Four Weeks of Wheat Beer on Tuesday

The last of the wheat beers for this month is In Heat Wheat from Flying Dog Brewery. It poured with plenty of carbonation and a foamy white head. The first sip is a mouthful of clean malty refreshment. There is plenty of malt sweetness to balance out any would-be hops sourness.

As the drink warms the flavor becomes more pronounced and a bit of citrus bitterness comes to the flavor foreground. This is a much better balanced wheat beer then some I have had recently and I recommend it highly.

Score: 5 out of 5 pints.

The Beer of the Day Calendar recently had a wheat beer review, it explained the three basic categories of wheat beers: Bavarian hefeweizen, Belgian Wit and American Wheat. In Heat Wheat is a great example of the American Wheat style.

The Rock n Roll shirts begin & more Deeper Thoughts

At least a small majority of my T-shirt collection are shirts for rock n roll bands. Two bands dominate this section, Widespread Panic and the Grateful Dead. I have a few Phish shirts too. Here’s one shirt for each of these bands to make the shirt count 38 with 327 shirts left to display.

Last week we had Melville, this week we have Jack Handey's take on D. H. Lawrence;

"Marta talks about sensuality, but I don't think she'd know sensuality if it bit her on the ass."

There are those contractions again and who is Marta anyway?

Starr Hill Brewery, The Love Wheat Beer

This beer poured clear and golden with plenty of carbonation. It smells like vinegar. The first sip tastes of vinegar and lemons and it is difficult to distinguish these two flavors. The carbonation settled down quickly and the best I can say for the flavor is, it tastes like a margarita mix without sugar.

I can't help but wonder if this beer has been sitting in warehouses and supermarkets for too long? The "best by" date is September, could this mean September 2010? The Love has an overall score of "B" at the Beer Advocate web site, that's out of 97 reviews. This beer has a bit more sourness than I can appreciate in any beer, Belgian or microbrew, but maybe Starr Hill is on to something?

I have to give this one a score of 1 pint out of 5 pints. I believe this is the lowest score I have yet to award.

The Glory of Their Times

A friend of mine loaned me this book;




I read it in about two weeks. It is a compilation of interviews with Major League Baseball players who played professionally before the first World War. The book concludes with interviews from men who played before and during the first World War and the Depression. This was a time when the Giants and the Dodgers both played their home games in New York State and a team called the Braves played in Boston. Each chapter, an interview with an individual player,begins with a quote from another book or publication which is revelant to that player. The chapter on Fred Snodgrass begins;

"Often I have been asked to tell what I did to Fred Snodgrass after he dropped that fly ball in the World Series in 1912, eleven years ago. Well, I will tell you exactly what I did: I raised his salary $1,000." John J. McGraw, My Thirty Years in Baseball

John McGraw, Mr. MaGraw to his players, was the manager for the New York Giants. This book is a great window into another era, and to as many errors as well.

Beer shirt Tuesday & Deeper Thoughts

I have acquired three more T-shirts this summer and each is beer related. I got a shirt for the Knoxville area Humane Society which reads "Yappy Hour." This one is from Union Jacks where they were collecting $10.00 per shirt for the Humane Society. Then there is the "Break Fluid" shirt which came from Wal-Mart for $6.00. The shirt has an image of a tub of ice and bottles and cans of beer. Lastly, I found one of those "Life is full of important choices" shirts at the Goodwill Thrift Store for 98 cents. The important choices on this shirt are various beer brands on tap handles. This brings our count to 35 shirts presented and 330 shirts to go...


Also, I found the Jack Handey book. It is actually titled Deeper Thoughts and is the sequel to the book titled Deep Thoughts. Here's Jack's version of Moby Dick;

"I think a good novel would be where a bunch of men on a ship are looking for a whale. They look and look, but you know what? They never find him. And you know why they never find him? It doesn't say. The book leaves it up to you, the reader, to decide. -- Then, at the very end, there's a page that you can lick and it tastes like Kook-Aid."

Enough said.

Four Weeks of Wheat Beer, pt. 2

Up in Crozet, Va. they have a little brewery named Starr Hill and, a couple of weeks ago, I purchased one of their mixed 12-packs. I believe that, normally, the 12-pack should contain three lagers, three IPAs, three pale ales and three wheat beers. I may have missed some promo material or they have a practical joker working in the packing room 'cause this pack contained a lager and a Hefeweizen from the Legend Brewery in Richmond.

I'm not complaining about this situation because this allows me to sample these Legend beers without purchasing the individual six packs or one of those $8.98 mixed six packs that all grocery stores have now. So, I bring to you all the Legend Hefeweizen.

This one pours very clear, it looks more like a pilsner than a wheat beer. The aroma is citrus, coriander and cinnamon. The first sip is like a dry, white wine, very light on the tongue and lightly carbonated.

The wheat and hop bitterness increases with continued sipping, citrus flavoring remains. It's like a Margarita without the balancing orange juice sweetness. I believe I could use this brew in a Margarita mix...

(I'm skipping the numeric rating on this one since I drank it a few weeks ago.)

Daily Affirmation; Who needs Jack Handey part 2

So, I’m driving home from work Monday and I pass a sign on I - 81 which indicates that the birthplace of Davey Crockett is located off the next exit. This of course brings the "born on a mnt. top in Tennessee" theme to mind and I think of how different the trees are now. I doubt ol' Davey would recognize every tree now. Mountain men like Crockett and D. Boone would probably try to make some Mohicans or twine something out of kudzu.

Of course, Boone N. C. is right over the Appalachian range from I -81 and I'm wondering if Boone and Crocket ever met and which one fought and/or died at the Alamo with Jim Bowie. Then I have to think of the Daniel Boone theme song and realize it qualifies as the worst composition ever with an opening line of "Daniel Boone was a man..."

I'm no Sam Clemens but what were the alternatives they had in mind when this line was composed? Daniel Boone was a woman, was a Canadian, was a Martian? Of course Daniel Boone was a man or you wouldn’t have been writing about him! He was a “man” from the pioneer period of U.S. History so we’re not gonna be writing any songs like;

“Daniele Boone was a woman, a might influential woman.
She could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan
and sheriff Hamblin Co. all three!!”

I don't wanna get on a soap box about this "Theme Song," a product of Disney I believe, I just wanted to share this very random, odd and funny thought . I hope some of you got a laugh out of these ideas.

I will share more of Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts with you when I locate my copy of his book again.