I’m going to be screwed when/if the pandemic ends

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As is often the case, I struggled immensely to come up with things I wanted for gifts for Christmas.  In the end, my general listed pretty much revolved around all sorts of sweats, compression gear and athletic apparel, and I was fortunate enough to be thought of by enough people to have gotten quite a good bit of it.

That being said, since none of this stuff really serves me much purpose outside of the gym, or at home, or while working out at home, when and if the pandemic ever ends and I have to start going back on-site to work, I’m pretty much going to be screwed as far as the usefulness of all this stuff is concerned.

I’ll definitely be better equipped for the gym, outdoor running, or when I feel like feeling like a sausage at home, but in the grand spectrum of time spent in this kind of stuff is going to pale in comparison to the kinds of clothing that I’ll be expected to wear in the workplace, or going out for societal functions again, not that I couldn’t just be that guy who always wears athletic gear everywhere he goes.

It’s just kind of funny though, since this just feeds the narrative that as we get older, the more and more practical our gift choices become, and how ecstatic we are to get things like socks, accessories and mundane clothing.  Because this isn’t in the least bit facetious or resentful for my gift haul, I couldn’t be any happier with all the things that I got, because they’re all things that I’ve wanted, but been too cheap to spend my own money on, and now I don’t have to, but can have all the athletic gear I always wanted in the end.

New Father Brogging, #031

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’d become so accustomed to carving out a little bit of time to write every single night throughout the month that I don’t feel right not doing so, even if there’s no more German beers to review, and even if it is Christmas, and even if I’m tired because I’ve been up since the usual 6:30 am, and spent pretty much all day entertaining guests and trying to keep up with families, be it virtual or in-person.

If anything at all, this is precisely what I should have wanted to have happen after writing about beer for 24 straight days, is that it’s kind of conditioned me to want to do some writing, every single day, because when the day is over that’s really what I always aspire to accomplish with my brog, in writing regularly while hopefully not becoming too inane or uninteresting.

So I’ll simply say that as it has been the first Christmas of my daughter, I am in very good spirits that she had a pretty good day, slept well, had good naps, ate very well, and had a tremendous amount of gifts for her.  I am floored by all the love that my family is fortunate to receive and that so many people want to lavish my daughter with gifts and other thoughtful gestures, and I feel very lucky to have so many positive persons in my stratosphere.

It makes me feel unworthy of all the consideration so many of my friends and family have for my family and I, and that I will probably be anxious and insecure with the idea that I can reciprocate such generosities adequately.  I can only hope to be the friend, family or companion to those who think of me back to them, and I would like to be the best person in return to everyone who even has even just good thoughts towards my family and I.

Regardless, in spite of the general mass bemoaning of the kind of year that 2020 has been, it was still extremely important to me that my daughter have a good first Christmas.  Mythical wife is often critical and gives me hell about my general apathy and reluctance to do stuff like putting up trees, decorating the yard, and other festive things around the house, but it wasn’t so difficult to do as much this year, because of our general want to have the best Christmas we could under the circumstances we were given.

And despite the fact that we couldn’t see much of our family and friends this year, and there’s still a laundry list of people that my daughter has yet to meet in person, we still made the best of the hand we were dealt and be it virtual and the few people who do have a pass to come to my home, I think we succeeded in having a pretty good Christmas not just for our child, but just a good one in general.

I hope all future Christmases can be as positive for my wife and daughter as this one has been, if not better.

Advent Beer #24: Weizenbock Hell by Ladenburger

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And here we are, hours before the clock strikes midnight, bringing on Christmas of the vaunted year of 2020, and I am sipping on the final and 24th beer of the Costco advent calendar.

When I pulled this can out of the fridge, my first thought was, WTF another Hell beer?  Obviously by now, I can recall that “hell” in Deutsch means “bright” and not the devils and pitchforks hell-hell, I’ve had so many hells over the last 24 days.  But at the same time, I’m thinking, if this is the last beer in the entire collection, surely it must be good to warrant it being the finale to a beer drinker’s journey, right?

