Author: yanaminicus

Magic Hat Mother Lager

Magic Hat's Mother Lager
Magic Hat Mother Lager

Bottle comes with their wry Vermont sense of humor, and their customarily dry Vermont beer. Good lager, with that mid-mouth effervescence you got with the fad of “dry” beers back in the 1980’s. At 5% alk this is a candidate for casual drinking, and the taste has that great savory feel of a lager, like they usually end up hopped into orange, rather than ales which get hopped into lemon.

Never had a bad Magic Hat, and today is any other day. Buy Mother Lager from Vermont SSR and they can get wheeled prosthetics for all their 3-legged cows. Production! More sour than bitter, with a real friendly malt texture. A real good lager, and i like lagers, so this comrade earns an 8.4 rating.

Magic Hat Low Key IPA

Magic Hat's Low Key Session IPA
Magic Hat’s Low Key Session IPA

Another one of those “session” IPA’s, and darn it, i’m tired of not knowing what that means. Hold on a minnit, let me force the Googer to tell me…

OK, ok. That was easy. Apparently, “session” simply means 4.5% alk or lower, so you can then drink it during your “session” of worktime. 4 hours is a likely “session” so 2 beers at work these days, maybe more in thee olden dayes when people had to work from sunup to sundown. And the low alcohol won’t make you fall over on the job, which bosses always hate. Don’t even ask me to cogitate what the workday beer allowance was before child-labor laws…

So this one fits, it’s at 4.5% alk on the dot. The color is pale, happily golden, and vigorous effervescence makes it a lively brew. The taste, however, is quite light as well. I believe there are hops in this, but they are just not slapping me across the cheek, like a good IPA ought to.

Beer body is heavier than the color would suggest, so quality malts used here, but the hoppiness is more than understated, it’s almost absent. It’s a fine beer, but just not what i’m looking for in an IPA. I want a pinecone shoved up my ass, grapefruit coming out of my earholes. Certainly not a bad beer, but what it is, as opposed to what the label says it is, leaves it at 4.4 for a rating. Sorry, Magic Hat Guys, your #9 rocks, but the Low Key Session IPA is a little too, well, low.

Magic Hat SMASH Hits IPA

 

Magic Hat SMASH Hits IPA
Magic Hat SMASH Hits IPA

A little different take on the IPA, here’s Magic Hat’s take on an IPA singularity: one hop, one malt. The latter is Vienna Pils malt, the former is Delta hops. And this is one of the Magic Hat brews which they’ve contracted out to the Genesee Brewery, instead of pure Vermont progeny.

Alk content is 5.5%, color is pale sure, but not quite as pale as many. What it does have is a distinctive taste, a lemony hop bitter and serious Euro beer body. It’s that pungent taste, sharp and biting that German beers have, only not as serious as they do it. I like the simplicity here, very citrus hopping and light-ish alcohol make this a great Summer beer. And since MH farmed out production, the price is nice too. Rating it 7.9 for having a plan and intent, and sticking to it.

Widmer Bros Hopside Down IPL

Widmer Brothers Hopside Down IPL
Widmer Brothers Hopside Down IPL

 

Another hop-op-along from the haunts of Portland in Oregonia, this time it’s an IPL, which is ridiculous but everyone thinks that if you use the letters I and P then it’ll sell better. But for a reality check, there is no such thing as an “India Pale Lager”. There’s not even such a thing as an India Anything in beer, besides India Pale Ale. The whole idea is that an ale which is top-fermented can be sealed in barrels in London, and packed onto a ship bound for India. On the way the malts and water and yeast turn it into beer. And it’s hopped so strongly because it’s crappy beer, with all that sloshing around for 4 months on the ocean.

You can’t brew a lager on a sailing ship. Just want to make sure you understand clearly that no lager, not even a highly hopped “pale” lager, has anything to do with India, whatsoever. And IPA for that matter, has strong hops to mask the crappy beer, not as a culinary delight for connoisseurs. It was intended to be cheap and barely drinkable for the British occupying forces in India, and soldiers, as we all know, will drink anything not clearly labeled “Poison”.

