Beer of the Week (Vol. CLXXXII)

Another edition of Beer of the Week sponsored as always by the smoothing folks at Glen Lake Wine & Spirits who can help you find the wine, whiskey, and beer you need to calm the most jagged of nerves.

This is the time of year when we typically witness an outbreak of hysteria in these parts. It’s caused by the sobering realization that our glorious days of summer are indeed numbered and that number is dwindled rapidly. I like to call this SSAS or Summer’s Slipping Away Syndrome. Its symptoms include:

- Freaking about because it’s almost time for the kids to go back to school

- Freaking out because it’s almost time for the State Fair

- Freaking out because the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder

SSAS seems to especially prevalent among Minnesotans this year after enduring a winter that never ended and a spring that never began. But rather than fret over or fruitlessly try to fight the change, we might as well just embrace it, enjoy what remains of summer, and appreciate the splendors of autumn.

The cooler nights for example are well suited for quaffing richer, heavier beers that we typically eschew during the height of the sultry summer. Beers like Midnight Ryder from Indeed Brewing Company in Minneapolis:

Midnight Ryder – a hat tip to Bischoff’s son, Elliott Ryder – is cloaked in mystery and full of surprises. A style of disputed origins and merit, American Black Ale puts a distinctly American twist on the India Pale Ale with five varieties of malt that give this dark beer a medium body and a complex array of flavors including caramel, chocolate and a smidgen of roast. Sealing the deal are six varieties of American-grownhops added throughout the 90-minute boil (Willamette, Cascade, CTZ, Warrior, Summit, and Glacier,. This beer offers a resinous and piney character with just enough citrus to bring balance at the finish line.

Six-pack of 12oz cans retails for $9.99. Another Indeed design with a fin de siècle feel this time with a top-hatted, curly-mustachioed chap sporting both a top hat and monocle riding a bear-who also has a top hat and vision aid-and drinking a cup of coffee.

STYLE: American Black Ale

ALCOHOL BY VOLUME: 6.5%

COLOR (0-2): Deep black. 2

AROMA (0-2): Toffee and chocolate blend with citrus. 2

HEAD (0-2): Tan color. Thick and foamy with loads of volume. 2

TASTE (0-5): Like the aroma a zesty combination of hoppy bitterness and roasted malts. You get flavors of pine, citrus, chocolate, and coffee. The body is medium to heavy and it definitely more suited for sipping than slamming. Mouthfeel is thin and a bit watery. 4

AFTERTASTE (0-2): Lasting flavors of coffee and bitter. 2

OVERALL (0-6): Another good effort from Indeed to go along with their other flagship offering Day Tripper Pale Ale. Midnight Ryder is a tasty amalgamation of bold flavors that strikes the right balance between roasted malts and hearty hops. Summer’s end may indeed be imminent, but Midnight Ryder will smooth your transition. 4

TOTAL SCORE (0-19): 16

Back Yard Jihad

Al-Shabaab recruitment video features men who traveled from Mpls to Somalia for jihad:

Al-Shabaab's latest recruitment video features the stories of three men who traveled from Minneapolis to Somalia for jihad.

All three men left for Somalia in 2007 or 2008 and were dead within two years.

In the video, Troy Kastigar, a Native American who converted to Islam in 2004, tells viewers, "This is the real Disney Land."

"You need to come over here, join us, and take pleasure in this fun," Kastigar adds.

Al-Shabaab is a Somali-based al-Qaeda cell.

The video has since been removed from YouTube, but two journalists with expertise on Somalia watched it and tweeted out details, including stills of the men.

There is absolutely no danger that videos of this sort might induce local Somalis to take up jihad here rather than traveling all the back to the homeland, right? Good, I feel much better now.

Buzz Words

While I haven’t yet completed work on this next installment in the award winning Beer of the Week series, I have a hunch that it might involve a cask Gueuze style offering dry-hopped with Mosaic hops. Just maybe…

Four magic words that will make you sound like a craft beer expert:

Like any interest, hobby or obsession, craft beer has its own lingo, and navigating a tap list or communicating what your preferences are when ordering at L.A.'s craft-beer-focused establishments can be intimidating. Here are some terms to know that are growing in popularity among craft beer drinkers.

You gotta talk the talk, right?

Just Grow Baby

The problems facing the middle class and possible solutions have now become a staple of American political conversation. Politicians and pundits of all stripes now acknowledge the challenges faced by “working Americans” even though most of the proposals voiced to overcome them are stale policy prescriptions that are either irrelevant or unlikely to make a difference. In fact, some would likely make things worse for the middle class.