Regardless of my general disdain for the seeming lack of originality in putting forth yet another hell bier, and not like another dunkel, I remained hopeful that this would be good, in spite of the fact that all the other hell biers sit uncomfortably at the bottom third of the rankings, due to their general boredom and lack of interesting characteristics.

Pouring this bier into my das boot, I’m greeted with both a strong aroma, and the sight of a cloudy, amber bier, both of which bode well for my hopes, as cloudy usually equals flavorful, and if you can smell it, it probably isn’t going to be bland.

The first sip is met with a ton of fruity notes and a pretty intense flavor.  I’m kind of reminded of a Lonerider Shotgun Betty, which is a tremendous compliment in its own right, and it should be reminded that a former #1 in the rankings, the Bearjew Weisse (#16) got that position mostly because of its similarities to Shotgun Betty.  So the fact that this also has similarities to the characteristics that makeup Shotgun Betty and Bearjew Weisse means that this has to rate well, right?

As I drink this beer, I’m feeling that the fruity notes are a little on the too intense side of things, and there’s a surprising amount of kick at the end.  Examining the can, I read that this has an ABV of 7.4%, which I believe makes it the most potent bier in the collection, which I guess kind of explains why this is the one they end on, because it’s the one that’s going to punch the hardest.

By slotting Weizenbock Hell into #5, that solidifies the rankings as there are no more beers to go.  I liked Weizenbock Hell a good bit, it’s easily the strongest bier to have put into my das boot, but when the day is over, it’s falling beneath a more balanced Shotgun Betty clone (Bearjew), two dunkels (Jubilation Suds and Kirta), and my first (supposed) exposure to a kellierbier (First Coral).  Weizenbock is a strong finish to the entire collection, and the fact that it cracked the top-5 at the very end speaks volumes to the quality of this finale.

And with that, concludes 24 days of biers from Deutschland.  I have enjoyed it, and making it an excuse to carve out a little bit of time each night to write about something I’m most definitely not an expert in, but one of the big takeaways I get from this is that a lot of ‘Murican beer is about as mediocre in comparison to a mishmash of biers randomly collected from another country, but maybe that can be chalked up to a grass is greener logic.  I wonder if whatever country drew ‘Murican Beer Advent Calendar is as impressed with theirs as I am with Deutschland’s?

Current Rankings:

  1. Jubilation Suds (#18)
  2. Bearjew Weisse (#16)
  3. First Coral (#2)
  4. Kirta (#5)
  5. Weizenbock Hell (#24)
  6. Turbo Prop (#6)
  7. Schwarze Tinte (#13)
  8. Perlenzauber (#9)
  9. Loncium Vienna Style Lager (#12)
  10. Märzenbier (#20)
  11. Jubiläumsbier 333 (#7)
  12. Landgang Pils (#23)
  13. Zwönitzer Steinbier (#4)
  14. Alpen Stoff (#17)
  15. Kurpfalz Bräu Kellerbier (#22)
  16. Erl Hell (#19)
  17. Grandl (#11)
  18. Altbairisch Hell (#15)
  19. Hell (#1)
  20. Tannen Hell (#8)
  21. Perlenzauber IPA (#21)
  22. Tradition (#10)
  23. Hallertauer Hopfen-Cuvee (#14)
  24. Käuzle (#3)

The Mandalorian Season 2 Thoughts

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I just caught up with The Mandalorian’s second season, which is kind of miraculous in its own right, as we’re both on new parent schedules plus we don’t want to introduce our child to screens, so our general television consumption is probably a tenth of what most of our friends and family tend to watch.  The fact that we’re only a week removed from the finale is a miracle, since there’s a litany of shows and movies that we’ve stated interest in wanting to watch but the realism is that it’ll be eons before we do, if we even remember to watch them in the first place.

