Tuesday’s ad is a 1950 ad for Schlitz, one of the three-panel ads that goes from curiosity to sampling to loving Schlitz. This one has a diving theme, not scuba diving but the old diving bell type.
Drunken Carrot
On Sunday, my wife and I indulged our inner geeks by attending WonderCon at Moscone Center in San Francisco. It’s an orgy of comic books, cartoons, science fiction and fantasy, art, toys, film, television and all manner of mainstream and non-mainstream entertainment. It was a fun day, and we picked up some cool stuff for ourselves and the kids. One oddity I came across is a stuffed vegetable (animal didn’t seem quite right) entitled Drunken Carrot. He’s part of the Mr. Toast collection. You can see more of artist Dan Goodsell’s artwork and characters at the Wonderful World of Mr. Toast.
Drunken Carrot is described like so: “He is orange and he has a problem.” I’m not entirely sure why one of his eyes is not working, but I assume it’s from over-indulging on beer — what is that, Dos Equis?
Since I didn’t want him to get too lonely being stuck in my office all day long, I also picked up a companion for him: Shaky Bacon. Shaky doesn’t look to happy. He probably needs a drink.
Marzen Madness 2011 Winners
Congratulations to the Connecticut Huskies, who last night bested Butler to win the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament. And thanks to everybody who played Märzen Madness again this year. Nobody’s more surprised about this than I am, but of the 42 people who played this year, I was the only one to pick UConn to go all the way. Of all people playing Yahoo’s tournament pick ’em game, only 3.3% took the Huskies. The majority picked either Ohio State (30.3%), Kansas (26.1) or Duke (16.1%). Every other team is in single digits. Here’s the top five finishers in our little game:
- Brookston (107)
- huskless (77)
- Day V (70)
- Unemployed in Greenland (66)
- Shoot the Damn Ball (64)
Brewbot: An Automated Homebrewing Machine
This is an odd one, if not without a certain interest just for the effort involved and how it works. For a design contest, The RX MCU Design Contest, sponsored by Renesas, an Australian designer, Matt Prattau (a.k.a. Zizzle), created the Brewbot, an automated homebrewing system that does all the work.
Here’s his introduction, from the contest submission:
Home brewing beer can be a rewarding mix of art and science. It allows the brewer to explore the thousands of possibilities available using the dozens of varieties of hops, malt, yeast and other interesting ingredients. The process can be time consuming and results can vary due to many factors, including precision, technique and consistency used by the brewer in the process.
Imagine an appliance in your kitchen that could take the time and labor out of the brewing process and brew a consistent batch of beer each time thus allowing the user to focus on the ingredients and recipe.
I always thought that the actual work of homebrewing was part of the fun, not something to be avoided, but still, you have to admire the way he did it. Here’s what it looks like. The submission page also includes links to schematics and other information about the design. He’s also set up a blog where he tracks his progress entitled Brewbot Mk2
Hack A Day blogged about the Brewbot, and had this to say:
You can see the development board there just to the left of the brew kettle. It’s network connected with a web interface that allows you to take recipes from Brewtarget and import them directly to the system. All you need to do is make sure that you load up the grain basket and boil addition modules to match your recipe. The bot takes it from there, filling the kettle, preheating that water, lowering the grains and maintaining temperature for the mash, and completing the boil with additions from the servo-controlled PVC pipe pods. Experienced brewers will notice a few steps missing, like the sparge, and a quick way to cool the finished wort. But this does take a huge part of the drudgery out of our hands. If only it had a clean-in-place system … then we’d really be happy!
But to get a real feel for it, check out the video where the designer walks you though the steps of how it works.
