Category Archives: Beer

Yeah, There Are Things About Portland That Suck

Posted on March 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

A co-worker of mine pointed me to this site yesterday, Things About Portland That Suck. I’m slowly working my way through it as free time shows itself. It’s fairly obviously inspired from the sensation from a couple years ago, Stuff White People Like. (Incidentally, reading that entire book out loud to your wife actually works pretty well — so many opportunities for weird voices.) So, some of the Portland stuff is right on the money. For an example, I point you to #32: Happy Hour:

In the professional world, a work day never ends at 5. For the few times you have left before 5:30, I can only imagine the sheer guilt consuming you. Leaving before projects have been completed to provide the body with sustenance* will add to your unhappiness. Why are the old popular happy hour joints suddenly shortening their hours to 4-6? We can blame this decrease on the general popularity of happy hour, Californians, or point our finger at the Oregon Restaurant Association.

Preach on, brother! Yeah, I’d love to hit more happy hours. The 4-6 thing makes it nearly impossible for us, though.

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Good News for IPA Drinkers

Posted on February 8, 2010 | 1 Comment

Now, I like IPA (India pale ale, which is a light, extremely hoppy type of beer, for the non-beer drinkers reading this), but I’m more of a porter or stout kind of beer drinker. I have some friends that are much bigger IPA fans than me, though, so this news should make them pretty happy:

A beer a day could keep brittle bones at bay. That’s because beer is rich in silicon, an element that has been linked to bone health. But what type of beer should you drink?

Previous studies have shown that silicon can aid bone growth, and that moderate beer drinking is linked to increased bone density. Now Charles Bamforth and Troy Casey at the University of California, Davis, have discovered how much silicon each type of beer contains.

They analysed 100 beers from around the world and found that the brews contained between 6.4 and 56 milligrams of silicon per litre, with an average of 29 milligrams per litre. Looking at the silicon levels in beer’s ingredients, they found that most of it comes from the husks of malted barley.

The pair found that lighter-coloured beers made from pale malted barley and hops, such as pale ales, are richest in silicon, while low-alcohol beers contain the least, along with stouts, porters and wheat beers.

Maybe I’ll up my light/dark ratio a bit. You know, for my health. You can never start too early to keep your bones nice and strong! Thanks to Instapundit for the news filtering for the day.

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Europe’s Booze Belts

Posted on January 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

I discovered the Strange Maps blog a few weeks ago and just can’t get enough of it. Here’s the latest post, which breaks down Europe into three alcohol belts. As you might suspect, there’s three of them: wine, beer, and vodka, which get progressively cooler. Identifying more with the British/Scottish culture, and living in the microbrew capital of the United States (Portland, Oregon!), I’m all about the beer belt. So, this probably is my favorite part of the post:

For cultural reasons, however, the Vodka Belt has been losing ground to the Beer Belt. Scandinavians tend to drink more beer than before (although possibly this doesn’t mean they drink less wodka). Maybe this is due to the perception of beer correlating more with ‘core European’ behaviour (as it is the preferred alcoholic beverage of Britain, Germany and other influential and centrally positioned countries). That might explain the emergence in Poland, some years ago, of a Beer-Lovers’ Party (which actually won seats in the Polish Parliament in the early 1990s). Beer has since surpassed wodka as the most consumed type of alcohol in Poland.

That’s what we need in the USA! A Beer-Lover’s Party! It does sound much more fun that the Tea Party, doesn’t it?

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Posted in Beer, Politics

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Everybody’s Brewing Gets Oregonian Love (Kind Of)

Posted on March 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

You know, I’m from White Salmon, still visit family there quite regularly, and I still haven’t dropped by this place. Or I should say, at least since it’s been open (I did get to look around inside before it was open). Sad, but on the bright side, they still don’t have their own beer available to drink. That’s a bummer. It’s great to see them get some digital ink on the Oregonian’s web site, even if it is a beer blog, and not, you know, paper.

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Brewpub in White Salmon? Yes!

Posted on January 29, 2009 | Leave a comment

I grew up in the small town of White Salmon, Washington, in the Columbia River Gorge. Small, meaning about 2000 people in the town, and perhaps 10,000 in the entire mid-Columbia area. Not a town where you’d expect a brewpub to appear. Yet, it has. I’ve known about it for almost a year now, and they’ve been open for about half of that. I don’t live in the area, though, so I haven’t had a chance to check them out for myself as of yet. I was happy to see a review online in a fairly established Northwest beer blog. Pretty heartening. I can’t wait to try their own brews once they’re available (aren’t they pretty late already?).

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