Today, the reverse is true. People are making pale ales with actually good beer malts, and not fermenting it in dark rat-infested cargo holds where the constant pitching and rolling ruins the beer. So there’s no need for all that hoppiness today. Now, it’s just tasty.

The name of this one, “Hopside Down” is just as absurd. It’s not an IPA brewed upside down, it’s just a lager brewed like a normal lager, with the fermentation happening at the bottom of the chamber. The only difference with this lager is they jammed a bunch of hops in there. It’s a hoppy lager, that’s all it is. Nothing “India” about this at all, other than in the feeble minds of marketing idiots.

Just so you know.

Now on to the beer. As it happens, i prefer lagers and i like IPA’s because of the strong hops, so this one is right up my pants leg. The goofy popularity of IPA’s has led many micros to make hoppy lagers, and although i roll my eyes at their stupidity when they try to call one an “IPL,” the fact is that this type of beer was made for me.

Plenty of fun info on the bottom of the carton, where you can only read it AFTER you’ve bought it, heheh. There’s a nice drawing of their brewery, and they note that it’s “under the Fremont Bridge” so we can only assume that the Widmer Brothers are trolls. Hey, i don’t care if they live under a bridge and eat nanny goats. I don’t have a goat. And i don’t judge lifestyles, only beers. Could be orcs for all i care, just keep the hopped-up lagers coming!

From the carton, this’s got Pale and Caramel malts, they used Cascade and Alchemy hop varieties, and there’s a number for “apparent extract” which i have no idea about. But, what i do know about is the IBU’s which are at a healthy 65, and the alk which is at a swarthy 6.7%. And there’s another number, “Color,” which is apparently measured in something called an “SRM” whatever that is, and this beer has eight of those.

It is pale for a lager, nicely golden-yellow, has a good smell to it, and the taste is not as crisp as a real IPA, but rounder and sweeter in the mouth, almost something you can bite into, which is what i like about lagers in general. Hops are pretty nice but seem lighter than that 65 IBU rating would suggest. That’s the inherent problem with hopping a lager way up high: there’s more solid beer body which just absorbs the bitterness. With an ale, the body is so slight that the hops are swimming around on their own, unfettered and free to attack.

So it’s a tougher balance when you try to hop up a lager. These Oregonians have pulled it off nicely. Mixing in pale malts leaves some hops on the loose and yet the mass of the beer is pleasingly hearty. Like i said, this kind of frankenbeer is just right for me, and i love this example muchly. It’s nearly buttery, so velvet smooth and richly flavored. I recommend this for human consumption. In moderation, naturally, with that 6.7% alk lurking inside.

At $9 for a sixer, this is one of them crafties which is worth the premium, and have no trouble awarding it an 8.5 rating. Just wish they’d stop calling it an IPL, grow a ball and make up your own brand name for this kind of beer, wouldja? Don’t be a pantysniffer trying to coat-tail the IPA brand. Your beer is better than that. You are better than that, Widmer Brotrolls.

Forward?

Hiatus, mostly result of astonishment. It’s taken this long to figure out what happened in November 2016. The Electoral College is supposed to exist for one reason only: to put a very important decision in the hands of people who are more involved in the political process than your average snapstagram feeder.

The fear of the Founders and Framers was that direct executive election could open the door to a huckster concentrating on only a few of the 13 original States: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Thus the will of the majority of the States could be subverted. So they designed the Electoral College, to crutch on the fact that every state has 2 Senators, and thus at least 3 members of Congress, so 3 Electoral votes.

The theory behind this says that natural cultural variations between the Various States would lessen the chance that the whole republic could be duped by one faction at the same time. And the founders tried to reinforce this regional approach to the republic by giving tiny Delaware and Rhode Island equal representation. That was a good solution 230 years ago. But now the Electoral College has proved its worth, and technology has caught up to the goal of counting every citizen’s vote quickly, nationally rather than regionally. 230 years ago, things moved as fast as a horse.

