Figuring Out Who You Are

I had originally gotten into this blog deal because I wanted some sort of platform to express my own personal thoughts on myself, which sounds very self-serving ( and I suppose it is).  Not in a "look at me" way - I have radio shows for that - but more of a "why do I think this way" thing.  I want to figure out who I am and why I react the way that I do towards certain things so I can become a better friend, or so that I can say "I'm real funny", which is usually not the case.

This is an uncomfortably open book of a post, but one that I'm kind of ok with writing.  It's odd how sometimes being honest over the internet is easier than opening up to a friend or loved one.  Maybe it's because we aren't used to censoring ourselves when we write.  Forums have erased that filter we have always been taught to have when writing, and that has given way to the impulse post.  The demand for instant information just encourages us to rush through out thoughts, clarity be damned.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot of how I come across to people, and how they view me as a person.  I think I'm pretty easy going, but I do have a certain set of standards when it comes to things like entertainment.  I'm not so easy going when it comes to going to the movies, let's say, because I know that, for the most part, after the movie I'll just be more disappointed and $20 poorer than when I went into the theater.  Does that make me a negative person or a realist?  The majority of the time I'm totally comfortable with this decision to be cautious, but occasionally the look of disappointment on my girlfriends face because she wants to see a film that I won't go to sort of makes me feel like a jerk-off.  Why can't I suck it up and just deal with watching a shitty movie?  I don't know.

Same thing goes for beer.  My thoughts are that if I'm going to pay $6 ($7 with tip) for a pint, I want it to be a good beer, or at least what I think passes for good beer. And if I don't see any beer that's worth that to me, I say that.  Aloud.  In public.  Doses that make me a whiner?  An asshole?  Or just someone who knows the value of a dollar?  I used to think nobody gave a shit about what I said, but a few times recently I have been told I'm negative, and that I hate everything and blah blah blah blah ( I don't know, I stopped listening).  Which just isn't true.   I like lots of shit, I'm just picky about the quality of the shit I like.

What's the divider there?  What is it about my personality that I seemingly cannot express my views without just being labeled as a negative person?  How can I become more positive without sacrificing my ideals and excellent tastes?  I'm working on finding out.

                                                   Blah Blah Blah Dinosaur Jr.

A Chicken Update

Wow, it's been a long time, eh?  Many of you have been asking for an update on my chickens, so I felt that was as good an excuse as any to get back into this blog thing.

Daisy and Georgia

All the birds are doing well and getting along, which is great.  During the hotter days, which have been many here in the East Bay, the two newer girls (Daisy and Georgia) have been mimicking Butterworth and her desire to let everyone know that she has risen and is ready to great the day.  Which is not so bad I guess, but at 5:30 each and every morning it gets old.  At least the younger birds don't yet have that cynical tone to their squawks yet, as they remain cheerful and almost cute.  Recently, this has died down a bit and all three girls are being somewhat quiet.

Daisy and Georgia looking like idiots, with Butterworth in the back

The best update, though, is that all three birds are now laying eggs.  Georgia started first, which for some reason upset Daisy a great deal.  Daisy would just run around squawking while Georgia was up in the coop nesting.  She'd come in and just push Georgia up to come play with her outside, clearly unaware that she had more important things to do.  Even when Daisy started to lay, she'd raise a stink when her buddy was inside.  This, too, has seemed to quiet down somewhat, but it was a tough 3 weeks there for a bit.  Daisy clearly needs some therapy.

Now that everyone is laying, we get at least two eggs a day, sometimes three.  Daisy likes to move every bit of bedding away from her to lay, and as a result, many of her eggs crack when they hit the ground.  But it's not that big of an issue, as they don't really breach the shell, just spider it a bit.   Daisy is the one laying the green eggs, by the way.  So it's more of a shame when we have to toss hers out due to cracking.

Our egg bin as it stands now, with no new eggs today ...

That's it really.  So far, owning chickens has been a real adventure.  After about a year or so, I'd say it's not for everyone - the amount of time that I have had to go outside to quiet them down took a toll on my sleep for awhile.  BUT ... I'd still recommend looking into it.  Chickens are rad, and make really great pets.  If you are thinking about it, talk to your neighbors, tell them you'll be handing out eggs to them and see what they say.  It helps to have a shitty dog in the neighborhood, too, that you can blame noise on.  Works for us.

