Tag: booze

Advent Beer #1: Hell by Flötzinger Bräu

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What’s I’m hoping is that every single beer in this advent calendar is a 16 oz tallboy, and that I don’t get any sissy 12 oz coke cans, because then I might actually feel like I’ll have gotten my money’s worth.

But the first beer in the calendar was this beer I guess is called HELL by Flötzinger Bräu.  Because I do not read a lick of German other than phrases that might’ve been spoken in Wolfenstein 3D or Inglorious Basterds, I have no idea what is actually written on the can, and no idea of what kind of beer it actually was.  Regardless, as I’ve stated before about how I typically haven’t found a German beer that I didn’t like, I figured it probably wasn’t going to be bad.

I cracked it open and poured it into a pint glass, and I suppose that’s going to be my plan throughout the entire month because I tend to think that beer tastes best when it’s in a pint glass, and it was a nice golden color with a very light and subtle aroma.

The taste almost reminded me of an Asian beer, based on the fact that its flavor was about as intense as its aroma, which is to say it was kind of light, and the flavor kind of ends abruptly.  It’s a good flavor, and easy to drink, and I found it to be quite enjoyable.  Like if I were at a party or a wedding reception, and this was the only beer available versus drinking shitty wine or low-shelf spirits, I could easily see myself crushing 3-4 of these without much problem.

According to the snobs at Beer Advocate, this was a lager with an ABV of 5.2%, which makes it a little higher than a Budweiser, but tasted way better.

Either way, this was a good start to the advent calendar.  I wonder if Costcos in other countries are getting the same advent calendar as we are in the United States, or if they’re doing some kind of trading of regions, because I can’t help but feel woefully sorry to whichever country drew the USA advent calendar.  I’d have to imagine it would be the Costco in Shanghai, because they tend to think American shit’s shit doesn’t stink, and would probably tolerate 24 days of Bud, Bud Light, Bud Select, Miller High Life, Miller Lite, MGD, Milwaukee’s Best, you get my point

Holiday writing exercise: Reviewing Costco’s Beer Advent Calendar

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure why I decided to turn this into a writing exercise, but here we are.  Mythical wife heard that Costco was doing a wine advent calendar and being the lush that she is, we basically had to drop everything and head over to Costco, despite the fact that they’re always a madhouse these days because they’re a safe(r) place that mandates masks and the de facto place where people go to hoard and amass supplies, whether they need them immediately or not.

So we go to Costco and surprising nobody, they’re flush out of wine advent calendars.  There’s not even a space where the pallet used to be, because according to employees, they were bum-rushed so quickly and cleaned out that they had ample time to repurpose the floor space and make it look like it had never existed there in the first place.  However, at the entrance of the store, we spotted these beer advent calendars, and as a consolation prize, mythical wife picked one up.

During dinner, out of curiosity I scoped theFacebook Marketplace to see if any shitheads were re-selling the wine advent calendars, and lo and behold, sure enough, there’s someone selling them, for a surprisingly modest $20 markup.  Mythical wife doesn’t even hesitate to tell me to take them up on it, and the following morning, I’m traversing a suburban jungle, find the seller, and make a quick transaction.  Apparently, they had purchased several of them, anticipating the potential resale capabilities.  As I said, shitheads.

Long story short, with the wine advent calendar in tow, the beer advent calendar has been bequeathed to me.  And because  I often find struggles with content to write about, I’ve decided to use this as a means to exercise my writing chops, and write about daily beers, and it should be quite well established that I am the furthest from a Beer Advocate beer snob there could possibly be: I loathe IPAs, I like sours, goses, hefeweizens, lagers, porters, and basically most things that aren’t IPAs.

But most importantly, it’s giving me a reason to write daily, and hopefully I’ll have the gumption and drive to actually follow through with 24 days in a row of reviewing beers that I’ve probably never heard of.  But they’re all German, to which I can’t really say that I’ve yet to encounter a German brew that I didn’t enjoy to some degree.

O how costly the losses

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was just thinking how I hadn’t written anything for a minute; my professional and personal lives have a tendency to get a little crowded at times, and sometimes I can’t find even five minutes for myself to just decompress and relax, much less take the time to write, no matter how important the act is to me.

But I didn’t really have to stretch real far in order to find any inspiration to write; sometimes the world just simply provides.  It’s been a while since I’d found one of these types of stories, but it doesn’t inspire me any less whenever one emerges to the forefront.

Out in McDonough, Georgia, a train collided with a cargo truck, obliterating it, and scattering its contents as far as a quarter mile.  And because it wouldn’t warrant entry into the brog without certain conditions, the truck wasn’t just any truck, but a beer truck, and the contents that were scattered as far as a quarter mile were cases and kegs of beer.

However, I would use the term “beer” loosely, because it was a MillerCoors truck, so the vast majority of the product lost was Miller Lite, along with some Old Style and Redd’s cider.  That being said, I would have to estimate that the cost of the lost product amounted to around $78, with at least $50 of it being the cost of the Redd’s, since cider is often considered a specialty beverage.

