Days of the Beer, June 8

The beer for June 8 is Harvey and Son's Tom Paine Original Old Porter.

On June 8, 1809 Thomas Paine died.

According to Wiki

His main contribution was as the author of the powerful, widely read pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), advocating independence for the American Colonies from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and of The American Crisis, a series of pamphlets distributed between 1776-1783 that supported the Revolution.

According to the Brewers Website

Brewed to commemorate the bicentenary of Thomas Paine's "The Rights of Man". It is thought that Paine help draught the American Declaration Of Independence. His work still ranks among the best sellers of all time. America celebrates Independence day on July 4th each year. CAMRA has designated July as a celebration of British Independent Brewers of which Harveys is one. Where ever your sympathies lie it is worth raising a glass of Tom Paine. A dry hopped strong pale ale awarded the Silver Medal at the BBI Awards in 1993.

So if you like freedom and beer, on June 8, crack open a Tom Paine Porter.

Days of the Beer, June 7

The highlighted beer for June 7 is Three Floyds Robert the Bruce.

On June 7, 1329, Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, died.

According to Three Floyds website.

Robert the Bruce

STYLE: Scottish Ale
COLOR: Dark Brown
FLAVOR CHARACTERISTICS: A big malty body from chocolate and roasted malts, well balanced withjust the right combination of hops. Robust yet smooth, a true malt-lover's delight. AROMA: Full sweet malty nose, highlighting by roasted malt notes.
ALCOHOL % BY WEIGHT: 7.2%
AWARDS: Gold Medal, 1997 Real Ale Fest

I remember Robert the Bruce from Three Floyds as being
extremely malty. Most 3F beers are big on hops, but this one is HUGE on malt. At 7.2% it can also mess you up pretty good if you have a bunch. So, for June 7, find you a Robert the Bruce, and drink happily.

not my picture

Bar Review, After Softball Bars

In the greater CU area there are several bars that I tend to think of as After Softball bars.

These are the places you might go to around 8 or 9 p.m. on a weeknight (not Friday or Saturday) and see a bunch of people wearing similar shirts and tall socks. There will invariably be some guys in brightly colored socks in Adidas flip flops.
These bars are pretty easy to pick out. So how do you tell if the bar you are at is an after softball bar, if it's raining? It's pretty easy to pick out, if the place sells pitchers of beer and its the little plastic pitcher, then it's probably an after softball bar.

When you go to these places, you could get that little pitcher filled with your choice of macro beer. Miller Lite, Bud Light, and if you are lucky you might be able to get one full of regular Bud. Horray!!!

Around CU, there are 4 bars that fit the above descriptions pretty well.

The first is on Neil Street near downtown Champaign. Tumble Inn, called TI to people who frequent it.

TI has darts, and some form of internet juke box, and possibly bar food, dunno for sure, never been there when anyone was eating. This bar is macro-heaven. There's a review somewhere on the interwebs that says over 50 beers (wait no, that's 50 years). If it's a macro-made, it's probably at TI.

TI is the kind of place where you don't go to enjoy a beer, or to enjoy your liquor, it's a "Let's do shots" kind of establishment.

A little down the road on Springfield is Pia's Sports Bar and Grill. Pias sponsors many many many softball teams (I think most everyone who has played softball in CU has either played for or against a Pia's team). Pia's is one of the places to go after softball, where you pay for your pitchers for striking out. They also have a grill that produces grilled bar food (go figure). There's nothing too spectacular about the place, but some folks love it.

A couple blocks away is Office II. It's pretty much the same as Pia's except it's totally different, just ask the people who love O2 and can't stand Pia's. Apparently someone likes their burger basket. I think I once had buffalo wings there that were ok.

So far, none of these places will have any beer that remotely resembles craft beer. You might be lucky and find Guinness on draught, but is that really luck?

The final after softball location is at one of the softball locations. T.K. Wendls or the Brickhouse, one of the two major CU places to play softball, the other is Champaign County Parks district. Wendl's has a full grill bar menu, and the full lineup of ho-hum beers. After softball games, on hot nights, its fun to sit out and sip hydrating beers and watch pretty girls play sand volleyball. Other than that, it's not so great. There are two pool tables at the Brickhouse and up until recently they had OTB.

So if you are looking for a bar that has decent hamburgers, with marco lager on tap that is served in mini-pitchers, then Office 2, Pia's, Tumble Inn or the Brickhouse would be great places to go.

