Beer In Review: Christmas Beer!

Well, 2006 is almost done. This is the time of year when people do some kind of "best of" or "top 10 stories" lists. I'm not. That would require alot of work that I have no interest in doing. I could opine about the deaths of James Brown and Gerald Ford but Mike did a good job of that already. Predictions for 2007? Nah. That's been done too. So, I'll just stick with beer.

Both of this entry's picks are from Ridgeway Brewing in Oxforshire, England. Shelton Brothers of Belchertown, Massachusettes (No, I'm not making that up) handles the importation of their brews. Ridgeway was founded by the former master brewer of Brakspear brewery, which shut its doors in 2002 after 223 years of brewing.

Ridgeway has gained a bit of notoriety for running afoul of censors here in the Northeast. Their Bad Elf line was accused of enticing kids into drinking beer. It's a lame argument which hasn't held up in court, afaik. Maine and New York have done likewise. Fortunately, Connecticut gave up on its battle last year. Yes, folks. The government is worse than your mother.

So while it's still legal, let me discuss Santa's Butt Porter. Yes, the double entendres are flowing. In beer terms, the "butt" refers to an 108 imperial gallon barrel or cask. Get it? As for the beer itself, it provides a decent head and a mild malty aroma. It has a very dark brown color and provides 6% ABV. Hops take a back seat here, but the malt isn't strong like Gonzo. This is a mild porter. It's a good beer, but it's not a great beer.
 
The other beer up for review is Lump of Coal Dark Holiday Stout. The byline boasts "Much More Than You Deserve for Xmas This Year." Ridgeway can't be accused of pulling any punches with their advertizing.

From the name, I expected this ale to be pitch black, but a little light manages to eek through shallow portions. Gonzo is darker. Don't get me wrong, it's still dark. There's ample head and a malty aroma. Hops take a back seat again as chocolate malt and a bit of smoke are the prominent flavors. I enjoyed this 8% ABV stout with, appropriately enough, the remaining petits fours that survived the in-laws Christmas night. Yummy.

Both beers come in 500 ml (about half a quart) bottles and retail in my neck of the woods for $3.50 each, iirc. That's a little steep to be enjoyed regularly, though it makes for a nice treat from time to time. I'll stick to domestic craft brews. And speaking of which, my complaint about a dearth of porters has ended. I've found a few to review for January.

Happy New Year!
\_/
DED

A Christmas Gift (sort of)

I've been talking about my "rock star" days (that's a joke people) on a couple other blogs. I thought that I should share some of those memories with this little number. Anyone from back in the day will immediately recognize it. Love it or hate it. It is what it is. And Merry Christmas.

\_/
DED

Beer In Review: March of the Imperials

Greetings from the Häagen-Dazs state! Being that Christmas will soon be here, I decided to keep things festive and happy here in the blog. So, let's let look at some beer. Better yet, we should drink some.

First up is a beer recommended to me by The Beer Guy who works at the liquor store I frequent. I don't remember him saying that this was an Imperial ale, but if one reads the fine print one finds out. Anyway, it's called Winter Storm and it's part of the Heavy Seas brand put out by Clipper City Brewery, located in Baltimore.

Technically, the Winter Storm is classified by Clipper City as a "Category 5" Ale. What does that mean? Your guess is as good as mine. It is a seasonal, but it's also an Imperial ESB that clocks in at 7.5% ABV. The website states that it has "pure hop power" and that's certainly true. It's dry hopped with Magnum, Fuggles, Cascade, Centennial and Chinook hops. Fortunately for me, it wasn't overwhelming like the 90 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head. In fact, drinking this beer reminded me of an IPA.

When you pour it in the glass you'll get a decent amount of head and a hoppy bouquet. The brewers also claim a "ruby hue" and "vivid malty flavor." I didn't get either of those. The color was dark copper and all I could taste were hops. Still, this is a good beer, especially for hops fans. I did see some yeast particles that the bottle warned about. But any drinker of homebrew knows that's nothing to be worried about.

