YouTube Tuesday: The cure for what ales you…

Today's the big day, guys. The big, chocolatey, hopsy, sudsy day that Kansas City has been abuzz about for weeks.

It's like Christmas in January. For, today is the day Boulevard Brewery's Chocolate Ale hits the shelves.

I know I don't have to go into a big long description of Chocolate Ale. I'm sure that by you have all heard ad intoxicum about the wildly popular collaboration of Kansas City's own Boulevard Brewery and Kansas City's own artisanal chocolatier Christopher Elbow.

Anyway, I've never tried it but apparently it's all the rage. In fact, I saw beer aficionado Chimpotle stocking up on the stuff as soon as stores opened this morning. I thought you guys might like to see the video of him bringing it home to his house.

I'm just glad he wasn't driving… his car.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, beer, train, Boulevard, Kansas City

YouTube Tuesday: Das Beer Boot

Some of my closer confidants and minions know that, in an effort to drop a few ell-bees, I've cut back my alcohol consumption to a fraction of what it was a couple of months ago.

But I still have a great appreciate the making and especially the marketing of adult beverages. And if I'm any judge at all, this is probably the best beer advertisement — nay, the best advertisement of any kind — for 2011.

The only thing that could make it better is a cameo by Bull E. Vard, but I'm sure some enterprising local video hacker can make that happen pretty quickly.



tagged: Youtube, Tuesday, video, advertising, beer, alcohol, humor

YouTube Tuesday: When Irish Eyes are Glazed Over

Hey, it's never too early to celebrate our fake Irish heritage. Afterall, as the Someecards people put it, this is the one holiday where our full-blown alcoholism could possibly go undetected.



tagged: Irish, drinking, song, video, St. Patrick's Day, eejit

YouTube Tuesday: Keep walking

It's interesting here in the state's, where the 30-second ad spot rules the airwaves, to see long form video advertising.

I mean, it's interesting when it's done well, like with this outstanding Johnie Walker spot featuring actor Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The Full Monty).

I dig how this 5-minute spot was all done in a single camera shot. Speaking of shots, pass me the Johnnie Walker.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, Johnnie Walker, commercial, Robert Carlyle, Scottland

My favorite Martin

So we're pretty deep in to the college basketball season with only a few regular season games left before the conference tournaments and then the biggie NCAA Tourney.

And while good sportsmanship has prevented me thus far from cheering too loudly for the good guys from the Little Apple (another Twager, alas, wasn't in the cards for basketball season), I think now is a good time to raise a toast to the success of Frank Martin and his team for a remarkable season.

The Wildcats, currently ranked #6 in both polls, are having their best season since... ever ... and are considered to be a real contender for a Final Four spot come tourney time.

They have absolutely exceeded my expectations this year (duh). I took a wait and see attitude a few years ago when Bob Huggins pissed in my Post Toasties and the recent success of the team has been a bright spot for college athletics in this state.

So sure, let's raise a glass to Frank Martin for a job well done.

But the question is, a glass of what? Such accomplishments demand something special, something tailored to the occasion, something representative of the achievements to which we are toasting.

So, I submit to you a new cocktail: The Frank Martini

The Frank Martini

3 Part(s) Vodka
1 Splash Chambord Raspberry Liquor
1 Splash Sweet & Sour Mix
1 Drop(s) Lemon Juice
1 Dash(es) Extra Dry Vermouth

Add all ingredients into a martini shaker filled with ice. Shake and strain into 2 well chilled martini glasses.

Be sure to drink it with a glare in your eye...

tagged: sports, basketball, NCAA, Frank Martin, K-State, Wildcats, alcohol, Martini

YouTube Tuesday: On the Boulevard

Most of us locals have been enjoying Boulevard Brewing Co's craft beers for years. We've toured the brewery (and tried the free samples) one or two (or ten) times so we're familiar with the company's story.

Still, this well-produced video is a nice introduction and review of where the company came from and where it's going.