The Smell Of Vanilla
Adrian Tierney-Jones — who was my editor when I worked on 1001 Beer You Must Try Before You Die — had an interesting post the other day on his blog, Called to the Bar, entitled What does vanilla smell like? It’s about the difficulties of accurately describing any aroma we encounter in beer, but with vanilla as the jumping off point for the discussion. Especially interesting is the idea of how do you describe aromas without using too much cliché, an inevitable problem when you write a lot of tasting notes. Adrian specifically mentions something he read in the introduction of the Penguin Guide to Food and Drink. Editor Paul Levy notes “how you might find a raspberry note in Burgundy but no Burgundy notes in a raspberry. But what does a raspberry smell of? Raspberry.” It’s a thorny problem for reviewing beers, and worth a read if you want to write thoughtful tasting notes, or just understand the difficulties inherent in them.
Wikio Beer Blog Rankings For April 2011
The April 2011 standings have just been released for Wikio’s Beer Blogs. I’ve been knocked from my four month reign at the top, and Jeff from Beervana has once again assumed the #1 Spot. Congratulations Jeff. Here’s what happened to the Top 20 over last month:
Wikio April 2011 Beer Blog Rankings
| 1 | Beervana (+1) | 2 | Brookston Beer Bulletin (-1) |
| 3 | Brewpublic (+/-0) |
| 4 | The New School (+/-0) |
| 5 | Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home (+/-0) |
| 6 | A Good Beer Blog (+1) |
| 7 | Drink With The Wench (-1) |
| 8 | Washington Beer Blog (+/-0) |
| 9 | Seen Through a Glass (+2) |
| 10 | The Daily Pull (+5) |
| 11 | The Session Beer Project (+1) |
| 12 | Seattle Beer News (+1) |
| 13 | It’s Pub Night (+3) |
| 14 | Stone Blog (-4) |
| 15 | BetterBeerBlog (-1) |
| 16 | KC Beer Blog (Not in Top 20 for Mar.) |
| 17 | The Not So Professional Beer Blog (+1) |
| 18 | Yours For Good Fermentables (Not in Top 20 for Mar.) |
| 19 | Beer 47 (-10) |
| 20 | Beer Therapy (Not in Top 20 for Mar.) |
Ranking made by Wikio
As usual, I added the relative movements of each blog from last month. This month, three new blogs cracked the Top 20 (though some had been there before) and three dropped off. Apart from #1 and #2 switching places, there was again very little movement near the top, with three through five staying put from last month and the rest of the top 20 seemed less volatile this month, too. As always, I continue to stress that this is just a bit of fun and that we shouldn’t take it too seriously.
Beer In Ads #340: Turn Of The Century Pilsner Urquell
Monday’s ad is for Pilsner Urquell. While I don’t know the true age of the ad, it definitely has a turn of the century look to it. Many beer ads from the late 1800s depict beautiful women of the day with beers in their hands, though I love the added touch of the hops around the barrel of beer.
Summit Celebrates The Return Of Legal Beer
Summit Brewing, in St. Paul, Minnesota, commissioned a local artist, Miss Amy Jo, to create a poster celebrating the passage of the Cullen-Harrison on its effective date of April 7, 1933. Eight months before the repeal of Prohibition, the bill allowed the production of 3.2 beer in about twenty states, including Minnesota. I love the retro look of it. It will probably drive historian Bob Skilnik batty, but it’s a cool poster and it’s available for purchase at Summit’s online store.
Beer In Art #121: Jan Jansz van de Velde’s Still Lifes
This week’s works of art are by Jan Jansz van de Velde, a Dutch painter from that nation’s golden age. He painted still lifes of everyday objects from the time, and at least two of those included beer. The first was completed in 1649, and is entitled Still Life with a Mug of Beer.
And the second is Still Life with Tall Glass of Beer, painted in 1647.
Guinness Ad #62: Have A Sandwich
Our 62nd Guinness ad again shows the iconic toucan with two pints of Guinness balanced on his beak, and a plate of sandwiches in one claw. The tagline is “My Goodness Have a sandwich!” with “Have a sandwich” essentially replacing “My Guinness,” which is the usual slogan.
