. Favourite Beer of the Week

Being a terrific snob, my feelings about canned beer look something like this:


But these days not all canned beer is crap.



Just like screw tops on wine, cans are becoming increasingly acceptable to pretentious toffs like ourselves. They keep beer fresher, they chill faster, they stack in the fridge, and they're better for the environment.

People have been recycling beer cans since the olden days.



For 18 years John Milkovisch covered his house with over 50,000 flattened beer cans. That's 52 beers a week.


“Some people say this is sculpture but I didn't go to no expensive school to get these crazy notions.” –John Milkovisch



John is dead now, but you can still visit his house. The address is 222 Malone Street, Houston, Texas. Admission is $1. Guided tours are $5.



The beer can house is currently being restored by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

I bought this beer in a can -



It was delicious.

You can by it on Virgin America flights.



Or from a shop.

Unfortunately, like all cans, beer cans still come lined with toxic BPAs.

Fortunately, I read that the BPA levels are higher in a tin of tomatoes than in a tin of beer.

Unfortunately, I like tomatoes.

. Book of the Month

D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths by Ingri and Eogar Parin D'Aulaire.



A cow licks the salty brim of the universe while suckling an ugly frost giant. The giant falls asleep and gives birth to a bunch of trolls out of his feet and armpit.

Meanwhile, the cow licks a man into existence. The man has a son, who marries one of the armpit trolls, and she give birth to Odin, the father of the gods.

Odin kills the cow and the giant and pretty much everyone else.



Odin creates earth, heaven, two hells, elf-land, gnome-land, troll-land, a rather mediocre demi-god land, and a super fancy proper-god land at the end of a rainbow, full of gold and magic apples that keep you young forever.



A bunch of other gods show up, including Bragi the bard, Balder the forgiving, Frey the fertile, Skade the skier, Thor the angry, and Loki the naughty. Together they have lots of adventures, falling in love, playing pranks, taking revenge, beating up ice giants, and dressing up in ladies clothes.



When he is not sitting around on thrones or suppressing the revolting trolls, Odin visits earth on his eight legged flying horse, and recruits dead soldiers.



The soldiers then hang out with Odin, waiting for Ragnarok and the big fight at the end of the world when everything turns to shit and the gods and trolls and gnomes and elves and men all die.

The end.


The stories in this book are short and to the point, plainly told with a grim sense of humor. They are equal parts morality tale, creation myth, and ripping yarn.

The illustrations are crude, bold, fun, and on every page, which I like very much.

Get this book to read with your child, then when your child tells you he'd rather be playing video games, let him, and read the book yourself. Children are our future, and the future is Ragnarok.

Next month we will be reading "To The Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf.

. Pubaramas

. Other Favourite Beer of the Week

Due to a total lack of work, I took Friday as a 'floating holiday,' which is like a regular holiday, but with less flag waving, and no fireworks. So as Thursday evening was no longer a school-night, when Michela and Brent invited us over to their new house for triple-birthday cake and ice-wine, we went.



I have nothing against ice-wine. But I have even less against beer, so I took with me a bottle of "Dogma" by Brew Dog, the Scottish brewery responsible for the controversial 41% abv "Sink The Bismarck."

Unfortunately, "Sink the Bismarck" can only be purchased from Brew Dog's UK website, where they warn, "It is important that you be careful with this beer and show it the same amount of skeptical, tentative respect you would show an international chess superstar, clown or gypsy."

It costs $60 plus shipping, and it comes with a free bottle stopper so you don't have to drink it all at once.

Dogma is only 7.8% abv, so we did drink it all at once, with delicious vegan lemon coconut birthday bundt cake by Michela.




Dogma is made with poppy seeds, kola nut, honey and guarana.

What is guarana?

It is a creeping plant related to the maple, and twice as caffeinated as coffee.

Where does it come from?

Several years ago, a god killed a small boy, and another god plucked out the dead boy's eyes and planted them, and out of the soil grew guarana.

Despite this, the American Food and Drug Administration has classified guarana as "GRAS" - Generally Recognized as Safe.

Brew Dog has classified Dogma as - "Not cool. You may think it is, but that is just a beautiful lie fabricated by clowns and gypsies."



We are not cool either.

. Different Doodles

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Why don't we meet up at Monk's Kettle? It's small and pretentious, but so are we.




