beer review

BLACKHEART OATMEAL STOUT—My heart is pure, but I’ll still take the cash

My Fellow Inebriates,

Today was a historical day for this blog. Did my fellow inebriates see it when I whored the site out with sold a piece of anchor text a couple of weeks ago? Did you all go madly clicking? Goodness knows, but today a deposit was made in my PayPal account, putting Liquorstore Bear officially into the black. Booyah!

My parents were duly impressed and offered me a purple balloon. I said no, I couldn’t possibly handle the disappointment Miss V experienced yesterday when she let go of her own pink balloon in the playground. In disbelief she watched it slip from her hand and then erupted with the most horrific caterwauling ever heard in Langley. Poor V—it was hard not to feel sorry for her. It wasn’t just a balloon; it was “Ballooney” and she’d hand-picked it from a bunch at her cousin’s 4th birthday party. Ballooney sailed upwards indifferently until only Mum’s polarized lenses and my plastic eyes could place it—for V it had already vanished. For us a pink pinpoint remained for a few tantalizing moments longer, and then suddenly it was not there.balloon copy

Meanwhile V was yowling like a damaged cat. She wanted Ballooney back. She demanded Ballooney back. And if you’ve ever met V…well, all you can do is give her a hug and wait.

So when my parents offered me a balloon, I told them they could go f*ck themselves. I had enough emotional scars, thank you very much, without shepherding a damn balloon until its inevitable demise.

V had been pretty demanding in the wake of her loss, specifying extra Easter eggs as a palliative and who knows how many games of Beat Your Neighbors. So I figured I’d ask for a beer.

blackheart oatmeal stoutIt worked. BLACKHEART OATMEAL STOUT was duly poured, boasting 5.7% alcohol and pitch-black with creamy foam. Redolent of roasted malt and coffee grounds (not unpleasantly so), its initial impression is more of a pick-me-up than a relaxer. The coffee aroma is serious. Coupled with a distinctive oaty note, those espresso lashings suggest breakfast—which dovetails pretty well with my general agenda for LBHQ. Surely such a coffee-like brew is appropriate first thing in the morning….

The first sip packs an espresso wallop. Yum, if you like coffee, blech if you don’t. I love coffee, but only if there are absolutely no other beverages available. As you drink BLACKHEART you get sweet malt and cocoa along with that coffee plus a nutty finish. The mouthfeel is substantial without being chewy, and the carbonation is pretty punchy for the genre.

Don’t get the impression BLACKHEART OATMEAL STOUT is a one-note beer. There’s plenty to enjoy—even mild metallic hints if you’re given to those. They remind you that you can pound this sucker if you feel like it, or you can “session it” so you don’t get too hosed.

With the remaining $35 from the LBHQ earnings pile, I might consider buying BLACKHEART again. Then again, there’s a universe of booze out there to be sampled, so maybe not—at least not right away. In the meantime, I’m not proud—consider Liquorstore Bear at your service if you have any anchor text you’d like to place. 😉

PHILLIPS BLUE BUCK ALE—The missing part of Family Day

My Fellow Inebriates,

What’s not to love about British Columbia’s inaugural PR-driven Family Day?

family dayThe day off work/school? For my dad it’s not much of a day off; all day long his phone continues to ring. For my mum, it’s more of an extra day on, given that everybody’s home. And for me it’s just terrifying. In addition to P & V running apeshit through the house, we also have their cousins C & R accompanied by Auntie H and Uncle B (who don’t know I call them that). It’s Family Day, so the family is together—whether it frightens bears or not.

My mum has already screwed up by suggesting a family bowling outing and then failing to call the bowling alley in time to book a lane. Every freaking family in Langley thought of bowling before her, so every alley for miles is booked all day. One idea per day is about my mum’s limit, so everybody’s at LBHQ, doing family things.

Even if bowling’s not on the menu, the kids are happy. Happy, that is, without turning their attention to yours truly. Instead, Auntie H has decided to examine me and ask, “Have you ever put him in the washing machine?”

“No,” says Mum. “He has only two brain cells; if he came out with just one he couldn’t write his blog.”

