Front Porch Chats #95

I’ve got a Helles from Van Henion today and if you don’t know: I’m a fan if Helles style beers. But they rarely seem to match my standards.

This one is starting off well, with a sourdough nose and I really like that.

Unfortunately the flavors don’t quite match up. There’s hardly any breadiness in this beer and actually it’s a little sweet. It finishes fairly well; not too crisp but crisp enough and with a hop bite that’s just strong enough to show up.

I don’t think I can recommend it, though. It just doesn’t have the kind of flavor profile throughout that I like.

I don’t really have much else to say this week. I miss going to pubs and being around people. I’ve been a little more isolated and bored than usual so I’m feeling that a bit.

And really, the biggest thing to talk about is what a dumb son of a bitch Joe Rogan is.

Oh, I know; as one of the leaders of the Great White Grift, he doesn’t care what I think. He doesn’t care about what anybody thinks-he cares about getting paid. He’ll say whatever it takes to get attention and dollars, a fine example of the problems with dealing with a bullshitter.

He’ll say whatever, so long as his bank account gets fat. In this respect, he’s no different than Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin; all three of them are getting people killed so they can get rich and there’s no consequence for their bullshit.

On the other hand, that this is the big deal of the week is kinda nice. I can just say: fuck these assholes and move on.

The Best*: Wayfinder & Von Ebert

We begin the series at Wayfinder with their Cold IPA. It’s got a nice head & piney nose but nothing over the top. The beer is mellow, too-the finishing bitterness present, but not lingering. The Cold IPA has been designed as an easy drinking IPA and it succeeds at it.

Next was Freiheit, a festbier: basically an Oktoberfest ale. The nose is sweet but not too sweet-there’s a whiff of roast to it. The beer itself is full of malt, nice weight on the tongue and easy to drink.

At Von Ebert, I have to say, first: get your portions in order, folks. I should be able to order something that is bigger than 4oz of beer but isn’t 16 oz of beer.

That said: we start with the Volatile Substance IPA, their best known IPA. Pine nose, but the rest of the beer holds up-it isn’t too intense. It has a pine quality running through it but the bitterness doesn’t overrun everything. I’d say the Volatile Substance deserves its reputation. It’s drinkable in ways that many IPAs forget to be.

Last was the Baron of Bad News-a strong ale with a great name. The nose just doesn’t come up for me but: the beer itself has some pipe tobacco and molasses going on and it is a nice sipping beer. Maybe I don’t want a pint but a legit short pour instead of sample? I’m down.

Editing

Here’s a neat story about how they’re using CRISPR gene editing to manipulate yeast for beer. I’ve seen the yeasts available but have been reluctant to try them as I’m not sure I want the level of fruitiness they offer in beers I make.

But still, pretty cool!

Front Porch Chats #94/Second Pint PRM

So, we’re getting four COVID tests….per household.

~takes very, very long sip of Baerlic’s NUGS! IPA~

I swear to fuck, the only sin this country considers valid is poverty.

Which is pretty messed up, when you take in the larger picture, and notice that poverty is a policy choice that we’ve made.

I’m not talking about being poor-anyone can be bad with money and end up broke. That’s a temporary problem-or it should be.

I’m talking about systems that keep you from being able to access assistance if you need it, or that rich people have decided that you’ve gotten enough of, the skyrocketing cost of housing, the suppression of the minimum wage, the inability to tax wealthy people so things like healthcare and education programs are property funded.

And so on. Hell, even the systems that are available are so opaque to use that people go without that help! You know; the things that ensure you stay poor if you are, or horde wealth if you have it. It’s all just world fallacy bullshit.

But people are so into their myth that even when they have an experience that shows them how the deck can be stacked, they insist on holding to the beliefs that put them in a position of privilege. I get some of that; it’s good to be the king, right?

I just thought that one of the whole points of America was that we didn’t do…kings.

At least the beer is good-lighter mouthfeel and malt input makes for a spotlight of the hoppy bitterness, which is almost but not quite as bitter as my heart is toward the richest nation on earth.

Today’s second pint goes to the Portland Rescue Mission.

Pale Red

The nose has a sweeter malt flavor, but it’s not very bready.

That’s alright though because the flavors have more dimension. It’s still sweeter, but the caramel malts come up, and the finish is got that hop panache that keeps this beer on the balanced side. I probably didn’t go as strong on Vienna malts as I needed to, but that’s alright.

The Lemondrop hops don’t seem to have much of a footprint but I suppose that’s to be expected, since there was only half an ounce, at the last five minutes of the boil. Even with that, I was expecting a stronger hop finish here.

Still, it’s not bad, if on the maltier side. And the clarity for this one is pretty high for one of my beers! So there’s some things to be happy about.

Brew date 10/23/21

Steeping grains
5 lb Pale High Color malt
2 lb Barke Vienna
1 lb Munich

Fermentables: 4 lb extra light extract malt

Hops
@60 .5 oz Amarillo, Chinook
@30 .25 oz Amarillo, Chinook
@5 .25 oz Amarillo, Chinook, .5 oz Lemondrop

Yeast: Imperial’s Tartan (second use)

OG: 1.074

FG: 1.01

Super Cool

The local weekly paper has a story about a new internship via the Oregon Brewer’s Guild. This is awesome for multiple reasons but the two biggest are first, that it is there to help elevate underrepresented people in craft beer.