In today’s WSJ, William Galston looks into what is Behind the Middle-Class Funk:

Four decades later, the middle class share had declined by 10 percentage points to just 51%, while the upper class share increased by six points and the lower class by four. The U.S. income distribution is still a bell curve, but the left and right tails are fatter and the hump in the middle is lower.

This means that the middle class is less economically and socially dominant than it once was. Relatively speaking, more Americans are enjoying affluent lives at the same time that more are just barely making it (if at all). But that doesn't mean the middle class got poorer. During those 40 years, Pew calculates, the median income of middle-class households (adjusted for inflation) grew by 34%. The median grew for the others as well—by 43% for upper-income households and 29% for those with incomes below the middle class. This isn't surprising, because the median income for all U.S. households rose by 32% during that period, from $44,845 in 1970 to $59,127 in 2010. Indeed, 86% of middle-class Americans, and 84% of all Americans, enjoy higher incomes than their parents did.

By some measures the middle class has done better, and by others worse, than the Pew study suggests. Pew uses a definition of income that excludes employer-provided health insurance, non-cash transfers such as food stamps and the redistributive effect of taxes. If these additional sources are included, the rate of increase in median household income between 1979 and 2007 is significantly higher. The increase looks substantially smaller if, as some economists suggest, we use the rate of medical-cost inflation rather than the consumer price index to determine the real value of employer-provided health insurance.

Another complication: Forty years ago, average household size was 3.2 persons. Today, it is only 2.5, a drop of 20%. Most analysts (including Pew's) adjust for this change, because a smaller number of persons per household means that income per person rises faster than the overall household income numbers would suggest. But some researchers disagree, on the ground that smaller households reflect, in part, lower birth rates, which are in turn influenced by gloomier economic realities and expectations.

Finally, rising household incomes reflect increasing hours of work per year to a greater extent than wage and salary increases. Between 1979 and 2007, on average, annual hours worked by middle-income households rose from 3,007 to 3,335—fully 10%, a larger increase than for any other income group. Some of the additional work reflects expanding opportunities for women. But much of it came in response to economic pressure and represents time that men as well as women reluctantly diverted from their children—hardly an unambiguous improvement in family well-being.

Galston doesn’t offer any simple solutions to the myriad problems that are afflicting the middle class. However, he does end his piece with one prescription which would undeniably improve the situation:

We can argue about how squeezed the middle class was in the decades between the end of the postwar expansion and the onset of the Great Recession. But two things are clear: The coping mechanisms the middle class employed in those decades (fewer children, more hours worked, more borrowing against home equity) are played out, and it will take middle-class households years to recover from the recession-induced blow to their income and wealth. If we cannot restore a vigorously growing economy whose fruits are widely shared, the struggles of the middle class will persist, and our democratic distemper will deepen.

There’s an economic maxim that says “growth solves all problems.” While that might be a bit of exaggeration, it is true that a period of solid and sustained economic growth would be the best single way to help middle class families. Now, we just need to figure out how to make that happen.

HWX, the Summer Wind Edition

It’s a special Monday Night Edition of the Hinderaker-Ward Experience (HWX), with  John Hinderaker of Power Line and Brian Ward of Fraters Libertas reconvening for a discussion of the vital issues facing our culture on this sultry night.  Topics include:

 *  the weather in Minnesota

*  the best in cheap beer, today and yesterday

*  the onset of the trial of Major Nidal Hassan

*  the fire sale on the Boston Globe

*  the curious case of the closed US Embassies

*  Loon of the Week, featuring a double shot of Rep. Keith Ellison

*  This Week in Gatekeeping, featuring a double shot of geography errors in the Guardian and the New York Times

 We’re also joined by a couple of recent Ricochet Members/Listeners of the Week who give us the low down from their respective corners of the country and tell us their Ricochet backstories.  

There are many ways to hear the podcast, including over on the mothership at Ricochet.  You can be sure to never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes or Feedburner.  Or just use the player embedded below.  If all of these fail, send me an email and I'll come to your house and read from a written transcript.  Hope you enjoy.

Counterproductivity Is Alive And Well

The San Francisco 49ers will be unveiling a new app along with their new stadium next year.  The app will let fans know which concession and toilet room lines are the shortest:

When the San Francisco 49ers unveil Levi's Stadium, in Santa Clara, Calif., for the 2014 season, their new home will come with all sorts of built-in tech extras. For instance, a high-speed mobile infrastructure will allow fans to watch highlights and surf the web without their connections being jammed by tens of thousands of other fans trying to do the same. 

