Spring Break Brews!

Brr! Woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow on my back porch! Not cool. This week, I figured I would do a little reminiscing about the beers I got to enjoy while I was having a relaxing Spring Break in Minnesota :) It was so nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of my everyday life- I managed to read five books, and I started watching a tv series I had been hoping to check out- cult classic Twin Peaks!

 I also made friends with the friendly cat that roams my boyfriend's neighborhood.

The first noteworthy beer I enjoyed was Edmund Fitzgerald, a tasty porter from Great Lakes brewing! The dark coffee taste was not overpowering, and it was an excellent choice to sip on while I enjoyed my first Juicy Lucy in Saint Paul!

My boyfriend and I traveled to Stillwater to visit his cousin, and she picked up some very local beer for me to sample! I tried Hop Dish (a play on words inspired by the traditional Minnesota "Hot Dish"), a wonderfully bitter beer made with seven different kinds of hops! I also enjoyed the Farm Girl Saison, which paired beautifully with our dinner- handmade gnocchi with chicken and steamed green beans! I can't wait to go back to Stillwater to explore more of their quaint downtown area and stop by Lift Bridge's brewery!

And now for some local business... The OG/6 Row Fraise Cassee collab will be hitting shelves within the next couple of weeks! Stop by 6 Row this Wednesday for the official release party- yes, it's April 1st, but I promise I'm not foolin! You can find release party details here!

In other news, the Washington Post has been hosting a US craft beer bracket all month long, and we're down to the final round of voting. Schlafly's Kolsch is facing off against home-state rival Boulevard's Tank 7. As of this writing, the Kolsch is in the lead with about 300 votes, but let's extend that margin!! You can vote at the Washington Post's website. In fact, if you go vote for Schlafly's Kolsch and send me a screencap on Twitter, I'll put your name in a drawing to win a prize pack of craft beer goodies! The bracket winner will be announced Monday, so go vote ASAP!!

Brew Day Bottle Share!

It's true- yesterday, The OG and Six Row finally came together to brew our Fraise Cassee! I'll have a recap of our brew day up later in the week (with photos from both myself and our resident real photographer, Kara!), but I did want to type out a quick recap of the second most important part of the day- bottle share!
The ladies all brought some fabulous beers. We started our Sunday off with New Holland's Blue Sunday, a delicious sour ale. This tart beer was delicious!

Next, we tried The Saint, a yummy cider made with Trappist Yeast! I'm not much of a cider fan, but I loved the balance of tart apples and sweet maple syrup in this cider. I plan to grab a couple of bottles in preparation for some late-spring Sunday brunch. 

I brought a bottle of Blacklist's Rhubarb Wit, which I was fortunate enough to snag while in Duluth for Valentine's Day. This tart, balanced beer was incredibly interesting! I would love to try it again and pair it with a dinner of grilled chicken and veggies (with rhubarb pie for dessert, of course).

We also sampled Blushing Monk, the first non-stout Founders beer to grace my palate. Just beautiful! I would love to try it again paired with some cheesecake. 

Immediately after Blushing Monk, we all sipped on a 2014 bottle of Big Lushious, to taste the opposite end of the raspberry beer spectrum. 

Other sampled beers included Dual Artisanship (fitting for a collab brew day!), Cigar City's Invasion, and the Honey Pear Ale from local(ish) favorites Scratch.

Later this week I'll have a technical brew day post up, as well as a giveaway post!

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.

Birthday Beer? Birthday Beer!

Hi readers! I'd like to share something really special with you today- it's my twin's birthday!
You might be thinking, "Caroline's birthday is in September. She doesn't even have a twin." While you are technically correct, I have, through the powers of the internet, adopted myself a twinny- and she turns 24 today!
In honor of this momentous occasion (she has endured her mandatory one year of being told "Nobody likes you when you're 23"), I drank Shiner's Birthday Beer last night, a chocolate stout celebrating the 106-year-old brewery.

I chose to pair it with some sriracha-maple crackers and honey bbq boneless wings, to provide a nice contrast to the bitter chocolate flavor (and also because I love carbs. Like, looooooove them). While this wasn't my favorite chocolate stout, it was certainly alright. I would drink a free one, but I don't think I'd pluck it off the shelf again.
In honor of my twinny's birthday, I thought I'd spotlight a bit of the history and culture of her hometown, Port Elgin, Ontario. This small town (pop: 8,000) has spawned numerous NHL players. Port Elgin also holds a yearly Pumpkinfest, a competition to grow outlandishly large pumpkins and other crops. Port Elgin is also home to some breathtaking white sand beaches, and after conducting some research, I'm pleased to report that "white sand" isn't just a clever way of saying "snow." There's actual white sand! 
I kid, of course. Port Elgin has many amenities, including a Tim Horton's, McDonald's, a sushi restaurant, numerous hotels and campgrounds, and many attractions and trails! I'd like to spend some time in various parts of Ontario someday (specifically, Toronto and Thunder Bay), and just might have to stop in Port Elgin, just for fun!

