A note from Professor Good Ales: Because of content this post has also been posted on the beer site.
Written by Ye Olde Scribe
(Scribe is simply providing a convenient pun and admits to having never tasted Duff, which apparently is a real product inspired by the fictional Duff. But he does dedicate this column to Duffman style politics being practiced in the White House on the day this was posted.)
Scribe longs for an Arrogant Bastard President. No, not Saint Junior, may he rest in peace.
Not dead yet?
After choking on a pretzel and the transportation device accident, Scribe is surprised. Well… enough of that SEGWAY.
No, Scribe is referring to an actual beer made by Stone Brewing.
Yes, it also serves as a metaphor. Which is better than a gaggle of gagging girls wearing ugly pinafores, but not quite as classy as an H.M.S. Pinafore’.
Anywhosiefloosiewhatsis, gosh by Golly, Mr. Gilbert and Sullied Van… (Scribe owned a sullied van once… all painted up in the classic artsy style, but cleaned the art off it before he sold it to some maurading mariachi band musicians. But they had trouble making the VAN… GOGH.) …this substantial brew does a decent job of burning to pleasantly tingling the tastebuds; as do many full flavored micros these days.
Scribe longs for a President with similar strong character; firm, resolute… who won’t compromise so easily. Bold. Brave. A President with enough actual audacity, fortitude and final gravity to actual order a decent beer while trying to make peace between the good Skipper “I arrest people in their homes for speaking their minds” Officer Crowley and the Professor.
What is this, some strange version of Gilligan’s Island?
He ordered Bud Lite? Well, at least it’s not Mich Ultra, the only beverage, if one dares call it, where the infused bubbles are embarrased to be in a liquid with less taste than water.
His beer buds don’t have any more class…
Red Stripe? Hey, just what we need, something that partially attempts to clone the bad bland brews the biggies have offered for many a decade.
Blue Moon?
Well, at least it’s an attempt, though a rotten one to the COORS.
So two guys might make peace by hiding behind mediocre’ fizz?
Scribe predicts a whole lot of nada out of this meeting. And he’s NOT just referring to THE BEER.
Until the next STUPID, over blown by the press, racial incident, this is your faithful servant who salivates for REAL BEER…
Ye Olde Scribe
Have to disagree a bit with you here Scribe. I think it was a noble effort and seems to have worked: positive press. Who cares, shallow or not. We should be talking and getting together, not adversarial. That was so last year and the past eight before that.
The beer? We agree there.
So, Mr. Carman, how well will this work in the long run, or will it fizzle as Scribe suggests: be an empty photo-op?
My friend, sweetheart that she is, suggests that Obama’s not a beer drinker, so he chose Bud Light as the least offensive brew he could think of, in the PR sense — after all, if the BM noticed him sloshing down something halfway decent — a Sam Adams or a Chicago-brewed Goose Island ale — no doubt they would have been up in arms that he isn’t a ‘real man’ who connects with the Bud-quaffing working class. My retort: Why didn’t Obama just have a regular Budweiser then? Her response: Uh, maybe he’s concerned about calories. Sorry, that doesn’t wash. I’ll just have to live with the fact that I voted for a man who apparently likes Bud Light. Argh.
I didn’t find Gates’ choice of Red Stripe all that bad, although I think he should have gone instead for the Beck’s the early reports of the Beer Summit claimed he was having.
Crowley’s selection of Blue Moon put me off — any beer that comes accompanied by a slice of fruit, such as Blue Moon’s piece of orange, never tastes good to me. (And I’ve tried Blue Moon with and w/o the orange. Cloying, with a metallic aftertaste.) One exception: Some of the German weiss beers that come with a slice of lemon to filter out the yeast at the bottom of the glass.
Biden’s choice of a non-alcoholic Buckler — well, he’s an old man, so I’ll let that effrontery to beer lovers pass.