Days of the Beer, June 6

I'm going to start a new "feature" here on the Vbg-log, called Days of the Beer. We've all seen (and possibly have) a beer calendar, the day at a glance thing. I've got one sitting on my desk, it's still on April 24. It seems the beers in there are in no particular order. Today's beer is Mactarnahan's Oregon Honey Beer. What does that have to do with June 6? (This won't be a definitive list, but it'll be a beer that would be a good one to have today). If you know of any beers that go with a date, let me know.

So the first Day of the Beer will be for today, June 6.

Guess what... Today's beer isn't even beer. It's a cider.

Etienne Dupont Cidre Bouche Brut de Normandie

Image taken from the web

On June 6, 1944, the battle of Normandy began. Operation Overlord, or D-Day began with 155,000 Allied troops landing on the beaches of Normandy France. Beaches Omaha, Utah, and Pointe du Hoc were taken by American troops; the British landed on Sword and Gold; Canadians on Juno.

So in honor of those soldiers from U.S., Canada and the UK, today would be a good day for Cidre Brouche Brut de Normandie.

The label says "Product of France"; if we didn't win, it'd say "Product of Germany".

I had this cider last year on May 22, I remember it tasting like a dry champagne style cider, as opposed to the sweet sugary style. I believe it was almost like a white wine, than a sweet alco-pop beverage.

Bars at the Crossing

On Wednesday's now, Kriddy and I are in an APA pool league at Jupiters at the Crossing.

Right next to Jupiters 2 (Jupstew) is another bar, Billy Barooz. Both Jupstew and BB are Carlos bars, like Seven Saints. The man gets a lot of my money. Granted he's probably got a huge house, but I'd bet that I spend enough at his bars to make him a mortgage payment a year.

We started out at Billy Barooz to eat before heading next door to Jups2. I prefer the BB food rather than the pizza at Jups. BB has a good menu and is the Carlos bar you would most likely take a family to for a sit down dinner. It's probably the only bar he has that has a kids menu.

Last night I had the ribeye steak sammich, which was delicious. It looks like they changed out the steaks because the last time I had it, the meat was thinner and stringier, last night it was about a half inch thick, prepared perfect (medium rare; pink throughout) and the bun was good too. I got it with the vegetables which last night was steamed baby carrots and broccoli. Kriddy went with the kids mac and cheese and fries. The mac wasn't too impressive, Kriddy thought it might have been kraft. If it was, they made a lot of money off it. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't great and looked like something anyone could make.

On Saturday's they used to (and might still) have a special of the smothered sausage. This is DELICIOUS. A polish style sausage covered in peppers and onions. Served with a side of spicy jardinière. The mixed vegetables normally are a squash and zucchini mix which is outstanding.

On Sundays they had (and might stil have) the country fried steak which Kriddy got most every football sunday. BB has the NFL sunday ticket and enough tv's to have every game on. (Update Sept. 6: Billy Barooz no longer has NFL Sunday Ticket)

One of my favorite meals there is the Cajun Creole Pasta. It's AWESOME! The pasta itself is good enough, but it's got shrimp, peppers, spices and some hot sausage, served in a spicy creamy cheese sauce. It's sooo damn good. I'd eat it everyday, except that since I'm lactose intolerant, it REALLY rips me up. Add to the cheese that shrimp can also devastate my insides and when I eat that I have to have a restroom available three hours alter. But it's worth the pain every now and then.

The beer selection isn't that great. There are 4 different taps on each side of the bar. On the north side is Guinness, Smithwicks, Blue Moon and Stella Artois; on the south is Coors Light, Miller lite (or high life), Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. You'll note there are no AB products on draft. They have all the AB's in bottle. BB's also carries Natural Light for one special person who shows up every now and then. They carry about 20-30 bottles and you can probably find something in a style that suits you. Kriddy's favorite beer there is Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout. My standby is Goose Island Oatmeal Stout (although I'm not sure they still carry it). Up until yesterday there were no 22 oz bombers but now they have New Belgium Fat Tire.

BB was the bar that got me to stop drinking miller lite. Ok, it was a bartender there, but still, it was at that bar. Right where the Stella tap is, was the beer that got me off macro's. It was Bells Amber. The handle that looks a little bit like a tooth with a light brown ball. Several months after switching beer, they changed that to Bells Oberon (which I didn't like, I missed my amber :( ). That's about when I started to try all their beers. It's to the point there now, that several bartenders won't even serve me Miller lite anymore.

The bartenders are friendly and accommodating. They'll change the tv's to whatever you want, and if it's slow enough, they'll just give you the remote. There are "for entertainment only" poker games but only a couple. There's also the game center where after 10 at night you can play Adult games, like the Photo Hunt (or as kriddy calls it T&C). There is a Touch Tunes internet jukebox. After 10 p.m. I've been known to terrorize the remaining patrons with music they hate. Marilyn Manson's Cake and Sodomy is one of my favorites for that. Playing that at 10 really cleans out the people who ate dinner and are just staying for "one more drink" "ok, maybe one more but this is it" "ok one more".

