Funny things you've overheard about beer

Not sure if it was funny or correct, but on Saturday while milling my grains at the LBHS I overheard an employee showing a new customer around. It went like this:

"And here we have the base grains, the German ones are on the right. We have two types of German Pilsner, Weyermann's and Avangard. The Weyermann's is a bit more expensive, but they are both made in Germany. The big difference is that Weyermann's is only for export, no one in Germany uses them."

Seeing as Weyermann is one of the oldest malting companies I know of and is known to provide the smoked malt for the local Rauchbier, I just have to call bull on that. I think what is going on is that they got the Avangard in a few months ago (maybe 6-8) and it doesn't seem to sell as well despite being a bit cheaper than the Weyermann.

 

2 things happened this weekend:

1- an old friend posted on the interwebs that he and his buddy we making "beer". I got geeked up and reached out and inquired if he was making Extract, All grain, What variety of beer, ABV? IBU's?
The response I got was " black label, white can beer, just beer, the brown kind ".
So I just left it like that.

2- took the wife to a local hipster wine bar. I did not like the wine selection so I went for a beer. They had the worst write ups for beers.
EX-"beer name" a beer from Denmark $6
"beer name"- German beer $ 8
"youngs double Chocolate Stout" english Stout $8
"Tom Green Beer"- made by a comedian.

I ended up going with The Youngs Double Chocolate Stout because that is the only one I knew. (side note, I have never had a beer served in a huge wine glass. I felt fancy).
Everyone at the table wanted me to go for the Tom Green Beer. however there was no description and the waitress had no clue.
For the record, I was never a fan on Tom Greens Comedy and all of us quoting "Freddy Got Fingered & Road Trip" did not make me want the beer more.
Today I looked it up on the internets and kind of wish I had given it a go. if only they had a better description on the menu!

http://www.beaus.ca/beer/tom-green-beer

 

My father-in-law and brother-in-law sampled some of my HBs this weekend. Exchange went something like this:

"This is a Centennial Blonde, kind of akin to a Budweiser, but more hop/malt character. It's around 5.5%"

BIL: "Hey, this isn't actually that bad." (gee, thanks)

FIL: "I heard most of these are like 12% alcohol. I dunno..."

"I just told you that it was 5.5%"

FIL: "Oh, well here goes... yeah, it's not that bad."

Feeling super confident at this point from the rave reviews, I poured an APA.

"This is an APA, very hoppy, slightly bitter, but refreshing... 5.9%"

FIL: "Oh, dang, that's one of those dark beers" (It's orange/amber)

BIL: "Ooh... no, I liked the other one better."

FIL: "Yeah, that's too stiff for me."

"Well, thanks for trying, I'll get you both another bud light with tomato juice."

 

1. What the hell!
2. Sounds very hipsterish indeed

 

And for some strange reason I still hate humanity. No faith in it at all.

 

Here's a good one I just had to lol at that's kind of appropo to this forum. I was just writing some more of my 2nd home brewing book, when it once again came to mind to search for anyone with my surname, hopefully family, that might've been brewers? Hey, it can't hurt to try, right? Ha, oh man. So anyway, I googled "historic brewers named Cogar". Seemed simple enough for starters? Sheez, guess who was at the top of the list? ME. Yeah, I lol'd the second I saw it as first on the list...the Brew & A interview I did with Austin a while back.
While flattering, even a bit amusing, it didn't answer my question. I am understandably curious about any family brewers, since we are from Upper Bavaria. My real grandad was a German cabinet maker. So it seemed logical that there had to be some brewers in there someplace? I think we can all agree that an old, forgotten, dusty recipe excavated from the sands of time would be awesome!? While I keep searching, have any of YOU done the same? Have you found anything cool? Share'em here! Nasdarovie!

 

My surname is Brewer. I bet there's a couple.

 

Never met my grand dad, but he was a cooper from Bavaria. He was lucky enough to land in Buffalo when it was a BIG brewing town (Rushing the Growler is a fun book). He also moonlighted as a janitor, but his craft was making beer barrels!

 

Him: "So when you make a beer, is that a dark beer or a craft beer? What do you call it?"

Me: I call it what the style I'm making is, but I guess it would fall under a craft beer.

 

So when you bake a cake is it a German chocolate or an artisanal cake? Well, it depends on the ingredients doesn't it. Maybe it's an orange cream cake. Maybe just a plain yellow cake. Why is beer shrouded in such mystery like its an alien beverage that no human being can comprehend how it's created. Is it a conspiracy, or are we all that dumb?

 

Having worked in hospitality the better part of the last decade, I'm certainly going with the latter.

 

I was talking to my caterer about home brewing last week and she insisted that it can't be as good as commercial beer. I pressed her for an example, and she used Coors Light. I told her there was no way I could brew a Light Lager even close. She asked me why I even brew. I handed her my IPA, and told her this is what I want to do. She almost puked.