Damn I'm thirsty.


tagged: Kansas City, beer, Boulevard, video, movie, YouTube, Tuesday

I guess you gotta do what you gotta do

Looks like Boulevard Brewing Co. started packaging my favorite brew in aluminum bottles today.

The Kansas City-based company produced about 2,700 cases of beer in the aluminum bottles on its initial run Thursday. The brewery will continue to offer its Unfiltered Wheat in glass bottles and barrels, as well.

“If you’re out mowing the lawn, out at the golf course or at the pool where you can’t have glass, you can now drink Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat in an aluminum bottle,” said John McDonald, Boulevard founder and president. “Being only in the glass bottle, we didn’t have access to venues like golf courses and stadiums. So that was a big reason.”

I can totally get the logic of packaging your product (heh) so that it can be sold in more venues.

But there's still a bit of a purist in me that will probably just keep getting the glass bottles. I mean, I know that maybe aluminum is the superior material, but it just doesn't have the right feel.

It's similar to wine. Even though drinking wine out of a bottle may be better, I still feel like it's just a more natural, classier experience to drink it out of a box.


tagged: beer, alcohol, Boulevard Brewing Co, Kansas City, wine, aluminum

The slow death of beer

According to my many inside sources at The Nielsen Company, the "Millennial" generation (those currently between 21-30 years old), are drinking 12 percent less beer than the more manly and mature Generation X (31-44-years-olds).

It appears the Millennials are opting more often for more girlie drinks like Pinot Grigio, Cosmopolitans and Appletinis.

This sounds like bad news for the beer industry, but there is a silver lining. According to the comprehensive study (which was conducted in the basement of frat house in Columbia), there is still a slight preference for beer among this generation.

• On a dollar basis, beer represents the majority (47%) of Millennial consumers’ spending, compared with spirits (27%) and wine (26%).
• On a volume basis, beer accounts for 83% of Millennials’ purchases, compared with 11% for wine and 6% for spirits.
• Among Millennials who drink different types of alcoholic beverages, beer is most often cited at their “favorite.”

So its clear that we still have a chance to save beer as the national beverage. But it's going to take us all working together.

We need to do a better job of communicating the benefits of beer consumption. These go far beyond making ugly women look sexy. Did you know that, according to a highly respected scientist, drinking homebrew is good for you, and what is commonly called a "beer belly" is, in reality, the body's storage system for wisdom and B vitamins.

The most important thing we can do is begin introducing beer consumption at an earlier age to America's youth. If you have kids of your own, or if your neighbors have elementary-age children, feel free to offer them a beer a couple of times a week.

Also, make sure to keep a couple of 12-packs or an open 40 in your call at all times, you never know when you'll be stuck in a traffic jam and this is the perfect opportunity for a communal beer bust while you wait for the authorities to cleanup that 15-car pileup.

Anyway, these are just a couple of suggestions. Like I said, it will take all of us to make a difference. Let me know what ideas you have.

tagged: beer, Millennials, alcohol, demographics, drinking, Nielsen, wine

California on my mind

It's Monday already. Man, time can really get away from you. I returned from San Francisco last Wednesday evening and just wanted to dump a few thoughts out before they get away from me.

So here are a few thoughts/lessons I've brought back from my most recent trip to SF.

• Just because your host paid $360 for that bottle of 12-year-old Scotch, don't feel like you and the four other dudes in you party have to drink the entire thing. Scotch is a sippin' drink, and if you kill the bottle you'll regret it when you have to make it to a 9:30 flight the next morning.


• The people of Chinatown were celebrating the birth of the Peoples Republic of China when I arrived on Sept. 23, which coincidentally is my birthday. Happy Birthday PRC!




• When you're walking back to your hotel at 2 a.m. (Pacific time, that's 4 a.m. to you and me), it's okay to tip the homeless guy who serenades the ladies in you group with Ain't Too Proud To Beg. You have to appreciate the poetic honesty from a homeless guy.


