Happy Fathers Day

Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there.

My mom and I headed over to the liquor store earlier today to pick up some beers for quality father-son bonding.

My dad is a self-described "locovore", so I decided to go with some beers that have more of a local flavor to them.  Unfortunately, none of the great breweries in Madison sell beers that he doesn't get regularly, so I had to stretch it a little bit.  I'd say that New Glarus is close enough to Madison to count that as local, so we got him a 4-pack of their Imperial Weizen, as well as a bottle of their Belgian Red.  We finished it off with a beer that was local to me while I was living in Milwaukee, Lakefront's Bridge Burner--seriously, I lived a few blocks from the brewery.  That was awesome!

Dad and I split the Bridge Burner and each had an Imperial Weizen.  He definitively told me that he preferred the Bridge Burner.  Frankly, that surprised me a bit.  He generally prefers beers that are more like the Weizen, though he isn't huge on higher alcohol stuff so I guess it makes some sense.

I'm not really sure which one of them I thought was better.  I love weizens and I definitely have no issues with higher alcohol, but the Bridge Burner was a very good beer.  To be honest, I'm not actually a huge fan of a lot of the stuff at Lakefront (it's not bad beer, it's just generally not my style) but this was a very nice one. The Belgian Red is an entirely different experience, as it's a low alcohol cherry beer.  I actually got it for him on his recommendation, and we split it.  I'd agree with his initial take: it's absolutely phenomenal.

Did you give/receive any Father's Day brews this year? If so, what?

Better late than never

Well, thanks to some computer issues, I wasn't able to post for The Session #52.  This really sucked for me, as it was a topic that is very relevant to this blog.

As host of Session #52, I’ve decided not to focus on the substance of beer, but the material that plays a supporting role. Bottles, coasters, cans, labels, ads, tap handles, church keys, hats, t-shirts, tip trays, glassware and signs have been collected by fanatics ever since beer has been sold.

 I can probably come up with about 50 posts for this topic, and since I'm way too late for the session this month and all I'm doing for the time being is working on job applications, cover letters, resumes, and a plot in a community garden I think I'll give it a shot.

I guess that the natural place to start this topic for a blog about a beer bottle collection would probably be with the bottles.

Back in the fall of 2010, my longtime friend Phin moved into an apartment owned and operated by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  The apartment that he moved into wasn't cleaned out particularly well, as there were a number of alcohol bottles left on display.

The bottle that stood out to us was called Sigmund Snopek's, a beer that was apparently brewed by Lakefront Brewery, just a few blocks from our apartment.  It gave us the idea to put more bottles on display.  Since then, we've moved into a new apartment (where we at one point had 99 bottles of beer on the wall), and then moved out of it after graduating college.  According to the Facebook Photo Album I made, we have at least 160 bottles in the collection (I think it's probably over 200, but I haven't uploaded a lot of the pictures yet.) 

We made a set of rules about putting bottles onto "The Wall", and have since come up with a number of unwritten rules.  Unfortunately, now that we're no longer living in that apartment, The Wall is currently a set of bags tucked back in a corner in my parents' storage room.

I have a tendency to rate beers a little differently than most, in that I break it down into rating the bottle and rating the beer itself.  For instance, a review that I'm planning on doing sometime in the near future is for a beer called Polygamy Porter.  It wasn't my favorite, but it wound up being put on display (translation: it was one of 34 beers to be on the front row of one of the two shelves) just because of the funny name and bottle art.

Anyway, moving out of the apartment was pretty rough on the collection, as not only are the bottles no longer on display, but a handful had to be thrown out since there was no room for them.  Fortunately though, most of those were watery macro lagers that we didn't really want anyway.  Not to mention, the political drama unfolding in the state left a number of the bottles on the boycott list.

Well, I'm rambling, so I think I'll end this post.  I'll be back tomorrow (or later tonight) with another long-winded post about some of the other beer-related goods I'm collecting.

My thoughts on the attack on Wisconsin craft beer

It's been a pretty crazy time for craft beer in the state of Wisconsin.  Faced with a situation where craft beer sales are growing fairly rapidly and macro sales are dwindling, it seems that MillerCoors is now attempting to put a halt to that growth in the name of defending themselves from Anheuser-Busch.

I will freely admit that I'm not a fan of Scott Walker, but I also feel that it's important to note that this is not a Republicans vs. Democrats issue.

Glenn Grothman (the Republican who called the Capitol protestors "slobs") and Bob Jauch (a Democrat from the northern part of the state) voted against passing the motion.  It has bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition.  By painting this as an evil plot by the Republicans, people are seriously damning the chances that this will be taken out of the budget bill or changed in anyway, as Republicans stand by Governor Walker.

My opinion is that removing this motion from the budget bill, then negotiating it to a point where it helps the state as a whole is something that all Wisconsin voters can agree is a good thing.  Protecting small businesses in a growing industry is a good thing, no matter what political affiliation you have.  Promoting products that are made in America by companies that are entirely based in America (unlike SAABMillerMolsonCoors or Anheuser-Busch Inbev) is also a good thing. 

If small brewers were truly made exempt by the motion?  I'd be all for it.  While I personally don't like MillerCoors products, the company still employs a good number of people in the state.  Anheuser-Busch does not.  As a result, I am perfectly fine with Miller protecting itself from A-B.  There's just no reason to throw a group that collectively makes up 6 percent of the market under the bus in the process. 

If you're in the state of Wisconsin, please help prevent this motion from becoming a part of the budget bill.  Contact your legislators and let them know you oppose this motion if Craft Brewers aren't protected