BB's used to be my everynight bar, back when I was going out drinking with my nEighbour. One night he'd drive and I'd get to drink, the next he'd be loaded up on some REALLY STIFF Jack and Cokes.

BB's was and still is one of my favorite bars. I've got some fond memories of sitting in there drinking. But there's not much else to do in there than sit and drink.

If you need something to do... go next door. Jupiters at the Crossing is now Champaign's playground. Like the original Jupiters, there are pool tables. The original has about 4 tables, the new one had about 3 times as many. The main floor has about 6 tables and the basement also has a bunch. (I've never been to the second floor; but I think it has darts).

In addition to pool tables, there's an air hockey table and all kinds of other games. There are kid's style games that give out tickets that can be redeemed at a machine that gives out prizes. They've got skeeball! On the first floor next to the motorcycle racing games is the basketball freethrow game. Kriddy kicks ass at that. Her favorite downstairs game is Deal or No Deal, while I enjoy the hunting game.

Oh, there's also 4 lanes of bowling. It's not full sized bowling, the lane is about half as long. You throw shotputs down the lane and hit pin's on strings. It's as much fun as you should be allowed to have while drinking. Kriddy has been known to not set her beer down while playing. I effort throwing the ball REALLY hard. I like the pin explosion.

The food is mostly pizza and related items. There are all kinds of pizza, if you want something on a pizza, they've probably got it. I've heard people say the pizza at Jups Classic is better, and I tend to agree; although I don't eat pizza much due to the afore mentioned lactose intolerance.

Now for the beer...

This is the Carlos bar with the largest selection of beer. It's not the variety you'd get at Crane Alley, but it's probably got the fifth largest selection in CU. The beer list was initially put together with input from Andy at Seven Saints. They've got nearly the full line of Great Divide beers including Yeti, Hercules and Titan. There are several Lefthands. There are still a few bottles of Goose Island Bourbon County Stout floating around at some of the bars (there are bars in the basement and the first floor, and probably on the second... dunno, haven't been up there). There's a wide variety of Rogue beers there, along with several trappist ales too.

In the past 2 times I've been there I've had New Belgium 1554; New Belgium Fat Tire; Rogue Shakespeare Stout; Great Divide Hercules; Rogue Chocolate Stout; Great Divide Yeti; Goose Island Bourbon County Stout; Great Divide Titan and probably some others.

The bartenders are ok about the beers, but they are more jack and coke makers than providers of great beers. Most of the time, they don't know the beer you ask for, and then spend a long time looking for it... "it's the one in the bottom shelf in the middle... with the white label". Last night I asked for a Fat Tire and got a 1554. Asking for an amber and getting a black isn't great. I drank it anyway, but wasn't too happy about it.

Jupiters at the Crossing is probably the best place to take a person if you want to entertain them and have them try some really great beers. It's best to go there after 10 p.m. because that's when they kick the kids out. Saturday and Sunday afternoons have a lot of kids birthday parties. (CU doesn't have a chucky cheese, the nearest is 50 miles away).

Between the two bars, you can get some great food and some great beer. It's too bad I can't transfer my tab between the two. Or maybe it's a good thing, I'd probably spend even more money if I could get BB food at Jups or Jups beer at BB.

Forget the rain, there's a bar to review

I was going to be reviewing "after softball" kinds of bars today, but changed my mind last night to reviewing Mike and Molly's. Unfortunately, Kriddy left her ID in the car and it was raining and she got carded in MnM so we went next door to Seven Saints, whey they know our names.

Ok, I won't lie, Seven Saints is one of my favorite bars. It's a member of the Carlos Nieto family of bars. It's located in downtown Champaign, on University Ave, towards the train tracks, next to the alley. Many people, for some reason, have trouble finding that bar.

Parking isn't so great in the downtown area, so if you are going to any bar, you may just want to park at the train station. If you are lucky, you'll get a spot right in front of 7S. You probably won't get lucky.

Seven Saints is the kind of a bar that you go to WITH a date, as opposed to a place you go to try to find a date. It's definitely not a MEET Market. It's somewhat dark inside, but that's a mood thing. There are always candles burning on the bar and in the candle display at the end of the main sitting room. The music is somewhat subdued, and the selection is made by the staff. There is no jukebox. There are 2 tvs above the bar, one around the corner and one in the dining tables area. They will put on whatever you want to watch. Last night, we were flipping between the Cubs game and the evening news while watching about the storm.