The other beer is Gonzo Imperial Porter made by the Flying Dog Brewery out in Denver. It's intended as a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson. Yes, that Hunter S. Thompson. According to the website, he and Ralph Steadman, the artist for both HST's books and Rolling Stone articles and the brewery's labels, are kindred spirits with the brewery's founders.

The Gonzo Imperial Porter is as malty as Winter Storm is hoppy. From the moment you pour this beer into a pint glass you know you're getting gobs and gobs of malty goodness. The beer is so dark it's black, due to the black, chocolate and crystal malts. However, there were hints of a ruby glow through parts of the pint glass. Maybe a pilsner or tasting glass would reveal more. Anyway, bouquet and taste are all malt and all porter. The Millenium and Cascade hops show up just enough to let you know this isn't a malt soda. The 9.5% ABV reveals itself to you late in the taste. That's your clue that this a beer not to be trifled with. If you like porters, or just beer from the malty end of the spectrum, then I heartily recommend this one.

I'd forgotten how much I miss porters. There seems to be a dearth of them on the market these days, or at least in my travels. It seems that it's all Wheats, IPA's and PA's. It reinforces my decision that my next batch of homebrew should be a porter. But, in the meantime I'll go bug The Beer Guy to order some porters for the liquor store.

\_/
DED

Rebecca The Lobster

"Honey, could you get the fertility clinic on the phone. I think they messed up our order."

"Great Neptune! What have they done to you, Larry?!

\_/
DED

I Want Coal For Christmas

Last week, we got hit with a double whammy: an additional $7 million is to be added to the existing $25 million high school renovation/expansion project and the Connecticut DPUC announced that CL&P residential customers will be facing a 7.7% rate increase. Nevermind that we got hit with a 22% rate hike last year. Businesses and United Illuminating (UI) customers will get hit worse.

I won't go into the politics surrounding the high school project. I've touched on that before. Everyone agrees that something needed to be done but no one could agree on what should be done. The "let's do everything" crowd won and now I'm looking at an additional $300/yr for the next 20 years for the high school alone. Since property taxes have been rising steadily at 4-5% a year, except for the year they adjusted the mill rate and taxes went up 19.8%, I should expect a property tax bill over $6,000 this year.

A few years ago, Connecticut deregulated its utility industry. Northeast Utilities, the owner of CL&P and UI, was forced to sell off its power generation equipment. Their new role: purchasing agents for electricity. They got to keep their power transmission business (power lines). Of course, it was after deregulation that the need for electricity in lower Fairfield County became evident. Much larger power lines (345 kV) were needed and, after alot of public debate, are now being installed.

I'd say that deregulation has been a disaster. Rather than fostering competition, all CT residents have seen are rate increases. And if you want to go green, you have to pay a surchage. How does that convince people to go green?

I'm currently paying over 15 cents per kiloWatt-hour. 10.068 cents of that is power generation while 5.21 cents is transmission. I've got electric heat so bills in the winter can be brutal. We've taken steps over the years to offset these costs. I've switched as many lights as possible over to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). We've had new windows and garage doors installed to cut heat loss. When my washer & dryer of 13 years died, we bought new energy efficient ones. I turn off the water heater for 8 - 24 hour intervals depending on usage. I unplug our televisions when they're not going to be used for long periods of time. I keep the thermostats set in the low 60's during the day and 50's when we've all gone to bed.

To take the chill out of the house on cold nights, we burn wood. We upgraded to a soapstone wood burning stove, which is more efficient and cleaner burning than the steel one that came with the house. It's already paid for itself in heating savings. We haven't paid for wood in seven years, acquiring it for free from my tree surgeon neighbor, harvesting dead trees from our 1 acre forested yard, and helping out friends with their tree work. Yes, it's messy and time consuming, between collecting, chopping and stacking the wood and keeping the fire going, but we think that it's worth it.

