Brooklyn Brewery Variety Pack

Brookly lager was the first beer I wrote about here. This time I bought the Brooklyn Brewery Variety pack, which contains 4x Brooklyn Lager, 4x Brooklyn Pennant Ale '55, 2x Brooklyn East IPA, 2x Brooklyn Brown Ale. Well, what to say: I still really like Brookly Lager, the rest is so so, nothing to really write home about... Let's stick to Brooklyn Lager from this brewery, the only one really worth a mention.

André Gide: Ponarejevalci denarja

Ponarejevalci denarja so knjiga, ki sem jo žvečil celo večnost. Par mesecev, čeprav je relativno kratka. Zgolj, da ne bom čez tri mesece pozabil, da sem jo bral, so tukaj ključni podatki: izjemno kompleksna zgodba z malim miljonom karakterjev, umetniki, ki "ne mogu da gledaju ljude", vsi heteroseksualni odnosi so napisani pavšalno, res se dogaja zgolj homoseksualcem in te dogodivščine so napisane s takim žarom, da se človeku kar milo stori pri srcu. Naslov izhaja iz dvojnosti, original in kopija originala, tako na ravni umetnosti, kot na ravni medosebnih odnošajev.

Apollo Olive Oil: Mistral Olive Oil

I tend not to rave about things like oil, but this olive oil really deserves attention. We bough it in the local whole foods and when I saw Maya speaking to the dude I was immediately suspicious since in California people usually put more emphasis on bullshit and organic credentials of ingredients rather than the quality itself. But this guy was different, he was spelling out the various varieties of olives that went into different versions of their oil (I didn't recognise any) rather than go on about tradition, environment, etc. And indeed, these dudes use an advanced vacuum milling technology (allegedly only one of five in the world) and the results are worth talking about. For the first time I am looking forward to taste olive oil in salad rather than just assume it is going to provide some neutral background to the salad itself. Warmly recommended.

Fantôme de Noel

I've decided to splurge on beer this Thursday and spent $15 on Fantôme de Noel. Fantôme makes expensive beers in a small craft brewery in the French speaking area of Belgium. Well, I got home, opened the beer and it exploded, making a small fountain in my living room and kitchen that took 20 mins to clean up. Now, I was paying $15 for half a bottle of beer. Huh.
But it was good, real good. With wines, price never correlates with taste that much, at least not to my buds, but with beer you can never do wrong with buying an expensive one...

Deschutes: Red Chair IPA

I am simply too busy at the moment to write much about cool beers I am drinking. However, this one is really quite interesting. Inidian pale ale (IPA) is one of my favourite styles and American microbreweries created their own stream of IPAs characterised by excessive hoppines, bitternes and high alcohol content. This one keeps the hoppines and high alcohol content, but manages to remove bitterness. The result is quite intruiging and novel in addition to be a very drinkable, citrusy beer. Well done, Deschutes!

Lagunitas: Hop Stoopid

Lagunitas is one my favourite west coast breweries. They are the ones that did the Zappa series (I wrote about the first two and also drank the third). The bottle of this beer shows a wooden farmhouse of some kind, a bizarre tall building (I think it was stretched vertically using photoshop) and you can just imagine a stoopid hillbilly coming out... And the beer lives up to its name, it is stoopidly hopped. It makes me see green. Green, green, here I come.

Magic Hat Brewing: Magic Hat 9

I've drunk this beer in a dodgy greek restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, yesterday. I must admit that this beer intrigued me somewhat, it smells of honey and fruit, but it actually doesn't taste of honey. It is a bitter, lemony taste with a sweet after taste; it seems that the progression of tastes goes follows an unusual progression. I wouldn't call it a great beer, it didn't seem like a very well balanced taste and nothing amazing in the grand scheme of things. It is, however, an intriguing beer, well worth trying...