The manager, Andy, is very knowledgeable about his craft. He was brought over by Carlos from Crane Alley (the second best BEER bar in CU) to help this bar along. When Andy arrived, he turned over the beer selection and also the hard liquor selection. The liquor was mirrored (same on east and west) of the bar, but he reduced the multiple bottles and more than doubled the liquor selection. In the top middle is Pappy Van Winkle 23.

The bar has some martini originals, and some other mixed drink specialties, but they seem to pride themselves on their whiskey selection. There are 2 shelves (or so it seems) of whiskey. If you want it, they've probably got it. If they don't have it, they'll probably get it. They had, during May (not sure if it's still going on) Whiskey Wednesday, where the whiskey was half off, which made for some really good deals on servings that were formerly around $30 a glass.

Their food menu is somewhat ... um... snobbish. While the main fare is "slider" style mini-burgers, they can be found with all sorts of interesting ingredients. Of their sliders, my favorite is the bratwurst slider (I think I had that once). They have beet chips, cheese curds, and hummus. I do enjoy their ribeye sandwich but it's not the best steak sandwich in the Carlos bars. There are other entrees on the menu besides sliders.

As for the beer; they have 3 mirrored coolers on either side of the bar that contain most of their beers. They have beers that fit all styles. There are wits, wheats, ambers, bier de garde, farmhouse, lambic, porter, stout, ciders, marzans, and several trappists. If you order something and don't know what beer goes with it, you could either go with the St. Amand Farmhouse Ale; or the new Flying Dog Garde Dog (bier de garde). There are several beers from Flying Dog, Dogfish Head, Bear Republic, Dark Horse, Left Hand, and Rogue (to name a few). There are (I think) 8 taps, with Guinness; Magic Hat (#9); Dark Horse Black Bier; Rogue (currently Issaquah Bullfrog); and for the macro... Miller High Life (I think). I can't remember the rest of the taps, sorry. There is also a cooler that has rotating stock, whatever is new and limited goes in there. Goose Island Bourbon County Stout is in there. Most of the 22oz bombers are in there, including the Bear Republic beers. In the entryway to the kitchen is Andy's cooler. He keeps some "special" bottles in there. If you ask him nicely, he may bust out something special from there. He's given us a Dogfish Head Pangea, some stuff from 3 Floyds and some other high quality beers from his own stash. The stuff in his cooler is from his personal cellar, and he loves to share good beer. Just make sure you are willing to hear the story behind the beer, because he'll talk about it for a while.

Andy tries to keep the staff knowledgeable on their selection, but with all the hard liquors and different beers (there's possibly 50) they have trouble keeping up. Granted I don't need any help picking out a beer, but I can throw in a food pairing or a beer suggestion when I'm there. The beer menu isn't exactly up to date, but Andy will give a little writeup on the new beers on the back of the menu. (he likes to use an exclamation mark!)

Last night a guy was drinking Delerium Tremens and was looking to have something different, but then couldn't figure out what to have, so he ordered another DT, so I recommended a Unibroue La Fin du Monde, as those are both similar beers. He seemed to enjoy it. So that was nice.

If you want a beer or drink with someone, without having to shout across the table; Seven Saints is a good place to go. If you are taking a date out and don't want to be bumped into a lot, it's good for that too. The kitchen is open later than most of the other bars around, so you can get a slider at a late hour. (However if you are closing bars and need to eat, Merry Ann's is still the place to go). If you want to dance, it's not the place. It's not the busiest bar downtown, but on Friday and Saturday, the bar can get kind of full.

Muzzah Fuzzah Rain

Well, it's June and here in central Illinois we are getting April showers.

If you look at a couple of days ago, we had some really cool storms. Well, last night (tuesday) we had MORE rain. More than Friday and that covered my yard.

Last night, we spent the night at Kriddys after being at 7S during most of the cubs game and the tornado warnings. But we got to her place and there was only one part on her country road that had some standing water. This morning there was a lake across the street in the farmland.

You could tell it was a lake, because there were ducks in it. Seriously, there were ducks in the rain water pond.

Last nights storms were really good, they probably went around bragging about how good they were to all their storm friends. You know how a bag of microwave popcorn says to listen for when there are a couple of seconds in between pops and that's how you know it's done. Last night, the popcorn wasn't done. Not only was there thunder every second, there were times when there was just constant booms, before the first would finish echoing, the second and third and fourth would have started. The popcorn cooked for at least 20 minutes. When it got done, it wasn't burned, it was soaked. Too much butter.

