Ermagerd, Herps

Last night, I sipped on some truly delicious IPAs! Friar Tuck on Watson has numerous bottles of Stone's Green Tea IPA, so I snagged a bottle as a treat to myself for passing my first history exam!

This delicious collaboration had a very prominent floral nose and balanced the IPA qualities and the green tea flavors masterfully! I also noticed some fruity flavors, mostly peach and mango. I'm planning on buying a few more bottles and pairing them with a sushi dinner!

I also enjoyed Bent Paddle's Bent Hop, part of a six-pack sample I bought when I was in Duluth for Valentine's Day. This was a resiny, bitter IPA that would taste great on a camping trip! I'm really looking forward to trying the other beers that came in the 6-pack.

That does it for this post. Coming up in March, The OG will be brewing with Six Row and I'll be doing a beer goodie giveaway!

A Hopeful Note.

You guys, I am so, so sorry for the unintended 3-week hiatus. I had the flu, so I wasn't really drinking, and then I was out of town for Valentine's and supremely stressed out with school and work. But I had a few beers over the past couple of days, and I'm here to talk about them.
First, Sunday evening I had another fabulous beer from North Peak Brewing- specifically, Berserker, an offering from their Grizzly Peak Series.

 This tasty Winter Imperial Stout featured some mild dark fruit and chocolate notes and even some coffee. I loved it!

Last night, I enjoyed an Eos Hefeweizen. A solid example of the style, this Hefe had prominent banana and clove flavors and reminded me how much I love the Public House Hefeweizen.

This leads me into today's "story" topic. I've got to admit, I have no love for the state of Nebraska. I dated a guy from Nebraska once, and he was horrible, so now the whole state is kind of ruined for me. I know, it's petty, but Ron Swanson feels the same way about blondes thanks to his first ex-wife. Speaking of Ron Swanson, the series finale of Parks and Recreation aired last night. I don't normally get too attached to television shows, but I was absolutely in love with the town of Pawnee. So, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge some of my favorite episodes, one from each season, of this beautiful show.

Season One

Not gonna lie, season one is the weakest, an opinion that's shared by most media outlets and even the cast and crew of the show. It's still important, though, and my favorite episode of the season is episode three, The Reporter. The episode does a wonderful job of highlighting Andy and Ann's ultimate incompatibility, introduces recurring character Shauna Malwae-Tweep, and spotlights one of my favorite underrated P&R friendships "workplace proximity associate"-ships: Ron and Tom. Two fundamentally different people who grow together and mentor each other in their own special way. In this episode, we learn that Tom and Ron play online Scrabble with each other while at work, and Ron always beats Tom. It's a beautiful little subplot.

Season Two

Season two may have been the hardest season to pick only one favorite episode. The obvious choice is The Hunting Trip (episode 10), due to the hilarious antics of Leslie and the gan in the woods, as well as April and Andy's B-plot, but that's not the episode I'm going to pick. My choice is episode 22, Telethon, which is the first episode I saw. The episode has so much going on that it serves as a wonderful introduction to the show. We see Mark propose to Ann. We see Tom chaperone for a local celebrity. The episode is also the second appearance of recurring character Barney Varmn (my second-favorite recurring character after Ethel Beavers).

Season Three

By contrast, season three's choice was the easiest to make: Episode thirteen, The Fight. In this episode, Tom invites everyone to the Snakehole Lounge for the release of his new, high-end, alcoholic beverage Snake Juice. We get to see everyone get drunk and sloppy (including Ron dancing in a tiny hat), we see Ann and Leslie have their first fight, and this episode is the birth of Burt Macklin and Janet Snakehole. This episode also led me to discover one of my favorite books- Leslie gives Ann a copy of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, and one day while I was in a used bookstore, I found a copy and bought it solely because it was mentioned on the show.

Season Four

Season four was one of the best for the series, full of amazing episodes, but few are better than the season's fourth episode, Pawnee Rangers. This episode may be one of the most widely-known due to Tom and Donna's (and Ben's) B-plot revolving around "the best day of the year," Treat Yo Self day. However, Ron and Leslie's camp-group face-off is just as wonderful. Maybe I'm biased since I'm a former girl scout, but the entire plot line, from crafts and merit badges to puppy parties and Ann pretending to fish was just solid gold.

Season Five

Season five saw Ben and Leslie get married in one of the best episodes of the show (with Ethel Beavers' best appearance), but that's not the episode I've chosen to focus on. Instead, I'd like to briefly talk about the seasons' tenth episode, Two Parties. In this episode, we see Ben's bachelor party turn into something amazingly beautiful and we get to see Leslie's bachelorette party go horribly wrong. I don't want to spoil too much of the episode, so I'll just throw out some of the key buzzwords:

• Wamapoke Indian Artifacts
• Paunch Burger
• Settlers of Catan
• Indianapolis Colts
• April Ludgate makes a male stripper feel insecure

Simply put, it's a great episode featuring some cool locales and many wonderful recurring characters.