However, a week removed wasn’t nearly enough time for the shitheads of the internet to spoil a ton of shit for us in advance of our opportunity to watch the show.  Between all of the excitable fuckwits on social media who couldn’t shut the fuck up even if it there were guns held to their family’s heads, and now actual sci-fi/pop culture sites themselves just outright blow covers and spoilers under the guise that there’s some appropriate official statute of limitation when it comes to being allowed to talk about shit, it’s been impossible for mythical wife and myself to not get spoiled to varying capacities.

Mythical wife apparently got it worse than I did, because of her choice of people she connects with, but even a relative shut-in like me was still spoiled to some degree when someone posted a gif of X doing Y, revealing a pretty substantial moment of the show (was that so fucking difficult, no), so we agreed that before it could get any worse, we needed to buckle down and watch the show before I declared jihad on everyone I know for when they would inevitably spoil more shit for me.

Yes, it sounds like I’m making my problems the problems of others, but at the same time, do people really lack the common sense to just shut the fuck up about things for just a little while?  Yes, the answer is always yes.

Regardless of quality of acting, plot, and other superlatives, one of the greatest things about The Mandalorian in general, is that they’re fairly quick and short episodes, and it’s a very easy show to stay on top of, provided the effort is put forth to actually start watching it.

And just like that, I’ve conveniently blathered on long enough to create a meaty post that hasn’t actually gotten to the point, and now I can comfortably tuck anything else that might be considered spoiler-ey behind a cut.

Continue reading “The Mandalorian Season 2 Thoughts” →

Advent Beer #23: Landgang Pils by Landgang Brauerei

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What I’ve been doing every single day is that right before I pull the day’s can out of the fridge, I pull the next day’s can out of the box, to prepare it for the next day.  I try my best to not look at the can when I’m doing such, because as has been the routine, I like to be surprised when I pull it out of the fridge.  However, when I pulled this can out of the box yesterday, it was impossible to not notice the lime green color all over the can, and I was wondering if they had just snuck a tallboy of fucking Surge into the box.  Frankly, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but I knew I was getting a lime green-ass can tonight.

Anyway, so when I retrieved the can today, I looked quizzically at the design of the can.  First, I quickly identified that it was a pilsner, mostly because it’s listed on the bottom of the can, but then I couldn’t help but notice that they’ve basically put Shipwreck from GI Joe on the can itself for some reason, and I’m just sitting there with this wtf look on my face.

Typically, when I see something short-called “Pils,” it makes me think of Sam Adams’ Noble Pils, which is one of my more preferred beers in spite of the hoppiness of it.  I normally equate pilsners that identify themselves with lots of hops as IPAs and I think I’ve made clear how I feel about IPAs, but after stuff like Noble Pils and bier #6 Turbo Prop, I’m in this gray area of love and hate with some of them.  But seeing as how I’ve been determined to have at least one quality beer with the days remaining, out of my das boot, I was skeptical that I’d be relying on the final day of the calendar to hope to get something particularly good.

Shipwreck Pils doesn’t have a lot of aroma, pours very light, and looks every bit like a classic pilsner.  The first sip is immediately satisfying, but there’s a little bit of an odd finish at the end that negates a lot of the good will set by the first taste.  Overall, it’s an okay bier, that I think sits firmly in the middle of the pack as far as all of the Deutsch beers are concerned.  There have been many better, but at the same time, there have been several that have been decidedly worse than this one.

It is a bier that I could easily see myself having several of them, but that’s if someone else were paying for them provided I were drinking Shipwreck Pils only.  If it were on my own euro, I’d probably be seeking out something else, like a dunkel or a weizen, but for what it’s worth, this wasn’t bad at all.  If it means anything at all, of the three beers I’ve drinken out of my boot, this has been the best one.

Tomorrow marks the final day of the advent calendar, and I’ve already seen the color of the can, but know nothing else.  I really hope the box saved one of the best for last, but regardless, this has been a fun little exercise, and excuse to write daily.

