Ein Prosit der Gemutlichkeit

The other day I headed down the shore to hang with my brother from another mother. I decided that it was time to celebrate. Celebrate what, you may ask? Well, my heritage for one thing. As you probably (don't) know I am just over 25% German and Oktoberfest is in full swing. So I headed over to Oak Tree and picked up as many Oktoberfest singles as I could find, which weren't many. Disappointing. Also, no Brooklyn Oktoberfest. What gives. I checked out this other beer store in Westfield, which had some good stuff, but really no singles. New Jersey needs to wake up and embrace beer culture. Or maybe I need to move to the west coast. Any ways, I eventually ended up with eight different Oktoberfest selections and gunned it down the parkway to Asbury. James showed me the location he is scouting for his coffee shop and roastery. Shit looks good. Congrats to him for living the dream. After that we got some burritos and then headed back to his place for some tasty beers. Basically we did a blind tasting of our selections and then saved some for Meems to taste after she got home from back to school night. Again, I am going to have to link the spreadsheet as I still don't know what the f I am doing. I need to take an html class. Here you go. We evaluated based on aroma, flavor, prozit, and overall score. We were all a bit surprised by the outcome. Personally, I thought Brooklyn would score higher. Flying dog was the big winner with Left Hand not far behind. Otter Creek was the least drinkable of all. Anyway, enjoy. Prost!

What I'm drinking: Lagunitas, Little Sumpin Wild (bangin)
What I'm listening to: New Gaslight Anthem
What I'm watching: Started watching Ken Burn's Tenth Inning tonight. That thing is well f'in done. I honestly started to tear up several times watching the Yankees rising from the ashes of the strike during my formidable years. I haven't seen the original series, but if any of my friends or my girlfriend read this blog, that is what I want for Christmas/my birthday/Rosh Hashanah.

Beers chilling out

All the beers lined up, covered, and numbered

Also, I got some new buddies

The Fridge

From time to time my fridge will get a bit backed up. I have this fear of running out of beer. This coupled with the fact that I have a bad memory has me buying beer often when I already have a bunch at home that I have been meaning to drink. I also have this habit of buying something that is not my normal thing, drinking a few and then deciding that I don't like it or that I am bored with it. Then the extra bottles hang around in the fridge taking up space until I can pass them off on some unsuspecting victim. Right now my fridge is pretty much full up of beer. Below is a list of what's in there and why.

Good stuff that will be gone within the week:
6 Sierra Nevada Pale Ales - My go to beer. Can't say enough good stuff about it. That's what I'm drinking right now.
3 Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPAs - Good but a bit tannic.
5 Magner Original Irish Ciders - They belong to the girlfriend. Pretty good, but I am not much of a cider fan
3 Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marrons - Good, but high in alcohol, so they might last longer then a week
3 Otter Creek Oktoberfest - Meh, they might make a jump to the next category.
1 Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Black Barleywine - I can not wait to drink this one. Perhaps tomorrow night after my closing shift at work.
1 Coney Island Sword Swallower Steel Hop Lager - A gift from the girlfriend. Can't wait to drink this one. A nice hoppy lager along the lines of Brooklyn Lager

Beers that have been hanging around for a while:
4 Flying Dog Raging Bitches - A Beglian style IPA. Not my thing. Beer store dude convinced me to get it
2 Long Trail Blackberry Wheats - Part of a variety pack. Again, not my thing.
1 Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout - This is from a few years back. It is good, but a bit boozy. I should really drink this
6 Founders Breakfast Stout Clones - Homebrews gone wrong
1 Anchor Steam Liberty Ale Clone - A homebrew success that I was saving for guests. It might have spent too much time in the fridge though.
1 Homebrew UFO - It is in a Grolsh bottle, so no labeling. I'm gonna drink this tomorrow. I hope it is a Boston Lager clone, but I suspect it is an under carbonated porter

That's it. If I put in the effort, I can probably drink the fridge down in under two weeks, except for the Raging Bitch and the Long Trail. No way am I drinking that. But feel free to partake if you are into it.

Glory to God in the highest

I've been wanting to do this post for a while. My original idea was to get an atheist, myself (an agnostic), and a believer together and drink Trappist beers (beers brewed by monks) while watching Ben Hur. This was too difficult to set up, mostly because I don't know any believers who are into beer. So in the end I got together with my jerk off friends and Amelia and we drank beer from six of the seven Trappist breweries. The only one we didn't have was Westvleteren for obvious reasons. Previously I had only drank three Trappist brews, so this was a much needed educational experience for myself. Every beer we drank was good, but it was almost overkill. The beers started to run together a bit. There were definite distinctions from beer to beer, but with so many really flavorful beers your palate can get desensitized. I will say that, for me, Chimay stood out among the crowd; shined in fact. Also, me and meems got real wasted on these high alcohol brews. Below is the results of our tasting. We commented on aroma, flavor, gave an overall rating and commented on how the beers effected our spirituality. Word.

I made an google docs spreadsheet to drop into this post, but i can't figure out how to do that, so here is the link. I know this is pretty bunk, so if anybody can throw me the code for embedding a spreadsheet into blogspot, I'd appreciate it.