Tag Archives: beer

Drinking for art!

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You can say what you want about the potential evils of drinking alcohol — obnoxious behavior, self-destructive addiction, abuse of others, turning automobiles into weapons of mass destruction — but then the artful structure you see here to the right wouldn’t exist if a lot of people hadn’t consumed a lot of beer.

From Inhabitat:

Using 33,000 everyday, ordinary yellow beer crates like giant Legos, Architects SHSH assembled this visually intoxicating pavilion to pay homage to the fiftieth anniversary of the 1958 Universal World Exhibition…

Why beer crates? “Understanding that the sense of the temporary can only be truly successful when it is free of waste, the pavilion is built using an unusual and ephemeral component which after the event returns to its normal daily use,” say SHSH on their site. One of the coolest things about the pavilion is that it isn’t a purely rectangular space – inside, the crates are stacked to form architectural features such as columns, arches and even domes.

While they don’t specify what type of beer was in those crates, this was built in Brussels, Belgium, and Belgians are known for their brewing…and their ambitions of world domination, which I wrote about in November 2009.

;-)

Goin’ Calorie-Neutral!

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The weather is FABULOUS right now in Bellingham, and when the weather is FABULOUS, even though I commute to work by bicycle rain or shine, I tend to want to ride my bike everywhere.

So, I’ve mentioned my treasured nights out with the guys, but I haven’t mentioned that we’ve given our group a name: The Beer Klatch.

Anyway, there was a Beer Klatch meeting last night, and the plan was to meet at Boundary Bay Brewery, have a beer, fill up a few growlers, and head to the house of one of the guys to enjoy the sunset over Bellingham Bay from his deck. Three of the guys play guitar, and so instruments were invited as well.

And then, an idea came to me in a flash!

By now, thanks to that pesky global warming, everyone’s heard the term carbon-neutral. And while I was disappointed to find out this morning that it’s not an original idea, what came to me in a flash was to attempt a calorie-neutral Beer Klatch!

Let’s get one thing straight. I am a solidly right-brained individual, numbers aren’t my thing, so I wasn’t going to be doing any detailed analysis of the actual calories consumed and burned. Rather, my carbon-neutral Beer Klatch would be based on the grossest of estimates, a gut feeling (pun intended), if you will.

So, at 7:30pm, after a hearty meal of Spinach Fontina & Roasted Garlic Gourmet Chicken Sausage from Trader Joe’s, with a rice pilaf I improvised, containing green onion, celery, broccoli (finely chopped), sundried tomatoes, pesto, and balsamic vinegar, I mounted my bicycle. On my back was my guitar in its gig bag, and in the pocket of the gig bag was my empty growler.

I pedaled across town, enjoying the sunshine over Bellingham Bay as I passed over Taylor Dock and through Boulevard Park, eventually joining the Klatch members in the glorious Boundary Bay beer garden, where I rewarded my efforts with a lovely, refreshing IPA as I cooled down from the ride.

Then, at 8:30, I had my growler filled, put it back in the gig bag, making the load on my back considerably heavier. I refused the offer to throw my gig bag and the growler in the car of one of the guys, and I set out to climb South Hill, past the campus where I work, and then a few blocks to the house where the Klatch was meeting.

More beer was consumed, along with some chips and pretzels, the sunset was FABULOUS! and the music jam short but sweet.

When the meeting concluded, I put my growler, empty once again, into my gig bag, turned on my head and tail lights, and rode home back across town.

Now, I’m pretty sure that the calorie count for dinner, beer, and snacks exceeded the number of calories burned, but I had a blast, and I felt great this morning. In my right-brained calorie-neutral calculation, I’ve included pollution prevention, mood enhancement, and a happy body as calorie offsets, and so I’m pleased to report that I did, indeed, achieve calorie neutrality!

Stuff We Don’t Need: Chili Beer

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Listen, everyone who knows me knows that I LOVE Boundary Bay Brewery. I love the beer, the ambiance, the clientèle, and the food’s not too shabby either.

That said, I’m no Boundary Bay sycophant. I don’t like all of their beers, and I don’t like their policy of serving select seasonal beers in smaller glasses for the same price as a pint.