Current Rankings:

  1. Jubilation Suds (#18)
  2. Bearjew Weisse (#16)
  3. First Coral (#2)
  4. Kirta (#5)
  5. Turbo Prop (#6)
  6. Schwarze Tinte (#13)
  7. Perlenzauber (#9)
  8. Loncium Vienna Style Lager (#12)
  9. Märzenbier (#20)
  10. Jubiläumsbier 333 (#7)
  11. Landgang Pils (#23)
  12. Zwönitzer Steinbier (#4)
  13. Alpen Stoff (#17)
  14. Kurpfalz Bräu Kellerbier (#22)
  15. Erl Hell (#19)
  16. Grandl (#11)
  17. Altbairisch Hell (#15)
  18. Hell (#1)
  19. Tannen Hell (#8)
  20. Perlenzauber IPA (#21)
  21. Tradition (#10)
  22. Hallertauer Hopfen-Cuvee (#14)
  23. Käuzle (#3)

Advent Beer #22: Kurpfalz Bräu Kellerbier by Weldebräu

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With just three days left in the journey, I’m really hoping to have at least one stalwart bier to drink out of the boot from, and I’m still kicking myself a little bit for not busting the boot out sooner, if not from the start.  And when I saw “kellerbier” listed on today’s can, I thought to myself, I’ve had a kellerbier before, and looking back, it was First Coral that was also a kellerbier, which sat at the top of the rankings until Day 16, so I felt that this might just be a worthy bier to be drinking from my boot.

Unfortunately, the fact that it’s also a kellerbier is about where all the comparisons end, because after beating the bubble and finishing off the boot, this one just wasn’t really at all that fantastic, and definitely not worthy of being savored from within the boot.  I should’ve seen the red flags of just how much of the can was actually translated into English instead of remaining in its native Deutsch, so a demerit goes towards Kurpfalz Bräu for Americanizing it up too much, in spite of having probably the most German name of all the beers there’ve been so far.

It wasn’t a bad beer, but it also wasn’t a great beer either.  Considering my first exposure to a kellerbier sat at the top of the rankings for over two weeks, I had higher hopes for this, and perhaps the expectations of the prior kellerbier was the downfall to Kurpfalz, because it was just kind of grassy and bitter, and had a dry finish that left me feeling thirsty and unsatisfied in the end.

It’s sad too, because I was having a good evening with a stomach full of Mexican takeout, mythical wife and I were bingeing the last few episodes of The Mandalorian season 2, my daughter was sleeping soundly which hadn’t happened in quite a few nights, I ran yesterday so tonight was a no-run relaxing night and an outstanding beer from my boot would have been the perfect topper to what was already a fairly pleasant day.  But the bier was a letdown, there’s only two more beers to go, and I only have hopes that the creators of the calendar had it in their minds to stack some home runs at the tail end to hopefully walk-off with, because boot or not boot, ending strong is going to be important.  FOR THE SAKE OF CHRISTMAS.

Current Rankings:

  1. Jubilation Suds (#18)
  2. Bären Weisse (#16)
  3. First Coral (#2)
  4. Kirta (#5)
  5. Turbo Prop (#6)
  6. Schwarze Tinte (#13)
  7. Perlenzauber (#9)
  8. Loncium Vienna Style Lager (#12)
  9. Märzenbier (#20)
  10. Jubiläumsbier 333 (#7)
  11. Zwönitzer Steinbier (#4)
  12. Alpen Stoff (#17)
  13. Kurpfalz Bräu Kellerbier (#22)
  14. Erl Hell (#19)
  15. Grandl (#11)
  16. Altbairisch Hell (#15)
  17. Hell (#1)
  18. Tannen Hell (#8)
  19. Perlenzauber IPA (#21)
  20. Tradition (#10)
  21. Hallertauer Hopfen-Cuvee (#14)
  22. Käuzle (#3)

Advent Beer #21: Perlenzauber IPA by Privatbrauerei H. Egerer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, I have good news and I have bad news.