Says Auntie H, “R’s bunny has been in the wash tons of times. You could put LB in. If you used the gentle cycle and a delicates bag…”

And my mother says: “Hmmm.”

Hmmmmm!! OMFG, my fellow inebriates, it’s fine to love your family but you have to draw the line somewhere. This is the part where Mum should be kicking Auntie H and her brood out, don’t you think? But she is still reflecting:

“His ass is full of beans; they’d never dry out.”

“Bunny’s full of beans,” says Auntie H. “He does fine in the wash.”

OMG!!

pope-benedict-xvi-feb-2013-2Meanwhile, Uncle B is obviously not well. He looks like he’s fighting something off. He declines lunch, he looks tired, and only when my mum starts bitching about the pope’s resignation does he get a little animated. Mum is incensed that the Catholic Church’s head honcho, chosen by God and ordained to die in the saddle, would resign. She sees it as a big PR attempt to give Catholicism a makeover by allowing a pope with a chequered past to exit stage left before any more of his dirty underwear gets exposed. Whereas Uncle B and I think it might be good for Catholicism, and that flouting 600 years of tradition might be a sign of increasing adaptability to a modern world. To which my mum says, “The church doesn’t adapt.”

When you’ve attended a high school that once made you spend all day being a human rosary bead for a “living prayer” ceremony, you might carry this impression of the Catholic Church. But I’m hanging with Uncle B on this one—it might be good for the Vatican. If the Catholic Church gets the opportunity to revamp itself, it should take it. Pope Benedict is super-creepy—a real cosmetic liability that’s only going to get worse as whatever age-related condition he hasn’t disclosed deteriorates in his dotage.

But here’s where my solidarity with Uncle B ends. Get this: he’s allergic to alcohol. I didn’t even know this was a real thing until I googled it. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Alcohol intolerance is caused by a genetic condition in which the body is unable to break down alcohol. The only way to prevent alcohol intolerance is to avoid alcohol altogether.”

Holy crap, what kinds of people have alcohol intolerance? People with the gene ADH2*2, which produces a highly active form of alcohol dehydrogenase that tends to discourage heavy drinking. The gene is common among Ashkenazi Jews like Uncle B. Symptoms include flushing, racing heart, and a mean game of chess.

Which meant the beer didn’t flow this afternoon at LBHQ. We had to break it out later. No harm done…just minor DTs…

phillips blue buckAnd the beer? Once again, from our Phillips sampler pack: BLUE BUCK ALE. Once again, 5% alcohol, but we won’t hold that against it. The color is amber-brown with a light cream head. The nose is hoppy and slightly floral with some bready notes and background fruit in moderation. On the palate it packs middle-of-the-road satisfaction, middling mouthfeel, and a good mix of malt and hops—some toffee if you’re concentrating. Nothing overly complex going on here: just a damn fine beer.

Family Day would have been better if the family had got into the BLUE BUCK about eight hours earlier than they did. After all that talk of washing machines, I needed a beer. I say to R’s bunny, however many times it’s been through the wash, You’re a stronger animal than I am. Too bad you live with teetotalers.

ANALOGUE 78 KÖLSCH—Once again, beer keeps me out of trouble

My Fellow Inebriates,

When WordPress let the following comment through, I thought its spam filters must be drunk.

…stop using your harsh bathroom tissue. Buy premoistened wipes or pads instead. Do you use garlic at home?…

But Holly Hayden’s message actually  made sense in response to 5 Ways to Help Your Anus Thrive. Goodness, she was actually proposing help for the ragged anuses at LBHQ.

“Stop using your harsh bathroom tissue.”

Given that throughout history people have used everything from leaves/twigs to corn husks to wipe away their nightsoil, TP doesn’t seem so harsh. But point taken. Miss V in particular dislikes the harshness of Kirkland Signature toilet tissue, a product we’ve taken to buying in bulk at Costco because she enjoys unspooling entire rolls into the toilet while nobody’s looking.

“Buy premoistened wipes or pads instead.”

