German Beer Cheese!
- 1/2 lb Cheddar cheese
- 1/2 lb Swiss cheese
- 2 tsp. Worcestershire (Whats-this-here) sauce
- 1 tsp dry mustard
- 1 small clove garlic, mashed
- 1/2 cup beer (yep, drink the rest!)
Shred the cheeses very finely. Add the Whats-this-here sauce, dry mustard, garlic and enough beer to make a mixture of spreading consistency. Turn into a 3-cup rounded bowl and pack firmly. CHILL. Unmold and serve at room temp.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Random Beer Fact for 11/13/10
How fast could you chug a 12oz bottle/can of beer? 2-3 seconds? More? Less? How long do you think it would take to chug a liter (33oz)? If the chug-speed vs volume was a linear relation, you'd think maybe around 5-7 seconds? Possibly longer if you think about it. Well, a beast by the name of Steven Petrosino drank 1L of beer in 1.3 seconds on June 22, 1977 at the Gingerbreadman in Carlisle, PA. All I can say to that is DAMN!
Friday, November 12, 2010
Crystal Springs Brewing Company
I was just catching up on some local news and happened across an article about a new local brewery; as the title says, Crystal Springs Brewing Company. This place is dubbed the "smallest" brewery in Boulder and could in fact be the, if not one of the smallest licensed breweries in the country. Think a homebrew setup on steroids; at 20 gallons a batch, he's not moving much beer. But apparently it's really good, so if you're in the Boulder area, look for his beer at LiquorMart, North Boulder Liquor, and Bottles. I'm going to have to pick up a few and see what all the fuss is about, and when I do, I'll be sure to let you all know what's up!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Random Beer Fact: 11/11/10 Edition (part 2)
This one was especially interesting; if you have a beard or facial hair, you'll be interested!
The powers that be at Guinness say that a pint of beer is lifted about ten times, and each time about 0.56 ml is lost in a beer drinker’s facial hair. That’s a lot of wasted beer!
The powers that be at Guinness say that a pint of beer is lifted about ten times, and each time about 0.56 ml is lost in a beer drinker’s facial hair. That’s a lot of wasted beer!
Random Beer Fact: 11/11/10 Edition
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was elected in 1932 because of his promise to end Prohibition.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Beer and the Rise of Civilization
So I was out of town the past few days. After getting home and opening up the laptop to start reading the news, I find a great article on MSNBC.com titled, "Beer may have lubricated the rise of civilization". You can read it here, OR, you can read below...
By Charles Q. Choi
May beer have helped lead to the rise of civilization? It's a possibility, some archaeologists say.
Their argument is that Stone Age farmers were domesticating cereals not so much to fill their stomachs but to lighten their heads, by turning the grains into beer. That has been their take for more than 50 years, and now one archaeologist says the evidence is getting stronger.
Signs that people went to great lengths to obtain grains despite the hard work needed to make them edible, plus the knowledge that feasts were important community-building gatherings, support the idea that cereal grains were being turned into beer, said archaeologist Brian Hayden at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
"Beer is sacred stuff in most traditional societies," said Hayden, who is planning to submit research on the origins of beer to the journal Current Anthropology.
The advent of agriculture began in the Neolithic Period of the Stone Age about 11,500 years ago. Once-nomadic groups of people had settled down and were coming into contact with each other more often, spurring the establishment of more complex social customs that set the foundation of more-intricate communities.
The Neolithic peoples living in the large area of Southwest Asia called the Levant developed from the Natufian culture, pioneers in the use of wild cereals, which would evolve into true farming and more settled behavior. The most obvious explanation for such cultivation is that it was done in order to eat.
Archaeological evidence suggests that until the Neolithic, cereals such as barley and rice constituted only a minor element of diets, most likely because they require so much labor to get anything edible from them — one typically has to gather, winnow, husk and grind them, all very time-consuming tasks.
Hayden told LiveScience he has seen that hard work for himself. "In traditional Mayan villages where I've worked, maize is used for tortillas and for chicha, the beer made there. Women spend five hours a day just grinding up the kernels."
However, sites in Syria suggest that people nevertheless went to unusual lengths at times just to procure cereal grains — up to 40 to 60 miles (60 to 100 km). One might speculate, Hayden said, that the labor associated with grains could have made them attractive in feasts in which guests would be offered foods that were difficult or expensive to prepare, and beer could have been a key reason to procure the grains used to make them.
"It's not that drinking and brewing by itself helped start cultivation, it's this context of feasts that links beer and the emergence of complex societies," Hayden said.
Feasts would have been more than simple get-togethers — such ceremonies have held vital social significance for millennia, from the Last Supper to the first Thanksgiving.
More science news from MSNBC Tech & Science
"Feasts are essential in traditional societies for creating debts, for creating factions, for creating bonds between people, for creating political power, for creating support networks, and all of this is essential for developing more complex kinds of societies," Hayden explained. "Feasts are reciprocal — if I invite you to my feast, you have the obligation to invite me to yours. If I give you something like a pig or a pot of beer, you're obligated to do the same for me or even more."
"In traditional feasts throughout the world, there are three ingredients that are almost universally present," he said. "One is meat. The second is some kind of cereal grain, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, in the form of breads or porridge or the like. The third is alcohol, and because you need surplus grain to put into it, as well as time and effort, it's produced almost only in traditional societies for special occasions to impress guests, make them happy, and alter their attitudes favorably toward hosts."