The new stadium's most impressive innovation, however, will tackle another problem entirely. Yes, as recently reported by Yahoo Sports' Rand Getlin, a stadium-specific app will allow fans to track the shortest beer and bathroom lines in real-time to most efficiently plan excursions away from their seats.

While I admire the effort, I see one huge problem.  If everybody in the stadium is being directed to the shortest lines, wouldn't they then quickly become the LONGEST lines? 

Was That Wrong?

Lawyer for San Diego Mayor Bob Filner blames city for failing to provide sexual harassment training:

The attorney for San Diego’s embattled mayor says the city failed to provide Bob Filner state-required sexual harassment training and therefore should pay to defend him against a lawsuit by his former communications director, who alleges he asked her to work without wearing panties.

Filner’s lawyer Harvey Berger made the argument in a letter to City Attorney Jan Goldsmith one day before the City Council voted unanimously to deny Filner funds for his legal defense. Local media published parts of the letter Wednesday.

Berger said the training was scheduled but the city trainer canceled and did not reschedule.

From the Seinfeld episode The Red Dot:

In the boss' office.

Boss: I'm going to get right to the point. It has come to my attention that you and the cleaning woman have engaged in sexual intercourse on the desk in your office. Is that correct?

George: Who said that?

Boss: She did.

George: Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you I gotta plead ingnorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frouned upon, you know, cause I've worked in a lot of offices and I tell you peope do that all the time.

A Matter of Style

In case you haven't yet heard, today is officially National IPA Day. No Atomizer, it is not a national holiday (report to the office immediately) although hard core IPA fans no doubt treat it as such and are celebrating accordingly.

IPAs are the rock stars of the craft beer world. There's an official Site of IPA, which describes the style as the "flagship of the craft beer movement." Anyone with even a passing familiarity of craft beers is likely well acquainted with the style and even some of its history (although they may not know the real story of the origins of IPA).

A less well known beer style that's all the rage among the geekiest of the beer geek crew (guys with beards mostly) these days is sour. I have yet to jump on the sour bandwagon and this piece from the New Yorker called A Brief History of Sour Beer helps explains why the style may not be for everyone:

Before the advent of refrigeration and advances in the science of fermentation in the mid-nineteenth century, almost all beer was, to varying degrees, sour. The culprits were pre-modern sanitation and poorly understood, often naturally occurring bacteria including Lactobacillus and Pediococcus, as well as Brettanomyces yeasts, which can contribute a hint of tartness and characteristic “funky” flavors and aromas, sometimes compared to leather, smoke, and “horse blanket.” In a development that would make Pasteur, the father of biogenesis (as well as his method for halting it, pasteurization) roll in his grave, brewers, especially in the United States, have embraced the time-honored Belgian art of deliberately infecting beer with the same “wild” bugs that generations of their predecessors so painstakingly eradicated. The result: pleasingly sour, food-friendly beer, mysteriously complex and engaging.

At brewing conventions these days, the best-attended lectures aren’t about hops. They’re about inoculating wood barrels with wild yeast, with slide shows of oozing bungs and anti-oxidative pellicles. Brewers have put the lessons to use, releasing hundreds of commercial examples of American sour ales. These sometimes have lofty, even sacerdotal names: there’s Allagash’s Resurgam (“I shall rise again”) and Russian River Brewing’s Consecration, for starters. With pH akin to good Pinot Noir, the best make it onto serious menus. The worst taste of nail-polish remover, rotten apple, coconut, or the dreaded “baby diaper.” A consistent product is notoriously tricky to pull off; brewers might be said to guide, rather than master, the beers, hoping for serendipity. Amid all the trial and error, ancient brewing history is repeating, spreading around the nation one foamy, infected-on-purpose barrel at a time: to Billings, Montana; Athens, Ohio; Tampa; L.A.; Brooklyn (of course). Where next?

When there's a chance that the beer you're cracking may taste like a dirty diaper you're operating in a high risk/reward environment. It might be a while before we're celebrating National Sour Day.

Message: We Care

Confession time, the Hinderaker-Ward Experience (HWX) has often utilized audio clips that play at an insufficient volume in the posted broadcast.   They sound fine to me when I cut them.  Then something happens in the transfer and rebroadcast. Our Ricochet producer commonly advises me to pump up the volume or rip them through some sound enhancing web app first, but I have not.  I figured it was more of his overprotective mothering (I also regularly ignore his nagging to eat more vegetables and to call him more often) and it couldn’t have been THAT bad.