Done and done. Almost no one with young kids can avoid prepackaged wipes. In just the way disposable diapers sneak into the diaper bag, especially with a second kid, premoistened wipes assert their must-have status in short order. You get to the point where, if somebody else’s kid sticks a hand down a diaper and emerges with a handful of excrement, and the parent doesn’t have a premoistened wipe, you think they’re a total asshole.

farting guyBut according to an itchy-bottom expert, wet wipes can cause rashes. Especially in body areas that transition from external to internal, “such as the lips or the anus,” or indeed the lips of the anus, sensitivity to methylchloroisothiazolinone/ methylisothiazolinone (MCI/MI) or kathon CG, the chemicals most often found in wipes, may induce mind-bendingly awful ass rashes, which then devolve into further hell as you “treat” them by wiping instead of using TP.

I did an informal poll of LBHQ to see who exactly is using these wet wipes.

Miss P: No. Miss P likes to squat and dash, using nothing, and leaving everything behind for later discovery. Hemorrhoids? No.

Miss V: Yes. Miss V feeds wet wipes to the toilet despite their obvious indigestibility, making for later surprises of the plumbing kind. Hemorrhoids? No.

My dad: Refused to be interviewed. Hemorrhoids? Not that I know of, which is to say, inconclusive.

My mum: Yes. Takes wet wipes to the park so other parents won’t think she’s an asshole. Hemorrhoids? “None of your bloody business,” but no.

Scarybear: Shits in the woods, he says, which means outside by the cedar trees. No one has ever seen him leave the house. Hemorrhoids? How could someone as ornery as Scary not have hemorrhoids?

“Do you use garlic at home?”

For what? OMG, my fellow inebriates, what is my spammer suggesting? What would one do with garlic vis-à-vis hemorrhoids? Insert them up one’s ass??

I had to know, so I clicked on Holly’s link.hemorrhoid feedback form

My WordPress spam filter might have tied one on, but gmail’s was sober. It put my “H Miracle Alternative Remedy Handbook” straight into the spam pile. And when I retrieved it, it was just a tease.

hemorrhoid miracle end of sample

Luckily I don’t have a functional anus, but I know most of you do. Should you insert garlic into it?

My new friend Holly may have been reticent to share her hemorrhoid wisdom without a credit card number, but Lainey Penninger was not. Her instructions were as follows:

Insert the garlic clove into your rectum like a suppository. Adding lubricant will make it easier to insert. Simply use your index finger and insert the clove inside the rectum approximately two inches. Leave the garlic suppository overnight… Repeat three times per week to decrease hemorrhoid symptoms. The garlic clove will naturally be expelled when you have your next bowel movement.

Holy crap, people, I’d never thought about doing this. Have any of you ever done this? Would you like to?

garlic cloveWe have garlic in the fridge, but none of the humans wanted to be a guinea pig. So I thought I’d find Scarybear and insert some garlic up his cavity while he was busy watching The Matrix for the hundredth time. But I got distracted by a bottle of PHILLIPS ANALOGUE 78 KÖLSCH. Unbeknownst to me it had arrived in a Phillips sampler pack that included DR. FUNK DUNKEL, a beer my dad found so awesome that he asked my mum to buy it again, little knowing that she would instead abide by the LBHQ beer-tasting agenda and buy a four-variety pack so we won’t run out of brews to review and have to post two weeks of cat pictures again.

Analog-78At first my dad was disgruntled at receiving only three DR. FUNK DUNKELS and nine randoms. I suspected hemorrhoids, but you can’t blame those for everything. No, my dad thought he’d tried the Phillips sampler before and hadn’t liked it. Which was a total hallucination, as the box has never been in our house before. Again, I suspected hemorrhoids—this time the hallucination-inducing kind. This he denied, so I guess I got my interview.

Fact is, when we got those Phillips beers chilled, they were damned fine. ANALOGUE 78 pours silky straw-colored with a film of white head and quick bubbles that waft bakery crust, faint citrus notes, and earthy hops. The aroma falls within typical parameters: nothing outlandish, just crisp and uncomplicated.

On the palate ANALOGUE 78 is clean and refreshing with peppy carbonation, easy bitterness and restrained malt. A quintessential summer beer, the stuff is more quaffable than its marketing materials (“our version of the long-play album”) purport. It was gone in a blink.

Needless to say, any thoughts of garlic were also gone. Not that stuffing garlic up Scary’s ass was one of my better ideas…

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