The last gulp of the Reagan Republican Inversion from north to south finally took place in 2010, with a Tea Party midterm just as Census results came in. A Gerrymander here, reduce polling stations there, and now you have a Red Wall. But now it’s a Wall built on controlling local politics to manipulate voting patterns, not on the somewhat more natural political theories, like tailoring the local message to the local demographics.

The Red Wall couldn’t stand against African-American turnout in 2012, on a key-state level, but golldurned if it didn’t entrench a wider base in statehouses and state mansions. The Blue Wall had been built by Big Labor, but that’s inexorably hollowed out by the Rust Belt over the decades. So we’ve got this now. 20 months in, and it’s a verified circus.

The problem isn’t nutty conspiracy theories becoming public policy, it’s the ADHD in the middle. Buoyed by a decades-long procession of listeners, after some decades of frustration about never being taken seriously. The most-recent F2F with a person becomes the current truth, but it only lasts until another agreeable person drops by to talk. After a while, supplicants keen onto the fact that sensationalizing brings results. Root of all nepotism is paranoia, sometimes a difficult combination with Oh look, there’s a spider monkey riding a sheep, haw!

Look, if you want to make America a better place, volunteer time to projects that educate African-American women. That’s really the bottom line. Women hold the power in African-American families now, and the smarter they are, the better they can wield that power. But if your vision is broader, then the best thing you can do for the whole of humanity, is to work for educating women in Africa itself.

The whole complement of African-descended women has been ill-served by humankind as a whole, starting with stealing their men for a few centuries, on to colonial repression, then on through another century of laws designed to keep African families unstable whether in Africa or abroad.

Actually, there are already people doing that work, and more would like to, they just don’t have the money to put everyone to work who wants to work, for the education of women in Africa. If you got a job or a family or a caregiver situation that prevents you from going to Africa and helping to educate women, you can still give money to people who are doing that work.

In a broad sense, education of women in sub-Saharan Africa is the fulcrum upon which rests the future history of the 2000’s century. Yes, the military history is shaping up to be Asia versus Europe and the Americas, again, but that will be decided by the resources of Africa if it’s a cold war, or by the geography of Africa if it’s a hot war.

One thing to consider: if you fight a war for small reasons, then even if you win your war, your world is the same small place. The only way to make your own world larger is to line up behind a larger reason. Educating African women, whether diasporated or not, is the second-last step in lifting all of humanity up the next rung.

Non-vegan Vegetable Soup

Is it soup yet? Ageless question, but maybe the real answer is that it was always soup, and will forever be almost becoming soup. You can’t force soup into existence, but you can tease out the soup-like inner natures of various things. In today’s example, it is vegetable soup for non-vegans. Another paradox, ho-hum.

The quest for the vegetable soup of the ages started with meat. Specifically corned beef, and if you keep an eye on various meat markets in the waning days of March, you can find some damned good deals on a corned beef brisket. And for once, someone is using the term “meat market” not as a euphemism, imagine that! Past two years, there were no good scoops to be had, at least not in my neck of the giraffe.

But this year, behold the cornucopia of corned beef briskets on steep discount by March 24th! I bought six. Two in the fridge and four in the freezer, which made my freezer sad and it need to see the freezer doctor. But it was worth it, now it’s August and i’ve still got one in the freezer.

When you cook a brisket, you end up with a few quarts of water, which are normally secondary to the juicy brisket you just fished out of the pond. I’ve always just dumped the bracken water down the sink. But it always smelled so good going down the drain, that i felt pangs of lost opportunity, like i should be using the whole carcass as the natives do.

Last time, i reserved the liquid. Kept it in the fridge until it was time for another brisket, combined the two batches, and that’s a good base for some soup, dontcha think? Yes, think. Veggies coaxed into soup, using meat-water. What could go wrong?