• Weatherwise, San Francisco in the fall is beautiful. At least that's what I heard. It's hard to appreciate the great weather when you're holed up in a conference room all day. Oh well...


tagged: travel, Temptations, San Francisco, Chinatown, PRC, homeless, Scotch

Friday Blogthing: Would you like cheese with that

This is peculiar. I've always preferred red wines (particularly Italians) to white, though I have had some excellent chardonnays.

You Are Chardonnay

Fresh, spirited, and classic - you have many facets to your personality. You can be sweet and light. Or deep and complex. You have a little bit of something to offer everyone... no wonder you're so popular. Approachable and never smug, you are easy to get to know (and love!). Deep down you are: Dependable and modest Your partying style: Understated and polite Your company is enjoyed best with: Cold or wild meat

What Kind of Wine Are You?

tagged: wine, blog, quiz, survey, chardonnay, alcohol

At the very least you need a beer*

We had a lot to celebrate on Saturday. It was Cinco de Mayo, a day very important to my family's cultural heritage, and my brother-in-law Nick, recently arrived for R&R from his deployment in Iraq, was visiting.

So what better way to commemorate both occasions than to enjoy an activity so close to the Mexican culture: a tour of a local artisan brewery.

We arrived at Boulevard Brewing Co. on (fittingly) Southwest Boulevard a couple minutes early for our 10 a.m. tour. According to our schedule, we would take the tour then be finished just in time to slosh down enough free beer samples to get us through lunch.

The tour started in the Boulevard tasting room with a brief introduction by our host, Jason, about the history of beer in the U.S. According to Jason, the pilgrims stopped at Plymouth Rock not because they had arrived at their destination, but because they had run out of beer and needed to find provisions to brew more. (Presumably, after brewing more beer, they were too "chemically inconvenienced" to go any further).

Anyway, fast forward a couple hundred years during which beer became so popular that pretty much every town in the Union had a brewery or three, to prohibition in the 1920s which effectively shut down all but the biggest breweries, to 1989 when I graduated from high school and John McDonald founded Boulevard Brewing Co. (I may have left out a few details, but you can fill in the gaps for yourself when you take the tour).

We then were guided through the brewery proper. Jason showed us the original brew house that was bought from a small town in Germany. We were walked through the brewing process, from the milling of barley, making the mash, introduction of hops, fermentation, filtering and bottling.

Jason showed us the new expanded brew house that will allow Boulevard to ramp up production to meet a growing demand for their beers.

Employees at Boulevard get some great perks, including a basketball court inside the bottling plant, a workout facility and an employees-only bar where you can drink (of course) free Boulevard beer.

Finally, we ended the tour back in the tasting room where the five Boulevard brands were ours for the tasting.

I had previously tried the Unfiltered Wheat (my favorite) the Pale Ale, the Dry Stout (very smooth, not at all bitter, my second favorite) and the Bully Porter, so my first sample was of the Lunar Ale. I gotta say, it didn't speak to me. It's a wheat based beer, but it had a taste on the back of my tongue that I can only describe as "green."

So I switched to the sixth beer on tap, labeled only as "Test." Boulevard often has a test beer on tap in its tasting room and today it happened to be an India Pale Ale.

It was a great surprise for me. I'm typically not a fan of the bitterness of IPAs, but it didn't bother me in this test brew. It was so well balanced and the finish so crisp that this ended up being one of my favorites.

Boulevard would do well to add it to their brand lineup.

*10 points to the first person to name the author of this quote.

tagged: Kansas City, Boulevard Brewing Co, beer, India pale ale, stout, porter, Cinco de Mayo

Sunday cheers

The Wichita Eagle's editorial staff is using a temporary mass exodus from the city as an argument for pushing an end to the city's ban on Sunday liquor sales.

