A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

My goodness

   My Guinness:

Diageo Plc said today it was reviewing brewing operations in Ireland after media reported the drinks giant may quit the Dublin city centre site where Guinness has been brewed for almost 250 years.

"The Diageo brewing business is considering a number of important investment decisions on upgrading and renewing its brewing facilities in Ireland in the coming years," the company said in a statement.

The review was at a "very early stage" and a report in the Sunday Independent newspaper that the company was preparing to move from its landmark St James's Gate site on the banks of Dublin's River Liffey was "speculation", Diageo added.

"No decisions have been made or will be made until the assessment is completed," the world's largest alcoholic drinks company said.

The site, where Arthur Guinness took out a 9,000 year lease on a disused brewery in 1759, has grown into what the brewer now describes as "a prime 64 acre (25 hectare) slice of Dublin".

The Sunday Independent reported the land could fetch as much as €3 billion if Diageo implements plans to move production to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the capital.
[...]
Guinness is brewed at almost 50 sites around the world but some 500 million litres of the stout are still produced at St James's Gate, which also houses a visitor centre, shop, bars and restaurants.

Original terms of the lease were £45 per year, which - multiplied by 9,000 - amounts to...a lot of money.

When we visited Dublin, the Guinness tour was obviously high on our list. It was okay, but nowhere near as incapacitating as the tour of the Jameson distillery (I'm used to the old school Anheuser-Busch tours where you pretty much drank for free at tour's end). And while it'd be a shame to move something so readily identifiable with Ireland and the city of Dublin out to the sticks, €3 billion is nothing to sneeze at.

One assumes Guinness won't change the brewing process, at least. Other sites that produce Extra Stout blend unfermented wort extract with locally brewed beer, and the results are frankly less than ideal. I always attribute it to the "fresh squeezed" aspect of drinking it in Ireland, but Guinness honestly tastes different when it's served everywhere but the Emerald Isle. It's passable in the States, but drinking a fresh pint in the Brazen Head while scarfing fish and chips from Leo Burdock is as close as I've come in the last 20 years to believing in a benevolent god.

In related news, Houston's Saint Arnold Brewery is looking at moving closer to downtown Houston (via Chuck):

Founder Brock Wagner said he's scouting inner-city real estate to relocate his brewery, which also happens to be outgrowing its 32,000 square feet of space at 2522 Fairway Park, near the intersection of U.S. 290 and West 34th.

"We're looking all over town, but my first goal would be to get something as close in to the center of town as possible," Wagner said.

Not too close, though.

"Manufacturing can't afford prime downtown real estate or even just off prime downtown real estate," he said. "I'd like to be within five minutes to downtown."

The 13-year-old brew house, which hosts public tours and an average of 15 special events each month, needs a building of at least 50,000 square feet or 3 to 5 acres of land.

I don't live that much closer to downtown than 290 and 34th, but I've already discussed it with two of my neighbors, and we'd be more than willing to put our lots together and let them build on them, provided we were given modest accommodations and a tap running directly from the main Amber tanks.

Mixed blessings

Our local Kroger has been sprucing up lately, apparently to make itself more palatable to all the folks who are moving into our neighborhood and tearing down 60-year old houses to put up overpriced money pits. Aside from some cosmetic changes (and a tortilleria, perhaps to ward off future H.E.B. incursions), I've noted one distinct improvement. Namely, the addition of these to the beer aisle:

The Stone Brewing Company is one of the many reasons I want to move to San Diego.

Of course, there can be no sinug without suffering, as Spalding Gray once said. So they also had to make space for this:

The Wife was raised in Western Pennsylvania, so she knows better than to go near that abomination. Where's the damn Yuengling?

Reminder: APCB Beerfest III - The Search for Slack

It's this Saturday, July 15. Rationalization here.

The time is "around" 7:00, though I expect people will be filtering in and out all night. Rudz is at 2010 Waugh (map), and parking...well, let's just say I hope you don't value your car's undercarriage.

But who cares? The beer's cold, and so is the sweet, sweet refrigerated air. They also serve food (sandwiches and pub grub) that is surprisingly good, so you've got that covered. RSVPs aren't necessary, so just look for me. I'll be the one loudly arguing the merits of the Spice Girls, wearing a yellow shirt with Chinese dragons on them and a crappy straw cowboy hat.

If The Wife lets me out of the house like that, I mean.

