Bridgeport's 20

Happy birthday to Bridgeport Brewery on their 20th Anniversary. I can’t speak highly enough of their IPA, which I consider an all time favorite. Their other beers are also terrific, especially Old Knucklehead and Porter. It really doesn’t hurt that the brewery/pub are in a gorgeous building, and serve some of the best pizza and ceasar salad in town either. And the casks – two magnificent casks!

The Oregonian has a nice article that celebrates the anniversary well, and treat’s Portland as the beer mecca that it is.

Low Gravity Mystery Solved

The mystery of the low original gravity of my last two beers has been solved! It turns out the 7 gallon brew kettle that Michelle got me is actually a 10 gallon (40 quart) kettle. The last two beers I brewed had lackluster gravities, including my cream stout, whose OG was under 1.030!

After purchasing a 1 gallon jug of distilled H2O, I filled the kettle to 5 gallons and marked a line. The line was half way up the kettle. Do I feel stupid? Yes, I do.

Well, as this new batch starts, the OG should be much closer to the estimated OG. Lets hope it tastes better too!

Govt. Like a Brewery?

Denver Post Columnist Al Lewis thinks government should be run like a brewery. A quick read of his column doesn’t actually include any reasons that have any merit, so I suppose we can assume that Al is a Coors man.

The breweries that are successful, like Coors, end up that way from years of making compromises, most of which result in a crappy product. The columnist attributes Coors’ shaking its white-trash image to Peter, who has brought some class back to the brewery by changing its sales tactics. Now they objectify women in their advertisements. Wait a second….

He also points out that Coors should provide stable leadership because its hard to be a megalomaniac while sipping a brewski. I guess sipping a brewski only leads to cool problems, like pollution, union busting, racism, rape, domestic violence and crappy beer.

We all are aware that many of the founding fathers were ale drinkers. However, they didn’t brew themselves. Usually it was the women in their lives that brewed, on only smaller batches, and only ale, not sub-lager. I’m not buying the connection.

Alcohol's effects

There’s a story over at CNN on the long term affects of heavy drinking. It appears that heavy social drinking has the same neurological effects as clinical alcoholism.

There is a saying among some beer drinkers – 60 beers per month is still healthy. If that is true, its something to max out at. I think I’m still well within healthy range, but I’ll keep better track now. I don’t want brain damange.