget with your varying taste preferences! If you want some introductory level Scotch, Bourbon, Rye, I'd suggest the following. These tend to have more of a softer somewhat caramelly flavoring. This is popular among entry level whiskey drinkers who can sometimes find the heat and strength of whiskey abrasive or overpowering.

Add in that they're relatively affordable and of high quality too boot. Peated whiskey can be very polarizing and I would be hesitant to start with something of that nature.

Rye
Bulleit Rye Whiskey

Bourbon
Buffalo Trace

Single Malt Scotch
Auchentoshan Three Wood
or
Aberlour 12 - An alternative if budget is an issue. Less sweet but still delicious. I know a lot of people in this forum prefer it to the Three Wood.

If you want to step it up some, I would recommend going for the Green Label of Johnny Walker. You should do so quickly as it's going to be discontinued - which is a tragedy as it's probably one of the best Johnny Walker scotches. It's just amazing why they'd want to dump Green Label. It's probably one of their best and the price is actually reasonable enough to make it a buy.

It's not that Blue is bad. It's just bad at its price point. In particular, it's not better than Green, which is a fraction of the price. Maybe that's it. It's still at a price point where most people shopping today will go right to the single malt rack without look its way. The general public doesn't know what a pure/blended/vatted malt is, they just think it's the third up in the line.

Maybe Green Label was just not selling at all. Well, not anywhere outside Taiwan. As it had no sales presence at all in Europe and only slightly better popularity in the rest of Asia and the U.S. It's definitely one of my favorite scotches

So there. Now you're better equipped to handle the holidays.

Beer is Hitting The Books

Beer is Hitting The Books

Rogue brewery is a beer company that really likes to do a lot of gimmicky beers. In the past they've partnered up with Voodoo Donuts to create a maple bacon beer and they constantly have strange experimental beers like "Let's use the yeast strain we found in our head brewers beard!".

Well, it looks like they just taken it one step further into the realm of stupidity as they're planning to make a special beer in honor of Powell's Book Store's anniversary. The special ingredient? Moby Dick

Powell’s Books and Rogue Ales and Spirits, two unique Oregon businesses, have collaborated to create a beer that’s dedicated to everyone with a thirst for books and artisan craft beer –  White Whale Ale.

White Whale Ale is infused with the sea-faring spirit of Moby Dick. Michael and Emily Powell took pages from a copy of the book and, along with Rogue brewmaster, John Maier, placed them into the brew kettle. Moby Dick is especially meaningful to Michael Powell, who was inspired to become a bookseller when he found a first edition of the novel in a box of books he’s purchased.

I have to wonder, is even putting printing ink into a beer all that safe?

At least Voodoo donut was at least a shot at what they were trying to emulate. I don't get the point of putting several pages of Moby Dick into a beer. It'll add nothing to the taste that you could at least say "Hey, this taste just like Moby Dick!" so it's pretty much pointless. How about, you know, going for something like Melville's opus as it's probably the single most densely symbolic work of American literature. They're just too lazy to use an actual ingredient or tailor the recipe of a beer from literature or do some research for the period it took place.

Nope! Let's just chuck some pages of a book in there. How fucking lazy.  Rogue has safely taken the crown from Dogfish Head as the brewery with the dumbest gimmick beers. Though for once you will know why people describe a rogue beer as papery and cardboardy flavored.

It would be one thing if it had been done with an actual 1st edition of Moby Dick. And that's a huge MAYBE, Mainly because after some time, the chemicals used in books could break down and create a vanilla-like aroma to form. It's why old books smell so good. But chances are these pages were from the last half-century and this is going to taste like eating a ream of paper. Though let's be honest, it would have tasted bad anyway.


When it's all said and done, this is just incredibly stupid and pointless and just paints craft beer drinkers in a light that we actually tolerate this stupidity. Though, I guess I should be pleased that they aren't using a real whale's dick to brew it.

Saving Face... Book

Saving Face....Book

Many people feel that Facebook is a sort of devil's tool. Something that you sort of have to have but at the same time they make it really hard to like it. I know of a lot of people who left as soon as they started rolling out Timelines - a feature that pretty much made mapping out your entire life online possible.

In actuality, Timeline is just how they display content on your profile. It looks cool at first but it's a really difficult way to try to read someone's profile. Let alone attempting to keep things private and not completely out there about yourself and your actions is a bit of a pain in the ass.

