Trout Slayer, Big Sky Brewing Company

 Before I started my review of Trout Slayer, I took a peek at what other people thought of it.  Of all the words used to describe it, one seemed to stick out.  Wheat.  A page of Ratebeer with ten reviews produced the word sixteen times.  The first ten reviews on BeerAdvocate clocked twenty!  This is even more surprising when you take into account most of these reviews follow the basic ASTMO format.  That format usually results in words like fruity, citrus, bitter, grassy, etc.  What does it mean for something to taste like wheat?  It sounds so benign, like ordering fried rice and having the dominant flavor actually be the rice.  On the other hand, the Italians would argue in favor of the main ingredient being a large portion of the flavor.  The question here is whether this Montana beer is Chinese or Italian.  That wasn’t too much of a logical leap, was it?

It's German.

By the way, ASTMO stands for Appearance, Smell, Taste, Mouthfeel and Overall.  It’s used by many as a standard format, ensuring all the bases are covered and making it easy to compare reviews.  I personally like substituting Appearance and Smell with Pour and Aroma.  Not only does it make the acronym classier, but it turns it into PATMO, which just sounds much more revelatory.

Hang in there Johnny!  Just write what you see!

But enough with the musings over a beer’s ethnicity and biblical references, on to Big Sky Brewing's Trout Slayer.

That head looks pretty fine.  Although it dissipated quite rapidly.  It still exhibits all the smooth, small bubbliness of the style, just at a half centimeter thickness.  It smells... like wheat.  I still don’t know what that means, though.  Any esters are sharp and faint.  Okay, who used lager yeast on a wheat beer?  Seriously, how did you make the beer so clear, crisp and lager-y?  It even tickles my nose when I burp!  I bet it’s the stronger than average hop notes for a wheat beer.  I guess weird things happen out in the wilderness of Montana where nobody’s looking.  (With fewer than 7 people per square mile, that’s understandable.)  It’s not bad, I think.  I don’t really know.  No!  I do know!  It is not bad!  Past that I don’t know, though.  Hmm...  Give it a try and let me know what you think.  Really, I need to know where to put my fingers.

Sunday School: Alcohol Absorption

In this blog I mention many things to describe how enjoyable a beer is.  Bitter hops, sweet malts, funky yeasts, interesting adjuncts, etc.  There is an aspect of beer that is often ignored in reviews of good beer, however.  That would be alcohol.  The intoxicating qualities are often overlooked lest the drinker be seen as the stereotypical frat bro looking for one, trashy thing.  We drink for flavor!  Not drunkenness!  (That word has three ns?)  But this is not completely true.  The effect of alcohol on our bodies is part of the whole experience.  The problem is that alcohol, like fire, can move from friend to enemy quite easily.  If you look at a chart of alcohol’s impact on a person from .01 to .5 BAC, you will be left with an image of Ron Burgundy drinking a Miller High Life at his desk.  (If not, here’s some help with that.)  It is very important to remain the master of your own inebriation so that it doesn’t drain your ability to taste and smell what you’re drinking while making you less stable.  Understanding how your body absorbs alcohol is a good start on your journey towards buzz control.  Here are some tidbits you may have heard before with a few words on their veracity.

Carbonated drinks speed absorption
Carbon dioxide passes quickly into the bloodstream, so when it is present in a beverage like champagne or mixed drinks it acts sort of like the detergent that grabs the grease off of your dishes, dragging alcohol with it wherever it goes.

Eating bread slows absorption
Bread does not “soak it up” like you’ve heard people say, but eating a large meal of any food will slow the alcohol’s absorption.  Your body likes to hold food in the stomach to digest before passing it on to the gastrointestinal tract.  The intestines are the most efficient absorbers of alcohol, accounting for around 80% of the total.  The stomach accounts for closer to 15%.  Therefore, by getting stuck in the stomach, the alcohol is more slowly absorbed, leading to a 9-24% reduction in peak intoxication.

