63/1000: Budweiser
64/1000: Pelican India Pelican Ale
MM: I brought Budweiser! Because you’re back in America.
JB: I just opened a Pelican IPA. That is also highly American. In a different way. Which should we drink first?
MM: Let’s enjoy the Pelican before we dip into the Bud.
JR: We haven’t had pizza in weeks!
MM: Mmm, that beer is good.
JR: We’ve been drinking exclusively Sol and Corona, so this tastes chewy. Oh my gosh, the hops!
MM: I’ve been drinking a lot of shitty beer.
JB: Why’ve you been drinking shitty beer?
MM: Hanging out with Nathan. Nathan drinks shitty beer.
JB: This beer tastes huge to me.
JR: Good, or too much?
JB: A little too much.
MM: I can’t even remember the last time I drank good beer. Drank with Nathan, drank at the Blazers game, that’s shitty beer. Thanksgiving I had some of that smoky beer.
JB: We’ve got to blog that beer.
JR: Is it actual Rauschbier?
MM: I don’t know what that is.
JB: I think it is. The German smoky beer.
MM: And it has the most amazing shitty label.
JB: We should talk about this beer we’re drinking a little.
JR: It’s kicking my ass. I don’t think I like it.
MM: I liked my first sip, but it’s not getting less intense.
JB: It’s not right with pizza!
JR: Maybe we should drink the Bud and come back to this.
JB: Let’s do it.
MM: So I wanted to buy some shitty beer for watching the Blazer game on TV. I could have gotten anything but Bud’s packaging is so great. Plus, it’s so American! And you can be proud of America now!
JR: This tastes so good to me.
MM: Uh oh, we lost our beer snobbiness… Josh, you’re our last hope.
JB: It’s sweet. It’s just so sweet! It could be good except for that.
MM: It’s great when it’s cold. Once it warms up, it has a foul taste, but when it’s cold…
JB: …my taste buds are so numb, I can’t tell the difference!
JR: This is all we’re going to say about Bud, huh?
JB: There’s no more to say.
MM: I’m nervous to switch back to the other one! I’m a Budweiser man from here on out. We’ll change the project to “1000 Budweisers.”

JB: I’m going back to the Pelican. Oh, now it’s tasting good to me, still really intense though. It’s got a lot of citrus going on. Are you going to drink it?
MM: Let me cleanse my palate with this Budweiser. [sniffing] It smells really good! Caramely. I think it smells better than it tastes.
JB: I don’t feel like this beer is getting a fair shake in 1000 Beers.
MM: Yeah, maybe we’re out of sorts. Out of beer sorts. Out of whack, with beer. I think what people should take away from this is that it’s a pretty intense IPA.
JB: I don’t think that’s all they should take away. Having drunk this previously, I feel it’s an exceptional IPA.
MM: What do they say about it? [reading] “Enjoy the huge Cascade hop aroma, the subtle malty sweetness, and the spicy, citrusy flavor of this robust, gold-colored ale.”
JB: Yeah, that’s a great description.
MM: I agree.

62/1000: Mikkeller

JB: Before we even drink this I want to comment on the “Beer Geek Breakfast” thing. It seems to unnecessarily limit the audience. It’s like having something that’s the “beer for moms.” That might help you a little bit with moms, but it ensures that no one else is ever going to drink it.
MM: It’s the “Diet Coke” dilemma. They had marketed Diet Coke so strongly to women, they had to invent a new product for men. On the other hand, maybe production is so small, they only need beer geeks to drink it.
JB: But there are tons of beers like that, that are beer-geek-only. But they don’t need to say it.
MM: I bet it’s the American importers, not the producers, that tagged it that way.
JB: So, tasting it now, it’s pretty sweet, not really different from a regular stout. Does this have “coffee” and “oatmeal” in it, or are those just the overtones they’re talking about?
MM: It says it’s a mix of a coffee and oatmeal stout. I’ve had “oat” stouts before.
JB: Like Samuel Smith.
MM: I have been drinking actual coffee, so it’s very hard to detect a coffee flavor. Even a very coffee-heavy beer won’t measure up to actual coffee.
JB: I’ll give them that this is a decent breakfast beer, if you’re going to have beer for breakfast.
MM: I won’t give them that “there’s a new taste adventure with every sip.”
JB: I experienced no adventures in the drinking of this beer. Wait, here on the label, it says “oatmeal stout brewed with coffee.” I’m going to have a sip of coffee.

MM: This makes me think we should start a 1000 coffees blog.
JB: It’s somewhat comparable to coffee, but drinking it back to back with coffee really highlights the sweetness of the beer.
MM: It makes my coffee taste a lot better!
JB: Now you have poured coffee into your beer. I wouldn’t have done that.
MM: The coffee smell it has now is good, though. I want you to try this. I propose that it tastes better.
JB: It cut the sweetness. And I like the temperature that it’s at now, too.
MM: It’s way better.