APCB Beerfest III - July 15, 2006

Just a preliminary heads-up that I'm planning on throwing the 3rd APCB Beerfest this Saturday, July 15, at Rudyards in steamy, sultry H-Town. While previous affairs have been more kid-friendly, Rudz is decidedly not so. It is often smoky, and occasionally someone will inexplicably play "Surfing Bird" by the Cramps five times in a row on the jukebox (cough), but it is indoors and mercifully refrigerated. No disrespect to Jackie and Paul at Hans' Bier Haus, but I'd like to host one of these where I don't suffer heat exhaustion immediately following.

More details to come. Right now I'm thinking 7-ish (no kids doesn't mean I'm 19 again and just starting my evening at midnight, after all). The Rudyards web site is here. Map is here.

Hope to see you there, in spite of the short notice.

For the Tolkien completist who also happens to be a wealthy alcoholic...

The world's oldest bottle of scotch is going up for auction tomorrow:

A single cask yielded only 61 unique bottles of this exquisite Scotch whisky. Import laws required a special 750 mL bottle to be made; the item for auction is therefore the only 750 mL bottle of the Glenfiddich Rare Collection 1937 ever produced. The spirit came into being in 1937 when oak cask 843, hand-made by distillery coopers, was filled with liquid from stills at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, Scotland, and laid down in a dunnage warehouse to mature. The spirit was slowly aged in cask for 64 years and bottled in 2001, resulting in a liquid of deep, robust character. With a rich walnut color, nose of toffee, cinnamon and cloves and sweet, cedar-y palette, this extraordinary Scotch whisky brims with complex yet subtle notes.

This one-of-a-kind spirit will be sold to the highest bidder with proceeds donated to City Harvest, a charity charged with ending hunger in communities in New York. The lucky buyer will own a piece of history, as Cask 843 has lived through monumental world events including World War II, man landing on the moon and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Glenfiddich Rare Collection 1937 was distilled in the same year the Golden Gate Bridge opened to traffic, JRR Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' was first published and Walt Disney's 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' was first released as a full length animated feature film.

Glenfiddich Malt Master David Stewart notes, "Glenfiddich Rare Collection 1937 is a truly unique and exquisite malt whisky of exceptional character. As well as being the oldest Scotch whisky in the world and a very collectible piece, it would make for the most wonderful taste experience."

This sounds like an extreme example of the kind of scotch people drink if they want to "die penniless," as Ron White would say.

In Texas, there's lots of beer...

But you shouldn't drink it here:

Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said Wednesday.

The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission's Carolyn Beck.

Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.
[...]
"There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they're intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car," Beck said. "People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss."

And? People fall asleep on their front porch. People make ill-advised long distance phone calls and break into tears trying to convince ex-girlfriends to give me them "one more chance." People eat a whole bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos and stay up too late playing Halo. I'm glad the TABC is around to protect me from getting fragged by the Covenant.

Apparently some of those busted were in a hotel bar. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't most of these individuals be staying at the hotel in question? What about those planning on calling cabs? I'll be brutally honest with you, I sometimes go out drinking with the express purpose of sloppily forgetting my troubles with extreme prejudice and paying someone to drive me home, is the possibility that I might stumble going up my front steps sufficient to justify the TABC's budget? These guys haven't changed their strategy since I was in high school.

EDIT: What The Fat Guy said.

Faith and bejeesus

The Wife is over on the Emerald Isle this week, which will - conveniently enough - coincide with St. Patrick's Day. I've been to Ireland twice, once with the missus in 1998, the second time with my mother in 2002. The dichotomy between the way Americans were greeted during the Clinton and Bush administrations was palpable, even if I don't feel much like going into it here.

And why not? Because apparently my father-in-law and his brother, one of The Wife's uncles, are doing their best to alienate themselves on their own terms.

First there's The Father-In-Law, an avowed scotch drinker, who seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge that not every bar in Ireland will carry his preferred booze. I know we expect to be able to drink "Tennessee whiskey" even if we're stuck on a layover in Seattle, but they operate a little differently over there.

Then there's the uncle. When I was informed of his transgressions earlier today, I began fearing for his safety. First, he ordered a Jameson and - horrors - watered it down. When my fine and diplomatic spouse informed him you didn't need to water down Irish whiskey, he promptly approached the bartender and asked if they had any "Irish bourbon."