It's too late for me to delete it. I'm too far down the rabbit hole in it, I have my entire life going back nearly 8 years on it and do most of my social planning via it. So it's kind of a stuck situation for me.

Look at myself, my facebook is and always has been under a false name and I basically untag anything that is labeled as myself and you need to go through some hoops to label pictures of me. So it's not really so bad. I have like 70 friends and my wall is basically as plain as it can be. I generally just post links to these articles I write and every now and then I get some old high school friend or random friend of friend tell me "I read all your articles, you're pretty insightful" and I'm all, hmm, I guess I have some facebook fanclub. Neato.

On the flip side, I also succeeded in making everyone who wasn't a communist red bastard loathe my post and dread my status updates on something most people enjoy.

This doesn't mean I don't get why people hate it. I mean, has Facebook even pretended that it's anything more than a giant data gathering farm for advertisers at this point? It has got to be some of the scummiest practices around, even by American standards. And yet we all just love it so. I'm not sure why America trust it so much.

It's gotten to the point that you can be turned down for a job because not having a Facebook account is seen as suspicious activity. I can't be bothered to dig up the article, but Facebook is so much of an important aspect to the hiring process, at least for particular jobs, that you won't get them if you don't have a social media profile.

Like, it's as if not having a Facebook or not using it makes you be seen as not being a "social person" or something like that. Also, if you don't have a Facebook account, that sets off red flags because Facebook is so ubiquitous that not having one must mean you did something bad to get banned, which speaks of what kind of person you are.

I sort of wish I was making this up but here we are. Lots of jobs now also like to ask for your Facebook password so they can check your shit and also if you DO have a Facebook, you better be careful about what you say because if you complain about your job or you complain about customers who make you stay literally like an hour or two after your shift is up at as a waiter and then leave a $5 tip, you can possibly get fired because of it.

While I like the aspect of using the internet to talk to people from across the country or whatever, it seems like we constantly use technology for the wrongest things possible. Especially when it's something like "social media integration" - Because really, how on earth could they ever really justify asking for your password. I'm thinking it's this article.

It basically shows that wanting to have some semblance of privacy means you're suspicious. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear - or some Orwellian stance like that. I mean, they already basically fucked you by allowing your friends the ability to share your profile with the government

A federal judge has ruled that investigators can go through your Facebook profile if one of your friends gives them permission to do so. The decision, which is part of a New York City racketeering trial, comes as courts struggle to define privacy and civil liberties in the age of social media.
In an order issued on Friday, US District Judge William Pauley III ruled that accused gangster Melvin Colon can’t rely on the Fourth Amendment to suppress Facebook evidence that led to his indictment. Colon had argued that federal investigators violated his privacy by tapping into his profile through an informant who was one of this Facebook friends.
The informant’s Facebook friendship served to open an online window onto Colon’s alleged gangster life, revealing messages he posted about violent acts and threats to rival gang members. The government used this information to obtain a search warrant for the rest of Colon’s Facebook account. The Colon information is part of a larger investigation into crack-dealing and murder in the Bronx.

Fucking hell, I have to laugh at this shit. This is the real clinchers;

Ironically, Colon’s current account suggests that the government’s ability to peruse Facebook profiles may have become even easier since the introduction of the Facebook Timeline. The feature can in some cases reveal past events and status updates to the public unless a user changes his or her privacy settings.

HAHAHAHAHA Privacy settings... HA!

Don't even bother asking if it's secure and safe if you set your Facebook to private. That is a joke in itself and Facebook can easily change that setting without your permission and most of all, without you even realizing it. They did just change everyone's email address to some generic @Facebook address, after all.

I think the best thing about Myspace, and why I miss it just a little is that the private messages had two options at the bottom of it -
Reply to Message and Remove From Friends.

made it completely easy to just delete friends and keep some sort of level of privacy from others. Be it you were going to be bombarded by stupid indie bands trying to sell their record.

Don't get me started on twitter. I can't hold myself to only 140 characters and thus I hate that program. I simply refuse to be constrained to 140 characters, we're not posting in London during the blitz with letter rationing in full swing.

Ironically enough, that post was less than 140 characters.

You have to admit, Facebook is really creepy. I constantly get recommendations friend wise that Facebook just shouldn't know about, it's ability to make connections based on information given is fucking scary good and I've been recommended to add a shit lot of people I knew in real life from college and family functions and the such despite FB not knowing what college I went to.

