Brookston Beer Bulletin

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Canadian Iceholes

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canada
If you’re a regular viewer of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, then you’re probably already aware of his mock feud with Canada over ice time for the U.S. speed skating team, which the show sponsored after the team lost its long-time previous supporter due to the economy. The Colbert Nation stepped up and donated thousands of dollars so the show could become the new sponsor. Colbert has featured the team on the show repeatedly. He also featured a story that the Canadian team was in some way keeping the U.S. team off the practice ice, though I can’t recall the exact details of the dispute. At any rate, in response, Colbert launched the Don’t Be An Ice-Hole campaign and even set up a Facebook page.

ice-hole
Now a Vancouver microbrewery, R&B Brewing, has released a new one-off beer, just in time for the Winter Olympics and playing up the feud. The new beer is Iceholes Celebration Lager.

According to Vancouver’s Scout:

For limited release only, Vancouver’s Local Microbrewery, R&B Brewing Co. introduces Iceholes Celebration Lager in response to the recent “Don’t be an Ice-Hole” campaign against Canada started by Stephen Colbert, of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report. Barry Benson, co-owner of R&B Brewing Co. says “ We are proud syrup-sucking Canadian iceholes. In celebration of our icehole-ish behaviour we have decided to get even rather than get mad. Canadians can wreak their revenge against Stephen Colbert in a truly Canadian way and have a beer.”

R&B Brewing Co. Iceholes Celebration Lager is a medium bodied beer, gold in colour with a spicy aroma. Brewed in the tradition of a European Pilsner, Iceholes Lager has a snappy hop flavour and a clean dry finish creating a truly refreshing beer. Iceholes Celebration Lager will be available in 650ml bottles for a limited time only starting February 2, 2010. Consumers can purchase the specialty beer at independent beer stores and local Vancouver restaurants during the month of February.

To which I can only add, as Stephen Colbert would, U-Ice-A! U-Ice-A! Now that’s great marketing.

iceholes

Photoshop Fun With Beer: A Time Suck

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tall-beer
The humor website Freaking News, whose tagline is “News Photoshop Contests,” apparently has held several contests involving beer, challenging people to create funny pictures using Photoshop. In some cases they offer an image to start with and manipulate and in others they just suggest a theme. Below are some of my favorites from the Cold Draft Beer contest.

FN-Boom-Beer
Boom!

FN-Beer-Lake
Beer Lake.

FN-Drunk-Bouguereau
Drunk Bouguereau. The original is La Petite Mendiante (The Little Beggar) painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1880.

You can see many more beer-altered photos in these contest galleries. Warning: it’s a time suck.

  • Beer Endorsement Pictures
  • Beer Mug Pictures
  • Beer Olympics
  • Cold Draft Beer
  • Pint of Beer Pictures

Help Choosing Your Beer

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humor
This is a very fun little chart, though it must have taken quite some time to actually put together. Over at Eating the Road, they’ve assembled a flowchart to help you choose what beer to drink.

Here’s how they describe it:

In conjunction with the amazingly useful, humorous and insightful Sloshspot.com we’ve put together another flowchart to make your decision making that much easier. Just in time for those wonderful Holiday parties, Eating The Road to the rescue. We figured you may need this one a bit more than the others seeing that you may be a little…ahh, under the influence. Due to that, please use this chart with caution and responsibility.

I ended up with Utopias and Cantillon, so in my case it worked pretty well. Enjoy. At Eating the Road, you can also find links to other flowcharts, including ones for Fast Food, Chain Restaurants and cereal.

NOTE: If you find it hard to read at this size, you can view it full size here.
what-should-i-drink-beer

Jeff “Lucky Pants” Babgy Wins Big

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pizza-port
Jeff Bagby, the head brewer at Pizza Port in Carlsbad, won big this year at the Great American Beer Festival. He picked up a whopping seven medals; four gold, one silver and two bronze. In addition, Pizza Port Carlsbad was awarded the Large Brewpub and Large Brewpub Brewer of the Year.

Below is a photo of Jeff, with Yiga Miyashira, up on stage picking up just one of his eight awards last Saturday. Notice the eyesore inducing polyester plaid pants? If you’re a regular to the GABF Award Ceremony, you may already remember that Jeff always seems to have on a pair of plaid pants. At first, I thought it was the same pair every year. But looking back over the last few reveals that it’s actually been a different pair of polyester plaid pants each year.

Given that Jeff and Pizza Port Carlsbad have won 19 medals in the last four years, I’d say his plaid pants are pretty darn lucky. Of course, being a great brewer helps, and I don’t want to take anything away from his mad skills. But I’d put even money on the pants making even the most mediocre brewer better. Below is a retrospective of Jeff’s “Lucky Pants” for the past four years.

2009 Lucky Pants
P1160443

2008 Lucky Pants
P1120452

2007 Lucky Pants
gabf07-awards-16

2006 Lucky Pants
gabf06-awards-14

If you, too, want or need a little luck — and let’s face it, who doesn’t? — I took a close up of the pattern on Jeff’s lucky pants and created some downloadable wallpaper in three different sizes. So now in addition to the Bulletin logo wallpaper page, you can also get Mr. Bagby’s wallpaper, too.