I'm told everyone managed to exit the place with no bloodshed. Still, it was a near thing.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe St. Patrick's Day. For myself, I'll be picking up a 4-pack of Guinness tomorrow and drinking it while trying to teach She Who Shall Not Be Named how to fight. And all to Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash by the Pogues.

I didn't know "Cancer" was one of the Seven Duffs

Looks like all that beer drinking is coming back to bite us on the ass:

A doctor who describes himself as a former beer drinker has found that significant beer or other alcohol consumption — with the exception of red wine — increases the risk of colorectal cancer.
[...]
[Dr. Joseph] Anderson said he's no longer a beer fan even though he had no problems. What he found, though, were serious health issues in many of his beer- and spirits-imbibing patients.

Anderson said he found that his patients who drank eight or more glasses of beer or about the same number of stronger alcoholic beverages per week had a significantly elevated chance of having precancerous polyps or fully developed colorectal cancers.

"Beer and spirits are probably just as important as a family history of colorectal cancer when it comes to risk," Anderson said.

No chance that's "eight or more glasses" in one sitting, is there?

Well this is hardly the news I want to hear after finding out The Wife got me tickets to Game 3 of the NLCS this Saturday. Baseball without beer? That's like...Starsky without Hutch, or Itchy without Scratchy, or driving in Houston without seeing a pickup truck sporting those fake testicles hanging from its trailer hitch.

Goddammit, it's not natural.

Patients who drank eight or more glasses of beer or stronger beverages per week were more than twice as likely to have precancers or full-blown cancers than those who drank less or who chose wine instead.

Earlier studies have suggested that alcohol has a powerful effect on the colon and increases the likelihood of cancer development because of the increased amount of aldehyde, a noxious compound that forms as alcohol is processed.
[...]
Wine contains a significant amount of alcohol, up to 12 percent or more by volume in some vintages. Still, the "pernicious effect" was not evident in red-wine drinkers, he said.

He and his colleagues found that red-wine drinkers who consumed between one and eight glasses of red wine per week experienced a decreased risk of colorectal polyps and cancers.

Anderson attributed the difference to high levels of natural antioxidants.

So if I drink eight glasses of wine a week in addition to the beer it'll all even out, right?

Feh. I've given up enough bad habits.

"This time I'm drunk on love. And beer."

Thinking of going "down the pub" in England? You may never leave:

Plans to relax drinking laws in England and Wales will lead to a sharp increase in violent crime, judges have warned.
[...]
Licensed premises can apply to extend their opening hours beyond 11pm from 24 November, potentially in some cases to allow 24-hour drinking.

The judges' report stated: "Those who routinely see the consequences of drink-fuelled violence in offences of rape, grievous bodily harm and worse on a daily basis are in no doubt that an escalation of offences of this nature will inevitably be caused by the relaxation of liquor licensing which the government has now authorised."

While I don't know that those prone to domestic violence are going to be encouraged any more by later drinking hours, I do agree that 24-hour bars are generally a bad idea. Spend a week around Bourbon Street if you don't believe me.

When we were in Dublin, they had just started experimenting with the "late bar" thing, and while I have no data on increased Irish violence, I can tell you it greatly contributed to the severity of my hangovers the next day. I actually kind of enjoyed the fact that most pubs booted you out at a (semi)reasonable hour. My track record on knowing when to say when hasn't always been the best, after all.

It usually takes the combined efforts of security personnel and circus roustabouts to get me back to my room when I'm in Vegas.

Judge Charles Harris QC said a high proportion of British people become "pugnacious and bellicose" and "fight at the slightest provocation" after drinking.

He said: "A very large proportion of domestic violence is committed by people who have been drinking - and if they hadn't been drinking so much, they wouldn't be so violent."

I think a "high proportion" of most human beings in general become pugnacious and bellicose after drinking.

The problem with this line of reasoning is the short leap you have from 11 PM closings to closing bars entirely. Maybe if more attention was paid to complaints about domestic violence and punishment amounted to more than a slap on the wrist, people would be less inclined to do it. Or more likely to curb their drinking.

He also denied later opening times would lead to more "continental" drinking habits.

"Continental-style drinking requires continental-style people - people who sit quietly chatting away at cafe tables."

He said British drinking involved "standing up, shouting at each other in crowded bars, trying to consume gallons of beer at a time".

Man, I'd hate to hear what he has to say about Australians.

Two liver minimum?