I got home this morning to my fear, my basement had water in it. It's the second time this year that that's happened. The first was because the sump pump didn't have an outlet hose and was just making a pit that was filled with water that would just go right back down the tube into the well. So I got a hose, that was a couple of months ago. Well, it flooded again. Not exactly sure why, but I'm going to assume that the ground is just so saturated with water around the house, that the big empty space that is my basement is the logical place for that water to go to.

Not so long ago (2006) Lake Bloomington was in drought levels. We aren't hearing about that these days. Nope, now we get warnings about flash flooding and other things associated with heavy rains.

Remember that food shortage I was talking about the other day? Here's a nifty little tidbit. Many acres of farmland are now under water and look more like rice paddy's than they look like corn fields. Fyi, corn doesn't grow very well below water.

Should I ever get out of the house today, I'll report on the beer last night.

In other news.

Rain is in the forecast... horray!!!

Champaign/Urbana Bars... my goal

The other day as I was looking around the web for information on bars owned by Carlos Nieto, I came across this website. It's a nice little rundown of some of the bars in C/U. As I read it I realized that it was 4 years old, and many things have changed since then. So I thought... Someone's gotta do it... so it'll be me.

So at least once a week now, in addition to the beers and all the other crap that I fill your free time with, I'm going to review a bar. Tuesday night is normally the night that Kriddy and I have to go to a bar (at least it's the NORMAL night for that) we get out some other nights, but mostly it's Tuesday that we hit bars. So on Wednesday's you'll be able to read up on some bars.

Things I'll try to get in are (of course) beer selection; wait staff knowledge of the beer selection; food selection; atmosphere and overall impression. Yes, I'm biased to certain bars and there are some that I know that I hate; with pool being in house and not traveling anymore, it'll be difficult to get to the dives, so I'll go from memory on those.

First up, the dives...

I think the biggest dive in CU is D.R. Diggers. Diggers is kind of like Moe's tavern, without the possibility of any fun nights. When you walk in, there'll be a bunch of regulars there who look at you over the top of their macro lager, as though you don't belong there. There'll be some girl who just turned 21 a couple of months ago, who used to be pretty in highschool, but the past 3 years have aged her poorly. She'll be hanging out with her friend who's a couple years older and several nights closing the bar ahead of her, she's the mentor. They are only 15-20 years away from being straight up bar hags... prune tang. They'll come up to you and ask you to buy them a drink... refuse to do it. If they offer to buy you a drink... RUN!!!

Diggers has 2 pool tables in the back. They are coin-op per game but can also be fed dollars and played by the minute. The juke box is Touch Tunes. The songs played normally on it vary from "my dog just died" country; to "i'm going to kill you" death metal. You can play pretty much anything in there, someone might like it, one of the surly drunks at the bar won't. Just stay away from him.

I've heard their food is ok. It's mostly fried fare, but it's pretty good drunk food.

Diggers is poorly lit. It feels dark. The ceiling over the pool tables has fiber optic lights punched through it which gives it a starry feel, but it's still... very dark. As for the beer, there is nothing too interesting there. Mostly macro's. You might be able to find the Michelob seasonal there (I've had Winters Bourbon Cask Ale on draft there) but the highlight of their selection is HAMMS (for $1.50 I believe).

Diggers has "for entertainment only" video poker.

Diggers "allows" smoking (Illinois has a no smoking law). Unfortunately, it's back near the pool tables, so that really sucks. Some people go out and follow the rules/law, other go near the back door, others just sit, hidden away in a corner, puffing away. This gives off a seedy-dive feel. I'm pretty sure once while I was relieving myself in the men's room, that a drug deal was taking place in the stall.

Diggers is not a place I chose to go to. I only go there for billiards, since I'm not in a traveling league... I won't be there for a while.

The next dive is The Phoenix. The Phoenix has absolutely no redeeming qualities, or at least no reason to go there that I couldn't get at a different bar.

The Phoenix beer selection is really bad. They don't sell bottles because people who get into fights would kill another person with it. The Phoenix probably has the largest selection of 24 oz canned beer in CU. If you are stuck drinking horrible beer, you might as well get a really huge friggin can of it, right? WRONG!

They have 2 pool tables, both coin op. There is also "for entertainment only" video poker.

They also have Touch Tunes, but get really mad when you play something that isn't Lynrd Skynrd... It seems very southern rock-y.

The bar is also very dark. The front windows are tinted dark. It's dark. There is a stage where bands play, and I'm pretty sure it's only local death metal bands. I've never been there on a music night.

It's a biker bar some of the time. Kriddy is pretty sure that once while she was there a guy was jacking off in the corner while looking at her. On another occasion, two bikers in full leather pulled up in front of the bar, parked came inside and shouted "Let's get this party started". Which would be scary enough, except the guy who said it was speaking through a mechanical larynx. This is a scary bar. I am uncomfortable there.

