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.
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.
It 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. 😉
My Fellow Inebriates,
Oh, to be an American today…. As a Canadian I can’t get in on the action (so my parents tell me), but in the US it’s the 80th anniversary of the day beer became available in the US—the beginning of the end of Prohibition. Back in 1933, thirsty citizens lined up at bars and taverns all over the country waiting for midnight to strike so they could finally enjoy a legal brew.
Prohibition was, no doubt, one of the dumbest legislative ideas ever conceived, spawning an infamously violent underground economy and string of HBO series concerned with the crimes committed in the name of supplying and procuring alcohol to a populace that undoubtedly wanted it. Lasting an unbelievable 13 years, Prohibition produced—in addition to the gangland events that continue to supply screenwriters with fodder—some unintended consequences for alcohol production in America: consequences that would delay America’s international acceptance as a serious wine producer and instead mire it with a persistent reputation for producing bathtub moonshine.
Consider something as simple as grape planting. Driven to produce their own wine during the dry years, Americans created a demand for hardy, disease-resistant, “no-brainer” grapes that weren’t necessarily optimal for making wine. California grape growers increased their land allocation by 700% to accommodate the demand, ostensibly for table grapes, tearing up decent vines and planting crappy consumer ones because this was the only way they could stay in business. Growers even produced thick slabs of grape concentrate bearing cautionary labels: “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine.”
The result was a steady flow of barely drinkable near-vinegar that would render the US’s fledgling wine industry internationally risible. Illegal wine was hideously unstandardized and even watered down. At best it was undrinkable; at worst it was unsafe for consumption. Worst of all, those citizens in such thrall to alcohol that they sought out and drank it anyway could find no psychological help.
Prohibition destroyed or caused serious winemakers to flee the country. When the dry years finally ended, grape cultivators would be left with large swaths of thick-skinned, flavorless grapes planted for the sake of easy transportation, and an industry brain drain that left behind little winemaking knowledge.
Thus April 7 is cause for celebration, my fellow inebriates. In the years since the Volstead Act was declared unconstitutional, American winemaking has followed a long road to recovery. Not until the 1980s did it manage to penetrate the international wine market with any degree of seriousness, and its fight against European derision is to some extent still being waged.
Okay, so logically, I should be reviewing some American wine here. This was the plan, but my parents are being dickheads again, and they wouldn’t buy any. (Apparently “we” are drying out for a while.) So I’ll tell you instead about the Canadian Cream in the fridge.
How does this tie in with Prohibition? It doesn’t really, except that it’s a good example of what happens when citizens with very little expertise decide to make their own booze. Cooking up our own Irish cream variant seemed like the best idea we’d ever had, but four months later the stuff is looking a bit gross. Sure, it passes the sniff test, and my mum baked something with it last month, but it has some weird curds that have to be strained out of it, and nobody OMG! I totally want to drink it but I can’t get into the fridge really wants to drink it.
Liquorstore Bear 