As it turns out, there’s nothing wrong at all. Bash some garlic cloves, scrape out a couple cans of tomato paste, toss in some spices, then make it boil. Made soup before, but this time applied some science to it, and it really works. First, brainstormed and asked others, about what should go into a soup using corned beef stock. Then learned up on each of the ingredients, listing how long each one needs to cook. And once you know the times, you can plot a schedule, so that each of them finishes cooking at the same time.

I know a few recipes where you’ve got to add a certain ingredient at just the right time, but this was the first time i juggled so many at once. Here’s what it ground down to:

* whisk the broth to break up deposits.
* add tomato paste, crushed garlic, and spices.
* make this boil, keep the heat on high.
* add overnight-soaked great northern beans and dry rinsed lentils.
* 12 minutes later, add celery, shallots and vidalia onions.
* 7 minutes later, add potatoes, carrots and leeks.
* 7 more minutes after that, add parsnips and scallions.
* and after 7 minutes, add bok choi stems.
* let it all cook for 7 minutes, and then it’s soup.
* careful, it’s hot.

Where the recipe says “spices”, insert your own faves. I think this is basic enough a veggie soup to take on whatever spice regimen you throw at it, and wear it well too. Spices i used were marjoram, thyme, sage, parsley, basil, oregano, rosemary, fennel, savory, a bay leaf, black pepper, white pepper, pink pepper and pink Himalayan salt, whew. Oh yeah, turmeric and paprika too.

Someday i might make this with mace, cardamom, allspice, cinnamon and cloves, skipping the garlic. I can taste that in my mind’s tongue, and it’s not half bad. Parsnips would positively have an orgy with cloves and allspice.

Come to think of it, parsnips would easily become intimate with ginger, say fried in butter alongside a ginger-root slice, then topped with cinnamon sugar… oh boy, that’s a million dollar recipe right there. Ah, someday.

Wrong!

Well that’s embarrassing. Saw one guy from Ohio on a news show, saying that when pollsters came to his door or rang him up: “I lied.”

So nobody saw this coming. In a post this past Spring explaining the rise of Trump, i laid out the case of the disaffection, that general political malaise which Donald rode to a win, but i certainly didn’t think it would play to a majority in Pennsylvania or Michigan. The key to a Hillary win, in my eyes, was her +30 points among Hispanics, combined with a higher turnout among Hispanics, offsetting expected lower turnout among African-Americans, compared with 2012.

And that happened like i saw it. Hillary won Hispanics by +30, they did turn out higher, and it was enough to counter lower black votes. Only one talking head on tv Wednesday diagnosed the election correctly. Educated whites in the Rust Belt, Obama won by 16 points. This time, Hillary lost them by 10. The lone correct ‘splainer nailed the reason as a protest vote gone haywire. So many in MN, MI, WI, IA, OH and PA had been fed the line for months that their states were going to go to Hillary and she was obviously going to win, that they saw a vote for Trump not as wasted, but might be used as a protest vote, to let Hillary know that she was on thin ice, that she would have to be more attentive to Rust Belt whites when she got back to the White House.

Trump turned out all his voters, which includes the 2% of Americans who are in the nutjob conspiracy wing of the right, who are normally low-frequency voters because they’re sure the whole thing is rigged by the CFR or  Rothschilds or someone, maybe the lizard aliens. And he got the diehard Republicans, who just hate anything Clintonish for evah. And he got more than expected of casual Republicans, who just love to get out on Election Day and mingle, and they’d vote Trump just because they are there. But those constituencies are not enough in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan or Wisconsin, Iowa or Minnesota. Because cities exist.

The difference in the Rust Belt was whites who had gone for Barack, who didn’t like Hillary, but thought she was going to win. In that case, voting for Trump might be a protest to serve notice to Clinton that she better keep on her toes. For that voter, extending the red line all the way across the ballot looked like a good idea. Since Hillary was going to win, so they thought, a Republican congress would be a good check on her ambitions. That’s why Donald had coat-tails in the Upper Midwest, but not in Nevada or New Hampshire.