Shots are the quickest way to get drunk
This is actually false because of what I just explained.  The most efficient absorption occurs at concentrations between 10% and 30%.  Under 10%, the amount of non-alcohol liquids slow the process of gastric emptying.  Over 30% irritates your pyloric sphincter, leading to an increase in mucus production that fully delays gastric emptying.  This works by altering the osmolarity in the intestinal tract.  Osmolarity is a complicated chemistry term that required a consultation with my experts panel to understand.  I feel really smart now that I know what it is, which may be the point considering 20% of my experts told me it existed simply to make people who know how to use it sound smart.  So I probably shouldn’t share with you because then I’d lose my advantage.

Bigger people take more to get drunk
Your blood alcohol content is measured as a percentage, so the more fluid you have in your body, the more alcohol it takes to reach a certain level of BAC.  Like how China’s nominal GDP is over twice that of Germany’s but because China’s population is so much larger, Germany’s GDP per capita is four times that of China’s.  China needs a lot more money to be just as rich.  This effect isn’t just between different sizes of people though.  Muscle has more water than fat, so if two people weigh the same, the person with the lower fat content will be affected less because the alcohol is spread out more.

Girls can’t handle as much alcohol
The difference in gender is mostly accounted for by what I just explained.  Women generally have a higher fat content than men, so the alcohol concentration is higher.  Also, women eliminate alcohol more rapidly, so their inebriation is shorter and more intense.  I guess if you likened drinking to eating spicy food, men would experience intoxication more like tabasco and women more like wasabi.

Older people can’t handle as much alcohol
This one also comes down to water content because as we age, we become little geriatric raisins.  But elimination slows down too, so the effects last longer.

I’m still good to drive
No you’re not.  Some people will say they can drive because they drink often and are used to it.  While their liver will work a little bit faster (before it dies) nothing is changing the normal absorption or BAC.  If they use the “I’m a big guy” line, be wary.  If he’s over 240 lbs, four beers in an hour will still land him over the legal driving limit.

Tank Seven, Boulevard Brewing Company

2012 is not turning out to be a good year for farmers.  Droughts in the U.S. and Europe are damaging crop yields and putting strain on food prices.  Amateur gardeners everywhere sport forlorn faces as they scour their little plots of independence looking for dinner.

I had pizza.

The only people that seem to be having a bounteous harvest are those who reap a series of zeros and ones either via farmville on Facebook or through any number of the surprisingly vast trove of agrarian pursuits online.  But even though our toiling is producing meagre results, it is still mid August, the traditional Belgian récoltes fin de l’été, or late summer harvest.  For me, and for this blog, that means it’s time for saison.  Meaning literally “season” in French, saison was brewed in Autumn or Winter to be ready in late summer.  Workers gathering the wheat would drink saison on their breaks because it is refreshing and smooth.  One of the best summer styles.  Today I’m trying Boulevard Brewing Company’s Tank Seven, my third from their Smokestack Series.

Such a lovely head.  Big bubbles make it quick to dissipate but it doesn’t go away entirely.  Maybe it’s two-headed.  This beer is often described as cloudy, but I feel another term is necessary here.  What appear to be thousands of hefty floaters throughout the glass make me think less of the sky before a storm and more of the sky at anytime on Coruscant.  Belgian yeast strains produce some of the most enjoyable smells in the world of beer and their work can clearly be sensed here.  However, a certain sharpness keeps Tank Seven from being overtly funky, fruity or nutty.  The amarillo hops bring a tartness Americans so often expect from craft beers and the wheat and corn help smooth it out for softer palates.  Meanwhile, the relatively unnoticeable 8% ABV helps anybody enjoy it.  The juxtaposition of a grapefruity bite and wheaty mouthfeel makes this beer perfect for late summer, when the sustained heat is at its peak but you still have to go to work.

Tank Seven is a delightful beer with something for almost everyone.  It truly takes an anomaly to do multiple thing well, so even though this year’s récoltés fin de l’été hasn’t been one of générosité, don’t let that stop you from enjoying this saison from Kansas City.

