Yellow Rose Brewing Update

Yellow Rose is finished now, and boy do I like it. I'd read quite a bit about peaches in beer, and how many were disappointed with how subtle the final flavor is. Of course, this excited me, because I wanted a beer that tasted like beer, not fruit. Well Yellow Rose has definitely come through, and I'm certain to make it for the wedding. It has a very full mouth feel and body (as it should being a Maibock), with some light biscuit and strong malt flavor, plus the subtle nuttiness of the pecan. The fruit comes through in a nice blend with the mild Strizzlespalt noble hops, and there's a warm aftertaste from the 6.6% ABV. And I feel like the fruit also introduces some mildly tart acidity, very different from the bitterness of the hops, and a great counter to the sometimes cloying maltiness of bock beers. It pours a rich peach-orange color, with a huge, fluffy white head that lasts for quite a while (sounding good yet?). There is only a slight protein haze (thanks to a "proprietary" anti-pectin process I came up with). Next batch I'll bump up the pecan a bit more and back off on the Carapils. As a panty and britches-dropping brew (in honor of its namesake), I think it's a big success. Yellow Rose FTW.

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Tito's Handmade Vodka and Beer

I was thinking of visiting Tito's distillery next time I'm up near Austin, but it looks like Tito (I shit you not) Beveridge has gone out of his way to avoid telling us where he is, much less offered distillery tours. From photos, I'd guess it's somewhere Northwest of Austin toward Lake Travis, up off 2222 or 290. From the website:

We used to [give tours] before we had insurance. Now our insurance company doesn't allow us to, but you can watch the video piece the Discovery Channel did on us."

Damn you, insurance industry, damn you all to hell! (And thank you for the Ike remittance.)

For those of you who haven't had the chance to drink Tito's, it's pretty damn awesome. Super clean, with full mouthfeel, and no harshness, astringency, or chemical flavor. It should be said that I'm not a big Vodka fan -- I think Vodka should be felt and not tasted -- and so I like to mix it or infuse it (chili pepper and honey? yum). Tito's fits the bill for me.

Another great part of the website is the video section, where you see some local New 8 Austin pieces on Tito circa 1995 (the Big Hill Country Hair era). He's a petrochemical engineer, and built the pot still himself, using old photos of prohibition-era raids. The Tito's venture started off as a planned 10-million dollar whiskey distillery, and shifted to a back-porch vodka plant after the investors failed to shell out and Tito spoke with liquor store owners who suggested Vodka was where it's at. Elsewhere he relates that it took him a full year operating the still before he was willing to taste anything that came out of it (Oh tricksy methyl alcohol, with your single carbon group and your light-footed, ne'er-do-well ways... Why don't you put some weight on like your sister, Ethyl?).

Tito's is distilled exclusively from corn, not from potatoes (as is often assumed) or from rye and wheat, as are the majority of vodkas today (according to Wikipedia, anyway). So if Vodka can be made from corn, rye, or wheat, what separates it from whiskeys? It turns out, nothing, according to David Wonderich. Vodka is just distilled more times -- taking out more of the impurities (like color and taste). Hence, if Tito decided to run the stuff through his still a few less than six times, he'd have a creditable Moonshine. Wonderich adds that there was also once a practical distinction between Slavic and non-Slavic distilled liquor; they liked to use charcoal filters, apparently, while us Anglos preferred wood aging.

But of more interest to me is how vodka's emergence as the bête noire of American mixology (Choclatini, anyone?) echoes the ascendancy of lagers like Budweiser and Miller. These clear and clean American lagers rose in the wake of Prohibition and near beer. People had gone so long without drinking the real stuff, they lost a taste for stronger, more flavorful beer. Combine that with advertising which emphasized clarity, simplicity, and freshness as forms of sophistication, and American dark lagers and IPAs were doomed. Similarly, it seems American whiskey was largely diverted into explosives production during WWII -- millions of barrels of booze ended up in bombs and torpedoes. This exhaused the supply of properly aged whiskey in the US, so after the war, distillers had only a dram of the old stuff lying around and tons of fresh hooch. The solution: mix it. This young stuff didn't have the richness or flavor of the old; but inasmuch as half the drinkers had been away drinking schnapps, vodka, Scotch, or more often, nothing, this didn't bother many. Smoothness was prized above richness, "Canadian" whiskeys rose in stature, and with them, Vodka -- which made a virtue of its flavorless, and hence ultra-sophisticated (00svelt) taste.

All of which is to say that, from McCormick's to Kettle One, Vodka is the lawnmower beer of the liquor world. I'd hesitate to throw crafted booze like Tito's and Chopin in the mix. But if Tito ever wants to start a sideline selling the Texas whiskey he'd always dreamed about, I'll be a huge and enthusiastic supporter (as would, I suspect, most other Texans). Might I suggest a Rye?

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Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Pulitzer Nominee

I think they're stealing copy from the Daily Show. Or some erudite eighth-graders. Wow:



The closer:

And in Cavuto's defense, if you are planning simultaneous teabagging accross the United States, you are going to need a "Dick Armey."

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Christopher Walken Twits Again

Thought I'd render this into a video via XtraNormal. Enjoy?



Note: To clarify, everything the guy says is from Chris Walken's twitter account.