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into life in the Great White North! I'll have another post up Friday, probably discussing school scheduling woes and anxieties.

Wolpertinger!

Guys. You guys. Wolpertinger happened. And it was great!
After grabbing some mind-blowingly amazing brunch at Atomic Cowboy with my pal Forrest, who agreed to tag along with me to Wolpertinger, we strolled down Manchester in the gross drizzly rain to get checked in at UCBC. We received our tasting map and some beautiful glasses!

 At 1, the figurative flood gates opened and the breweries began pouring! After staking out a seat, I headed for my first beer- Porter from one of Saint Louis's newest breweries, Old Bakery.

Their Porter is a solid example of the style, with a rich toasted malt flavor! I also snagged a sticker and a coaster and look forward to checking them out soon.
Other notable beers of the day included Sun King's Soul Shakedown Party, a dangerously delicious rum barrel-aged Scotch Ale; Earthbound Brewing's Mahlab ESB, a delicious beer with a big tart cherry nose but a very mild and pleasant mouthfeel; and the Vanilla Cream Ale from Exit 6, which I would love to pair with some blackberry angel food cake.

I also sampled beers from 6 Row, Perennial, Scratch, and, of course, I grabbed a pour of the 2015 Wolpertinger beer before meeting the man, the myth, the legend... Wolpie himself!!

The festival also had some great music provided by the hilarious and energetic Bolzen Beer Band! Imagine if you took the mentality and vocal styles of Bowling for Soup and replaced their guitars with an accordion and a tuba. Great fun!

 This was the second indoor festival I attended (the first being MWBBF), and I'm still not entirely sure I like the layout of indoor festivals. Sure, it's convenient in the case of inclement weather, but festival etiquette seemed to be at an all-time low. Lines were disorganized and there were many instances where people would get their pour, turn around, and plant themselves to chat with friends instead of making way for others in line. Other than that small annoyance, it was great to take a look behind the scenes and UCBC and sample some beers from breweries I don't get a chance to visit often! I especially loved seeing Exit 6, Old Bakery, Excel, and Scratch. I would love to make a day trip to Illinois to visit them as well as Little Egypt. 
Of course, it was also AWESOME to sample some Sun King brews as well- I'm hoping to do an Indiana brewery/architecture trip over my birthday, with stops in Indianapolis, Columbus, and Evansville.

Tuesday, I'll be drinking a very special beer from Shiner and later this week, I'll have info on a giveaway I'll be doing in February!

Learning opportunities.

This has been a stupidly busy week. 
Thursday, I decided to treat myself to a night out at Perennial for one of their Thursday releases- Bleauregarde, a blueberry tripel named after the chewing gum-obsessed Willy Wonka character. 

This tasty little beer (I probably shouldn't say little, since it hits the charts at 9.7% ABV :/) had a beautiful fruity nose, with just a little bit of tart taste! I really enjoyed it. I also tried a couple of the current food offerings, and was pleasantly surprised! I had the pork nuggets, which were accompanied by honey-soy peanut clusters, kimchi puree, and a black garlic aioli. Not something I would usually order, but it was delicious!! Over the summer, I went to the Thursday releases pretty regularly, but my school schedule was not kind to me last semester. Hopefully I can make time and space in my budget to get down to Perennial once a month or so.

Yesterday was a long one as well, with my leaving the house at 7:30 for class, then rushing to work to learn how to do Western Blots, a protein-detection technique. After that, I wolfed down some regrettable fast food and headed to the Schlafly Bottleworks to help set up for The OG's First Anniversary Trivia Night! It. Was. Amazing. The raffle prizes were a big hit, everyone learned at least one cool new fact about beer, and I got to drink some tasty brews while getting to know the members of The OG. Here's some shots from the event!

Just a couple of the stellar raffle prizes.

I enjoyed a Coffee Stout and (wo)manned the OG Info Booth.

The official scoreboard, when all was said and done!

We even hit our fundraising goal! Funds will go towards applying for Federal Nonprofit Status and local outreach projects.

Afterwards, the ladies all went to Manchester Public House for a well-deserved celebratory drink. What an awesome little bar! Their tap list is diverse, the food is delicious, and the bar even has purse hooks, which are one of those things you don't really care about until they're suddenly very important. I look forward to going back! 

 There are quite a few awesome beer events coming up in the next few weeks! As I'm sure you're all tired of reading, WOLPERTINGER IS TOMORROW!! I'm done trying to contain my excitement. I'm looking forward to sampling some delicious brews from Indiana favorite Sun King as well as trying some beers from one of the Lou's newest breweries: Earthbound. Located on Cherokee Street, Earthbound has been receiving a ton of press lately! My best friend was there on Thursday and really liked what she had, even though she's not much of a beer fan.
This Saturday, the 31st, is the Science Center's Science on Tap event, which should be a fun-filled educational evening featuring pours from many amazing local breweries as well as The OG! There will also be food pairings and live music.