Fuller confession time, I don’t typically listen to the podcast after it’s posted. I was there, I lived it, and, no matter what levels of new excellence in punditry, interviews, or TWIGs and Loons I felt we achieved, I did not see the value of a replay.  More to the point, I have not yet reconciled with the reality that, while my voice in real life sounds to me like a combination of Morgan Freeman and David McCullough, on tape it’s an uncanny combination of Carol Channing and Tom Waits with a head cold.

A comment from Al Sparks in the Ricochet thread to this week’s podcast string shook me from my egocentric complacency:

I usually enjoy the Hinderwalker Ward Experience and that includes this week's.  But their production values could use some working on.  I don't care about the occasional discussions with their producer that were meant to be offline, but when they're playing the occasional recording of a person they want to comment on, it's at a very low volume.  To listen to that recording you have to turn the podcast volume up.  But then the recording is over, and they're back to talking, my ears are getting blasted before I manage to turn it down.  It's even worse when they do voice overs on a recording.

It's been roughly 9 months since I mentioned the production values problem, to James Lileks (during an NR Cruise) and he did say it was a concern at Ricochet.
I do think the problem has been addressed at the other podcasts, but the problem has stubbornly remained with HWX.  It's been around for at least a year.  Doesn't anyone at Ricochet headquarters listen to their output and self-critique?

For that matter do John Hinderwalker and Brian Ward care?

I think I can speak for Hinderwalker as well when I say our answer is absolutely, positively, yeah, I guess, whatever.

No, our answer is Yes. Yes. We. Care. Everything we do on the podcast, we do it for the listeners, and now that’s its been hammered home with guilt inducing ferocity, the low volume on our clips shall not be ignored.   We’ve heard you and soon the world will hear the roar of our audio clips!

Seriously, thanks to Al, this will be done.  Al’s heartfelt comments also compelled me to listen to our last episode with Victor Davis Hanson, and besides the low volume on clips, and the Channing/Waits duet, I heard something … else.   Something best described by Ross Perot in 1992 as:



I don’t know when or how this annoying unconscious vocal tic entered my speech pattern, but it’s on this podcast, early and often.  The Giant Sucking Sound, just dropped in at the beginning of a sentence, sounding like a rich combination of air and fluid.   The horror.

I don’t know necessarily how to stop an unconscious vocal tic, I swear it will be done.  This will not stand!  Unrelated, I also pledge to purge my other bad habit of enjoying a heaping plate of linguini and clam sauce during the show and snacking while Hinderwalker is talking.  Probably doesn’t effect the audio quality of the show, but you never know.

For next week’s HWX, tentatively scheduled for Monday evening, you can look forward to hearing the clips and not hearing the slurps.

Comic Book Guys

Interesting post on why comic books can be a good way to get some kids to read:

Because of this focus, it’s common and normal for the creative child to come to reading between the ages of 8 and 10 years old, when their brains naturally shift from primarily three-dimensional thinking to be able to take in two-dimensional and symbolic processing, which is what reading entails. Therefore, not only is the time frame of learning to read different from society’s viewpoint, the process to acquire reading differs as well because they prefer a picture-based method such as a sight-word, context-driven resource. And, finally, once the initial reading skill is acquired, the creative learner is drawn to reading materials and resources that are less valued in our society, thus, bringing us back to comic books and other “twaddle.”

Right-brained, creative learners turn every symbol (words, numerals) into pictures. (This is why it is easier for the creative child to learn the word “encyclopedia” than the word “the.” It’s a more visual word.) When they read, they often skim across the top of words in order to “catch the visual” that is important to their comprehension and enjoyment of the reading process. (This is why it’s easier for the creative person to read silently.) Therefore, the right-brained, creative learner is drawn to resources that assist and support them in their particular learning process.

Comic books serve several purposes for children with this learning style. The first is that the resource already supplies the pictures for this learner’s need to “catch the visual.” The reason this is important during their pre-fluency stage of reading is the need to understand what they are reading (in order to enjoy the process by comprehending what they are reading). When they’re not required to create the pictures themselves they can concentrate on interpreting the actual symbols involved in reading.

The second purpose a comic book resource provides is context in figuring out new words. This learning style prefers a “whole-to-part” method to learning (sight words) versus “part-to-whole” (phonics). A creative child will often use the existing pictures to guess or predict the words that will be used in the dialogue. We are conditioned to view this as “cheating” or “less than,” but in actuality, our right-brained children are using their best assets: learning by association and/or context.