Another major issue with this bar is, the "allow" smoking. One of the parts of the Smoke free Illinois thingy is that bars can't have ashtrays on the table. The Phoenix technically doesn't have ashtrays. The last time I was there, they had Altoids cases on the tables, that could easily be closed, should some sort of enforcement person show up. We were there for pool and outside of us, there were maybe 10 other people in the bar. It seemed all 10 people were smoking. I stunk worse than when I smoked. Kriddy had to take a shower before she could go to bed, the smell of smoke was too strong for her. Renee got sick from the overpowering smell.

For food, the Phoenix has frozen pizza... and some bags of chips and stuff.

If you are looking for a place where you'll get beat up, can drink crappy beer from 24 oz cans, and can smoke, then the Phoenix is probably for you!

The final dive for today is Boomerangs. It seemed like we were always at Boomerangs every year for the all star game. I'm not sure how that worked, but for quite a few years we'd be sitting in front of the same tv watching the all-star game. Boomerangs has two pool tables.

Boomerangs bathroom, during the winter, is possibly one of the coldest places on the face of the earth. In addition to being 20 degrees colder than the outside temperature, they somehow manage to pump water into the sink that is 10 degrees below freezing. You will get contact frostbite if you touch the sink. Don't stick your tongue on it.

Their food menu is decent greasy spoon grill fare.

They have one of the larger Leinenkugel selections in town on draft. Otherwise, there is nothing to spectacular for beer.

The jukebox is an internet jukebox, but not touchtunes. I'm not sure the name of the style, but it's one of the greatest I've seen. You can listen to at Boomerangs. I can torture their patrons for hours with nearly the entire KMFDM collection.

Boomerangs isn't as dark as the other dives. It's also a starting off point for some people as it shares a parking lot with the the Silver Bullet (dancers wanted, no exp. needed).

If you are looking for these three dives, they work from west to east. Diggers is off Springfield Ave on 604 S. Country Fair Drive. The Phoenix is at 215 S. Neil Street. Boomerangs is 1309 E Washington St.

There's more dives in town, I'm sure I'll remember more... I'm not trying to leave anyone out. I'll get them later.

V

It's the end of the world

I want to be an apocalyptic kind of guy too.

Ok, so I'll be an atheist disguised as a guy standing on the side of the street corner in a sandwich board that says "the end is near".

We all know about the hops shortage. Although it hasn't seemed to affect the beers yet, some prices have been raised, but it doesn't really seem like a shortage in the beers themselves. Unless you are a home brewer and are looking to get hops for a beer. The wall at Friar Tucks that last year was covered in dozens of different varieties of hops this year is out. There's no hops there. It's a blank wall. On top of where the hops were, there's a sign that says when they MIGHT get hops in next. They had even implemented a policy where to buy an ounce of hops you had to purchase about 10 pounds of grain. (No IPA's being made in Champaign these days).

Sunday while watching NHRA on ESPN2 (drag racing) they spent considerable time talking about the Nitromethane shortage. Apparently the stuff that makes hot rods go really fast is running out. Nitro currently is only made in China, and with the olympics going there this summer, they are trying to lessen the pollution. They also aren't going to be shipping the hazmat stuff out of their major ports. So nitro in the next few months is going to start to be more and more expensive.

Hops, nitro... so we're looking at some "want" items that are having a shortage.

Everything else in the world is fine... right?

FOOD SHORTAGE

Oh great. I never noticed there was a food shortage because I live in the U.S. (incidentally, the United States of America is the only country in the world EVER where poor people are fat). Apparently the food shortage is hitting other parts of the world. Why?

The whole answer isn't just that in the U.S. we are taking food and making ethanol out of it (although crops being used as gas adds to it)

It would take 450 pounds of corn to yield enough ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4237539.html?page=2

According to Wiki answers the average American eats about 4.7 pounds of food a day. So the corn needed to fill the tank of an SUV could feed a person for about 100 days. Theoretically.

Still, gas is around $4 a gallon. I find it funny that back when gas was $1 a gallon for regular unleaded, that it only cost 10 cents more to make it midgrade and another 10 cents more to make it premium. It's funny that it still only costs 20 cents more to make supah premium gas now that gas itself costs $4. It's also funny that one of the reasons ethanol was put on the market was to be a lower cost than gasoline. But still E-85 is nearly $3 a gallon.

Here's something I definitely don't understand.

If oil costs $125 a barrel on the open market. Who is buying this oil?

