Speaking of Beer

I was hoping to have show 30 up today, but it looks like that ain’t gonna happen. Look for it around Monday or so. Meanwhile, enjoy these beer-related tidbits provided to me by Eric. Just click on the hypertext and be swept away to a beery story!

Miller tap on Coors keg equals state fine (could anyone tell the difference?)

Beer festival runs out of ale

Do you have Dale in a can?

Latrobe brewery produces first beer in a year

Summer beers

How strong is that beer?

Stone Ruination IPA to be available in “snack size bottles”

For beer fun & news, just follow the links! Thanks to Eric for all of these.

Pizza beer: story here video here

Gluten-free yeast

American Craft Beer Week (going on NOW!)

Go green with New Belgium

Fruity Michelob Ultra (not that that’s a good thing…)

There’s more to spring than bock beer, as made abundantly clear by the great Jonathan Coulton’s ode to getting back to nature, “First of May.” And now you can hear a hilarious version produced by a bunch of podcasters* á là Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” recorded as a tribute to the late great Joe Murphy, a huge Coulton fan. I imagine Joe’s celebrating spring the right way out on the Elysium fields about now…

Catch some podcasters In flagrante delicto here.

Thanks to Paul Fischer and Phil Rossi for putting this together!

*Heather Welliver, Phil Rossi, Martha Holloway, Debbie from Mesa, Barb Fischer, Bill Shunn, Rich Sigfrit, Jared Axelrod, Tim Callender, Jack Mangan, Mathew Wayne Selznick and Command Line

Thanks to ditto for this one. Mad science skilz are used to decipher beer foam. Check it out here!

SoB Stalwartâ„¢ Eric, as well as some other fine folks, sent me this bunch of links to cool beer stuff:

Do you, like myself, suffer from “setter-downer syndrome”? You know, you unthingkingly set something important, like your beer, down at some random location and spend the next ten minutes frantically trying to find it? Never fear, the Beer Pager is here. You’ll never swig out of a bottle that has been used as an ashtray again!

Do you find your nice clean pint glasses insufficient to squeeeze every iota of enjoyment from your beer-drinking experience? The kind folks at the Boston Beer Company (brewers of the Sam Adams beers) have you covered. They’ve engineered the ultimate beer glass, jam-packed with features designed to maximize your quaffing pleasure!

Do you love beer so much you want to move beyond simply drinking it? Well Men’s Health magazine is ahead of you. They’ve compiled a list of 32 Things You Can Do With Beer other than pour it down your gullet. Stop snoring, trick your miserly landlord, or catch mice with your favorite beverage! Thanks to Eric’s lovely wife Wendy for this one.

Do you enjoy some blues with your beer? Well, the Flying Dog Brewery in Denver Colorado is running a contest to send one lucky winner to the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival on September 14 -16, 2007. Entering is easy, just fill out this online form by May 13st! And for beer and blues any time, take a listen to my beercast homies at Big Foamy Head.

And you homebrewers out there, are you having trouble coming up with a snappy name for your latest creation? To your rescue comes the Random Beer Name Generator. I think SoB’s next beer will be Ruby Groundhog Day Rauchbier. Or maybe Big Bird’s Salty Red Porpoise Koelsch. Or possibly Shitszu-Mojo Maerzen. I could do this all day….
Thanks to Wesley for this one.

If you enjoyed the little teaser in Show 27 about pairing food with your beer, then you might want to explore this link. It’s basically an advertisement for the book Beer & Food: An American History by Bob Skilnik. I haven’t read the book, but I gotta say, it looks right up my alley. Has anybody out there read it and if so can you give any feedback?

Today I lost a friend and colleague in podcasting. My first experience with podcasting was sharing a microphone with Joe Murphy. If you haven’t already, please check out the Joe Murphy Memorial Fund website, and see what you can do about helping out with final expenses and with funding research into leiomyosarcoma, the cancer that took him from the master of the snarky zinger to a memory in four short months.

He didn’t like beer, but somehow that never bothered me. I think I’ll go have a root beer now…

Turns out folks like their beer.

Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator - The best home videos are here

If you’re blessed with an eclectic beer distributor in the Western United States, look for these. Otherwise, go out and find the best beer you can possibly find in a can.

Mudshark Dry Heat Hefeweizen [alternatives: Pyramid Hefeweizen, Shiner Hefeweizen]

and

Dale’s Pale Ale from Oskar Blues Brewing Co. [alternatives: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Three Floyd’s Alpha King, any west-coast IPA]

If you haven’t divined the theme yet, think about the shelves lining the walls of your dad’s basement den.