Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Captain America Drinks Beer

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captain-america
As a long time geek of many stripes, not just beer, I’ve been a longtime reader of comic books. I still regularly read a number of comics, and I’ve gotten Porter into them as well. We have our weekly father/son ritual of going to our local comic book store each Wednesday to pick up the new books. He’s a big fan of Captain America. He loved the movie and started reading the comics shortly after it came out. So an item about some new superhero art in the new issue of Playboy stood out.

A French artist, Grégoire Guillemin, did a series of works under the title “The Secret Life of Heroes,” where he drew many of the classic comic book superheroes, and few other fictional folks, engaged in mundane pursuits, many quite ordinary and few others downright racy and subversive. They remind me of a cross between Roy Lichtenstein and Mel Ramos.

The series includes such images as Wonder Woman scratching her butt, Batman eating a doughnut, Hulk rolling a joint, Superman eating a hamburger, Spiderman brushing his teeth and … well, you get the idea. Go take a look. There’s one more that stood out as a favotite, and that was one of a number featuring Captain America; this one’s entitled Captain Drinks, and features him knocking back a cold bottle of beer. Enjoy.

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Coming Soon — All Big Brewers Owned By Some Corporate Giant

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It’s a slow Sunday, but I came across this editorial cartoon by Jeff Danzinger from February of this year. Entitled Coming Soon — All Big Brewers Owned By Some Corporate Giant, it certainly plays on the fears of ever-increasing consolidation in the market, especially internationally. It’s happening in the brewing industry, without a doubt, but perhaps more frightening is that it’s happening in virtually every sector of the marketplace. I especially like the Ballantine-like logo on the wall with the tagline “Drink … Pay … Go Home.” You can see more of Danzinger’s cartoons at his official website.

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How To Open A Beer Compilation

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My brother-in-law sent me this video this morning. There are a million ways to open a beer bottle, and this video includes a lot of different ones, including a few that seem pretty impractical (rendering the beer undrinkable) and some that look downright dangerous, but then there also some clever and funny ones, too. Enjoy.

Beer Clothing

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I’m not sure I’d wear any of these (nobody wants to see me in anything this tight) but for the right beer geek … maybe?! Created by an Australian clothing company, BlackMilk, they have three beer-themed outfits for the discerning woman who also loves beer. There’s a dress, a bathing suit and leggings.

First, there’s the beer dress.
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Secondly, a beer swimsuit.
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And finally, beer leggings.
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Don’t forget to scroll down to the bottom of each page, where there are lots of photos and self-shots of people wearing the beer clothing.

The Ziblee Beverage Pleasure Enhancer

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Maybe it’s my own skepticism, but this is setting off all of the Amway/Infomercial/Snake Oil Salesman alarm bells. On Indiegogo — similar to Kickstarter — someone has launched a project for the Ziblee Beverage Pleasure Enhancer, which they describe as follows. “Briefly stir your favorite adult beverage with the Ziblee and be amazed at the improvement in flavor and smoothness.” Uh, huh. Sure. Convince me.

Here’s what it looks like. To me, it looks roughly like a honey dipper made out of a metal spring with an aluminum handle. But no, the spring is made from “the finest stainless steel [they] could find. Surgical grade stainless steel,” no less.

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But actually it’s the pitch, and the fact that there’s a special crystal inside the wand, that makes is sound like it’s coming from a snake oil salesman.

The Ziblee is an energetically-charged wand-like device that, when stirred gently for six or seven seconds in a glass of wine, spirits, coffee or juice, liberates all the flavor of the beverage and smooths the taste significantly. Just like award-winning vintners, connoisseurs and sommeliers who have used the Ziblee, you will be astounded at the difference it makes. It really does “make the cheap stuff taste like the good stuff…and the good stuff taste even better!”

Beer is conspicuously absent, but apparently every other alcohol on the planet, along with coffee and juice, will magically be improved by a few stirs. How does this “magic” work? Here’s their explanation.

The Ziblee is not an ‘aerator’ and it doesn’t have magnets. It’s a totally new technology that uses the subtle energy of frequencies. Those frequencies impact the beverage on a molecular level releasing its full flavor and smoothness. There is no chemical change in the beverage at all, nothing dissolves, nothing is added or taken away. It really is a quantum energy thing and there are only two ways to know that something wonderful has happened to your drink. The first is to look at the molecular structure of the drink under an electron microscope, which we’ve done — but honestly, it’s not that easy to do. The second is a far better option…taste it! Do a variety of taste tests. All in the name of scientific research of course! This is absolutely the most fun you can have using quantum physics!

It works through specially selected natural quartz crystal. Due to their balanced and set formation, certain crystals have the ability to tune into the vibrations of what is around them. People have known that since ancient times. Today what we’re able to do with the Ziblee is ‘tune’ the crystal with a proprietary combination of frequencies. When the super-charged Ziblee connects with your beverage it harmonizes the frequencies to gently reveal the remarkable story within every glass. It makes every sip, every drink, every conversation more pleasurable.

Dizzy yet? Toward the end of this new ageiness, they claim that it “works with all adult beverages, making them taste smooth, expensive,” but finally address beer. “With carbonated beverages like beer, soda and champagne the Ziblee tends to make them go flat, so don’t ruin your drink. We’re not sure why that happens, but it does. We dumped many a beer down the drain trying to figure it out.” It’s funny that they don’t know why it happens, suggesting to me that they don’t really know anything about their claim that it does work on non-carbonated drinks, except water.

So what do you think? Magic or hokum? I’m sure it’s not that simply swirling your drink makes it taste differently. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it? Who would fall for that?

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