I thought Exxon had their own oil wells (they do). I thought Exxon had their own refineries (they do). I thought Exxon had their own gas stations (they do). Does it cost Exxon 4 times more today to produce a gallon of gasoline than it did 8 years ago?

They provide their own oil, make their own gas and sell it themselves. Where is the extra price at? It's no wonder they have record profits, their cost is the same as it was before, but they are charging the same rates as the open market (which isn't open at all).

Sorry about that ramble... back to the food shortage. There's corn, rice and wheat shortages. Guess what, there's also Barley shortages. So that means less barley malt for beer too. Starving people around the world are already rioting for want/need of food. We are turning 450 pounds of food into 22 gallons of ethanol. (Granted the byproduct is then sold to ranchers who feed it to livestock, so some of it does wind up back in the food chain.)

They need to figure out how to make ethanol (or some other -ol) from Kudzu.

So we're running out of hops, nitro, food... what could be worse?

A global water shortage.

We'll never be out of water, just out of FRESH water.

If you live in the southern U.S. you know about the water shortage. If you live in parts of southwestern U.S. you know about the water shortage.

States are suing one another now for access to water, and dammed rivers. Where did that water come from? The rivers in the west were fed by melting glaciers and mountain runoff... with glaciers gone, there's no water to feed the river. If you want to blame global warming, go ahead (I believe it to be some form of solar cycle, and not necessarily a man made crisis, although we might be helping a little).

So what does that mean for all of us? So, we're short on water, barley, hops... is there a yeast shortage too? (well, fuck me running, there is)

We're all going to die!

Finishing May

Not sure if this should be 3 separate entries, but, it'll just be one.

(Part 1 Friday storms and beer) Friday night I got home from work right before DEATH STORM 2k8 hit town. There were small extremely powerful thunderstorm cells that covered Illinois from St. Louis to Danville. It rained real hard for about 20-30 minutes and then there'd be a brief respite for about 15 minutes, then it'd rain again. There were tornado's (none too near me) and hail (none of that either) and flash floods and all kinds of other COOL weather things going on.
I pulled all my rugs up off the basement floor, because I was afraid my basement was going to get wet again, but I got lucky and the ground absorbed it all. My front yard had nearly an inch of water on it. The picture is dark, but you get the idea.
Then headed out to Kriddy's and took the stuff she asked for and a bunch of beer for the gathering for Saturday.
I decided against taking the country way to her place, as I was afraid the area where there's the little pond would be flooded, so I went to Cunningham.

That was flooded under the bridge, about 8 inches or so, and I didn't want to risk it with the aveo, so I turned and went down Broadway.

I made it safely there, and had about 5 minutes to unload the car before the next cell hit. From her front window we watched the wall of rain come up over the little hill and then make a lake in the farm ground across the street. There's a house across the street about 1/4 mile away. We couldn't see it at all, when the heavy part of the rain arrived.

It's kind of funny, neither of us have home phone lines. She used to and still has a phone plugged into the wall. Every now and then, a lightning strike would come close to the house, and her phone would start to ring. Not the ring of an incoming call, but just a buzz. When that happens, you can see how computers get destroyed when the modem gets fried.

Since we weren't going anywhere, I busted out a beer. Started the night with Alvinne Podge Belgian Imperial Stout. As you can see from the picture, it had HUGE head.
This head wasn't going anywhere. It looked like an unfrosted cupcake sitting on top of the beer. The beer itself was chocolate brown and had lots of chunks. Some people call it flocculation... this was chunks.
It smelled slightly vegetable-y. It felt really light and crisp from the huge carbonation. The chunks caused it to continually bubble like champagne. It tasted tart. (My notes say "muzzah fuzzah tart") So it was apparently tarter than I would expect an "Imperial Stout" to be. It left a sour aftertaste in my mouth. Overall, this was not a pleasant beer experience.

My next drink for the evening was Chaucer's Mead.You probably already know I'm not a huge mead fan, but it's like beer, so I try them anyway. I had got this bottle the first or second time that Kriddy and I went to Asheville, so it was over a year old. I don't think Mead is supposed to sit that long.

First, it was almost impossible to open this thing, a couple weeks back I tried opening it with one of those 2 part openers, where you put the cover through the top and then pull. That proved difficult. So I took my opener with the arms that go up. It still didn't want to give up the cork. After several minutes fighting it, I finally got to the honey nectar.

This thing poured completely clear, not a bit of carbonation. It reminded me of urine (except urine normally has more bubbles). It smelled like... paint thinner. Well, like paint thinner mixed with alcohol. It tasted like applejuice (a little) mixed with alcohol... lots of alcohol. It dried out my mouth from the alcohol, and had a slightly sweet aftertaste. It didn't really do anything on the tongue except leave.

