Let the internet tell you when I've done something productive...automatically!

Join 14,874 other followers

Email Address:

Browsing Tags troegs

Beer Review: Troegs Nugget Nectar

March 5, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

This morning, as I forced a crowbar of consciousness between my eyelids to coax them out of the sweet cocoon of sleep, I heard a bird. A single, sung, string of notes, like a flutist practicing her frills before a big performance. It didn’t last more than a single bar, but it was enough to flash Spring across my mind, warm my cold soul, reinforce that our sunlight temperance was, like all this snow, only temporary.

I suffer during the winter months. As soon as we lose Fall to those clocks who think that somehow giving us an hour will make up for all the long darkness, my energy slumps. The timely affliction is technically called Seasonal Affective Disorder, which I admit sounds like a completely made up thing to anyone who has never been hit by its unforgiving, inexplicable symptoms.

Medical research suggests it’s partly a deficiency in Vitamin D, a lack of exposure to daylight, a chemical void that can be fixed by little lamps, little pills, and little jabs of optimism. But the sulking pseudo-depression feels like more than that. It feels like someone dumped sand into your engine, like you’re pumping old, dirty oil into your brain to try to lubricate it, like your whole body is in serious need of a tune-up. Your car will start after some laboring and you can technically drive, but it’s a shuddering, slow affair, and you’re worried your clutch is going to slip at any second.

My energy isn’t the only thing that wanes; everything I hold onto and love seems muted by January grey. I find my ideas are trite, my confidence lacking, my creativity stagnant. This year’s winter was made worse by the chemicals having emotions to share a playground with, which lead to several weeks of getting little done, and then feeling especially bad about how little had gotten done.

But even if the plant looks brown and dead on the surface, the roots are strong and patient.

The little signs of spring – an early birdsong, a peeping crocus, a late-winter release of a favorite beer from a favorite brewery – start to pull me out of my mental morass. The Spring seasonals, be them buttercups or bees or beers, mark a turning point, when I feel the real me, the one who has been hibernating, shake the sleepy sludge from his shoulders and rise to greet the long rays of sun.

I’ve waffled on seasonals before, sometimes thinking they’re a bit too gimmicky for their own economic good. But there’s something about the rebirth of classic styles that makes Spring my favorite. Long gone as the spices of winter warmers and the gourdy-sweetness of the pumpkin patch, replaced by lagers of long tradition, pilsners and helles and all the bright bitterness the comes with. Hops don’t seem as heavy in those lower ABV beers you share a warm breeze with, and suddenly you’re not bound to your couch or your stout to hide from the bad kind of bitter, the one that howls on winter wind yelling at you to stay indoors.

I know Nugget Nectar from Troegs isn’t really a Spring seasonal. But it’s a herald for me. A knight, clad in brown and orange, sitting on a hill top with banner held high. His sole presence is enough to remind me that he has an army is at his back, an army made of baby animals and beautiful buds, an army armed with and by life, ready to put winter where it belongs: behind us.

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” ― Anne Bradstreet

Review: Troegs Sunshine Pils

June 27, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

He wore a wide-brimmed hat to keep his fair skin out of direct light. Long sleeves covered his existing, blistering burns, and he sweat like a mobster taking a polygraph. His thick white clothes were his only armor against the rays that bombarded plant, stone, and man.

His garden was wilted. The plants struggled to grow with what little water they were provided, and lost most of it to the heat of the day. The shade of his wooden shed gave them some respite, but the sun moved quickly and consistently. He lost a whole row of beets to a wildfire a few weeks earlier. He sat and watched as their above ground leaves burst into flames, spontaneously combusting under the midday sun. All that was left were blackened husks. The fruit below the earth dry and hard, unfit for human consumption.

But still he farmed, or farmed as best he could. The animals had perished long ago, and the few cacti and longrasses that could survive the summers make for bland, unsatisfying meals. He dug his rows at night, when the temperature dropped to a tolerable one hundred and three degrees. This was the only time the ground was breakable; he’d ruined 3 good shovel trying to crack the crust of baked clay that covered his land during the daylight hours.

An eye dropper was his watering can. Each drop he placed was precious, so he made sure each plant got only what it needed to not die. The arid soil gulped each drop greedily, and he prayed that it would seep low enough to nourish the parched roots. The plants survived through his meticulous care, but they did not thrive.

One night while digging a row for the tomatillo seeds he had found in his basement, his shovel struck something hard. The reverberations rushed to his shoulders, causing him to drop the shovel and grab his right arm in pain. As he slumped to the ground, he could see the edge of what he had struck. Something big. Something metal.