One thing the article does not mention that I’m very curious about, is that a quarter mile is a pretty long distance, when it comes to surface area for scattered cargo to go clattering around on.  As is often the case whenever it comes to shit being liberated from their confinement on the roads of America, this often times results in people who happen to be fortunate enough to be in the vicinity when shit goes free, to spontaneously turn into greedy looters who spring into action and try to get away with as much free shit as they possibly can, when pandemonium strikes.

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Life as a married man, brog post #2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honestly, there’s not nearly as much to say about the honeymoon as there was the wedding.  Frankly, much of this was split into two posts mostly because of my OCD of wanting to make sure a wedding photo was with the wedding post, and so that some picture from the honeymoon can also get displayed independently, therefore necessitating its own post.  Still, not to say that I can’t spout off about a honeymoon, but in the interest of transparency, this is the true impetus of this post coming to fruition.

Frankly, we’re just happy to have done a honeymoon, especially immediately after the wedding.  We’ve seen it happen to enough couples, where a honeymoon is planned anywhere from months to an entire year after the wedding to actually happen, and in some cases not even happen at all.  Yeah no, no disrespect to those who embark on similar paths, but the both of us most definitely wanted to have an actual honeymoon, where we could actually relax and take a well-earned break from the life of planning a wedding on top of our normal working lives.

In a nutshell, we went to Disney World for a few days, stayed at the Polynesian resort, and then transitioned onto a Disney cruise for the next week, where we sailed to Mexico for a few days, hit Disney’s private island Castaway Cay for a day, and then came back home.  The wife drove most of the itinerary, since she’s at least 200x more into Disney than I am, but I’m more than happy to go along for the ride, as long as the vast majority of my trip could be spent relaxing, eating like a pig, and generally having very little commitments at all.

Overall, my missions could very well be considered accomplished.  Maybe a little too much, because I still have no earthly idea what I’m doing with my life whenever I have free time back home.  I just watched Chinese Super Ninjas for the 80th time in my life last night, because I couldn’t triangulate on one better thing to do with two free hours than that.

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Thoughts on a European vacation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So for our 2018 vacation, mythical gf future wifey and I went to Europe.  Specifically Munich, Germany, Budapest, Hungary, and Vienna, Austria.  These are all places that I’d never been to before, but such could very easily be said about anywhere on the planet, because in the grand spectrum of things, the world is pretty large.

Needless to say, the trip was pretty much excellent.  All three places were great in their own ways, and I look back fondly to the exploration, food and drinking of each of them.

Munich, completely redeems the entire country of Germany for me.  When I was younger, I’d often said that Germany was a country that I’d most want to visit in my life, because it seemed like the one country where it was a pretty drastic change to everyday life without having to go into the bush.  In 2016, I went to Germany for the first time, but it was to Berlin, which turned out to be a city that embodied hostility, owned their unfriendliness and was just basically an unpleasant place that really made me question my choice of places I wanted to go.  I was as relieved to leave Berlin as much as they probably bid good riddance, and I really debated on whether or not I wanted to ever go to Germany again.

Thankfully, future wifey convinced me that Munich would be different, and our 2018 European vacation would both start and end in Munich, which turned out to be a pretty good thing in the end.  From the very start, arriving in Munich was arriving in a traditionally beautiful city that had classic European architecture all around, and the historic building and landmarks were stuff like cathedrals and monuments, and not just dingy vandalized wall fragments.

The people of Munich were also way friendlier, spoke more English, which is another thing that I don’t take for granted when traveling abroad, because I’m always impressed and grateful as hell whenever I go to other countries, and there are always people who can speak English as opposed to how it’s like in America where so few people speak anything otherwise.

And the trains in Munich, they actually worked, unlike Berlin, where they were always broken, closed for maintenance, and made absolutely no sense to where they actually went.  Much of our time in Munich was spent walking around from tourist destinations to bier hauses, and in a country where beer is pretty much the same cost as water, needless to say, we did a good bit of bier drinking.  Hofbrauhaus was a fun tourist destination, but Paulaner was definitely of superior quality in food and beer, but if any one place is worth remembering, it’s the literal cave like cellar of Augustiner, which turned out to be a really cool place in the end.

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The news acts like this isn’t the oldest trick in the book

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Hardly news: East Cobb mom busted for smuggling in alcohol through her kid’s sippy cup and getting blackout drunk during a matinee

A long time ago when I lived on the south end of town, I remember having lunch at a Chili’s in Peachtree City. While there, the adjacent table was occupied by a mom and like three kids, all of which were different ages, ranging from like 1-4 years old, and naturally, they were loud and rambunctious, with mom having pretty much no control over them whatsoever.

There was a great feeling of relief when they got up and left, because finally there would be some peace and calm to eat to; but not even a full five minutes after they had left, did mom come rushing frantically back into the restaurant, and to the table. The way she was scanning the table made me wonder if she had perhaps dropped her keys or cell phone or something of any actual value based on the urgency plastered on her face.

But then she grabbed one of the plastic kid’s cups that was still on the table, emptied its contents into a nearby water glass, and then promptly grabbed what was left of her margarita and poured the remnants of it into the kid’s cup, replaced the lid and walked out the restaurant as cool as the cucumber in the back of the crisper closest to the refrigeration coil.

It was a true veteran maneuver I’d witnessed, because the savvy in which she pulled this off, there’s no mistaking that this was something that she’s done numerous times.

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