Getting more people in to the scene gives us better beer, full stop.

Second, and just as important, the internship is paid.

Which is how it should be. Work that is not paid isn’t work. It’s exploitative bullshit and I’m glad they aren’t doing that.

Front Porch Chats #93

I’d heard of Fast Fashion brewery and when I saw a can I figured I’d give them a shot….but it had to be a hazy. Sigh. The nose suggests the pithy version of a hazy, not a sweeter one, and the flavors are grapefruit and pith and…I am less thrilled.

One of these days, these breweries are going to figure out how to properly label their beer. I will probably be dead. Still, it will be nice when it happens.

And it’s not even that the I Wish I Was Taller double dry hopped IPA is bad. Someone probably would really enjoy this. It’s just not what I would want to pay for and I have now paid someone money for something I don’t want.

Speaking of things I don’t want (transitions are not my jam this week, people. I’m going late night comedy host) Insurrectionists.

Goddamnit, these people fall into two and only two camps. They are running some part of the Great White Grift, or they are the dumbest motherfuckers.

I’m not saying there isn’t any overlap, because you have to be pretty fucking dumb to make your grift the destabilization of the United States.

Even if it works when what? Because it seems to me that if it works, you got a far, far bigger problem on your hands than the money you get will solve.

Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I don’t find out. However, I can’t say that I’m hopeful. For the grift to fail, people who have an opportunity to stamp the grift out would have to do things. People who have the opportunity to fix broken systems would have to fix them.

It’s work, and I really wish that the people who are responsible for doing that would would do it.

Because the assholes are telling us what they want to do. This isn’t any Illuminati shit. They’ll do it if we let them.

And I’m tired of us letting them.

Seasonal

This article on Sierra Nevada’s Celebration ale is fascinating to me.

First there’s the historical elements, about how the beer was built. I didn’t know that Celebration was a fresh hop ale, for example.

However, the interviews also go into the nuanced parts of making the beer, about how hops will change over time (I didn’t know this) and how getting them at a particular window can have a big impact on flavor. Even changing the hopping process by a day has an impact.

Finally, it’s just an enthusiastic account of how they made and now make the Celebration. It’s great to see people still thrilled to make a beer that so well established, now.

Where Yeast Comes From (Sorta)

Here’s a really neat post, talking about how they’re using gene sequencing to find out where yeasts that make beer originated geographically.

Using ale yeast makes sense-beer is a centuries old food, and humans would have an interest in utilizing it, much in the same way that we kept avocados around. So being able to trace it can help fill in bits and pieces of our ancient history-which I think is cool.

Front Porch Chats #92/Second Pint D&M

Let’s talk about the problem with numbers. Specifically, experience numbers and conceptual numbers.

Don’t worry, I brought a beer. Wander Brewing’s Correspondent foreign export stout, to be specific.

Earlier this week someone I know reposted a thought that went: “No matter how long I live, I won’t get over the fact that during the pandemic, the majority of people were unwilling to help.”

And I took exception to that: I don’t believe that most people were or are unwilling to help out; instead I believe that a small group have been terrible and that group has been spotlit and had their voices amplified so things seemed terrible, and I said I as much.

Her reply was: “You clearly don’t work in food service.”

What can I say to that? It isn’t wrong, but that reply is all about insisting on their experience and how it is the Truth.

I want to be clear here.

If one person treats you badly, every day-whether it is a different person or not-then eventually, what can you say except that you are being bullied? If you cannot go a single day without being accosted then your brain is going to tell you a survival truth: that most people are terrible and won’t do the minimum to help.

Which, given the state of service workers, nurses, any customer service jobs there is only one conclusion: they aren’t wrong.

And you cannot argue with an experience number, especially a negative one. Human brains are wired for survival as such that negative experiences last longer. My attempt to reframe that experience was unsuccessful and part of the reason for that, is the conceptual number problem.

Because there’s a point where a number gets large enough that most people just cannot imagine it. For example, 245,000,000. Most of us have never seen 245 million of anything, much less had the personal experience of that number.

But that’s roughly the number of people in the USA who have been fully vaccinated.

Or, 63%.

In Multnomah County, where both my pal and I live, that number goes up to 77%. (Or roughly 630,000 people. Again: how does someone really grok a number that big?)

But both of those numbers represent a majority.

They are just incredibly difficult to experience.

That’d be the opposite of this beer, which is pushing hard on the roasted elements of a stout. The Correspondent is nearly ashy, it’s so roasted. There’s only a tiny bit of sweetness to keep it all together but I’d say this is a quality beverage. Drink ’em if you got ’em.

Now, I don’t know how to reconcile the experience number and the conceptual one. I do know that it’s within our power to make everyone’s experience with us better, and it is within our control to help each other out.

Today’s second pint goes to Dinner & a Movie.