Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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My Little Pony Keg

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my-little-pony-drinks
I love Google Images. You just never know what you’ll find and over the years I’ve found some truly odd images. And this has to be among the stranger finds. Apparently there are people obsessed with My Little Pony. I really shouldn’t be surprised, for pretty much anything you could name, people have turned their solitary obsession into a full-fledged hobby, with similar-minded people coming together from all over the globe. The internet has made this particularly easy, and I can only imagine that the sheer number of different groups, organizations, associations, clubs, etc. surrounding almost anything we could name, no matter how obscure, has exploded over the last decade. Anyway, I stumbled upon a My Little Pony imageboard — an internet forum — called Ponychan.

An entire thread titled “Alcohol Thread” began with “What is your drink of choice and why? Are you bastards even old enough to drink?” A fair question, given the only reason I am so very familiar with My Little Pony is because I have an 8-year old daughter. The thread includes images of ponies drinking beer and cider, as forum users express their favorite alcoholic drinks.

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My wife informs me — I have no idea how she knows this — that there is an entire subset of adult males who are into My Little Pony known as “Bronies.” That’s more than a little creepy.

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So here’s a few of the drinking ponies from the thread. I can only imagine the neo-prohibitionists would be going crazy if these were to see the light of day, emerging from the murky shadows of the internet. Children’s characters drinking? Oh, the horror!

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But I’ll raise toast to the ponies. Drunk ponies could only be more interesting than I remember them, having to endure their sober exploits with my daughter Alice. Thank goodness she’s moved past the little ponies, but sadly what’s she’s into now — iCarly, Victorious and the Winx Club — are hardly much better.

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Beer In Political Advertising Spoof 2012

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Regardless of your political leanings, I think the beer aspects of this are pretty funny. Thanks to Ed Chainey for sending me the link. I suspect Republicans won’t be as amused as Democrats, but it’s true that alcohol is not allowed under Mormonism, along with coffee, tobacco and other items. I don’t know about above-ground swimming pools or truck nuts, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Still, from a strictly beer-centric point of view, the choice is clear.

Beer Can Dads 2012

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I posted these last year a couple of weeks before Father’s Day, but figured today was a good day to take another look at them. Last year, the good folks at Every Guyed designed eight beer can dads.

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Here was the idea:

To celebrate Father’s Day, EveryGuyed and Moxy Creative House have teamed up once again to deliver the second installment of the ‘Cheers!’. This time we had creative director Glenn Michael raise a glass — and his brush — to 8 iconic animated dads, re-envisioning them as beer cans.

When you were a kid, Father’s Day was a pretty boring affair. Now you’re of age, and all of a sudden you have the chance to do something with your dad that he’ll actually enjoy: share a cold one together.

See if you can guess all of the cartoon dads. You can see all eight of them in the slideshow above. The answers can found at the bottom of last year’s post.

Now I want my own dad can. What would yours look like?

The Formula For Beer

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film
I have my Tivo set to look for the keyword “beer” and recently it taped the 1933 comedy film What — No Beer?, which I hadn’t watched until now. The plot of the film is essentially about two people who think they can get rich by being the first to sell beer just as prohibition is ending, if they can just figure out how to make it. There’s a funny scene where the two stars — Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante — discuss how it’s brewed.

Elmer J. Butts (Buster Keaton): “How do you make beer?”

Jimmy Potts (Jimmy Durante): “Oh, I got the formula. An old German wash woman gave it to me. Take 5 gallons of water, 1 cup of malt extract, 3 spoonfuls of hop, 1 small cup of yeast. Mix in one large crock.”

Sounds pretty easy. I wonder why everybody doesn’t do it. It’s a goofy, if only occasionally funny, movie but worth it just to see the brewing scenes.

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Here’s the plot summary from the iMDb:

Although he has never met her, Elmer Butts loves Hortense secretly and from afar. He dreams of making a million dollars so he can buy her a Rolls automobile and marry her. With prohibition apparently on the verge of ending, Elmer’s friend Jimmy Potts gets an idea to make them both rich by opening a brewery just before the legalization of alcoholic beverages. Their timing is off, and the police raid them, but their inept brewing has created a beer with no alcohol, so they are let off. But it has also resulted in a cheaply made beer, and bootlegger Spike Moran realizes that he can vastly increase his profits by partnering with Elmer and Jimmy. But none of them reckons with the competitor, another bootlegger, gangster Butch Lorado. Butch has a girlfriend … Elmer’s dream girl, Hortense.

MillerCoors Looking To Hire Bay Area Beer Ambassador

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tenth-blake
Thanks to an alert reader, Susan G., who noticed this video about a Monster.com job posting for an “Import & Craft Trade Brewer” position in the Bay Area advertised by MillerCoors. Actually, the person hired will work for 10th & Blake, which is their craft and import division. The company is looking for “a beer ambassador and homebrewing coach in the western U.S. [to] Teach sales teams and consult on new beer recipes.” They want someone who “knows all things beer.”

Now Made With Craft Beer

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So I’m walking through the grocery store the other day; and I’m hungry, which is never a good combination. I’m perusing the frozen food section, when something catches my eye. It’s Cheddar Bites, or more specifically “Crispy Beer Battered Aged White Cheddar” by Alexia. Now it’s not that they’re beer-battered — which I’m pleased about — but it’s nothing new. That’s not what caught my attention. On the box is a small tri-colored square, at an angle, to the right of the main label, declaring that these cheddar bites aren’t made with just any old beer, but are “Craft Beer Battered!” Woo Hoo! We’ve come a long way, baby, when that becomes a selling point. It made me laugh a bit, and naturally there’s no information about what craft beer was used for the batter. The company’s in Washington, so that’s a clue, I suppose.

Still, I find it interesting that a food company thought it was enough of a selling point to include it as a separate element on the packaging. That certainly suggests that they believed it would appeal to a certain type of consumer, and specifically one for whom the fact that the beer was “craft beer” had some meaning. That’s an interesting development. And it worked, I suppose, since I bought them. The family verdict was mixed. My wife thought they were just “meh,” whereas I liked them just fine; though in fairness my tastes run toward anything that’s not too good for me and can be considered comfort food.

Has anyone else seen similar labeling on packaged foods? It’s the first time I’ve noticed it, but I’m curious if this is happening enough to be considered the beginning of a trend.

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