Sunday School: Three-tier Distribution System

In the laws of physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  In the laws of historical governance, the stipulation of equality quite often proves to be an unattainable goal.  The American experiment with prohibition is a very good example of this.  Faced with the actions of men overindulging themselves, the people decided to ban all intoxicating liquors.  Nowadays the response would be more subtle, like Scotland’s new fifty pence minimum per unit of alcohol or simply cracking down on volume promotions at bars.  Instead, a full ban was put in place and led to thirteen years of thirst-fueled crime.

Now although the 21st amendment put an end to prohibition, the legislative legacy of this teetotaling period is still very much alive today.  The vast majority of U.S. states have some form of a three-tiered distribution system for alcohol.  For the most part, producers are legally barred from selling directly to consumers, or even retailers.  It must first pass through a distributor before reaching the bar tap or store shelf.  This government mandated extra layer in the distribution chain seems peculiar for a country that espouses a love for laissez faire, anti-regulatory rhetoric.  Indeed, a lot of smaller brewers lose out in the patchwork of state-enforced middlemen.  Citizens of Illinois can thank abused legislation for their lack of brews from New Glarus and (between ‘06 and ’07) Bell’s.

There are signs that this system could be weakening.  In 2005, Granholm v. Heald ensured that any exceptions states make for small in-state producers must be applied to all producers regardless of where they’re based.  And last year Washington passed a bill that dealt a heavy blow to the traditional three-tier system by eliminating the government’s active role as one or more of the tiers.

Now we have to be fair.  A lot of the problems the current system produces or exacerbates were not on the horizon when the laws were being drafted in 1919.  Prior to prohibition, many producers owned or had heavy influence over the bars.  Bar operators were often pressured to sell more product, which in this case is not a good situation.  The three-tier system was an attempt to remove the economic incentive for binge drinking.  As a reaction to overindulgence, it is much closer to “equal and opposite” than outright prohibition, so it has survived a lot longer.  But with the explosion of microbreweries, it is reaching the end of its useful life.

Wake up Dead, Left Hand Brewing Company

Man, it’s been a while.  I must have gotten distracted.  Damn ADHD!  I can’t help it, the doctor said it’s real.  Speaking of it’s, I recently sent a message to a friend and typed it’s when I meant to type its.  Texting can be a pain, especially when driving.  One summer, I was away from my car for over a month and when I came back to it, driving felt really weird.  I bet that’s how someone from several centuries ago would feel if you brought them to our time and drove them around in a car.  That seem like a silly thing to do though.  “We’ve finally mastered time travel!  Now to go ride in a car!”  I wonder how long it’ll take for cars to become obsolete.  What am I doing here?  Oh yeah, a post on ADHD.

No worries on copyright here,
our tax dollars paid for this!

Well, not really.  I’m supposed to be here for beer.  How can I stay on one beer for a whole post?  I have ADHD.  That means I have no control over my focusing capabilities!  If only I could find a beer as multidirectional as my totally not made-up affliction...  I’ve got it!  Wake up Dead, by Left Hand Brewing!

The bottle kind of looks like it has tiny horns

The head has a whipped cream feel that triggers thoughts of pumpkin pie.  It’s accompanied by an aroma full of dark fruit and chocolate.  The carbonation seems rather low, providing a smooth quality that helps the beer go down.  It has a sharp bite, but there’s also a markedly sweet malt character.  This complexity probably comes from the diverse grain bill of seven different malts.  You have to be pretty confident to toss in that many types because you run the risk of producing a beer that’s too busy.  Wake Up Dead keeps it pretty well under control, but you do feel a little scatterbrained when you drink it.  “What’s that over there?  And this over here?  And something around that area?”  Setting out to identify each individual flavor and how it blends into the whole would make a great work out for your mind.  Move over puzzles, we’re gonna combat Alzheimer's with Imperial Stout!

Moral of the story, ADHD will save you from Alzheimer's. Or maybe this beer will. Either way I'm in the clear!