Fiddley Gomme - Beer

Spill It, Loyal Readers

Pete — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:25:22 -0400

It's Friday night before a three-day holiday weekend. I plan on sneaking some booze into the new Indiana Jones tonight then drunkenly groping Donna as we leave the theater.

What are you drinking this weekend? What's your favorite drink? Share your favorite libation recipes and drinking games. Don't forget to come back later and comment when you're drunk too.

Southern Comfort

Pete — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:17:53 -0500

I'm leaving our fair Zion for yet another babysitting... err... business trip today. This time to St. Louis, MO. Well, Ofallon, to be specific.

I enjoy travel, for the most part but have become weary of traveling with co-workers and spending my time in offices. Business meetings in conference rooms are exactly the same everywhere as they are here. Exactly. The. Same.

But, off I go. To rescue this project and be the only one of three vendors who meet our deadlines only to have the entire project delayed at the hands of less-in-every-way companies who can't manage to look at a calendar and realize that it's been a week since our last meeting and they've done nothing at all. Such is my life.

While I'm there I'm only drinking Budweiser. When in Rome and all that. And maybe I'll see if I can pick up a clydesdale to bring home as a souvenir. Though I'm pretty sure TSA would confiscate it just like the unopened Southern Comfort they stole the last time I left New York.

Look, I'm no chemist and I know SoCo is really amazing but I'm one hundred percent certain I couldn't make a bomb out of anything that still has the Utah State tax stamp on it.

A Beer Review

Pete — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:29:30 -0400

After an unbearably difficult day at work I was looking forward to a cold one and some barbecue bratwurst. I've been thinking of trying the new offering from the Miller Brewing Company, Miller Chill. A lime and salt alternative to Corona, I presume.

The night began badly when I found that the gas grill had been so badly damaged by last week's wind that it is now totally unusable. In fact, it looks not entirely unlike a crushed U-boat at the bottom of the Atlantic.

The moment I realized my brats were relegated to the George Foreman grill was the moment I opened the first beer. I figured I would need a head start.

My initial impression was that this was pretty much fizzy water with half a packet of lime Kool-Aid in it. A quick glance at the label showed a caloric count of 110. Not very many. I would guess at an alcohol content of about 3%. That explains why two beers later I still felt like I was drinking O'Doul's. Well... O'Doul's and lime punch.

Tasty enough, sure but it doesn't really even taste that much like beer. For some people that's a good thing. My overall impression? This is a highschool girl's beer.

But I'm still going to drink the rest because, hell, it's cold and it's beer. I'm not an idiot. Well... not that kind of idiot.

Menage Quatro

Pete — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:29:34 -0400

Every now and then a few people from the office get together for a beer after work. It's never a formal affair and it's not always the same exact group of people. It's more one of those, hey if anyone wants to go for a drink we're meeting at the bar down the street, kinds of things.

Yesterday was one of those days. A couple people mentioned that, some people were getting together and did I want to come? So I dropped by long enough to have a beer and be on my way.

I was the last to arrive and there were only three others there. All women. Let me take this formal opportunity to say that I did not plan for this to be me and all women. I had no ulterior motives. I made no scheme to arrange to be the only guy in the group. It simply worked out that way.

Also, NOTHING HAPPENED.

I make a point of saying all that because when I got home, Donna made a point of asking me specifically who had gone to the bar. When I told her, she rolled her eyes and said, "Oh... all girls."

Yes. All girls. Because my plan was to meet three women from the office and have sex with them right there in the bar. At. The. Same. Time. All in the twenty minutes between work and home while the Little League World Series played on the giant television in front of the other hundred and eighty customers.

Without the Holy Ghost to guide me, what else would you expect?

You Know What They Say About Opinions

Pete — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:08:27 -0400

A coworker justifiably outed me as a beer snob today when I scoffed at the idea of drinking beer from a can. It was then that I sheepishly admitted to buying beer fram a grocery store. And not just any beer... an Anheuser-Busch beer.

Now, before all my fellow beer snobs go judging me, this particular beer is AB's summer brew in their seasonal draught series, cleverly branded and cheaply-labeled in order to weasel their way into the increasingly popular craft brew market, Beach Bum Blonde Ale. A zymurgy-wolf in sheep's clothing, I figured, but my curiosity got the better of me so I plunked down seven bucks for a sixer.

I bought the stuff fully expecting a re-packaged Budweiser Select, or something close to it. I've become pretty picky since I started drinking my own homebrew to the point that even some of the authentic craft brews from the local pubs aren't always a sure bet. But, surprisingly, Beach Bum is really, really good.

It's got a nice hoppiness that isn't overwhelming and a nice, clean aftertaste. Served in a frozen glass stein, it was amazingly refreshing. It is better than any of the local kolschs, pilsners or hefeweizens from Squatter's, Uinta, Wasatch or Red Rock. And that's saying something when said about a beer from St. Louis. Though I still wouldn't say I like it as much as my own. I'm a snob, remember?

I'm not going to give up brewing for it or anything and I'm sure I'll still always be looking for something new to try when buying beer off-the-shelf but I do think I'm going to try to clone it and make a bunch of it myself before summer is over.

Quite A Dilemma

Pete — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:43:50 -0400

Uh oh. I've put myself in a bit of a pickle.

A couple weeks ago a brewed a special batch of beer made with, among other things, Deseret Brand dried apples. Church Apple Cream Ale, I'm calling it.