We don't like the evening crowd, but it's not too bad in the afternoons. They'll let us sit down at a table if we promise to order some food.




Too many beers to think about. Let's stick to what's on tap. "A Little Sumpin Wild" is a good place to start. It's Belgian.

I've got my new birthday camera with me. Where should I stick my big fat fingers?



Round two. You can have a Hopfen-Weisse, and I'm going to try a cask ale. The Russian Imperial Stout sounds interesting - dark and sweet, cellar temperature and non-carbonated.




Oh, it's warm and flat.




Someone is eyeing our table. Quick, order more food!



Time for one more. You have the Old Gnarleywine.



It's your favourite. Good color. You can't see your finger through it, which is important for some reason. I'm going back to Belgian. La Chouffe, please. What do you mean, it's off? Okay then, a St Bernards Quadrupel.


Nice.

Okay, let's get out of here.




To Papalotes!

. Space Buggy

I wrote this story when I was 8 years old. It is the best thing I've ever done. See how well it fits on the paper.




You probably can't read my writing, so I've transcribed it for you -

Space Buggy

I'd just moved into a new house and there was a rocket lornsh near us my ambition was always to go to the moon it must be fun floating about. Tomorrow I was going to see a big space ship lornshed. The night I went early so that I'd wake up early and be ready. Then the day came. My mum and two sisters came to my dad was away. There was a lot of commotion, a man who was going to fly was ill so they wanted another man but their was not one. So I asked, I was the only one boy there so I could, I was over joyed, anyway we had to get on. I got in and looked around it was great, there was trigers, buttons, leavers, and they told me what did what. A last we hit pluto. It was fun but when we got out we saw a robot we quickly got back in and pressed a buttons We saw there was eleven of the robot we sent the space plane to drop bombs which got five but six to go we got four with a giant magnet but still two. The we sent out the disintegrator which got one still one to go but the head cutter got that one, then we whent home, when we got home I drew a picture of it and the more I looked at it the more it looked like a dream.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

This week's beer is from Belgium.


Belgium is famous for beer.


And chocolate.


And waffles.


The first two are in this glass -



The addition of waffles I think would have been a mistake. Although at work one day last week they served fried chicken with waffles for lunch.



Ommegang's "Chocolate Indulgence" sounds like a bit of a ladies drink to me. My dictionary describes "indulgence" thus: Claire collects shoes—it is her indulgence.

They should have called it "Chocolate Excessive Over-Indulgence - for the man who's not satisfied with how fat regular beers are making him."


Further investigation has revealed that "Indulgence" is a Catholic term for the removal of temporal punishment. Apparently, if you are a horrible sinning type, the Pope (or someone even less scrupulous) can grant you an Indulgence, which draws on the "treasure house of merit" accumulated by the crucifixion of Jesus.



Basically, Jesus was so very good that he created this enormous great surplus of goodness, and you can buy some of it to make up for all the dirty sins you have committed. Or at least reduce the amount of time you have to spend in Purgatory.


That's Purgatory in the afterlife, not Purgatory in Rhode Island.



Not even the Pope would send you to Rhode Island.

. Arts and Crafts with Sasha

. Book of the Month

'Little Bee' (or 'The Other Hand' as it is known elsewhere) is very good. Except maybe the ending. Didn't you think?


Nicole Kidman is making the movie, starring Nicole Kidman.

Next month we will be reading D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths by Ingri and Eogar Parin D'Aulaire.

. Idiots

David Cameron is Britain's new Prime Minister. Here he is in 2006.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

It was not my intention to get another Mikeller beer, but this one came wrapped in paper with an excellent drawing on it, so I was forced to buy it immediately.



It is called "1000 IBU" because it has an International Bittering Unit rating of 1000.

This is the formula you should use to calculate your IBU.


You will need a spectrophotometer to perform your measurements. Here's one:



And this is how it works:

Guinness is 45 IBUs. India Pale Ales and Barley Wines can be 70 or more. So you would expect a beer of 1000 IBU to be the most disgustingly bitter beer ever made. Except it's not, because apparently no one can taste the difference once you go over 100.




Brewers are in the habit of boasting about the size of their IBUs. So "1000 IBU" is some kind of brewer joke. Geddit?



Anyway, the beer is delicious.