This post written under the influence of Superchunk

The Brewing Network: A Club You Can Count On!

This is an open letter to all of those homebrewers out there that not only didn't applaud The Brewing Network Club  for winning Club of the Year, but actually booed us as we took the stage.  You know who you are ...


Dear Homebrewer:

I have been a homebrewer for about 15 years, and have been attending the National Homebrewers Conferences for about 10 years now - my first was in LA in 2001, and I've only missed two so far.  Each year, when all of you win awards for your beers, the room claps and cheers in support and solidarity.  You are so proud of your fellow brewers as they take the stage - throwing up high-fives as they pass your table.  It's a heartwarming thing to be a part of.  The club taking home the Club of the Year trophy is usually driven to the stage by a thundering round of applause and sometimes a standing ovation.  And why not?  They've earned it.  Whenever I talk to non-beer people about what it's like to attend one of these award banquets I tell them about the love in the room, about the cheers, about the brotherhood of the homebrewing community.

Enter: The Brewing Network.  Last year when we won COTY, we got no love from you.  No cheers, no high-fives.  Just silence with some boos.  Ok, fine.  It was the first time an internet club had won, and maybe something like that just needed some adjustment time.  When we won this year, we got the same treatment - quiet, boos, frowny-faces.  This is not the way I had been describing our community for the past 15 years.  This is someone elses hobby.  Someone elses gassy family.  Not mine. 


Standing on stage, holding our club award and listening to the silence of 1800 "friends", I realized that our community is not the big ball of love and support we all claim it is.  You people out there that were sitting in the dark, glaring at us with hate-filled and blood-shot eyes are ruining homebrewing.  So here is my request: Get Out.  Just leave.  Take your resentment and ship it back home with you so your wife and kids can hate you some more, and leave this to the rest of us that actually love to see our friends win.  I was embarrassed for the whole lot of you, to be honest.  You are all adults and well, well over 18 years old and yet you still fail to show humility when you lose.  Shameful. 


The BN Club stands as the only homebrewing resource for a great deal of brewers out there.  Just because there is a club near them - if at all - doesn't mean they have to be a part of it.  And standing there on stage with my friends, looking out into the crowd, I can't say I blame them for not wanting to share this hobby with you.   Just be happy that other people are happy and move on. 


After all ... its just beer.  Ain't it?




Stay Classy, Homebrewers.


Love, 
JP

Cars Land: A Special Preview

Disney's California Adventure park has always been a puzzle to me.  If there has ever been a half-baked idea in Disney, it would be DCA all the way.  It was a theme park without a proper theme.  An entire land celebrating the state that it's in just seems too ... incestuous to really work.  Sure, there are bits fo the park that are actual rides having nothing to do with a California theme, but those are very few to make the park a viable option when spending time in DCA.

Recently, they opened a new ride, Ariel's Undersea Adventure or something like that (if you want to see the thing, watch this shitty video of it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIarm5FEQXI), which is actually a pretty sweet ride, fan of The Little Mermaid or not.  Anyway, they were working on this ride when they started on a new Cars Land, based on the popular animated film.  Having never seen it, I could give two shits about it.  In fact, the only thing I was excited about was that a new section of the park also meant more connectivity throughout DCA.  No longer would I have to walk in a huge fucking circle to get where I wanted to go.  Cars Land was also coming with a newly designed park entrance (which I talke about here) and a new little downtown called Buena Vista Street, set in the 1940's.  Right on!

My girlfriend won passes to an advanced showing of Cars Land, and so we headed down to check it out. Our passes gave us access to BVS as well, and it was a real treat to be able to walk around a section of the park ahead of everyone else, but also while they were still working on it.  Shops were open, food was being sold, and some shop windows were being propped and set - it was pretty rad.  Sorry, no pics of this, as - to be honest - it was rather dull.  The buildings are beautiful, but the colors were boring. Lots and lots of creme and dark browns that just washed the buildings out and blended everything together.  I walked around with my camera, trying to get an interesting shot but soon gave up.  It's cool to see, but it left me wanting more from Disney.

Walking on, it was time for Cars Land.  I was forced to watch the film the night before, so I sort of had an idea of what to expect, but nothing prepared me accurately enough.

