San Quentin Breakout Stout is named after the San Quentin prison, which many inmates have attempted to breakout of, including Vincent Parry in the 1946 movie Dark Passage (93% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes).
Parry's escape attempt was successful, as was the surgical transformation of his head into that of Humphrey Bogart.
Much to the delight of Lauren Bacall.
The head on my Breakout Stout transformed less delightfully.
It vanished entirely in less than a minute.
The quality of a beer's head is determined by its ingredients. In general, more wheat gives you more head, like in Belgian and German witbiers and weissbiers.
Other factors likely to affect your head include pouring technique, and the kind of glass you use.
A cold, wet, or dirty glass will reduce the amount of head. As will a high alcohol content. Hops help foam cling to the sides of the glass, which the beer people call lacing.
Lace was once the principle source of income for the village of Beer in south-east Devon.
These days it's caravans.
And most of those caravans sit on a clifftop known as Beer Head.
The village of Beer is also home to the Pecorama Model Railway,
and the Beer Quarry Caves, where stone has been mined for 2000 years.
In 2008 rocks from the Beer Quarry Caves were sent into space and attached to the outside of the International Space Station.
Sitting on the rocks were some microbes. After 553 days the rocks were returned to earth.
And the microbes were still alive.
The plan now is to shoot Beer rocks across space so the microbes can seed life on other planets, like the Genesis device in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The Genesis rocket was designed by the Federation to crash into an uninhabitable planet and initiate a process of rapid terraforming to create a class M world ready for human colonization within a matter of hours.
The Guinness rocket was designed to make beer head.
It cost $13.5 million to develop, and works by releasing gaseous nitrogen into the beer every time the bottle is tilted, allowing consumers to enjoy a cold Guinness anytime, anywhere, without having to worry about a pint glass.
Kirk never worries about a glass. Here he is knocking back a bottle of Saurian brandy before seriously invading Yeoman Rand’s personal space.
The favourite beer of any week in the Star Trek universe is Romulan Ale. It is illegal, but no one cares.
In Wrath of Khan, McCoy presents the aged Kirk with an aged bottle of it for his birthday.
Old age and death are the predominant themes in Wrath of Khan.
Similar themes pervade San Quentin prison.
It's been around since 1852, and is famous for its Johnny Cash concerts.
And for its executions.
There are currently 714 prisoners on death row at San Quentin.
Californians have spent $4 billion on their capital punishment system since they re-introduced the death penalty in 1976. Since that time, 13 people have been executed. That's about $308 million per execution.
As the state is now $26 billion in debt, voters may soon have to choose between raising taxes or getting rid of death row.
In 2008, Assemblyman Jim Beall suggested raising the tax on beer.
It didn't go well.