Jeff Bagby’s Lucky Pants 2009 Wallpaper

bagby-pants-800

Another Good Tip

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pint
Last week, I posted a useful tip from the UK on how to make sure someone who’s passed out doesn’t choke. I just stumbled upon yet another good drinking tip, this one from a Winter Park, Florida medical facility, Aloma Urgent Care. In an effort to advertise their services, they’ve created graphics showing the right and wrong way to assist a friend in need, who may need to quickly get rid of too much recently ingested food and/or drink. A true friend knows the right way.

aloma-advice

A Good Tip: Don’t Lose A Friend To Booze

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pint
Accompanying a story about the JD Wetherspoons pub chain offering very cheap pints, the chart below offers some sound advice on keeping your over-indulging buddy stay alive. In a sense, it seems to be their commentary on what offering cheap pints will do, making it funny, but it’s also a good tip should you ever encounter someone passed out. It could happen. Now you’ll know what to do.

rescue-position

The original story ran in Bad Idea, a UK magazine which bills itself as “the magazine of journalism, ideas and opinion for intelligent young Britain. Reinvigorating the form of narrative journalism, it’s the new stomping ground for ambitious young British writers, a braggadocious melting pot of tragedy, parties, love, death, cybersex and stretched cricket metaphors.” Which still makes me wonder if they’re serious or have their tongue firmly in their cheek.

‘Twas The Brewer’s Night Before Christmas

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christmas
It’s Christmas Eve again and time once more for the brewer’s parody of The Night Before Christmas, or A Visit From St. Nicholas. Enjoy! Happy Christmas.

santa-kegs

‘Twas The Brewer’s Night Before Christmas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
Every creature was thirsty, including the mouse…
The steins were empty, and the bottles were too
The beer had been drunk with no time to brew.

My family was nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of Christmas Ale foamed in their heads.
Mama in her kerchief lamented the drought,
She craved a pilsner and I, a stout.
                              santa-head
When out on the lawn, there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my chair to see what was the matter.
Away to the kitchen, I flew like a flash,
Opening the door with a loud bang and crash!

I threw on the switch and the lights, all aglow,
Gave a luster of mid-day to the brew-pot below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear
But Gambrinus himself, the patron of beer.
                              santa
With a look in his eye, so lively and quick,
He said, “You want beer? Well, here, take your pick.”
More rapid than eagles, his recipes came
As he whistled and shouted and called them by name.

“Now, Pilsener! Now, Porter! Now, Stout and Now Maerzen!
On, Bitter! On, Lager! On, Bock and On Weizen!”
“To the top of the bottles, the short and the tall,
Now brew away, brew away, and fill them all!”
                              christmas-beer
As dried hops before a wild hurricane fly,
And then, without warning, settle down with a sigh,
So towards the brew-pot, the ingredients flew,
Malt extract, roasted barley and crystal malt, too.

And then in a twinkling, I heard it quite plain,
The cracking open of each barley grain.
As I drew in my head and was turning around,
Into the kitchen, he came with a bound.
                              santa-claus
He was dressed like a knight, from his head to his toes,
With an old family crest adorning his clothes.
A bundle of hops, he had flung on his back,
And the brewing began when he opened his pack.

His hops were so fragrant! His barley, how sweet!
The adjuncts included Munich malt and some wheat.
The malted barley was mashed in the tun,
Then boiled with hops in the brew-pot ’till done.
                              santa
Excitement had me gnashing my teeth,
As the sweet smell encircled my head like a wreath.
Beer yeast was pitched, both lager and ale,
The wort quickly fermented, not once did it fail.

It was then krausened, or with sugar primed,
And just being bottled when midnight had chimed.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know, I’d be shortly in bed.
                              santa-head2
He spoke not a word but kept on with his work,
And capped all the bottles, then turned with a jerk.
And laying a finger alongside his nose,
He belched (quite a burp!) before he arose.

Clean-up was easy, with only a whistle,
And away the mess flew, like the down on a thistle.
And I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he left me the beer,
“Merry Christmas to all and a HOPPY New Year!”

                              santa-sleigh

 
Thanks to Steve Altimari from Valley Brewing, who sent me this parody of Clement C. Moore’s “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” first published in 1823. The original version is on Wikipedia along with much more information about the poem.

In addition to this one, there are also numerous other parodies of the famous poem. I especially got a chuckle out of the lawyer’s version. For a truly staggering collection of these check out the Canonical List of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas Variations, with 849 different versions of The Night Before Christmas.

 

Symphony in Suds

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I’m not one to pimp beer commercials very often, but I found this one pretty clever. It’s simply the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, on stage in their tuxedos, performing the theme song for Foster’s most popular beer in Australia, Victoria Bitter. But instead of their normal instruments, the song is played on beer bottles. Believe it or not, when I first started college my major was music theory/comp (composition) and I had aspirations to write classical music, so it was fun to see the inventive ways they found to make sounds from the beer bottles. Simple and with no catch phrases, animals or mud-wrestling. If only the beer was better.

 

 

Prayer and Pale Ale

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Apparently, there won’t be any Southern Baptists attending the Highland Vineyard Church of Louisville, Kentucky any time soon, as we’ve recently learned that some of them are literally afraid of beer. That’s because Highland Vineyard’s pastor, Robert Pitman, has been holding “Sunday Nights on Tap” services, which are held at Flanagan’s Ale House, a local Irish-style pub with a great beer selection and pub food.

As Pastor Pitman tells it, in a recent Louisville Courier-Journal article:

“I think there’s a lot of people that want to get close to God, but they don’t connect with the church today,” said Robert Pitman, Highland Vineyard’s lead pastor. “Maybe they either just have never been or they’ve been and had bad experiences, but it just doesn’t seem to connect with them.”

Last Sunday the church held the second of its Sunday Nights on Tap at Flanagan’s. Like the first, it drew about 35-40 people ranging in age from early 20s to late 50s. The events start out with live music — some original, some covers — followed by a message from Pitman and time to hang out and socialize.

For now, the church will be holding these beer bar revivals only once a month, but if successful, who knows? It’s nice to see not every religion is against beer. I certainly know plenty of religious beer-drinkers, but a church that embraces it and even makes it a part of their worship? Now that warms the soul like a good barleywine-style ale.