Season Six

It was hard for me to pick a favorite episode of season six. They're all solid episodes, but none really stand out. I've chosen episode 20, One in 8,000. In this episode we learn that Leslie is pregnant.... with triplets (an excellent nod to an earlier episode in which Leslie goes on a date with a doctor, played by Poehler's then-husband, Will Arnett). We also watch Ron give Donna some valuable relationship advice and see Andy struggle to keep a secret from April. The episode also features an appearance by Keegan Michael-Key and.

Season Seven

It's really hard for me to pick one episode (of the twelve in season seven) to talk about. The critically-acclaimed fourth episode, Leslie and Ron, served as our link between 2014 and the 2017 Pawnee in which season seven is set. Episode five, Gryzzlbox, dips its toe into the data mining debate. In episode seven, Donna even gets married, in the show's least-hyped wedding. The finale, One Last Ride, is absolute gold but I don't think I can talk about it in a dignified way. So, I'll discuss episode nine: Pie-mary. Pie-mary has some of the most sentimental value of the season, with April and Ron going on a scavenger hunt and Donna and Garry taking a trip down memory lane. The real highlight is Leslie and Ben's story line, which tackles the issue of gender norms and spousal roles in the political spotlight. In a masterful show of self-awareness, the episode evens calls back to season two episode Woman of the Year.

It's possible that Parks and Recreation affected me more than any other show- perhaps even more than my junior high obsession, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It taught me a lot about enthusiasm, Ginuwine, and waffles. It gave me hope that someday, I would find my own lovable band of weirdos to call a family.

In other, more pertinent news, the OG/Six Row collaboration label has officially been approved! We're brewing together very soon and I will keep you updated on when you can find Fraise Cassee on shelves or taps near you!

Just some Superbowl Afterthoughts.

I'm sure y'all can figure out the topic of today's brief impromptu post. Not the results of the football game. Not the halftime show (although I will admit to flailing and squealing a bit as soon as the opening notes to "Get Your Freak On" came through the speakers). Yeah. That Budweiser ad. 

In their 2015 SuperBowl spot, Budweiser asserts that their lager is "brewed the hard way" and that the people who drink Budweiser are "people who like to drink beer." These claims are accompanied by a montage of the brewing process, Budweiser fans having fun at crowded bars, and shots of stereotypical hipsters ordering flights of many-colored beers and swirling them, sniffing them, and sampling them. Maybe it's because I happened to catch the commercial while relaxing at Flying Saucer, one of Saint Louis's many amazing craft beer bars, while surrounded by fellow craft beer enthusiasts, but I found the commercial instantly alienating.

I'm not here to speak on the quality of Budweiser or the other AB-InBev products. I've never toured their brewery. In fact, I respect AB and the other lager giants for having the business savvy and brewing experience to brew a consistent beer, year-round, for decades. But I really think their marketing department really missed the mark on this ad! 

Paste does an excellent job breaking down the various hypocrisies in the 60-second ad, from their potentially questionable casting choices to the specific snubbery of "pumpkin peach ale" (seriously), a shot that's even more confusing when you take into account the fact that InBev's most recent acquisition, Elysian, brews a pumpkin-peach ale. Not to mention that, now that I've got that sensory idea stuck in my noggin, I'll certainly be pushing for The OG to brew a pumpkin-peach ale near the late summer and early fall.

Local breweries have so far posted admirable responses to the ad, with Civil Life and Schlafly tweeting excellent remarks!

O'Fallon Brewery, who I'm fairly certain are the largest local purveyors of both pumpkin and peach ales had the following to say.

The response from local beer lovers on the Saint Louis Area Beer Enthusiasts Facebook page, however, was less gracious, with one user even commenting "Next up Boones Farm mocks sommeliers." This raises a pretty interesting point. Sniffing, swirling.. Those are all time-tested tasting and judging techniques BJCP judges use to classify and rate beer. 

This article from the Phoenix New Times claims that the ad wasn't meant to be offensive, and I'm sure it may not have been. But the ad sends a message that all craft beer enthusiasts are uptight snobs, and many of Budweiser's die-hard fans will wind up believing that. Of course, in craft beer, there will always be certain pretentious individuals. The craft beer community has even self-effacingly embraced the following sketch from YouTube's Nacho Punch, about hipsters and craft beer.

The difference, though, is just like the difference between an overweight comedian making a self-deprecating joke and someone like Perez Hilton criticizing celebrities who may be overweight or may just be having an "off" day. Instead of using their status to poke fun at craft breweries (who, by the way, do their work the hard way. Just check out Civil Life's twitter feed), they should maybe engage in positive promotion efforts, or take a page from fellow national giants Sam Adams in sharing hops during a national shortage. Instead, they budgeted a classless and inaccurate ad that left a decidedly skunky taste in my mouth.