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On The Wagon

Londoner Nina Caplan finds a month of sobriety not to her tastes:

So I did it. It’s not difficult. Just dull. I felt unsociable. I missed the glow of self-satisfaction that alcohol brings, and the clear division it offers between work and recreation. I would cook dinner for a friend, watch her down half a bottle of wine and feel guilty for not joining her. (It was like when I gave up smoking years ago: I hated being unable to provide the comfort of cigarettes to others.) I missed feeling like part of a tradition of literary self-destruction.

... How does one negotiate the cracks in social discourse without alcohol?

This jibes with something I've long sensed about academics. We're a well-lubricated bunch; conferences and talks flow with wine and cash bars. And if we didn't drink, all of that civility would collapse under the weight of our acute idiosyncrasies.

Caplan sums:

So what else did I learn after a month of stone-cold sobriety? That it's over-rated. There is a reason why people drink proportionally more the less they like themselves: alcohol takes you, as so much slang for drunkenness has it, out of your head. I’m no self-loathing Hemingway or Parker, but a month is a long time in your own uninterrupted company. Nobody wants to spend that much time with me--not even me. This is despite the fact that I found abstinence to be good for my self-esteem, not the other way round. People keep asking me if I feel healthier. I don't, particularly. But I do feel smug.

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Rube Goldberg, This is Your Life!

Awesome. (Happy Easter.)

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Cause in Texas, that's how we do

Via the good people over at Burnt Orange report, the Austin American Statesman decided to head into the Texas house and ask our duly elected representatives what they've accomplished halfway through the current legislative session. Can you guess the answer?



They only meet once every two years, so it's not like there's any urgency.

Of course, this doesn't mean they're too busily un-busy to take up a bill making it legal to carry concealed handguns on state campuses.

I love Texas (I grew up here) but this cowboy complex is getting fucking ridiculous. Never mind that half those legislators are suburban out-of-staters. They couldn't cinch a horse, but are convinced a return to the wild west would solve our violent crime problem. Well here's a quick test: was homicide more or less common in 1860's Texas or 2000's? Robert Dykstra, in Body Counts and Murder Rates: The Contested Statistics of Western America, endorses a study which calculated homicides in Texas in the (particularly violent) post-reconstruction era as just under 50 per 100,000. And during calmer times, the book suggests, averages for western states were more in the 20-30 range. Compare that to current rates -- around 6 per 100,000.

But by all means, let's go back to the 19th century. Let's allow concealed handguns everywhere they might thwart rampages: elementary schools, liquor stores, synagogues, sports arenas, bars, hold'em tourneys. I've got a Derringer that I've been dying to tuck into a stocking. Maybe the Texans can talk the Giants into trading Plaxico Burris -- he can kick it with Carl Landry.

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Everything is so easy for Maureen

First, I should cop: I've been wanting to write a post about Maureen Dowd for some time, and while this isn't the most opportune moment (Wednesday's column was not a particularly egregious offender) I'm grumpy from a night of no sleep and need a punching bag.

The strange thing about my dislike for Dowd is that I feel like I should love her. She's a liberal columnist, at the NYTimes, who's of Irish Catholic heritage and has a penchant for cocktails. She should be a living, fire-breathing version of Katherine Hepburn in Woman of the Year. Never mind her moral grandstanding during the Clinton years -- after all, I didn't read the times that much back then -- or her early swooning for Bush's machismo.

I guess what really bothers me is not her scattershot liberalism, but the breezy insouciance of the columns themselves. I'm struggling to think of a column I've read that left any long-lasting impression (beyond the back of my throat). Her current column, "Striking it Poor," is a decent example. (Let's leave aside the bathetic names assigned to her columns. That may be the work of a copy editor who yet manages to do service to the other columnists of the Opinion page.) In this week's column, Dowd goes to Nevada with some girlfriends to visit a gold camp and do some quick panhandling. This serves for the through-line of a quick survey of High Sierra and our current economic crisis (with an off-hand reference to Chaucer thrown in). They decide panhandling's too much work for too little reward, and so retire for Ramos Gin Fizzes and a Lemon Drop. (After reading each of her columns and reaching the same conclusion, I wish I had the same option.)

The largest flaw in her writing, albeit, a common one for opinion columns, is her heavy-handed adoption of a central poetic conceit. If you're John Donne, this works. In mortal writing, it's wearying. A good essay does not know where it's going from the beginning; it does not end where it begins (see Montaigne). Coherence is not a virtue in itself (for that matter, nor does a central conceit guarantee coherence, as this column proves). In Dowd's defense, I can't imagine having to push out two columns a week on varied topics, and trying to stay funny and interesting. But I wish that "interesting" meant a more engaging tone of conversation than found on the chaise lounges of Sex in the City. (Second cop: I can't stand Sex in the City either, and it's just now occurred to me this may be because the voice-overs are like Dowdian tweets.) And lest you think I've a basic animus toward modern examples of the New Cocktail Woman, I've been a fan of Ana Marie Cox for some time.

But don't take my word for it. Here's a game you can play at home: The next time there's a Dowd column, read the headline. Scribble down what you imagine it will be about, and what the take-away will be. Then read the column. I'll bet you nail it. And a week later, it's all you will remember.

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