Cheers to your health: Czech beer spa offers sudsy soaks

Say what you will about the healing properties of mud baths, saunas or lavender-scented candles, but soaking in a stainless-steel tub filled with Czech beer put my body and soul at ease.
I was in the brick-lined cellar of Prave Pivni Lazni (original beer spa), run by the Chodovar brewery in the tiny Czech town of Chodova Plana, and I was about to slip naked into the first tub I’d ever seen with taps for hot water, cold water and bathing beer.

Read the article at ChicagoTribune.com.

Let’s take a break from drinking all this beer and talk about the Ultimate Dream. You know, the universal desire we all have to open a brewery!

Now you can own a brewery! Well, sort of. It’s the ULTIMATE DREAM… eh, sort of. What can you get for $50 bucks? Something? Maybe? But you have to pay $50 again next year…
That is my confusing introduction to beerbankroll.com, a confusing idea to use crowd funding to brew, bottle, and sell beer. For just $50 bucks they promise to deliver “ULTIMATE DREAM.”
They need to get $50 from 200 people, who will be members, and then they will use that $100,000 to hire consultants on how to start their business. Oh, and the $50 is a yearly fee.
Crowd funding is a cool idea, but beerbankroll.com is doing it wrong.
First off is the design. The whole vibe is wrong for building a community. It feels like a contest and offering “the ultimate dream” and free gifts adds to that sense of it feeling big and fake. The vibe of the site is explained by looking at the “Who are you?” question in the FAQ: A marketing guy, a PR lady, and a finance guy. This explains why there is a lot of hype in the design and copy of the site.
They take the “ultimate dream” thing too far. It comes off sounding like a big company that hired a marketing firm. Here’s an example:

“In exchange for your $50 bucks (c’mon, it’s not that much!) we’ll give you a yearly membership to BeerBankroll where you’ll get to live the ultimate dream – you’ll be part of a community managed brewery! Are we the next Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Heineken, Corona, Sam Adams, Beck’s, Guinness, or Stella Artois? Come find out!”

Real people don’t talk to other real people like this. And the hard sell starts to raise some flags. If I want to help, the reason has nothing to do with getting “the world’s coolest T-shirt.”
Secondly, members are in no way “owners” of anything. They can vote on things and they earn reward points to spend on schwag. This is only entrepreneurial for the founders. Control is very much outside the hands of the members as “BeerBankroll LLC reserves the right to choose what the members will vote on.”
Third, the idea of gaining on-going revenue from the members, even after profitability, seems a little shady to me. “If the company is profitable, this money will still be essential in funding business interests such as marketing, product development and other important actions needed to run the company.” No, that is what profits are for. In addition to members they also have sponsors, which is basically advertising.
It all feels fake. Good beer and good restaurants are created by people who are committed to creating high quality food and drink. That is not the feeling this website gives. Rather, it feels like they are taking advantage of people by promising the world and delivering a t-shirt.
I don’t think that Matt, Julia, and James are trying to rip people off. They are taking an interesting idea and applying it as they know how, as marketing and PR people. They probably had a lot of meetings and put a lot of energy into business plans and marketing materials and a flashy website and a killer commercial.
Unless they make major changes, this project is doomed. No brewpub will open, no beer will be brewed, and I suspect they will not make the $100,000 they think they need to hire consultants. (Really, that is their plan.)
It doesn’t help that their idea of good beer is “Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Heineken, Corona, Sam Adams, Beck’s, Guinness, or Stella Artois,” but maybe that’s just the beer snob in me?

march 8
[recorded on iPhone Notepad]
61/1000 “Romulan Ale”
J Well, we’re at Quark’s star trek diner in the las vegas hilton. We’ll be sampling the romulan ale. Be afraid.
M isn’t romulan… Isn’t it two planets? Like Romulus and Remus? Which one is it from?
J I looked at the bottle… Its brewed in central America.
M its hard not to remark on the color of this beer
J they’re fduxking green.
M mmm that’s cold.
J its really familiar. I could almost name what beer they’re copying.

M its not sweet like budweiser, but it is really light. Is it a pabst?
J it reminds me of one of those Asian beers that all taste the same. I’m glad the head isn’t green. That would be gross. I can’t believe this is the first liquid to pass my lips today.
M let’s talk about quark’s. I find a lot of inconsistencies. The star fleet logo everywhere? In quark’s? He’s not part of star fleet!
J excellent point. They clearly couldn’t find a ferengi architect to design the place.
M oh my there’s a real ferengi walking around.
J make sure you know where your latinim is!
M when are our hamborgers going to show up?
J I think they’ll bring out the best in the romulan beer.