Oh, and I can attest that this beer, which I tried last year, is terrible:

Chili Beer

A spicy yet refreshing beer for Cinco De Mayo. A light bodied ale spiked with roasted Anaheim, Jalapeno and Serrano peppers. It’s not as hot as it sounds because the roasting takes away some of the heat but leaves all the flavor. Try some with your favorite dish. Salud!

Some things were simply not meant to go together: fish and bicycles…um…I mean: bicycle tires and broken glass, bare feet and dog poo, marinara sauce and white shirts, and…

…chili and beer. Chili-laden Mexican food is great when washed down with beer, but the flavors do NOT belong in the same glass.

Then again, that’s just me. If for some crazy reason you want to judge for yourself, by all means, go check it out why it’s available.

In the meantime, order me an Imperial Oatmeal Stout.

Video Fridays: CR Avery

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As I mentioned in one of my first posts here at Fish & Bicycles, I LOVE a night out with the guys at a pub.

If last night all I did was meet up with the boyz at The Copper Hog, where I enjoyed a couple of pints of the very tasty Terminal Gravity IPA from The Middle of Nowhere Enterprise, Oregon, it would have been a fantastic evening.

However, as we exited The Hog, my friend John asked for a ride home, and on the way down State Street he suggested we stop in at the Green Frog Acoustic Tavern.

What a treat that turned out to be. Performing last night was a guy from Vancouver named CR Avery, who struck me as a Hip-Hop Tom Waits.

The guy’s a one-man-band — in this clip combining spoken word, singing, beatbox, harmonica, and keytar — but he also played a couple of songs on banjo.

He’ll be back at the Green Frog on May 11th, so check him out if you can.

In the meantime…


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Watch your back, Boundary Bay

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The first few times I tried the offerings at Bellingham’s younger brew pub, Chuckanut Brewery & Kitchen, around the time they opened about a year ago, I was thoroughly unimpressed.

I’m not a big fan of German beers, so I don’t hold it against them that their taps at the time were dominated by Pilsner, Lager, Kolsch, and Schwarzbier. However, I do hold it against them that that their IPA was TERRIBLE!

When I learned a few weeks ago that Chuckanut earned two gold and two silver medals, as well as the Best Small Brewpub award at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival, I figured that either I don’t know ANYTHING about beer or Chuckanut has made a dramatic improvement in one year.

It is my pleasure, then, to report that I thoroughly enjoyed the beers I tasted on a recent visit.

Chuckanut is bucking convention, eschewing the trend of naming their beers for entertainment rather than identification. Therefore, rather than something like Angry Angel Kolsch, Chuckanut offers, simply, a Kolsch. Rather than Harpoon Leviathan Big Bohemian Pilsner, you’ll find, simply, Pilsner. Fortunately, their beer tastes much better than their boring, utilitarian names suggest.

On my visit I sampled three of their beers that I hadn’t tried before: Foreign Stout, Strong Ale, and Brown Ale. (Screw those German beers!)

The stout was my favorite, the perfect pint for a cold night in Bellingham, very nice complexity, malts roasted to perfection, and great full body and mouthfeel. Yum!!!

The Strong Ale was incredibly well balanced between the hops and malts and had a very full body that belied its light amber color. Like the stout, its 6.5% alcohol level was not overwhelming at all, and, rather, offered a very nice warming effect. (Again, nice on a cold night.)

The final offering was the biggest surprise of the evening. The Brown Ale is not a style that I’m particularly fond of. My experience with them is that they tend to be too thin, malty, and sweet, leaving me wanting the greater complexity and full body of a good stout. The brown was ordered by a friend and I was offered a taste, otherwise I wouldn’t have been tempted to try it.

Chuckanut’s Brown Ale, while still not as full-bodied as I’d prefer, a fault of the style not the brewer, was the most delicious brown I’ve had. The malts, like those used in the stout, were roasted perfection, offering similar coffee and chocolate notes, and there was just enough hops to avoid the sweetness that can ruin other browns for me.

While my beloved Boundary Bay Brewery still retains favorite pub status in my heart, they now have the first serious competition right here in Bellingham since Orchard Street Brewery went out of business in 2004. Hopefully this will be a healthy competition, inspiring both breweries to uphold their considerable standards and offer an expanding variety of beers in the future.