The good news is that I was feeling like I was using my Sweetwater pint glasses too frequently, and for my own satisfaction of variety, I wanted to mix things up.  I have a bunch of other glasses in another cabinet, so I went to swap out some of the Sweetwater pints that I’ve felt were being repeated too much.  In doing so, I unearthed the absolute best, most appropriate glass that I should have been using throughout this entire journey, but simply neglected to remember that I had it.

This baby das boot easily holds 16 ounces, which makes it perfect in the sense that I can pour each day’s entire can into it without having to reload later on.  Plus it has that whole German tradition of drinking out of a boot thing going on, which is why this would’ve been perfect had I been using it from the start, but I just forgot about it.  At least for the final four days, I can make sure to be drinking my German biers from my German boot.

The bad news is that on the day in which I can start using my boot, the beer of the day is an IPA.  After twenty days, I was beginning to wonder if Deutschland even did IPAs since I hadn’t encountered any after this long, and I was quite satisfied with that assessment too.  Unfortunately, like a turd in the pool, an IPA decided to float to the surface, on day #21.

In addition, it’s also another encore from a particular brewer, since beer #9 was also from the same company, as indicative of the can design featuring an image of a woman presumably drowning outside of a porthole because I can’t think of any other scenario where another human being would be visible outside of a porthole, unless they were scuba diving or drowning, and the woman isn’t wearing any scuba gear nor does she have a fin which would make her an underwater breathing mermaid.

But yeah, it’s an IPA, and I winced like OJ Simpson in court when I discovered this.  Regardless, I made it this far drinking every drop of every beer, and there’s no point in throwing in the towel now, even if there was a shitty IPA in my path.  I poured it into my boot, disappointed that this would be the first thing to use my boot on, but hoping that the Germans do an IPA better than all the shitty ‘Murican hipsters who release a litany of shitty signature IPAs.

To the credit of Perlenzauber, or whatever the brewery is called, as far as IPAs go, this wasn’t turrible.  It actually had a fairly decent initial flavor, that staved off the vast majority of the bitter piss flavor at the end of most other IPAs, and I actually found it to be remotely drinkable as far as IPAs were concerned.  That is, as long as the beer were at its coldest.  As the time clicked away as mythical wife and I were catching up on The Mandalorian, as the beer got warmer, the more it turned back into IPA piss water, and by the time I got to the bottom of the boot, and the bubble had popped, I was struggling to finish it, and just kind of bottoms upped it, just to finish the job.

In spite of the not-quite negative first impressions, it’s still an IPA at the end of the day, and I simply don’t favor them.  The fact that it’s not dead last is a credit to the initial flavor notes that I did like, and makes me really try and remember just how bad the three underneath it really were to have been denigrated as worse than an IPA.

The funniest thing to me is that in spite of the fact that I didn’t hate this completely, the snobs at BeerAdvocate apparently have hated the shit out of this beer, in as equally new to them taste tests.  Clearly, my rubric for beer preferences are way off of the masses on the internet, but whatever.

Hopefully, tomorrow is back to another lager, or better yet another dunkel to pour into my boot, because today really was kind of a mulligan, and I’m hoping that the final three beers will be some good ones to close out this magical boozy journey with.

Current Rankings:

  1. Jubilation Suds (#18)
  2. Bären Weisse (#16)
  3. First Coral (#2)
  4. Kirta (#5)
  5. Turbo Prop (#6)
  6. Schwarze Tinte (#13)
  7. Perlenzauber (#9)
  8. Loncium Vienna Style Lager (#12)
  9. Märzenbier (#20)
  10. Jubiläumsbier 333 (#7)
  11. Zwönitzer Steinbier (#4)
  12. Alpen Stoff (#17)
  13. Erl Hell (#19)
  14. Grandl (#11)
  15. Altbairisch Hell (#15)
  16. Hell (#1)
  17. Tannen Hell (#8)
  18. Perlenzauber IPA (#21)
  19. Tradition (#10)
  20. Hallertauer Hopfen-Cuvee (#14)
  21. Käuzle (#3)