58/1000 Goliath
ME: All of our beers are Belgian, so the things we’ll say about all of them: There’s a heavy load of wheat. A grain. All these beers have that in common. They ferment in a way that makes me think, “This beer
has gone bad.”
MM: When I smell this, I’m reminded of cream of wheat, actually.
JB: I sort of think of this as a milder, summer Belgian.
ME: When you associate seasons with a beer — when you say it’s a “summer beer,” that basically means you could drink a shitload of it, right?
JB: Yeah! Versus a winter beer, which is going to be thick, dark, a bit fruity, high alcohol content, something that warms you…
ME: When summer comes, my mores associated with beer totally change. It’s 6:30? I’m drunk already.
JB: Anything else we want to say?
ME: It’s a Trippel, she says. I don’t know what that means. It’s a cultural thing.
MM: And there are the monks. The trappist monks. I want to make a list of all the foods that are made by religious organizations.
59/1000 Nostradamus
JB: This is like the most delicious candy I’ve ever had. Which isn’t to say it’s really sweet… it just gives up all its flavor immediately, and then it goes away.
ME: If it were a candy, it would be like a Wurther’s, something your grandpa had. Where you’re like, “They still make these, I thought they stopped after World War 2.” I think of caramel.
JB: So when we get a caramel taste out of this, it probably actually has caramelized sugars in it. Sugars that have been cooked and caramelized.
ME: Oh, very literal. That makes sense, though.
MM: I like this because there’s still a lightness to it. This flavor I mostly associate with heavier, darker beers. But in this, it stays light. I would order this again.
JB: In a second! This is a new favorite, without question.
60/1000: Cantillon Kriek Rose de Gambrinus
JB: Mike, you should have the first drink of this.
MM: Oh, man, immediately the smell makes me think that you are going to hate this beer.
JB: I ordered it for you. I know you’re going to like this sour beer.
MM: This is a bit more drinkable than the last lambics we had.
ME: There is a definite sour patch kid taste to this. There is a range of tastes that are just supposed to be bad.
JB: Most of those that we think of are bitter. But we’ve totally gotten beyond that, we’re comfortable drinking bitter things. Sour is sort of uncharted country.
ME: Somehow biologically, these flavors are a warning, and we have to get beyond that reaction to enjoy it.
JB: Bitter things are often poison, and sour things are not ready to eat yet. Like unripe berries.
ME: This flavor does have a lot in common with unripe berries.
MM: When I was a kid, we’d pick blueberries whether they were ready or yet, and we’d eat them. And I loved that! Maybe this is related to why I like these sour beers.
940 to go!