Though journalists are all raging alcoholics (who wouldn't need to knock back a few shots after publishing the latest gossip about Britney's coochie), they actually have a point here.

The editorial noted that last Sunday, New Year's Eve, everyone left town for the smaller surrounding burgs that no longer ban Sunday liquor sales. Despite the massive economic drain caused by everyone getting their grog in Garden Plain, the ban in Wichita proper stays in effect.

Of course we in Johnson County must smile condescendingly at our less sophisticated Wichita brethren. After all, we put away the childish ban yeas ago (well okay, last year).

But the proposal is getting some criticism on the Eagle's blog. Many folks are complaining that we drunkards should be able to plan ahead and stock up on Saturday for our Sunday drinking binges.

Why not keep Sunday a sacred day, they say. Keep it a day of reflection, a day for family, church and cursing at the NFL refs on TV even though they can't hear you.

My own humble contribution to the discussion was to point out that liquor isn't really counter-Christian. I mean, didn't Jesus turn water into wine? So how is it any kind of disrespect to Christianity to allow Sunday liquor sales (unless you're selling it at church, you know, money changers in the temple and all).

Of course, the abuse of alcohol is a different topic, but then that goes for the abuse of anything (food, drugs, women, alliteration).

Anyway, since I haven't spent an appreciable amount of time in Wichita since my high-school days (ironically, we used to go there to drink), I don't really care what they do. But I would be interested in hearing the views of some Wichitans

tagged: Kansas, wine, Jesus, alcohol, Sunday

Happy hangover

It's a slow day for posting. Sorry about that. I'm just not feeling all that well today.

Oh, nothing serious. Thanks for your concern, though. It's just that I've had a bit of a hangover all day.

You see, I have a longstanding tradition that I just started yesterday. December 5 is a big day in my family. We celebrate Repeal Day.

That's right, the pivotal moment in US history when the United States Government did what is probably the only useful thing it has ever done: repealed the Eighteenth Amendment.

If you yourself are still too foggy-headed to remember, that's the Prohibition amendment. Yesterday we celebrated the 73rd anniversary of the ratification of the 21st amendment (the one that repealed the 18th, whew, this is getting difficult), and guaranteed every American of age the constitutional right to get shitface drunk.

So here's to the 21st Amendment, and Repeal Day, and two Aspirin and my special hangover cure of two raw eggs blended with cherry Gatorade and ice.

tagged: drinking, alcohol, drunk, history, Constitution, hangover

Noble Rot

Kansas leads the nation on many issues. Paved roads per capita and anti-gay bigot funeral picketing, for example.

Kansas is also the leader in per-capita beef production (as well as per capita bull manure production, as this blog attests).

But Kansas still lags behind most of the rest for the free world in enacting reasonable liquor legislation. Recent steps taken by the state legislature have helped move us in the right direction, but still (<-- that's a pun, get it?). It's like Kansas didn't get the memo when prohibition was repealed. Too busy totaling their tees I guess. That's a shame.

For one thing, those of you who don't live near the state line and can't have your wine shipments sent to a friend in KCMO, you're missing out on some great wine bargains. For another thing, there are some great businesses suffering because of the old-maid attitude toward drinking.

Throughout my high-school years, I worked at the Kingfisher's Inn in Marion. It was a great job (my best friend who was the son of the owner helped me get it). I started out washing dishes but worked my way up to a senior cook position. I learned a lot about the value of hard work and the value of having a good time from Bob and Kathy, the owners.

Well, over the past 10 years as surrounding counties began to liberate their liquor laws, Marion County fell behind. The fine people of Marion refused to allow restaurants to serve alcoholic beverages with a meal. Can you imagine having a medium rare filet without a glass of Cabernet? Me neither.

And neither could many of the regular customers who would come from as far away as Wichita and Junction City. When other counties started allowing wine with dinner, Bob and Kathy couldn't compete. Finally, a couple of years ago, they had to close the restaurant.

