Brewed Slowly: #2 Cherry Stout
I'm not a fan of fruity beers (or negative construction introductions), but today Steve and I made a Cherry Stout. We have our reasons. It's a holiday beer of sorts. Steve brought some Sam Adams Cherry Wheat for the occasion. (I got no pictures because our digital camera (my other camera's an old-school film kind) killed the batteries as soon as I turned it on to take some pictures of the process. Imagine pots and brown/black liquid. Smiling faces on two medium handsome men.) This might be the darkest beer yet. Like dark as in black hole with chocolate milk froth as...
Drinking It All: #2 Rogue Juniper Pale Ale
Today I picked up a Rogue Juniper Pale Ale on my way home from getting some paint for a holiday home improvement project (see my wife's blog for details soon (shout-outs!)). I'm a fan of the other Rogue beers I've tried, specifically the Brutal Bitter and Dead Guy Ale, and I also have come to enjoy gin (which gets its pine flavor from juniper berries) in the last few years. So Rogue Pale Ale with juniper berries--where do I sign? This pale ale tastes, at first, about like a standard pale ale. Then you taste a bit of the pine...
Drinking It All: # 1 Fence-Post 32 oz. High Life
Drinking It All will be a document of my attempt to try every beer in circulation. It's a Herculean and tragic attempt at best. But it's the means, not the end that counts here. -- Let's start this new feature, Drinking It All, with one of my favorite beers: Miller High Life. And not only is it High Life, it's a big High Life. 32 oz. big. I'm an unashamed fan of High Life. It's a good solid blue-collar beer in the good company of PBR and Olde Style, and it holds its ground. The "Champagne of Beers" is easy to drink, as...
Here Comes the Beer
I'm going to be shifting gears and focusing, almost exclusively, on homebrewing and beer. In an effort to more narrowly define my site and hopefully find a focused niche, I won't be posting about all of my interests anymore. Nobody's a pro at it all, except maybe Tom Waits, and I ain't Tom Waits. I'm currently trying to find a new home (read: blog) for The Box of Vinyl Project (only one rejection so far) because I think the idea is too much fun, and hopefully, to you guys, interesting, to quit altogether. If you know of a blog that it...
The Box of Vinyl Project: #5 The Doors-Waiting For The Sun (Elektra 1968)
About a year ago, I acquired a little more than two crates worth of old vinyl LPs (about 200, give or take, records). I've listened to some of them, the ones I already knew and liked, but the majority of the records have stayed put in the box they came in. I figured I'd start making my way through the collection of vinyl. I don't intend to research any records that I'm not familiar with, so hopefully I'll arrive at as objective a review/summary of each records as possible. In the interest of full disclosure, I've never tried my hand at...
On the Turntable
Filed under: On The Turntable, Uncategorized, panorama, playlist
What's good this week: Against the Peruvian Monster--Man Man (The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face) World Class Fad--Paul Westerberg (14 Songs) Evil--Interpol (Antics) Strange--Built To Spill (Ancient Melodies of the Future) Winner's Blues--Sonic Youth (Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star) Bomb. Repeat. Bomb.--Ted Leo & the Pharmacists (Living With the...
The Worth of Art’s Evolution Leading to Its Abandonment
Filed under: Non-Academic Adventures in Academic Literature, Uncategorized, panorama
With Nabokov's unfinished, final novel, The Original Of Laura, finally being published next week, literary scholars and apprieciators are likely to be either defending the publication (which Nabokov explicitly opposed) or siding with Nabokov. As a fan of the few Nabokov novels I've read, I'll admit that I'm a little interested in taking a crack at the new "novel." However, I can't help but feel strange about reading what (I've heard) amounts to a rough draft outline of the novel knowing that Nabokov asked that it be destroyed if he died before he could finish it. But I can see obvious merits...
Brewed Slowly: Homebrewing Basics
I was recently asked to write up a post that covers the basics of homebrewing, and I realized that I probably should have done so at the beginning of this blog's existence. In any case, I'm doing it now. If you're considering starting to brew your own beer, or if you're just interested in the process, hopefully this post will give you an idea of how it works and where you need to go to get started. As I've told several friends when they ask me about homebrewing--it's too easy and too cheap not to do it. The easiest way to start brewing your...
Carl Sagan: Posthumous Recording Artist
Filed under: News you've probably heard, Uncategorized, panorama
As a fan of Carl Sagan, reader of Scientific American and pop science books, and believer that I understand some of what people like Hawking, Feynman, and Kaku do/did/do, I figured I had to post an entry about this little video I read about earlier in the week (over at Pitchfork (also of note: Jack White is releasing the song as a 7")). Apparently, somebody took footage from Cosmos, the Carl Sagan c. late 1970s/early 1980s miniseries, added music and autotuned Sagan's voice into a song. I'm almost 100% sure this video is awesome. Although with...
The Box of Vinyl Project: #4 The Autumn Defense-Circles (Broadmoor 2003)
About a year ago, I acquired a little more than two crates worth of old vinyl LPs (about 200, give or take, records). I've listened to some of them, the ones I already knew and liked, but the majority of the records have stayed put in the box they came in. I figured I'd start making my way through the collection of vinyl. I don't intend to research any records that I'm not familiar with, so hopefully I'll arrive at as objective a review/summary of each records as possible. In the interest of full disclosure, I've never tried my hand at...
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