lukeiamyourfather was visiting from vermont and, like db, is a beer connoisseur. naturally, we ventured over to our neighborhood sam adams brewery for a tour.
i learned so much about beer making. sadly, i was unable to retain more than about 5% of what was learned. but frequent brewery tours should help me piece it all together. and in fact, its possible that heading to the sam adams website might do that a little quicker.
i was surprised to learn that hops are part of the cannabis family. how the hell is beer legal when pot is not? not that i care - im just saying. db and i concurred that brewing a beverage from mj would taste like ass.
apparently sam adams is the only american beer allowed by germany as an import. germany has super strick rules about beer purity. beer must be pure, ie only using 4 ingredients, to make it into the country. im going to consider them the "ultimate connoisseurs" because of this. those 4 ingredients are barley, hops, yeast and water. nothing more, nothing less. although our guide insisted there is a secret 5th ingredient sam adams didn't tell the germans about... love.
we got to try 3 sam adams beers on the tour.
since i do not like or drink beer, i just had tiny sips. it was important to me to
i determined that if db ordered a chocolate beer someplace, or was drinking a bottle of it at home, i would have a sip. thats a pretty huge deal for me. im not one to steal sips of beer from folks. in fact, i dont like beer.
upon returning home from the tour, i was telling lukeiamyourfather and db about the good'ol days of my youth when beer commercials were cartoons with bears and offensive native american references (Hamms). and of course, motorcycles whose noise made the name of a particular beer brewed in seattle (Rainier). we spent a considerable time trying to find these commercials online, but could only find references to them - like the one in the journal entry i am writing right now. i wish you could all see them - they were interesting and funny. interesting because it shows how far we've come with racism and marketing, and funny because Rainier Beer had some hilarious commercials. you can still see three of the oldish Rainier commercials by clicking on the righthand side "RainierVision." you will not, however, find the motorcycle one.
previously:
weather or not - 2006-03-07
My Flight - 2006-03-02
poetree in motion - 2006-02-28
ultimate personality test - 2006-02-25
limerick e-trip - 2006-02-22