Hops are an acquired taste.

 

While not beer-related, this is somewhat relevant to your question:

A few years back my mom called and asked me how I got my name on the satellite. I had no idea what that meant, and asked her what the heck she was talking about. She said she decided to Google the names of our family to see what popped up under our names. When she searched mine, several listings came up talking about a satellite that had just gotten sent into space. Several names got etched on a plaque on the side of the satellite and mine was one of them (???). She wanted to know if I won a contest or something to get my name on it.

I had not.

After further digging, it turned out that there was an executive (I think at a tech firm) who happens to have the same first and last name as me, and it was his name on the plaque. Although, it doesn't give any ID besides the name, so I guess I can pretend it's me.

 

Score! So can you help me get my name on a satellite?

 

At least your double is an exec. There is a guy out there with the same name as I, including the middle initial, and the same birthday. The SOB also happens to be a felon and has an arrest warrant out in Florida for assaulting an officer. I have run into him my entire life for loan applications, background checks for jobs, background checks for security clearances, checks for buying firearms....few months ago I got pulled over for going a bit fast (only 8 over) and soon had two cops with hands on their guns asking me to step out of the car. Fortunately he is 3 inches taller and 30 lb heavier than me.

 

I grew up in a town of ~3,000 people, and there was a lady with the same name as my mom. Of course, she owed money to everybody. Every single year when my mom went to pay property taxes, etc she'd be informed that she owed money to the town and have to go through the whole process of proving who she was again.

 

Sure!

Step 1: Become important tech guy.
Step 2: ??????
Step 3: Name on satellite!

 

Your family married into mine...I think it was 1850-1855. I just read a bunch of records the last couple hours & my head's swimmin'. Had to start cracking SNPA's. Southern WV if I remember right.

You think that's bad? I have 2 others with all three names the same, we were all born at the same hospital about the same time/day. One's black & the other was a pricky big white guy. One of them's social is one digit off from mine, we all worked for Ford, so he got my PPH days & I had to fight to even get paid for them! Never got more than one or two PPH days off to be with wife & little boys. One stole the paint job I did on my GTP racer & gave it to his buddy who got an award for it. Mutha*****. Life is screwy sometimes. And this Steven Cogar has our name wrong & history is different than what I read or was told orally in his book on our family. No beer brewers to be found yet. Whiskey, yeah...but we don't talk about that!

 

Most people see fermentation as being

Corn + both tub + ?? + sketchy dude = home brew

 

Sorta, yeah. Grandma had the most shocked/hurt look on her face ages ago when I asked for her recipe for moon/keg charred. I told her how smooth & good it was & that it'd sell more than JD if she could do me that one favor. She never did. Pop couldn't remember the exact amounts either...dang.

 

My dad refering to Guiness, "you drink that!" He doesn't drink.

 

I worked with a guy who had the same name as me. He was corporate, but started at the same hotel I was at so it was still in his file as his home office location. Calling to reset passwords if they expired was always fun, I ended up being the only person in the company with a non-format user id. We even had very similar signatures, it was kind of creepy.

 

Some a-hole with the same last name and similar first name as mine is a deadbeat dad. I learned of this when my accounting department informed me that my wages were going to be garnished to pay child support for his kids. I wrote a letter that ripped them a new one and asked for an apology. I received a robot letter that said my appeal was "accepted." Now that's a government agency to be proud of. We don't even have the same first name! They knew his SSN, and they knew mine was different. Let's just throw crap at the wall and see what sticks.

 

I get email intended for a couple other guys with the same last name as me. I know about unpaid Lowes credit cards, haircut appointments, course catalogs, airline tickets, online purchases, and best of all, a restraining order against one of them. I don't know how people can make so many mistakes with email addresses.

 

It is easy when you are first getting used to email. When our government agency started using email, if someone typed "f" for my first name, and then my last name, the email went to Fred, with the same last name, in Anchorage, AK. They had email first, so he got the simpler address, I became "fw". He was pretty good about forwarding my mail back to me.

 

Thought this was funny.The SECRET Behind Milk Stout Nitro...: http://youtu.be/FXxZ_Da9Dpw

 

I heard, back in college.. that Beer liked to get drunk at his friends house and lock himself in the bathroom where he would proceed to disrobe himself to use the toilet, only to be found the following morning passed out naked in the bathtub.

Silly Beer.

 

Grandfather and great grandfather on my mother's side were brewers (lived in Bavaria, but worked at a brewery in Baden Wurttemberg). I actually worked at the brewery one summer about 8 years ago or so. Spent a week shadowing the brewer, then cleaning kegs and delivering beer and soda (many small local breweries in Germany also make soda).