What i did not expect was that trend, the Rusty Protest Voter, was not offset by females across the political spectrum. We heard about catgrabbing, we heard about “pig” and “nasty” and we saw him tell Howard Stern that he barged in on 15-year old beauty pageant contestants in the dressing room because as the owner of the pageant “I kinda get away with that.” I expected that tape about Trump trying to bed a married woman, “I was after her hard, I went after her like a bitch” would turn social-conservative women away. It did not.

What i got wrong, was my assumption that women had more self respect. But, as the cosmetics and publishing industries have shown, nobody ever goes broke by underestimating women’s self respect.

After 2016

It’s 3 days until voting starts, or rather, until lines start forming to vote in the US. Early voting, mail-in ballots, absentee votes et cetera have been pouring in for weeks, but the tally won’t be done until November 8th. Despite the media’s glee at a race where they are now using words like “tightening” and “horserace” and even “toss up,” the real political animals know that the race was over last Spring.

But the media needs it to look closer because they die without viewers, so they’re playing up any glimmer for Trump. The rest of us know that there is no glimmer, but Trump voters are the most gullible section of American society, thus they are the most susceptible to stay glued to their screens large and small. But, just in case you are among the gullible, the rest of us need you to know, beforehand, that it was never close. It was never a horserace. It was a mule wandering onto a track and a racehorse whizzed by it. The mule said “Hey, what?”

There’s no problem with that. America needs her gullibles. We need people to read celebrity igs, and to eat a sandwich with 2000 mg of salt just because something in it was once “organic”. We need people who think a cocktail is better when chilled to -273º, just like we need people to do hilarious things on webvids. It’s a social contract. They provide services, and in return they get middle-class money and a right to vote. The only problem is that the gullibles are now being told that a mule really could have beaten a thoroughbred. And, since they’re gullible, they can tend to believe it.

Plenty of non-gullible people have been squawking about how much damage Trump would do to the US and to the international community, if he won. The real problem, however, is that he has already damaged the world and nation. Luckily he won’t do any more damage past mid-November, but unluckily, the damage already done will take years to clean up. The real problem is what to do with a few million gullible people in 2017, the people who really believed that mules could run.

“As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” –Arthur Carlson

One plan might be to shame them, to heckle Trump voters as “losers” and let your dog pee on lawn signs. Make sure that throughout November and December too, they can’t forget how gullible they were. But that would not work out like you think it would. Failure does not cure gullibility. Pestering former trumpites would only open a door in their souls, where an even nuttier idea can walk right in. Trump TV won’t need any help getting viewers.

Speaking of which, the most predictable thing about his new channel is that they will increase viewership by reporting stories about how current viewers are being persecuted. That’s an old, old story, and it always works on a portion of the population, no matter what century it is. Insert PT Barnum quote here, you know the one.

The other plan might be to shake hands with the trumpites you know, mumble something about Trump’s forthrightness, and say “She won’t be so bad, you’ll see. We’ve had worse, eh?” Accept the trumpites back into civil society, and we’ll lose fewer of them to the online wonderland of conspiracies. Shiny objects, and all that.

But there is a third option, for dealing with the losing side this time around. Deny everything. Deny anything happened. Don’t talk about the election at all, and when asked, just say “Oh, I’m glad that’s over, I was getting tired of the ads.” Act like it was no big deal, it happens every four years, w-ever. Tuesday? Oh yeah, but Wednesday is a favorite show. Or a recent liked restaurant has a twofer on Wednesdays. Any cover story you like, just deflect any suggestion that there was ever an election this year.

After a week of this, former trumpers will start to wonder what they were all worked up over. When everyone seems to be ok with whatever happened last week, and if volcanoes have not broken out all over the world on Wednesday November 9th, then maybe. Maybe they’ll insist that they’ll sit back and suffer for four years, but maybe they’ll have a wider view now. A step back and a fuller picture now: this is America and we do this every four years. We go a little nuts, so sue us. But afterwards we get back to work.