Kriddy said it smelled like wine a little. It proved impossible for me to drink. As it warmed up, the paint thinner quality in the smell became more pronounced. Part of the joy of drinking a beer is smelling over the top of it before you take a swig. It was impossible to do that with this mead. I had to force myself to not breath before taking a sip. It was tasty, but was way to hard to drink.

(Part 2 archer liquors) Woke up on Saturday and called up hippy to see if he wanted to go up to chicago with me to go to Archer Liquors. He decided he wanted to go, and then checked the weather and thought he'd like to drive his lime green charger. So he came by and picked me up around 10.

He got a ticket for going 83 around 1045.

The cop who pulled him over was very nice; he probably mostly wanted to check out the car. He did inform us of a speed trap about 10 miles up the road. But hippy stayed under 75 the rest of the day.

That sucked. I was told to be back by 4 for the gathering at kriddy's. Going the 150 or so miles to Chicago and the 150 back shouldn't really take that long to do. Normally I drive it around 80-85 mph, hooked on with the fastest car. Hippy got the speeding ticket in the first 40 miles of the trip, which caused a 10 mph slow down for the rest of the trip. 10 mph is roughly 10 minutes per hour. This caused me to not get back to my house until 3:55 and didn't get to kriddy's until 4:15 or so.

As for the store; Archer Liquors has some great reviews on Beer Advocate and on RateBeer. They do have some stuff that I can't get locally, but I'm not sure if it's an "A" store. Friar tucks has a larger selection. It was nice to get 4 Southern Tier beers and 5 Dieu De Ciel beers, but other than that I wasn't overly impressed with the selection. Sure I spent $120 there, and got a box and a half (a box of beer is $100; don't ask why, it just works out that way) of some good beers.

(Part 3 beer gathering) I got to Kriddys and StEck and Mrs. StEck were already there, the Groom from Asheville was also there as he was around for business up in chicago for the weekend. So I unloaded some more beers and went and popped a beer. Mrs. StEck said she'd probably like fruit-y-er beers, so the first one we had was New Glarus Wisconsin Red.

It wound up just being Kriddy and I, and the StEcks and frank for most of the night; so as I'd open beers, they would get a history lesson on styles and on the beers themselves. "And I got this beer... ; and it's called an IPA because... ; and this beer isn't in illinois because..." So I got to show off my beer knowledge, i could have been wrong about everything, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't. Amazingly, I talk more about beer the more beer I drink... yes, hard to believe I know.

Ultimately we opened up 23 beers between us. (at some point kriddy's cousin and new husband showed up). Some fo the highlights were Alesmith Speedway stout, Peche Mortel, Blithering Idiot, 3 guys off the scale barlewine, palo santo marron, hopslam.

I added 8 beers (I think) to the list over there <--- so it was a good night. I don't really have any tasting notes, but everything was decent. Even the AB Hurricane High Gravity had some good qualities. First off it's an 8.1% abv lager. It had most of the qualities of a good lager. So I can't rip it too much. If you look at BA for hurricane you'll find a lot of people who like to bash AB. Some people are beer snobs... some people are beer dickheads.

Other interesting parts of the night was the opening of the Bar Harbor Blueberry. This one was a gusher. I popped the cap and the little cloud of carbonation made it's little whiff... and then BAM, geyser!! I didn't get money shotted, but it shot across the room, it was kind of cool. The entire bottle foamed out. I tried getting some into a glass, but was unsuccessful. I poured an entire glass of foam. The only beer I've ever seen be that foamy was from the Bells wheat experiments they did several years ago.

We also had a bottle of what I think was (my) Gorillas on PCP Chocolate Stout, but that one foamed. Also we had a bottle of Gorillas on PCP Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Stout. Which Frank seemed to love. I'm not sure if that was the original batch or the second batch, but in the past week I've had 2 people say that it was outstanding. So that's cool.

After Kriddy went to bed and the StEck's left Frank and I attempted to polish off all the bottles that were remaining on the counter. I think I had a Hopslam and Speedway mixture that was pretty good.

Mrs. StEck seemed to like most of the stouts that we opened but StEck himself didn't seem to be enjoying himself too much. I was trying to find things he might like more, but was failing. I had too limited a selection (even though we had 23 beers) He didn't seem to be a fan of the stouts, and we opened 8 of them. He also didn't really like the barleywine's (2) but did act like he enjoyed the IPA's.

Tonight, I'm taking it easy and just drinking diet dew. Sammon's sent me a picture of a church sign he saw today. I hope you get as much a kick out of it, that I did. (The following photo is REAL and unedited)