JB: We are about to drink a “flight” of eight New Old Lompoc beers. Can you feel the excitement?
MM: Yes.
JB: Where should we start? Wasn’t there a 5%? Ah, Golden Ale.
50/1000: Fool’s Golden Ale, by New Old Lompoc, Portland
MM: I hope this beer is as delicious as our quest to drink 1,000 beers. That’s a toast, to this, our 50th beer!
[clink!]
JB: They say, “our lightest ale.” Perhaps a good one for the ladies.
MM: And Mike!
JB: Really, this beer speaks to you?
MM: In a “I want to chug a couple pints of it” kind of way.
JB: Yeah, summer.
MM: I’m getting really pumped on the idea of summer beers in general, maybe because we’ve been doing a lot of heavy, hearty beers.
JB: Chewy ones?
MM: Yeah. There’s… no flavor really, then a bit of aftertaste. It’s really light!
JB: I’m sorry, honestly, no flavor.
MM: I think this would be good, paired with water. Any other flavor would overpower it!
JB: Maybe with a saltine? Peanut?
MM: Maybe, you don’t want to go too far. I honestly do like this, so I don’t want to talk bad about it. It fits on the tray. It has its place.
JB: Nextly:
51/1000: Condor Bay Ale, by New Old Lompoc, Portland
JB: (toasting) To the condor.
MM: To the condor.
JB: Mild.
MM: This is an ongoing trend here. Time to kick it up a notch, guys.
JB: Well, I’m going to let myself be distracted by food for a bit.
MM: It’s going to be hard to say something interesting about this beer! It doesn’t taste very different!
JB: It’s a little hoppier. A little.
MM: If we came back here in the summer, I would be like, “Which of these is the awesome summertime one?” And I don’t think it would matter which one I picked.
52/1000: 69 Dark Lager, by New Old Lompoc, Portland
JB: Get it while it lasts, folks.
MM: It’s seasonal. Deliciously seasonal.
JB: It’s portery. But still mild. I’m fond of it!
MM: I thought it was going to be a lot more difficult.
JB: That’s potentially a theme here, but we haven’t into the HUGE imperial pale ale, and all. So like, fruity, but next to no bitterness. But not sweet!
MM: That’s the weird part of it.
JB: I love that about it. Sweet beers are not my thing.
MM: We’ve just done three, but this is the favorite so far.
53/1000: Proletariat Red, by New Old Lompoc, Portland
MM: I like the name. I don’t even know what a proletariat is. Is it a political person? It seems vaguely revolutionary.
JB: It means the working class. The people. As opposed to the elite.
MM: And it’s red, so it’s like communist.
JB: This beer is hard to classify…What does it taste like?
MM: There’s something familiar about it, but I can’t figure out what. It smells something like the Duchess of Bourgogne. I don’t think I would want a pint of this.
JB: I have to figure out something to say about it.
MM: I don’t think this is the people’s beer.
JB: I’m in love with the smell of this beer, but then it doesn’t follow through. The smell’s actually very alcoholic.
MM: There’s a medicinal smell. If that smell was translated more into the flavor, I don’t know that it would be a good thing.
JB: So maybe it strikes the balance, between offering that smell, but not fully infusing it in the beer. I think we’re going to leave this one deeply conflicted and confused.
MM: Let’s make a note to come back to this beer.
54/1000: Sockeye Cream Stout, by New Old Lompoc, Portland
MM: I like things on nitro! I don’t fully understand how that system works, but I know it makes those beers smooth. I want to try every beer on nitro. Like Pabst. What would Pabst be like on nitro?
JB: You understand that nitro —
MM: It’s nitro versus CO2.
JB: Yeah. They’re both compressed gases. But the CO2 as a propellant also is absorbed by the beer and keeps it highly carbonated. The nitrogen doesn’t do the same thing. You might also like the hand-pumped cask beer that Bridgeport, for instance, does.
MM: Can you get nitro for your kegerator?
JB: I know you can get it for your Honda CRX. But I don’t know about the kegerator.
[drinks]
MM: Oh, Willow. Where’s Willow?
(Willow: It’s chocolately.)
MM: I was telling her today that that’s her catch phrase.
JB: I’m getting cherry. Like the dried soaked-in-something-good cherry.
MM: It’s good we’re drinking this warmer. Cold, we would be complaining about it being much too mild.
JB: Is this what New Old Lompoc does, though?
MM: We’ve got a trend here, yeah. It might be a good place to bring new beer drinkers. They can learn about several, but without being overwhelmed by them.
JB: Yeah, you can go through the styles and learn, without finding any of them off-putting or offensive. And the next time you have them…
MM: You’ve learned about what to expect, and it’s not a shock to your system.
55/1000: Centennial India Pale Ale, by New Old Lompoc, Portland
MM: Whoa, that has flavor.
JB: Ah, true IPA.
MM: It tastes toasted.
JB: I could go nice and slow with this, it lingers. I’ve had one sip, and it still sits on my tongue.
MM: It’s there on the hump of your tongue.
JB: What part is the hump?
MM: I imagine a tongue being an arc from the back to the front, like a rainbow. With the middle being the peak. I think in the cartoons, it’s always shaped like that. The part this beer sits on is the top of the rainbow.
JB: Okay. This is particularly flavorful for such a bitter, full-on IPA. I recommend it. I recommend this beer.
56/1000: LSD (Lompoc Strong Draft), by New Old Lompoc, Portland
JB: On the menu, it said this was a new cult classic.
MM: That seems bold.
JB: I’m not comfortable with it. Okay, no smell… No real taste either.
MM: We’re back to the first couple. The classic Lompoc “flavor”.
JB: I don’t think this is the new cult beer. Man, I am getting nothing off this.
MM: No, this is is really really…
JB: Really really what?
MM: I was going to say boring. They say “a touch of smoked malt.” I do get a bit of that in the aftertaste.
57/1000: C-Note, by New Old Lompoc, Portland
MM: Before we even start, can I say some things? I love that they’re listing the hops that they use. Crystal —
JB: Wait, that ‘s a famous one.
MM: Cascade.
JB: That, too.
MM: Chinook. Centennial.
JB: I think Centennial’s well-known.
MM: Columbus. And Challenger. Which is all of the “C” hops.
JB: Wait, is that an accident?
MM: No! That’s why it’s called the C-Note! Conceptually, this is my favorite beer, ever! Also, I think all beers should list the hops they use.
[drinks]
JB: Hoppy as hell! I love this.
MM: This is only remarkable because of the other 7 mild beers. I don’t think it’s remarkable outside of Hedge House.
JB: Well, it’s a breath of fresh air, and I like it. I like this beer. It’s as described. It’s a big, bitter, full IPA.
MM: For the order that we went through, this is definitely the finisher. On a high note. A high C-Note. A C-sharp!
JB: This entry, in whole, reads kind of harsh on New Old Lompoc.
MM: You have to put it context of all the beer we’ve been drinking. And these are mild in comparsion to those. And our expectation at this point is pretty powerful beers. It’s what we like to talk about. But this place is very approachable, and that’s important.
Just 943 to go!