Apparently not. At least, not for Larry Hagman:

Former Dallas star Larry Hagman has requested doctors refrain from giving him a second liver transplant - because he's not afraid of dying. The 72-year-old star is reportedly experiencing life-threatening problems with the replacement liver he was given in 1995 but has no intentions of undergoing another operation. Brave Larry says, "I wouldn't have it even if it meant I had another 20 years. It doesn't scare me. You are going to die eventually anyway."

"Brave Larry" didn't feel this way when he leapfrogged to the head of the donor list in '95, in spite of the fact his new liver was a replacement for one ravaged by decades of systematic abuse. That's okay, though, because whoever got bumped down the list for Hagman was going to die eventually anyway, right?

Bravery is waiting your turn like your garden variety non-celebrity, even if it means you might drop dead. Hagman, Mickey Mantle, and David Crosby don't fit that bill.

Shit, they should take Crosby's back.

"When I was seventeen, I drank some very good beer."

Via Fark, here's Modern Drunkard's list of the 40 Things Every Drunkard Should Do Before He Dies:

1. Open and close a bar
2. Go on a bender
3. Drink a fifth of hard liquor, by yourself, in one day
4. Dance like a fool in front of a large hooting crowd
5. Spend a night in the drunk tank
6. Get drunk on the grave of your hero
7. Buy a crowded bar a round
8. Embark on an impromptu road trip
9. Get 86’d from a bar
10. Extravagantly overtip a bartender
11. Walk up to an attractive stranger way out of your league and buy him or her a drink
12. Conspire an afterhours at your favorite bar
13. Make your best friend a perfect martini
14. Buy, build or steal a home bar
15. Get carried home by your drinking buddies
16. Get drunk with your father
17. Fight a good fight
18. Visit the source of your favorite beer, wine or liquor
19. Drunkenly watch the sun come up with your best boozing buddies and a bottle
20. Sit in on an A.A. meeting
21. Hit a dozen bars in one night
22. Try at least one hundred different drinks
23. Get loaded in the land of your forefathers
24. Juice on the job
25. Split a magnum of expensive champagne with your true love
26. Give a hobo twenty bucks
27. Get loaded and tell your boss exactly how you feel
28. Send a friend a bottle of good liquor
29. Eat a pickled egg from the big jar
30. Go on a fishing trip with your pals
31. Eat the worm
32. Learn at least one traditional drinking song
33. Steal some booze
34. Spend half a paycheck on a single bottle of liquor
35. Start your long-awaited and very personal autobiography: Me and the Booze: A Love Story
36. Try absinthe
37. Watch the movie Barfly with five of your closest friends
38. Work at least a week as a bartender
39. Make your own beer, wine or moonshine
40. Go to your place of worship loaded

Modesty and matters of public record forbid me from specifying which of these I've completed. Let's just say it's more than 20. I'm sure some of the reprobates who hang around here can top that.

"I thought my life would be a Mardi Gras, a never ending party...ha!"

Another Fat Tuesday is upon us, and in the American tradition of gluttonous excess, what was once a holiday marked by pre-Lenten feasts and the odd parade or two has swelled into the phantasmagoric orgy of booze, breasts, and beads we've all come to know and love from those numerous C.O.P.S. specials.

I've been to New Orleans a number of times, but never for Mardi Gras. Even in my callow youth I was wary enough of the hassle to steer clear, and now I'm too old. I'm comfortable with that, for Mardi Gras is a holiday for drunken youth and drunken still-wish-they-were-youth. How else do you explain the savagery with which crowds descend upon The City that Sobriety Forgot every March? Yeah, yeah, yeah, New Orleans is steeped in French-Americal colonial history, which would be a pertinent argument if more than 1% of visitors ever made it past the Daquiri Factory. I also hate crowds, so Mardi Gras would drive me nuts. I'd end up paying less attention to the boobs being flashed around me than I would the next throat I had to elbow in order to get the hell off Bourbon Street.

Even before I was old enough to sample the city's earthier pleasures, New Orleans freaked me out. I remarked once - to my friend Sven as we were driving through on a return trip from Atlanta - that there was an almost palpable miasma of evil that clung to the city. It tweaked at a visitor's nerves, making one skittish and edgy. Perhaps, I mused, this was the reason people felt compelled to drink so much. Sven just grunted something unintelligible, then rolled back over to continue sleeping off his hangover. The same hangover that necessitated my driving solo from Atlanta to Beaumont.