Entrance to Cars Land

Downtown, with bonus fatties

The land is set in a canyon, so 3/4ths of it has these high walls, simulating rock.  The bits of rock that are supposed to be off in the distance have a more pastel color tone to them, so they really do seem far away, when in reality they are at the same level as everything else.  The rock work is amazing, and the painting really makes you feel like part of the film.

Leaning Tower of Tires!

Coneage!

Rounding the corner, you hit the main drag of Cars Land, where all the shops from the film have been reproduced.  Flo's V8, Sarg's place - it's all there and it looks super legit - complete with cracks in the sidewalk and aged pavement to further replicate an old little town, save for the part of the road Lighting McQueen had to repave in the film (if you haven't seen it, you really should, if for no other reason than to get all these small things). 

Shitty pic of Stanley

The level of detail to make the rock look old is amazing

The rides are just ok.  We started with Maters Junkyard Jamboree which was total shit.  Basically, it's a ride that whips you in a figure-8 for 30 seconds, while Mater sings really awful songs at full volume.  Lame.   The second one, Luigi's Flying Tires, had a 75 min wait because the main attraction, Radiator Springs Racers, was down (again).  So we decided to watch it rather than blindly queue up.  The premise is that you are on a hovercraft-type thing shaped like a tire, and you ... bump into each other.  It had no point, and I didn't really get it but I will admit that everyone on that ride was having a great time.  Mind-blowing.

The food at Flo's is pretty good, actually. And they have beer!

Racer 5 and Red Rocket!

Eventually we got on to Radiator Springs Racers, which is like a slot-car race that wings you around a track while you race another car next to you.  It's a fun ride, but the lines will be long so I suggest you take advantage of the Single Rider line they have.

Night comes to Cars Land and the neon flickers to life, and THIS is the best time to come here.  Neon makes everything look better.  

I've bored myself already, so yeah ... Cars Land.  Choke on it.

The End of Craft Beer

Craft beer has been riding a rocket of growth over the past few years, and unless you are unplugged from the beer world, you already knew that.  Everyone is a champion of craft beer these days.  From the guy crushing pints of IPA at your local, to the fourth guy in your homebrew club to start a beer blog, it seems you can't get away from the juggernaut that is American Craft Beer.

But can this be a bad thing?

Here are the numbers: in 2010, there were approximately 1,800 breweries operating in the US.  This includes brewpubs, large breweries and non-craft breweries.  In 2011, this number increases to about 2040 breweries, not including closures (of which there were 35).  Over 2,000 breweries in the country in 2011, all pumping out beer, all needing one thing: ingredients.

An industry that relies on a purely agricultural product to survive cannot be sustainable forever.  At least, not while experiencing record growth.  There is only so much land on which to grow food to eat, much less to boil it down, ferment, and consume the dregs.  Our land is shrinking to strip malls and condos, and the products we rely on to make beer shrink with them.  Take the US Hop Crop, for example:  The acreage of hop farms in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon (the three states we rely on the most for hops) shrank last year by a combined 16%.  Imagine that - the farms that we rely on for our hops are now smaller than they were last year, by a good chunk.  Now, yields have risen by 80 pounds or so, but when the total crop is down almost a million pounds over last year, 80 seems like a very small number.   We all remember the "hop crisis", when the average size of the hop farms decreased by about 9,000 acres (and the price per pound rose but never really seemed to fall?).  With this giant growth of craft beer, are we going to be able to get the hops we need for our own beer making?

Then you move on to Barley.  Most of the barley that we get here in the US comes from our buddy, The Great White North (most of our crop is 6-row, which we don't really use in craft beer).  In 2008, the production was around 11,700 kMT.  Shift to 2010, when production fell to just around 8,200 kMT.

So here's my question to the craft beer world: When will the bottom drop out?  There has to be a limit, and for years we all speculated that the ultimate factor would be the consumer, where they would simply stop trying new beers and stick with the few brands they enjoy today.  But more and more it seems likely that the new growth will be governed by the availability of resources - namely malt and hops.

And here's a question to the homebrewers out there: we are already limited on our selection of barley an hops (though you don't know that) due to contracts signed by craft brewers extending for years and totaling into the millions of dollars.  So what happens when the almost 250 breweries that are waiting in the wings in California alone come online, demanding their share of two crops that have been in steady decline for the last 3-5 years?  Will homebrewers see a rise in prices - again?  Look at the trends - large breweries opening second brew houses - not just expanding, building new facilities.  Sierra Nevada alone is doing a pint night at a bar where 55 taps will be SN beers. Think about that.  Really think about how much malt, how much hops it takes to make 55 batches of individual beer styles, on a scale like that.  And you think you are worried now about not finding Amarillo ...