It brewed up perfectly. I fermented it and racked it to a secondary fermenter along with the apples where it sat until last Sunday. On Sunday, I put most of the beer into 2-litre bottles to carbonate. This plan was supposed to get the beer ready to take with me on my forthcoming eight-day Grand Canyon excursion. Or, as I'm calling it, Certain Death By Sun Exposure. Only a handful of glass bottles were filled as they won't travel well on the trip.

Here's my dilemma. Thanks to the recent hot temperatures, the beer is ready early. A week and a half early. It only took four days in the bottle to carbonate fully. And now that it's done, I want to drink it. Well, not all of it... but some. And, as I mentioned, most of it is in 2-litre bottles. If I open one of those I'm obligated to drink all of it leaving me both drunk and short on beer.

This isn't one of those problems like world hunger or say, having your intestines sucked out by a swimming pool pump or anything. Really, it's not an actual problem at all. But it does mean less beer to share on the trip. Or worse... I might have to buy beer to drink this week.

Vacation All I Ever Wanted

Pete — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:34:59 -0400

The vacation I've been yearning for is now in my future.

My tree-hugging, river-running Uncle Roger has been guiding tours on the Colorado River for years. Roger's such a pro that last summer he guided Laura Bush, the twins, a few of Laura's friends and a dozen or so Secret Service and Navy Seal types through the Grand Canyon. He even managed to snap a really amazing picture of Jenna Bush climbing off a boat in a bikini that would just about make you want to lobby for the removal of presidential term-limits, if you know what I mean.

Roger called this week wondering if I wanted to help out as a "swamper" on an 8-day float in July. Without hesitation I agreed. I could figure out how to arrange the time off and explain it to Donna later.

A swamper is basically the boatman's bitch. He ties up the boats, sets up camp, cleans up after meals and empties the "groover". Good times. The upside is, the swamper (err... me, in case you haven't been paying attention) also gets the benefit of an expenses-paid trip from Lee's Ferry to Lake Mead. Plus tips, I hear.

It'll be just the basics for me. A sleeping bag, a couple changes of clothes, clean socks and underwear, plenty of sunscreen, sunglasses and a hat. I'll be taking very little with me in terms of gadgets or luxury items because, well, there's not exactly a high-speed internet connection where I'm going. Also, not many gadgets do that well going from one-hundred-ten degree air to fifty degree water at twenty-five miles an hour. Besides, if my office thinks I'll be in touch, they can fuck themselves.

There are two items that are also necessities but that come with some small obstacles. Homemade beer and my Gen2 iPod Shuffle. Because, seriously, if it crossed your mind that I could go more than a week without beer and tunes then you just might need a vacation even more than I do.

The beer is a bit of an issue because of the amount Roger has told me I should bring. You see, the more beer you serve the paying customers, the better time they have... the better time they have, the better they tip. But bringing a large amount of beer in glass bottles is out of the question. For one, glass breaks. Secondly, twelve-ounce bottles take a lot of space. That means I'll be bottling a couple of batches to 2-litre plastic soda bottles. Totally ghetto, I know.

The iPod problem is really a power struggle. That is, how do I keep the battery charged? I'm thinking of finding some kind of a small, flexible solar panel solution. I'll be sure to let you know what I come up with but if anyone has any ideas send them my way.

Those minor quirks aside, it will be a fabulous opportunity for me to grow my beard out in preparation for the show I'll start rehearsing a couple days after I get back.

Is It Getting Warm Around This Fire?

Pete — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:22:17 -0400

I'm back at work today after an extended weekend camping trip with my old friend Danny.

Camp as a row of pink tents.

Our extensive and scientific research tells us that there's nothing about cold rainy weather that will keep you from sitting around a fire and drinking large amounts of beer. It also seems, though the data is sketchy, that the more beer you consume the more hilariously entertaining it is to melt beer bottles in a campfire.

Does this make you horny, baby?

It also seems that sharing beer is an attractive quality according to at least one semi-nomadic English woman. She was with a group of about twelve other campers making a tour of the western United States who were only in camp for one night as they made their way around the great parks of Southern Utah.

As night fell and cold-rainy weather caused an inevitable boredom to set in, I meandered into the group's camp with a couple of Garage Frog beers as a friendship offering and introduced myself. They kindly invited us to join them around the fire for s'mores and conversation. I took an available seat and handed a bottle to the woman sitting next to me.

She marveled that anyone would willingly give up alcohol when they could just as easily drink it themselves. "In England", she told me, "it might actually be against the law to go around giving away beer all willy-nilly."

The entire evening she kept saying really great things like "posh", "brilliant" and "you'd do great in England with that sexy American accent." It was cute. It turns out it was also her birthday and she had been celebrating for some hours already with the seemingly-endless supply of cheap American beer the tour guide had on hand.

It also seemed that the more of my beer she had to drink, in addition to the several she had already downed, the more attractive I became. I know this because as I stood to leave at the end of the evening she cracked me up by telling me, "Good night, Pete. Very lovely to meet you. If you're ever in London, look me up. My name is Helen."

Haiku For The Weekend

Pete — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:57:17 -0400

The camp awaits us.
Not quite spring or summertime.
Beer will be consumed.

Getting Drunk And Stuff

Pete — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:40:51 -0400

"I was talking with a couple of my friends the other day about you making beer."

"Oh yeah?"

"They asked if you 'get drunk and stuff'. I couldn't help but laugh. You hardly drink at all and when you do, it's not even a big deal. Just one or two beers now and then."

"Right. So can I ask? Why the change of heart? You were so opposed to it before."

"I just decided one day that I was sick of controlling what you did and what you thought. I'm so much happier letting you live your own life."

"That's great. I was sick of it too. Now... take off your top."