This is done by Facebook making "dark profiles" of people mentioned in updates and shit by other people. So if you don't have a Facebook account, but like your mom or brother or friend or something mentioned you - congratulations, you have one sitting around off the grid just waiting for you to sign up and "officially" activate it.

Then again, Facebook is literally the only way most people have to stay in touch with some of their friends and it does serve as a good information organizing platform. That said, you need to basically accept that everything you do on the internet is being watched.

So the way around all this is basically not care too much about it anymore.

Christmas Music - Running Over Grandmas and Date Raping Women

Christmas Music - Running Over Grandmas and Date Raping Women


If there was ever a reason to hate Christmas music besides the fact that they start playing it on November 1st and continue to play it never ending like till the day after Christmas, it's for the messages that they lace all throughout the music that is really some terrible shit.

Don't believe me, just take a listen to this little innocent number;



I'm half expecting there to be a Lifetime movie of the week based off that situation. It's seriously date rape material all up in there. There's no other way to explain the context and even if it's just tongue and cheek innocent, it's still all sorts of fucked up in terms of mysoganistic women hating that the era seemed to just be filled with. Here's what you should have been listening to in the film;



Since that's what it summed it up as. It's a song about date rape and pushing yourself on a woman who clearly has given you every excuse in the book as to why they want to leave... but no, please stay a little longer and drink this, why don't you.


I'm not even sure what to say about this attempt to hammer in Christmas cheer...


Shake it Santa? Like.. really? We know you're gonna take it to that house.. My god, it really seems like there's a serious amount of sexual repression just laced all over that song's lyrics. It's as if it was suppose to be some regular hip hop gangsta song about some hoes, but then they decided to drop the e and add two more ho's in there.

I could easily go into the whole I saw mommy kissing Santa Clause, but I won't go there. I guess I should mention Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer. But that seems pretty simple - why would you sing about your dead grandmother. Especially when the subject matter is how she got plowed by a fat man going far too fast. Grandma was involved in a hit and run. Authorities are on full alert for a fat fuck full of cookies.

Simply put - fuck Christmas music.

The Beer Bubble And Potential Poppage.

The Beer Bubble And Potential Poppage. 


Stone Brewery founder Greg Koch warns us about the pending brewing bubble...

“We are in a time of irrational exuberance in craft brewing,” said Greg Koch, co-founder and CEO of Stone Brewing. “We are like a Third World bus, with all these people hanging on to the roof. Sooner or later, we are going to hit a bump in the road.”

It's interesting because the majority of the article is all about how craft beer is really booming and growing out there. His concern is that the market is being over saturated. And much like any other product, once it hits a breaking point, then it's only the cream of the crop. The Stone Breweries that survive to see the next period of growth and bubble bursting.

When you think about it, during pre-prohibition, there were about 1,700 breweries in the U.S., which at the time had a population of around 100 million. So if you project that out to today's population, you'd get about 5,000 breweries. Not quite that insane amount of the first figure of the era gone by. But it's still twice the current amount. And yeah, AB and the other three major companies have the lions share of the market, but that % is coming down. It's been shown that more people are caring on who brews their beer. Perhaps this move will increase so that locals actually support their.. you know, local beer.


Nationwide there really is no bubble. Sure, in San Diego there's a ton of new breweries popping up left and right, but you go out to places like Riverside, Ca. and you'll find that it's not as insane as you would expect. We are basically working towards the way it should have been all along. Every city in the U.S. that isn't run by stone age thinkers, could easily support one brewery for every 30,000 people there. Some do even better than that, but this means we could easily have something like 10,000 breweries - depending on the size and locations of the town. If they don't expect to strike it STONE or SAM ADAMS rich, they could make a nice profit.

Factor in that there's also over double the number of wineries in the US compared to breweries and they don't have this mentality that the bubble is coming. Nor do they see that they're going out of business anytime soon. Especially with the fact that this "Irrational exuberance" is all happening during what is being considered a recession.

Yeah, some cream of the crop breweries who make great quality products will remain, the ones who make poor products and can't market themselves correctly will obviously fail, but I don't see this being like the mid-90's when the bubble burst. It's not going to be a huge plunge nor could you really call it a market bursting, just a market settling on who is successful and who isn't. 

Either way, let the good beer flow and the bad just sink to the bottom like it would even without a bubble to push it along the way.