The brewing of alcohol seems to have been a very early development linked with initial domestication, seen during Neolithic times in China, the Sudan, the first pottery in Greece and possibly with the first use of maize. Hayden said circumstantial evidence for brewing has been seen in the Natufian, in that all the technology needed to make it is there — cultivated yeast, grindstones, vessels for brewing and fire-cracked rocks as signs of the heating needed to prepare the mash.
"We still don't have the smoking gun for brewing in the Natufian, with beer residues in the bottom of stone cups or anything like that," Hayden said. "But hopefully people will start looking for that — people haven't yet."
It's these things that make beer THAT much more interesting!!!
By Charles Q. Choi
May beer have helped lead to the rise of civilization? It's a possibility, some archaeologists say.
Their argument is that Stone Age farmers were domesticating cereals not so much to fill their stomachs but to lighten their heads, by turning the grains into beer. That has been their take for more than 50 years, and now one archaeologist says the evidence is getting stronger.
Signs that people went to great lengths to obtain grains despite the hard work needed to make them edible, plus the knowledge that feasts were important community-building gatherings, support the idea that cereal grains were being turned into beer, said archaeologist Brian Hayden at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
"Beer is sacred stuff in most traditional societies," said Hayden, who is planning to submit research on the origins of beer to the journal Current Anthropology.
The advent of agriculture began in the Neolithic Period of the Stone Age about 11,500 years ago. Once-nomadic groups of people had settled down and were coming into contact with each other more often, spurring the establishment of more complex social customs that set the foundation of more-intricate communities.
The Neolithic peoples living in the large area of Southwest Asia called the Levant developed from the Natufian culture, pioneers in the use of wild cereals, which would evolve into true farming and more settled behavior. The most obvious explanation for such cultivation is that it was done in order to eat.
Archaeological evidence suggests that until the Neolithic, cereals such as barley and rice constituted only a minor element of diets, most likely because they require so much labor to get anything edible from them — one typically has to gather, winnow, husk and grind them, all very time-consuming tasks.
Hayden told LiveScience he has seen that hard work for himself. "In traditional Mayan villages where I've worked, maize is used for tortillas and for chicha, the beer made there. Women spend five hours a day just grinding up the kernels."
However, sites in Syria suggest that people nevertheless went to unusual lengths at times just to procure cereal grains — up to 40 to 60 miles (60 to 100 km). One might speculate, Hayden said, that the labor associated with grains could have made them attractive in feasts in which guests would be offered foods that were difficult or expensive to prepare, and beer could have been a key reason to procure the grains used to make them.
"It's not that drinking and brewing by itself helped start cultivation, it's this context of feasts that links beer and the emergence of complex societies," Hayden said.
Feasts would have been more than simple get-togethers — such ceremonies have held vital social significance for millennia, from the Last Supper to the first Thanksgiving.
More science news from MSNBC Tech & Science
"Feasts are essential in traditional societies for creating debts, for creating factions, for creating bonds between people, for creating political power, for creating support networks, and all of this is essential for developing more complex kinds of societies," Hayden explained. "Feasts are reciprocal — if I invite you to my feast, you have the obligation to invite me to yours. If I give you something like a pig or a pot of beer, you're obligated to do the same for me or even more."
"In traditional feasts throughout the world, there are three ingredients that are almost universally present," he said. "One is meat. The second is some kind of cereal grain, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, in the form of breads or porridge or the like. The third is alcohol, and because you need surplus grain to put into it, as well as time and effort, it's produced almost only in traditional societies for special occasions to impress guests, make them happy, and alter their attitudes favorably toward hosts."
The brewing of alcohol seems to have been a very early development linked with initial domestication, seen during Neolithic times in China, the Sudan, the first pottery in Greece and possibly with the first use of maize. Hayden said circumstantial evidence for brewing has been seen in the Natufian, in that all the technology needed to make it is there — cultivated yeast, grindstones, vessels for brewing and fire-cracked rocks as signs of the heating needed to prepare the mash.
"We still don't have the smoking gun for brewing in the Natufian, with beer residues in the bottom of stone cups or anything like that," Hayden said. "But hopefully people will start looking for that — people haven't yet."
It's these things that make beer THAT much more interesting!!!
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Kegerator Installed!
Just in time for a Halloween weekend full of out of town guests my good friend Bill made it over to install the 'guts' of my kegerator! On tap is my 2010 version of last year's pumpkin ale, and up next on the left tap will be Oktoberfest (even though it's late). Once tap #3 goes in, the Oaked Bourbon Stout will go in unless something clears out before that. I'll get another picture of the inside, but for now, this will have to do!
DLR-kegerator!
I'm still working on getting the carbonation just right, but I think I've got things ironed out for the time being...
Monday, November 1, 2010
Medicinal Beer???
So I'm sure most of you have heard of MMJ (medicinal marijuana), but have you heard of MB? In medieval times beer was used as medicine, but back then, you'd find people using just about anything as medicine. These days we're a bit more critical of what we put in our bodies in an effort to "cure" or "heal" us. During Prohibition, actually shortly after it began, the government ruled that doctors were allowed to give out beer for it's medicinal qualities (old school MMJ). This enraged those who identified with the Temperance Movement; they saw all their hard work to outlaw alcohol go out the window due to a loophole in the 18th Amendment. Debate started in Congress as well as the American Medical Association about the importance of medicinal beer. In the end, the Temperance movement won which lead to the rise of speakeasies and organized crime. Sounds like history is starting to repeat itself now isn't it?
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