So I'm left with a quandry. What else can I cut without affecting "quality of life"? The answer is: the money we put aside for home improvement projects. I already use coupons, buy stuff when it's on sale, buy no-name or generic brands if the quality is the same, and actively deny indulging in impulse purchases. If it ain' broke, I tend not to upgrade. For example, I've got 25 year old Sony Trinitron in my bedroom.

Since my wife and I aren't willing to make any cuts into our frugal lifestyle, my guess is that our home improvement pace will have to slow down. Some may argue that I should go to work, especially since my business is kaput, but that would mean putting the kids into daycare. Besides the minimum $20,000/year cost, there's the fact that neither of us believes in having our kids raised by strangers. Both of us had our Mom's at home while we were little and stable, drama free families. It was something that we valued in each other when we met. I don't fault families who need to utilize daycare because they can't afford not to have both parents work, whether for income or insurance reasons, but it's not for us. So, we'll just suck it up and vote NO, TOO HIGH on every single town budget until the kids are old enough for school and I can return to work. Oh, who am I kidding. I'll always vote NO, TOO HIGH on these town budgets.

\_/
DED

Wither The Dollar?

Yes, the misspelling is intentional.

Once you read this article, you'll be checking your résumé to make sure it's up-to-date. A recession in 2007 may be an unfortunate side effect of future interest rate hikes. Said rate hikes are necessary to convince foreign holders of our debt that the US dollar has value and that the US government is serious about its deficits. If foreign banks don't think we're serious, it could lead to a dollar sell off, which would be disastrous.

I got one of those investment brochures the other day. This one was from Global Financial Insight (GFI). They're trying to get investors to pony up to China VOIP & Digital Telecom (CVDT). They cite China's rampant growth and the success of other Chinese IPO's as reasons to invest in this company. The stock closed today at $2.98. GFI thinks that a return of 1900% to 3800% is possible. Sure, if enough people believe them, it just might.

I tried one of these stocks for my speculative investment portfolio. I liked the technology (Lithium Ion Batteries for cars). I bought 20 shares of Whistler Investments. I rode a roller coaster of three 3:1 stock splits, followed by a reverse, a name change (Hybrid Technologies - HYBT), a big rise in stock price followed by big collapse, and then a bunch of stock dividends. I now have 24 shares but the overall value is still 30% lower than my initial investment. So it's not a path one should necessarily follow. "Pump and Dump" I think is the term.

But what about China? Should investors who solidly believe in buying American (when possible) or that the Chinese government is an enemy of the US, slowly bleeding us to death, invest in China? Every week we read about companies investing millions, even billions, in China. Should we invest in China to make money off them and, if the numbers are high enough, use that money to survive the dark economic times to come? Maybe invest those profits in an American venture when the country really needs it? Or is that some kind of hypocrisy? I honestly don't know, but feel free to sound off.

In the meantime, here are some stats courtesy of the GFI brochure:

• China's middle class is 300 million people, the size of the entire US population. I don't know what constitutes "middle class" in China.
  
• China buys 9% of the world's oil, 25% of its aluminum, 33% of is iron ore, and 40% of the world's cement.
  
• The US has 9 cities with 1 million or more people. China has 103.
  
• The US has $40 billion in foreign currency reserves. China has $124 billion.
  
• The savings rate in the US is zero while it's 30% in China.
  
• The US has a $725 billion trade deficit. $202 billion of that is with China. I don't know how old that stat is.
  
• Warren Buffet has $70 million invested in PetroChina.
  
• GM and Ford are investing $6 billion and $1 billion, respectively, in operations in China.
  
• China's VOIP market was 29 million customers in 2005. GFI expects it to grow to 80 million by 2008.

I guess none of this should be a surprise to cyberpunk aficionados. The likes of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson forecasted the 21st century economic rise of China and the decline of America in their novels back in the 90's. But unlike alot of sci-fi, this is one future that's looking like reality.