BTW, there is something marginally worse than Michelob Ultra, YOS — it’s that CHILL swill that is flavored with lime and actually allowed to be sold as ‘beer’. I accidentally drank some — it’s like bad Kool-Aid with foam on top.
As an unabashed drinker of the Chill swill and Michelobe’s Ultra Lime Cactus (hey I hate beer but the local grocer doesn’t carry Zima and 1/2 a bottle helps me sleep at night! And I figure it’s safer than always downing one of those night time pain relievers with sleep aid) back to my supposed point ….the pundits are making jabs at Obama because Bud is owned by some foreign conglomerate and therefore he wasn’t “drinking American”.
And I like that Biden stuck with his desire not to have a beer just because this was the “beer summit”.
I had a grandfather who went to the bar and ordered milk. He was th kind of guy who could get away with that. Something about picking up the back of his truck and kicking an anvil under the axle so he could change a flat tire….
Well, Ana, as you say, you’re not a beer drinker, which is the group those products you mentioned were intended to serve. My late grandmother drank a couple of bottles of Miller High Life (even after they changed the formula in the early ’70s) every night since she was in her 30s for the same reason you’re drinking CHILL, etc. — a little alcohol helped her sleep soundly. I guess it didn’t do her any harm — she lived to be 95, and was healthy to the end.
My only concern would be, from a health standpoint, what chemicals they put in those fruit-flavored beers?
BTW, Biden technically had a ‘beer,’ according to some — it was just non-alcoholic. Junior used to drink Buckler — there are probably cases of the stuff left over in the White House — Biden may have been dong his civic duty by getting rid of some of it.
If a beer is well brewed, they put fruit in beer when they brew fruit beer… usually in the fermenter or even in the boiler. Depends. They may use it like those who brew IPAs “dry hop” a beer. (On top of the wert as it ferments.) But AB doesn’t even brew beer, really, if a certain brewer is telling the truth. The brewmaster for Boscos in Nashville brewed for AB, Guinness and many more. He says when they brew any of the standard AB products like Bud Lite, Mich… etc… they get a liquid base that they ship all over the country then dilute it: kind of like extract brewing, only far worse.
God only knows what AB/Miller use to flavor their swill fruit-wise.
The only decent NAs are Pauli, the old Kaliber and standing far above the rest: Clausthaler where they limited the blandness of such products by playing with the hops. Bravo!
Thirty-five years ago the Schiltz and Bud drivers went on strike in Chicago (Schlitz and Bud were then the most popular beer brands in the city), and the bars started selling their backstocks of Heileman’s Old Style. Old Style caught on, and many Chicagoans still drink the stuff.
About 30 years ago I was sitting in a bar early one afternoon (don’t ask) when the Old Style salesman stopped by. The place was almost empty and we struck up a conversation. I noticed he had ordered a vodka on the rocks, and wondered why he wasn’t drinking his employers brew. He replied, “Oh, that crap has formaldehyde in it.” He went on to explain that Old Style used formadehyde to preserve the shelf freshness of the beer.
I don’t know if this is true of the other Big American Brands like Bud, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
A certain trucker friend of mine hauled sawdust for their filtration system into An. Bush in Baldwinsville NY, and the grain after products out which were used in livestock feed. So it may be they brew in certain plants and then ship it out in bulk to bottling plants around the country.
A friend of mine is opening a microbrewery in CNY. It should be open this fall. I’ll let you know so you can stop in for a taste test.
I have had home brewed cherry beer that was quite good made by someone who is into medieval brewing techniques. I have no idea what the alcohol content might have been. I know the Sam Adams black cherry beer was awful – tasted like cheap soda.
I would imagine I might like other ales served with a slice of lime. Are all non-dark beers considered “lite” as in for lightweights?
The color of the beer has nothing to do with the body or alcohol content. Some versions of Guinness are as “light” in other than color sense as Bud.
I don’t know about that specific beer, RS, but Heineken (sp??) uses it as a preservative. Why? No idea. I wouldn’t do it.