What was my point? Oh, right...miasma. I couldn't decide, when I visited the Big Sleazy later in life, if there really was some cloud of malevolence hovering over the Mississippi River delta or if it was merely four decades' worth of accumulated vomit and urine. New Orleans is the only city I've ever visited that made me feel like washing my shoes afterwards. And I've been to Paris. And Amsterdam.

In the interest of fairness, I should point out that the Wife loves New Orleans. She's been to three Mardi Gras celebrations and, by all accounts, had a blast each time.

I prefer Vegas. Keep your phony forced jubilation and give me hard drinking gamblers who'd just as soon blow White Owl smoke in your face as learn your name. Mardi Gras is "the greatest night of the year?" With those tinted windows, it's always night in Treasure Island. Spare me swimming against a tide of Coors Light-addled frat boys for a 48 oz. pina colada and just keep the whiskey straights coming while I play Texas Hold 'Em. Here's a $5 chip for all your hard work.

And Vegas celebrates the institution of marriage, which is apparently very important to our President.

If bread is the staff of life...

...then beer is life itself.

Whether your tippling level equates to "social," "binge," or "Boris Yeltsin," everyone should have a set of guidelines for drinking. Mine starts and ends with "Never turn down a free drink," but Modern Drunkard Magazine will help the rest of you get started with its "86 Rules of Boozing" (courtesy of Metafilter). Highlights follow:

12. Never, ever tell a bartender he made your drink too strong.
15. If you offer to buy a woman a drink and she accepts, she still might not like you.
33. The only thing that tastes better than free liquor is stolen liquor.
35. Learn to appreciate hangovers. If it was all good times every jackass would be doing it.
45. It's okay to drink alone.
55. If you think you might be slurring a little, then you are slurring a lot. If you think you are slurring a lot, then you are not speaking English.
68. If there is a line for drinks, get your goddamn drink and step the hell away from the bar.

The only item I'd add to this list is: find your preferred alcohol and stick with it. If you're a beer drinker, don't mix it up in public with Wild Turkey. If you're a vodka drinker, don't suddenly decide to go with gin. More pain and suffering has been caused by amateur mixologists than the Black Death and Celine Dion combined.

Wine me, dine me, .69 me

Don't get into a drinking contest with 32-year old Willard Ashley III, who blew a whopping .69 after his arrest for public intoxication in LaPorte County, Indiana (where a blood alcohol measurement of .08 is legally intoxicated).

Using OnlineConversion.com's BAC calculator (and estimating Ashley's weight at 200 lbs), it appears one would need to consume 32 shots of 80-proof liquor or or 39 beers in one hour to hit .69.

This Bud's for you, Willard.

For comparison, here are some celebrity BAC measurements taken at the time of their respective arrests:

Tonya Harding (former celebrity boxer) - .116
Shannen Doherty (co-star of Judd Nelson's) - .130
Tim Allen (alleged comedian) - .150
Steve McNair (Oilers QB) - .180
Oksasa Baiul (what is it with these figure skaters?) - .168
Mike Lookinland (TV's "Bobby Brady") - .255
Bob Probert (legendary Red Wings and Blackhawks enforcer) - .310

Well, we always knew hockey players were tough, but how about Mike Lookinland? I'll bet even Sam the butcher would be impressed.

Sweet Jebus, No!

As Scott at The Fat Guy has so sedately noted, a Jim Beam warehouse burned down today:

BARDSTOWN, Kentucky (AP) -- Flames engulfed a seven-story bourbon warehouse Monday, sending alcohol-fueled flames more than 100 feet in the air.

The wood-frame Jim Beam warehouse collapsed about two hours after the fire was reported at 3 p.m. and continued burning. The company said the warehouse held about 19,000 barrels of bourbon, or less than two percent of its bourbon inventory.

And an accompanying photo, proving once again that a picture is worth several thousand barrels:

I still have a special spot in my liver (liver spot?) for Jim Beam, even if I've (mostly) moved on to Irish whiskey. I spent the worst New Year's Day of my life in the throes of a Beam hangover, and when the Missus and I went to Ireland a few years ago, Beam was the American entry in the whiskey tasting at the Jameson distillery. it didn't hold up well against the other offerings (Jameson, Bushmills, and Tullamore Dew). I'll still occasionally have a belt of Wild Turkey at the local bar, however.