They couldn't find a buyer of course, because any competent restaurateur would check out the local liquor laws. As far as I know, the place is still vacant. Bob and Kathy were forced to find work elsewhere.

The tragedy is that the rural community lost a valuable business and priceless community members. All because they didn't want to allow wine with dinner, something I believe Jesus was in favor of.

tagged: Kansas, law, legislation, wine, liquor, restaurant, prohibition

Wrath of grapes

A growing and insidious group of extremists continues to launch attacks in small towns and business throughout Europe.

These attacks aren't coming from Islamic extremists or anti-semitic neo-Nazis. No, the group behind the latest violence calls itself C.R.A.V. and it attacks the very life-blood of rural French, Spanish and Italian agriculture.

According to BeverageDaily.com:

Masked men, claiming to be from the shadowy Regional Action Committee of Winemakers (CRAV), took just 20 minutes last Friday to break open several of Val d'Orbieu's wine vats, sending millions of bottles-worth of French wine gushing into the street.

Devic told BeverageDaily.com the damage could cost between €1.5m and €2m. "It is all French wine, I hope there will not be any more [attacks]," he said.

Evidently, members of the terrorist organization C.R.A.V. are striking out against large, corporate wine producers because the producers aren't paying enough for the grapes they by from regional farmers.

BeverageDaily.com (a website dedicated to drinking? sweeet) reported that CRAV attacks have increased in ferocity and intensity since Christmas, and millions of litres of Spanish, Italian and French wine have been spilled in streets across the region.

And I guess I can understand their point of view. I mean, why fight about insignificant things like religion and democracy when French wine is at stake.

In vino veritas

tagged: France, Spain, Italy, wine, Europe, CRAVE, terrorists

Christmas hangover

Ingredients:

• One SUV crammed with two-months salary worth of gifts for inlaws
  
• One three-year-old
  
• 400 miles worth of open highway to drive
  
• Inlaws (any amount will do)
  
• Four heavy Christmas dinners with all the "fixin's"

Directions: Combine ingredients and set tension level to medium for two days. On the third day, raise tension level to high and allow to boil over. Serve and enjoy.

Damn it's good to be home. 4 Christmases in 5 days is way too much holly freakin' jolly for me. I just settled in with a nice glass of eggnog that I make out of bourbon and nothing else.

Anyway, I have a lot of Christmas horror stories, some of which I might share. Actually, though, it wasn't all bad. I did get a few things from my wishlist. Plus I'm still on vacation for a few more days, so I've got that going for me.

Well, here's to wishing you all a happy post-Christmas recovery.

tagged: Christmas, hangover, bourbon

Targeted by Marketing Guerrillas

I was sitting in the bar of the Hotel Rouge in DC the other day sipping a Manhattan with some business associates when we were approached by a little hottie carrying a wine bottle.

I assumed, as anyone would, that she was a waitress at the hipster hangout. But I learned in the next few moment the waitress gettup was camouflage.

She approached our table and offered: "Hi, I wonder if you would mind trying a free sample of our new wine, Virgin Vines Shiraz."

Wha!?! I never thought I would hear the words "free," "virgin," and "sample" in the same sentence. And even though I can think of a better context for hearing those three words, I've never been one to turn down an offer of free booze.

But let me be clear. Virgin Vines is from the famous Richard Branson (err.. ahem..) Sir Richard Branson Virgin franchise.

That's right, the people who brought you Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Virgin Mobile and Virgin Partially Gelatinated Non Dairy Gum Based Beverages, now brings you Virgin Vines from California's Napa valley.

Based on the website, Branson and Co. are targeting a younger, club-scene demographic. But you know what? Even though this old fart doesn't fit that demographic (I'm all of 35 years now), the Shiraz was pretty damn good and I'll probably buy a few bottles.

So I fell victim to the guerrilla marketing tactic. And if you've read this far, so have you.

tagged: marketing, wine, Shiraz, Virgin