We’ve definitely observed this pattern with our eldest son. He has struggled (and still does) with chapter books, but he eats up graphic novels. And lest you harbor under the illusion that comics are nothing more than pulp trash, here are a few of the comic books that he has enjoyed:

Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy

Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Big Bad Ironclad!

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The first two are stories of historical fiction (with a lot of fact mixed in) from the Revolutionary and Civil wars while the last is the classic Sherlock Holmes adventure. None would qualify as trash not worth reading. And then he also reads this:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Have you ever read “Moby Dick”? Despite its literary renown and all the cultural references that spring from it, I admit that I have not nor do I have any plans to. Unless that is, I happen to pick up my son’s edition. Maybe.

When I was a kid I too read comics. And yes, some probably were nothing more than worthless mind-numbing entertainment. But I also read comics in the Classics Illustrated series such as “The Three Musketeers,” “Two Years Before the Mast,” “The Time Machine,” “Lord Jim,” “Frankenstein,” “The Invisible Man,” and other timeless tales. They certainly didn’t deter and no doubt likely enhanced my love of reading that continues to this day.

Playing In Their End

A new Jeff Johnson for Governor video with a hockey theme? Yeah, I might just have to post that baby:



No, sadly enough that is not me in the blue jersey (get it?) schooling that poor red goalie, although from his positioning between the pipes it looks like it would be rather easy to light the lamp on him.

This video is a not-so-subtle jab at former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who liked to portray himself as a goalie blocking DFL efforts to impose their version of a "better Minnesota." I imagine that the message of going on offense will prove popular with local conservatives looking for more from a governor than just protecting the pipes.

Note to members of the Johnson campaign team: I want me one of them Johnson for Governor pucks.

Trapped Under Ice

A story in last Friday’s WSJ detailed the realities of increasing energy usage for the foreseeable future:

The world will use far more of every type of energy in coming decades, the U.S. Energy Department said Thursday in a report that predicts China and India will drive growing consumption.

The department's statistical arm, the Energy Information Administration, estimated world-wide use of energy—mostly for transportation and electricity—will surge 56% by 2040 compared with 2010 levels.

Half of that growth would come from China and India, the report says, outlining a scenario where global economic growth will lift demand for renewable energy like electricity from solar power, but also one where fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas remain the world's go-to energy sources.

While the mix of those go-to fossil fuels may change, they will still account for the vast majority of the world’s energy use:

Based on current government policies and a model that assumed continued growth in the world-wide economy, the report found that fueling that prosperity will take mostly traditional fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas. Those fuels will account for 80% of world energy use through 2040, the report projects.

Consumption of natural gas is expected to grow faster than that of oil or coal, with the industrial and electric power sectors leading a shift toward burning more gas, which is being unlocked across the globe thanks to new extraction technologies.

The report does say that alternative energy sources will supply a larger share than ever before, but that 80% figure for fossil fuels is striking. No matter how much people may want to wish them away, the reality is that we will continue to rely on fossil fuels for future growth and prosperity much in the same way we have relayed on them to fuel the previous hundred years of advancement in standards of living and quality of life.

The good news is the we keep finding new places for the fuels that keep our civilization going. Scientists Envision Fracking in Arctic and on Ocean Floor:

Scientists in Japan and the U.S. say they are moving closer to tapping a new source of energy: methane hydrate, a crystalline form of natural gas found in Arctic permafrost and at the bottom of oceans.

At room temperature the crystal gives off intense heat, earning it the nickname of "fire in ice," and making the estimated 700,000 trillion cubic feet of the substance scattered around the world a potentially major fuel source, containing more energy than all previously discovered oil and gas combined, according to researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Commercial production of methane hydrate is expected to take at least a decade—if it comes at all. Different technologies to harvest the gas are being tested, but so far no single approach has been perfected, and it remains prohibitively expensive. But booming energy demand in Asia, which is spurring gigantic projects to liquefy natural gas in Australia, Canada and Africa, is also giving momentum to efforts to mine the frozen clumps of methane hydrate mixed deep in seafloor sediment.

There are environmental concerns (of course) with harvesting these immense new sources of energy. But do you believe for an instance that our unquenchable need for energy won’t drive development of technologies and safety standards that will be able to address them? We’re going to need a lot of fossil fuels to satisfy our future energy needs. The sooner we start figuring out how to best make use of any and all sources we can, the better.