I've never come across a recipe because they were brewers, not master brewers, so it was a job for them and they didn't have the freedom to experiment with whole batches. But from working there I know that they used almost exclusively Tettnang hops and only 3 kinds of grains (pilsner, Munich, and wheat) at the time. Since then they've been making some darker beers, so I'm sure they're adding some dark Munich or maybe even Carafa here and there. It was pretty cool cleaning out a filter knowing that my grandfather had probably done the same 50 years earlier (he died when I was only 6).

I've been working to copy their Munich Helles (Blaubaendele/Blue Label), which although it isn't rated very highly on RateBeer or BeerAdvocate, I love. My grandfather's name was Josef, the brewery's name Stolz (family name of owners, also means Proud), so my "clone" is called Josef's Pride (or will be once I am happy with it, until then it is called Josef's Helles).

 

Another good one from the past. This guy we went to St Mary's with (grade school) was giving my address when we were newlyweds for his Child support. I repeatedly tried to explain to the cops who I was, even gave them copies of my DL. He gave them, apparently, my description & his name. I'm a white guy, as many of you know by now. He was a dark skinned, black haired hispanic of some kind. Idk where he was from? But they hounded me to hell & back, insisting I was this guy we haven't seen since grade school. I finally had to go to my union's lawyers to explain it to them. I even showed them an old class photo to give'em an idea of who he is & who I am. Sheez...

 

.

 

Don't they use ssn's for stuff like child support to verify an identity as well as description. Who gives their own description to the cops, or another's description in their place. What did he do call the police and say screw you and my child support, by the way this is what I look like and where I live if you want to find me. It'd be a fun visit to track him down. Maybe repay a little of that hell he sent your way.

 

I've tried more than once to get family members to try new things (either beer I've brewed or craft beer I've bought), and I have yet to really be successful with the effort. I took home a mild ale over Christmas, and was immediately confronted with statements of how it was "so dark" (when it looks more like a Red Ale). My pointing out that it was a low alcohol beer did not stop comments on how "I couldn't taste the alcohol!" You'd have thought I was serving them a Russian Imperial Stout or something.

I have yet to get anyone to try any of the Porters I've made. Probably because they are just "so dark".

 

I have spent quite some time getting my father to drink/appreciate IPA's. Last time he was over I was drinking SN Celebration ale. I offered him a sip.

"too heavy, I will just take a Manhattan!"

 

A guy at work showed me this.

 

Awesome

 

Well, by that logic, I get 41 MPG, Probe SE tuner gets 44.86MPG...looks like I'm a good American too!

 

I think some people are just not-tolerant to hops. I don't even think anymore that this is an acquired taste. Some people appreciate hops, some don't. I have a friend...a good judge of beer...but he has a 70IBU limit...believe me, he's done the research:cross:

Another friend says he wishes he could drink IPA's and what not (Bud-Lite guy) because he would dig the higher ABV (I guess its about getting drunk to this guy). Says he just cant take the taste of anything outside of BMC.

Funny, not so funny here. I Goggled up and went to a couple of beer bars in Miami. First one had quite the know-it-all as a bartender. Proceeded to shake/roll every bottle we ordered. I dont really care about sediment or floaties as my bud call them but I says to Chief...hey if ya let me poor that before you do you shake/roll thing I will leave the sediment in the bottle for you. "But it makes the beer so much more "creamy".

Still insisted on pouring an ounce or two (like a sommelier) which does virtually the same thing as shake/roll....whatever...

He did introduce me to Victory's Dirtwolf - and for this, I thank him.

 

Great story from home. Wurttemberg is the city I couldn't remember that family oral history says my ancestors grandpa came from. The wall ran right through the middle of it. He was born there in 1600, died 1684. some say 1688. Was the vogt of the town, prosperous, well liked & respected. That's how I tried to remember it. Thank you so much for the story that jogged my memory! Last gulp & shot is to you! You may be right about my family as well. No recipe or brewing records as yet. Still searchin every which away ya ya...but I'm like the northwest mounties...you know I'll bring it in someday!

 

I see all these posts about BMC drinkers looking like they're going to vomit or going "THIS IS TERRIBLE!" whenever they taste a craft beer or a homebrew, but I've never actually experienced this before. For example, my step-dad is a BMC drinker, but I bought some craft IPAs the last time I was home and offered him one and he accepted. He took a couple sips and said "Wow. That's nice and crisp." He finished the beer, looking quite pleased the whole time. Another BMC-drinking family member of mine I gave an RIS and he just said "Mm, this is good. Not the kind of thing I'd drink often, but nice and smooth." I've never heard anyone say "I don't like dark beers" or any of the other negative things about beer that's any darker than a light lager. I wonder if it's regional (I'm from Michigan and currently live in California).

I know those people are out there, but I do wonder why I've never met them. The closest I've come are people who just don't like beer period.

 

Oh, I've seen it in my personal experience plenty. It's like they're offended that I like beer that is dark. They get this disgusted look and an eyebrow raise. I call racism.