\_/
DED

Flying Cars Still Stuck On The Ground

Flying cars have been promised to us by prognosticators of high tech futures since the 1950's. With atomic power, everything seemed possible. But with nuclear power confined to large scale operations (utilities, submarines, aircraft carriers), flying cars remained solidly within the realms of science fiction. Flying car fans had to settle for high tech wet dream films like "Blade Runner" and "The Fifth Element." But some engineers never gave up on the dream.

Fed up with gridlock on Connecticut's highways, Paul Dev, of D-Star Engineering, has been working on V/STOL (Vertical or Short TakeOff and Landing) vehicles for several years. This article states that he's filed a patent for just such a vehicle. His design utilizes several small enclosed fans ("small" when compared to a helicopter's blades) to provide lift. Each of these fans will have an electric power source. No details as to its performance or even if there's a prototype. So we can leave this one in the pipe dream category, at least for now.

Terrafugia has developed a 1/5 scale model of it Transition™ aircraft and tested it in MIT wind tunnels. In essence, it's a regular plane that you can drive on the road because its wings retract. Nothing fancy about the engine. They expect to get 30/30/40 mpg air/city/highway. If you take a look at the thing, you're not gonna want to take it very far on the highway. And for $150,000 you can park it in your garage. I'm going to file this one in the expensive hobby category. We'll see if they meet their 2008/2009 prototype/production deadlines.

While these relative newcomers fiddle about with their models and blueprints, one
man has been slavishly working for decades: Paul Moller. He started building prototypes back in the 60's out of his garage. Over time, he piqued the curiousity of investors and formed Moller International (MLER on the Pink Sheets I think). His latest prototype is the M400, a sleek looking VTOL with 4 turbofans and retractable wings. The Moller engine is an outgrowth of the Wankel rotary engine but with many fewer moving parts. It's capable of 30-35 mph on the ground 275-375 mph in the air (depending on altitude). It gets 20 mpg, which better than most SUV's, and will run on ethanol or gasoline. The company prefers ethanol because the craft's engine temperature ran cooler and the emissions made it compatible with California's regulations. I was tempted to add them to my speculative investing account, but held off because I thought that they were still too far away from market. Consider this one practical.

But what are the drawbacks and hurdles to the Moller and its kin? Well, the Moller is expected to cost $500,000 once it's finally approved by the FAA. That's about the price of a helicopter. If mass production ever kicks in, the price could drop to luxury car price levels.

And it's approval by the FAA and getting insurance companies to provide reasonable fees that should be the biggest hurdles. I don't think that the FAA is ready for this. If this goes into mass production, how will the skies stay under control? Since the Moller can take off from anywhere, what's to stop someone from just taking off from someone's driveway? Not every city has an airport to monitor the traffic in its skies and when an aircraft is too close to the ground it's "under the radar." Unless this thing has seriously advanced proximity sensors and radar built in, what's to prevent collisions? While there are parachutes built in, would they deploy in time if some schmuck collides with another schmuck 100 feet above the ground? Moller's FAQ downplays the likelihood of congestion over cities but I think that they're being hopelessly naive or they're intentionally hoping no one will notice. And what about loading one of these things up with explosives and going kamikaze for Allah?

Don't get me wrong, I think that the M400 is very cool and I'd love to have one of my own. But in our litigous society, is there anyway that the M400, or its kin, will be able to cut through the red tape to get airborne?

\_/
DED

Beer In Review: Old Man Winter

Last night's thunderstorm (yep, a thunderstorm in December) heralded the arrival of a cold front and a return to normal temperatures for this time of year. Hell, there's even snow in the forecast for Sunday night, though it's nothing like what hit the Midwest this week. Anyway, with signs that Winter isn't far off, it's time to take a look at the Winter Ales being offered by the breweries.