Every time a partisan’s candidate loses, they think it’s a cataclysm. Hound them and they’ll cabalize. Console them and they’ll think they were doing something good, and it went south only on a fluke. But if you pretend nothing ever happened, gullible people will start to believe that’s true too. No news here, move along folks. Look over there, a celebrity divorce!

——————————————-

That’s what to do about the grumpers, but what about the shambles left of the Republican party? Reince Priebus is obviously out of the top chair, it’s a miracle if he hangs on until Christmas. That’s when the real fun starts. The various factions which make up the rightwards coalition now, will all vie for control. If they had compatible aims, there would emerge a consensus faction. Trouble is, there are divergent aims among the rightward factions, which each now blames the others for thwarting.

Who is the rightward today? You have the fiscal conservatives who basically want lower taxes, and see smaller government as logical to get that. Then you have the christian conservatives who would appreciate having the government establish Christian Sharia Law, minus the headgear of course. Then there’s a farther right pocket who wants radical curtailing of federalism to parallel the literal Constitution. And another pocket which wants social programs ended, because black people exist. And others, you know, browns too, most of them fersure.

Sheesh, i know it hurts to say it, but the US still suffers from crappy ideas like that. But here’s the thing, when the south flipped from Democratic to Republican in the late 1900’s, the racists flipped too. Cause/effect, chicken/egg? You call it. The result is that most of America’s real dooshes are more comfortable with Republicans.

Trump didn’t ‘splain ’nuff to gain America’s confidence, but he will peel off one or two of those constituencies to the Trump TV Party. Obviously, the racist wing will be the first of them. The remainder of the Republican party will publicy be glad of the riddance, but internally will be surprised at the number of defections. Who else will switch to the Trump TV Party?

We know it won’t be the social conservatives, because of faith and perseverance and the conviction of conversion. The hard Constitutional fringe is likely to gravitate trumpwards, if only to have a home at last for such a politically nebulous collection. Will it be the fiscals to join Trump? If so, the Republican party splits wide open. It becomes the Trump Party and the God Party, in a threeway slaughter against the Democratic Party.

This fact is not lost on fiscal conservatives, and yet, they can no longer hitch their wagons to the christian wing, because the science of demographics exists. 2016 is the year that the christian right bloc loses power. Either they swallow hyssop and join Trump, or they accept a meek role as Republicans, or they go it alone. In any case, they become a free bloc and whoever they align with will have to become a coalition. The devil’s bargain, religious support is great in local races but a hindrance on larger scales. Again, those pesky demographics.

While all of this is going on, Hillary’s transition team will be massaging the media with gushing positivity. To the general observer it will look like the Republican party is changing were-something on a full moon. In a tragically hilarious completion of a small cycle, the Republicans in the House who have atrophied their muscle of compromise over the last eight years, will be unable to name a Speaker in 2017. That is, until one side asks for the help of the Democrats.

And that’s the flare over the ocean, thence the business wing of the Republican party defects. Just like in 1993, they go blue. The difference between now and 1993, is that there is no backstop. There won’t be a recognizable Republican party to return to. No Plan B. Other difference is that in 1993, there was no Twitter. Instead of being big news, the defection of the business bloc from red to blue will be a peppering of little news.

Trouble ‘Round Midnight Belgian White Ale

Trouble's 'Round Midnight Belgian White wheat ale
Trouble’s ‘Round Midnight Belgian White wheat ale

Another bit of Trouble, the mystery brewery without even a website mentioned on the package or cans. All we can tell is that this is a “Belgian White” at 5.4% alk and a “Belgian style wheat ale”. Had my first wheat beer in the 1980s and have tried a few more over the years, as a category they’re nice but i never got wowed enough to stick with ’em.

This one is hopped a bit more strongly than others, and it’s a classic white ale in color and effervescent behavior. The taste is not too bad, as normal for me with wheat beers, just not a freak for them. Admit that this one is good for its species, but can only give it a 5.6 because it’s not my bag.