The next night, he ignored his rows and began to dig up the newly found object. It could be anything from what he could see of it; an old car, a chest, a washing machine, or even part of some left over military ordnance. He worked unrelentingly to unearth whatever it was; this find was the first thing to break his routine in a number of years.

It took a week of nightly digging, taking a few hours each night to drop water on his existing plants, to dig a hole big enough to get a true sense of the thing. It was rectangular and heavy, roughly the height of a man, with the outline of what appeared to be two hinged doors, caked with dirt. He dared not open it. He feared its power.

The thing became an object of worship and wonder; a monolith that he admired as much as he feared. The world had been destroyed by the evils of men and machines, and it was entirely possible this massive metal block was a weapon that would put a quick end to him and his little patch of struggling life. But something inside of him burned to know its secrets, burned like the sun in the middle of the day, burned like the nuclear clouds that drifted across the planet.

The fire inside overwhelmed him one evening. He found himself standing in front of his god, shovel stuck in the crack between the doors, ready to pry them open and meet his maker. He stood at the ready for hours. Finally, with a breath of despair, he put his weight against the shovel. The doors swung open easily. He was hit by something he hadn’t felt since he was a just a boy.

Cold.

Smoke accompanied the drop in temperature, and he stood for a minute shocked at the relief he felt. Large bricks of smoking, translucent material sat in the bottom of the opening behind the doors, radiating a refreshing coolness. In the bright moonlight he strained to see what else was inside. It was a cavernous thing, this cold metal box, but the only thing that sat on a shelf in the middle were 6 brown bottles, all near freezing and almost painful to the touch.

He knew bottles from his childhood. He removed one and carefully used the shovel to remove its cap. A small hiss let him know its seal had stayed intact. He pressed it to his lips.

The rest he poured onto his plants.

9 out of 10.

It is incredibly difficult to take a picture of direct sunlight.

Review: Troegs Pale Ale

June 8, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

It finally happened. I drank so much pale ale that the subtle flavors of different pale ales all started to blend into one homogeneous river of hoppy, bitter liquid.

It’s sort of like that odd linguistic phenomenon that happens when you say one word over and over and over again until it loses all meaning.

Chair. Chair. Chair. Chair. Chair.

Wait, what was I talking about?

Oh yea! Apparently the aforementioned phenomenon has a name! Semantic satiation. We’ve all been there, saying something banal like “rope” 50 times until you stop and say to yourself, “What the hell is a rope? Why did someone name it ‘rope’? Rope. Rope, rope, rope. Roooooope. Ropey ropey rope.”

According to this theory, your brain eventually stops recognizing the individual word and instead interprets the series of words as a pattern, changing the way you process the sounds. It only works with things your brain has to process externally; you can think of a word as many times as you want, and it won’t lose meaning.

It happens with pictures too. Imagine looking at a group of 4 different colored dots. Then imagine looking at a whole page of the same dots, repeated over and over again. You look at and take them in quite differently, whether you mean to or not. Eventually, all of the colors and details blur, until your mind no longer can (or no longer cares to) differentiate defining details. You can’t even tell what colors things should be or what elements might be out of place, because your mind has gone all stoner on you.

You can feeeeel the colors, man.

Until just now, I didn’t think the principle applied to taste. I should have, because I often find myself mildly disgusted with even the idea of a food that I’ve eaten way too much of over the course of a few days. I recently picked all of the cashews out of it huge can of mixed nuts until the point where I wished no one had ever figured out that cashews were edible. And normally I really love cashews! I’m just on cashew overload at this point. Wait, what is a cashew?

Pale ale is by far my favorite, but I have to learn to randomize my choices. Variety is the spice of life, right? I want to appreciate this beer for all of its hoppy, in-your-face flavor glory, but I feel like my tongue is just confused. He knows it is good, but he doesn’t know why it is good. My nose recognizes the heavy bouquet of flowery citrus, but he doesn’t know if it belongs to this beer, or Dogfish Head Shelter Pale, Smuttynose Shoals Pale, or some other, undefinable delicious alcoholic tincture.

OK tongue, fine. Shut up, nose, I get it. We’ll leave pale ales alone for a while so you two can recover. Since it’s summer, maybe I’ll switch to something a little lighter. Maybe. Maaaaaybe. May, be. May-bee.

8.75 out of 10.

Diffusion of flavors does not mean diffusion of deliciousness.

Next up: Gordon Biersch Czech Style Pilsner!

Review: Troegs Hop Back Amber Ale

June 1, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Ever read Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss?