First up is Winterhook, another fine ale from the folks at Redhook. This is a hearty hoppy ale with a rich copper color (Redhook claims that it's "chestnut", a more seasonally appropriate term). There's plenty of head on the pour. When you stick your nose in there, you get a full dose of the Northern Brewer and Cascade Hops. And when you drink it, you still taste the hops. Redhook makes claims about a "complex malt profile with hints of chocolate and caramel" but I didn't notice it. The hops dominate the scene. Don't get me wrong. I like this beer alot. I just don't see the "complex malt profile." Maybe it's so complex (9 varieties of malt) that my taste buds can't figure it out. I do agree with Redhook that the ale has a "clean finish". Definitely worth checking out. 5.5% ABV.

The other selection for today's beer review is Brooklyn Winter Ale. This is a new offering from the Brooklyn Brewery. So new, that it's not even on their website yet. Although it shares its coloration and head stability with Winterhook, the two winter ales are quite different. As Winterhook is hoppy, the Brooklyn Winter Ale is malty. Your nose and your tastebuds will tell you that this is malty beer. I even picked out the caramel undertones.

The bottle states that they used Maris Otter malts, which have their "roots in blustery Scotland." There's that winter connection. "Blustery" is a good winter adjective. No mention of the hops used but I'd guess Cascade was probably in there. I'll have to check back at the website in a month or so and see if I was right. Anyway, this is another really good beer. Fans of Brooklyn shouldn't be disappointed.

Both of these ales taste better in a pint glass than their respective bottles.

Drinking these winter ales made me nostalgic for Pete's Wicked Winter Ale. Way back in the early-to-mid 90's, long before they got bought out and began to suck hard, the line of beers from "Pete" were great. They were my favorite brewery. Their original Winter Ale was fantastic. I can't remember what type of ale it was, but I remember it being on the malty side with a hint of nutmeg underlying the raspberry accented flavor. But they changed the recipe a few years later. It was good but wasn't great. And now they no longer make it. In fact they're down to 2 full year brands (their original brown ale and the strawberry blonde) and two seasonal (the lame ass Rally Cap summer ale and Wanderlust Cream Ale). I think that they've lost marketshare as I don't see it on the shelves like I used to (except at big chain grocery stores). I don't even know anyone that still drinks them. They're a shadow of their former selves. It's kinda sad to see a good brewery gone bad. I think I'll go cry in a beer now.

\_/
DED

Affordable Housing and Healthcare

Many years ago, when I heard the term "affordable housing" I automatically thought of "the projects": dense residential housing consisting of brick tenements for the working poor. But now, the umbrella of affordable housing now covers the middle class, at least here in CT. With the median price of a home in Fairfield County now at a whopping $477,000, one needs to take a step back and wonder what the hell's going on.

Seven years ago, my wife and I were fortunate enough to land a raised ranch here in Bethel for $225,000. Bethel is on the outskirts of Fairfield county, like its neighbor, Danbury, and Bridgeport down on the coast. But now, the median price for a home in Danbury is $330,000, which one needs an income of $81,000 to reasonably afford (at least according to the article). Between market valuation and the improvements we've made, I know that we could sell our home for at least $125,000 more than we paid for it.

But what about everyone else? Do they have to wait for the housing bubble to burst? How long will they have to wait for prices to come down? But will prices come down? I haven't know home prices to devaluate during slowdowns. They tend to level off, but not decrease. At some point though, if there's a glut of homes on the market the prices will have to come down somewhat. But if you're a teacher, policeman, or landscaper what do you do until then? Live outside the county I suppose.

Businesses have been bugging lawmakers in Hartford to do something about the skyrocketing costs of healtcare. But according to this article, the legislators told the executives that they're on their own. It goes on to say that employers may make more of an effort to adopt preventative health measures. I wonder if this will result in businesses sticking their noses into their employees private lives. Lay off the smokes, booze, and Twinkies boys and girls or you'll be getting a call from HR.

\_/
DED