Just some thoughts I had while on the phone with my buddy Sean Paxton, talking about new emerging styles of beer and the future of craft beer.  I give it 5 years and then, if you don't have your contracts etched in stone, or your brewery isn't in more than 4 markets ... you're out.

I've had a few sources of info for this stuff, but the two I found most useful were the following:
http://www.brewerssupplygroup.com/FileCabinet/2010%20Harvest%20Report.pdf
http://www.usahops.org/graphics/File/Statistics/National%20Hop%20Report-NASS%2012-11.pdf
This is just my interpretation of the numbers.  I could be wrong. 

This post written under the influence of Hank III

Truly Putting It Out There

Ok, I'm going to violate several of my own personal beliefs here and actually question why brands are not getting into politics.

Normally I hate it when I hear a company or celebrity drop their viewpoints on a politician or bill or law, but this particular one I am having issue with.  The issue of gay marriage/civil unions.

Recently, the great state of Colorado voted down a civil union bill without so much as a debate on the subject.  And in North Carolina, they have passed an actual Amendment to their state constitution outright banning Gay Marriage - which didn't matter much as the state has already outlawed it.

Colorado is already known for great craft beer, but North Carolina hasn't gotten as much heat for it, mainly because, well, most of us don't pay the South too much attention.  With the expansion of three large breweries into the state, there is more weight to be thrown around than ever.

And this is a perfect opportunity for craft beer to assert it's power in these states.  To become true industry leaders - no, not only industry, but community leaders as well.  Show the country that craft beer is more than simply something to drink when you are tired of Bud Light.  We have a voice now.  And we are looking to you,  large craft brewers, to step forward and lobby for more than zoning laws or waste water disposal.  The country is ready for equal rights for all, and those that aren't are simply too stupid to see the horizon and all the changes that come with it.

Tell me I'm wrong.  Please, please tell me brewers in these states are doing what they can, and it's not just about growing their market share.  I mean, isn't that what the big, nasty brewers are about?  Push the envelope.  Break the mold.  Become something.  Changing the way we drink is fine, but show that you care more about peoples lives than you do about barrels.

This is a hot issue.  Claim it.

Marketing is Marketing

Yes, I hate to break it to you, but it's true: marketing is marketing, regardless of who puts it out.  As fans and devotees to a movement that is still very much underground, the breweries we follow and the beer bloggers we read have asked us to segment this information and treat marketing differently.  As if overnight it has changed into something more lofty than sales, and that those breweries that are still doing things "the old way" have some how grown horns and reverted to human sacrifice to hit their Q3 goals.  "Your" beer is not better than "their" beer.  Because your beer has the IBU's listed on the side of the corked bottle does not tower over the other beers simply because they choose a nicer label or a high-priced marketing firm.

I'm drinking this right now, and I am proud of it. 

The age of the craft beer getting by simply on the "poor me" method of marketing is over.  Consumers have taken craft beer to the next level and it's letting us down.  There is no more room for bullying - especially since we have accused the "Big Beer" guys of the same thing.  Telling it's customers that craft beer isn't good, that it's not as consistant.  By brewers saying their beer is superior to another simply because they make less of it is ... kind if insane.  To question someones courage or manhood because they drink yellow beer is, to be honest, scary.  Nevermind the fact there are many styles of beer that are "yellow", that attitude is becoming too aggressive for my tastes.  I don't want to be a part of a movement that says "Drink this not that".  Do you?  Do you really, REALLY care that much about what I drink?

If we are to ever get the mainstream attention we deserve, we are going to have to accept the fact that Budweiser is the best-selling beer in the world.  Does that make it less drinkable, or less valid as a consumer good?  No!  It's a fine beer and one that is extremely hard to make.  Any asshole can whip out a pale ale (and many craft pales taste like it, too), but I can count on both hands the number of breweries that can be as consistant as a Bud or Coors.

We should admire the big beers and learn from them.  The more we alienate them, the more we do the same to those who are loyal brand suporters and will not cross over to craft beer.  Ask your local brewer if he can afford to drive folks away.   But I bet I know the answer.

This post written under the influence of Crass.