It’s so tragic the way they hopped on pop.

Hopping on people is not a nice thing to do. It is never appropriate to jump up and down on top of someone, even in jest. Even if you only hop with one foot, as so many exuberant youngsters are apt to do. I went through a hopping phase as a teenager. I apologize to anyone who suffered because of my thoughtless and out of control hopping.

My boy Edgar Allan Poe wrote Hop-Frog. This is a good story, but I do not advocate hopping on frogs, court jesters, or little people. They might get mad and set your stuff on fire. Best to leave them unhopped, lest they sue you for wrongful hopping.

I recall a childhood game called hopscotch, which I had until recently thought involved numbered squares and a lot of single malt Scottish whiskey. In this game it is OK to hop, but only on certain areas, reinforcing the idea that we as a species need to be careful and mindful of how and where we hop.

Hopping needs to be monitored and controlled. If not, we might see a resurgence of the Pogo-stick. No one wants that. Hopping also inevitable leads to skipping, and we all know what skipping leads to (the loo).

The exception to this rule centers around the use of actual hops (Humulus lupulus); the type found growing in tall, fragrant rows all across the German countryside. These hops should be used with impunity. Hop often and hop many.

Troegs Brewing Company decided to not hop forward, not sideways, not upwards, and not downwards, but back. I’m guessing this is to pay homage to the little surprised jump you make when you taste this well balanced, hoppy masterpiece. Your legs cannot help but be overtaken by the extreme desire to hop, and hop you shall. Backwards, in joy and satisfaction.

As you hop back, you’ll notice this beer’s distinct, almost red, copper color. It’s as if someone dissolved a bunch of iron nails in the brew kettle, but somehow managed to filter out all of the metallic taste. The intense aroma will waft back to you (because smells can’t hop, silly) and you’ll imagine yourself rolling around in a big pile of freshly picked hop cones, getting all tweaked out like a kitty who got into a fresh bag of catnip.

In this instance, you might want to hop for joy. It is OK to do so, but be quick about it.

9.75 out of 10.

Hop on beer. Do not hop on hydrangeas.

Next up: Gordon Biersch Marzen!

Review: Troegs Dream Weaver Wheat

May 29, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

To avoid getting into the boring minutiae of what I do for eight to nine hours a day, everyday, let’s just say I’m a technical writer who works with Microsoft SharePoint.

For those of your unfamiliar with the program, it is an online collaborative work environment that multiple users can access from any location to simultaneously work on documents. It has fancy document tracking, versioning, permissions structures, and other built-in tools to share information across a large team in one centeralized location.

To simplify even further, it is a digital, online library. That makes me the gatekeeper; the curmudgeony librarian who lords over all the files (books) like a ruthless bookish dictator. Those who require access to our proprietary, corporate lore must first come to me. I hold the keys to the kingdom, for this kingdom was built on Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

I got into SharePoint because of my background in web design. I’ve always been a hobbyist designer. I find (good) websites aesthetically rewarding. I taught myself HTML in 7th grade to make a Pokemon website. I was that cool.

As I got more involved in designing the webs like some hippy art-school spider, I upgrade from writing tags in Notepad to using GUI based software. My first program was Adobe GoLive!, which in retrospect, was a pretty impressive HTML generator for its time. I then upgraded to FrontPage, as I got it for free in some weird MSDN bundle.

But then, while taking a graphic design class in high school, I came across Macromedia Dreamweaver.

This software changed my life. I finally had a tool to literally create my web-based dreams, wrapped in a pretty green icon and an easy to use interface. All of my early websites were built using an old version of Dreamweaver. The earliest roots of my now blossoming career started on a split design/code screen, packed to the brim with inline font formatting and poorly placed <ul> tags.

So when I look at this delicious wheat beer, a jewel in the crown of Troegs Brothers Brewing Company, I think of my hobbies. I think of what I am passionate about, and how far I’ve come since my Maddox-esque Geocities rant site named, “The Afterword.”

When I sip this light, crisp, but heavily wheated beer, I’m reminded of my life-long goals, and how much progress I’ve made towards attaining them. When I look through its opaque orange hue, I’m reminded of the glow of my youth, and the bright, but unclear future ahead.

When I see Dream Weaver on the label, I’m reminded of that program sitting idle on my desktop. I’m reminded that I have shit to do, and a place to do it.

Look out internet, I’m armed with beer and a WYSIWYG device. You have been warned.

9 out of 10.

The stuff dreams are woven of.

Next up: Gordon Biersch Blonde Bock!