How come I’m never approached to do one of these studies about drinking Bell’s beer? I love the part about how sticking to vodka over whiskey “would not improve your performance at work the next day.” Classic!
Note: I’m not endorsing drinking in any way as a way of achieving a heightened sense of being. As always, never drink and drive or set a bad example for your kids. I don’t claim to have the G-variant gene. This is only a post comparing what they found with some strange feelings I’ve encountered in my life.
I’ve known about this G-variant gene for years. I always called it beer equilibrium and never knew there was an official study pertaining to it. Amazing the things that universities spend money on.
Beer equilibrium is that place after drinking x number of beers where you achieve flow. Flow does not require alcohol to be reached however. Flow is very common in the programming world when a programmer becomes so engrossed in what he’s working on that the rest of the world around him ceases to exist. There is only the problem, and all the intricate possibilities are clear.
I’ve achieved the programming flow sober and alcohol induced. Most of Pit was coded by me sitting in a hotel room after a few beers. Yeah, it may be crap code, but the bits flew from my fingers and everything was clear.
Flow is that feeling of playing Civilization until 3am and not being able to recall the last 4 hours going by. There is only you and the problem at hand, the rest of the world dissolves away.
The other most prominent flows that I’ve achieved of the beer equilibrium (BE) flavor is while playing pool or golf. A certain amount of beer consumed does something to relax me enough that the club becomes the extension that it’s supposed to be. Drives, chips, everything just happen the way they’re supposed to. The tricky part with BE, is maintaining it. Consume too much and the golf game returns to the craptastic game it normally is. It’s a fine line (as eluded to in the article) between being in the creative state and going over the edge to the tired side.
Flow is an awesome state of being, the sober version even more so than BE. If I can ever get my ducks in a row here at home, I hope to achieve some programming flow on some personal projects.
I don’t understand whatever law it is that requires brewery web sites to make you answer whether you’re over 21 or not. What does it matter if they aren’t legal to drink? Are teenagers somehow becoming intoxicated while looking over the selections at Budweiser’s site? Is asking that question really preventing underaged kids from answering “yes” or entering a birthdate to gain access? Or maybe the brewery’s are trying to show some kind of responsibility by asking their visitors.
While poking around my favorite brewery’s site, I didn’t really see anything questionable that I would be concerned about my underage child seeing.
Why don’t the freakin porn sites have to put up this crap question? You can probably end up with a face full of material you wouldn’t want your kids seeing by accidentally clicking the wrong button. Luckily, it hasn’t happened to my kids yet, that I know of. But maybe having that super secure and foolproof question pop up, would stop any chance of it.
Last night I was reacquainted with La Chouffe, which as the bottle describes is brewed by Belgian Artisans. It’s brewed in the Ardennes and legend has it that gnomes used to brew it before passing it on and is where the name came from. The bottle explains that La Chouffe translates to “the gnome”.
I first encountered this special beer in one of the Christmas gifts that nephew #2 puts together for me from his family. The La Chouffe in that pack was a large bottle (liter size?) which is customary for this brewery. Only La Chouffe is available in this petite sized bottle (11.2 oz). This is because Brasserie D’Achouffe believes in the little gnome’s magic of bringing people together to share a big bottle. They call the petite size the “small beautiful stupid bottle” in homage to the strong individualism of many Americans. 
I absolutely loved it the first time I had it years ago and when I saw it at Flick’s I had to get a bottle. At $3.99 a bottle, one was enough for the time being. Would my love of it fade? Had I remembered it wrong?
Nope! This is a good beer. The bottle describes it as an Artisanal Belgian Golden Ale Brewed With Spice.
I forgot my proper pooring techniques in my excitement and ended up pouring the sediment into my glass. This is a bottle conditioned ale so the yeast and spice is still in the bottle. Oh well. First thing you see is a beautiful brownish gold color. Holding it up to the light shows something truly amazing. As bubbles fritter up here and there from the bottom, almost non-moving floating particulates are suspended all over. It’s quite a marvel to see. Whether this is the spice or yeast, I’m not sure. There was brownish sedimant on the bottom from my sad pour.
Upon tasting, the back edges of your tongue are assaulted with flavor. You can taste the spice (which I later found out to be coriander) and a slight fruitiness as your tongue is bitten with every sip. A truly marvelous beer.
I’ve thought about my new beer scale and here’s the scale unless I have some other worthy suggestions.
So there’s the scale I’ll try to keep to. La Chouffe definitely fits in the Meddle or Animals category. I’m kind of going against my philosophy here also, in that I feel I should give a beer multiple tastings (like a 6 or 4 pack) before giving my decree. But this is an amazing beer. And if I can only have one every once in a while, it’ll still be worth it.
I haven’t gone hog wild with the newly found access to the ability to purchase micro-brew beers as you might have thought. Heck, I haven’t even made a stop at the Maumee Bay Brewing Company since I’ve moved up here. Though I need to rectify that.
However, I do have a nirvana of access nearby at Flick’s. This is a nice specialty food, beer, and wine store. I made my first beer purchase this weekend and it’s something special. I have a six of Bell’s Octoberfest in my possession. This stuff is so rare that the distributor is only allowed to sell 3 cases per location. After being informed of this, I mentioned to the checkout, “Well, then, hopefully I don’t like it.” We knowingly smiled at each other. Of course I would.
I’ve been a fan of Bell’s beers since I started traveling for business years ago up in the St. Joseph area. At least in the lower 1/3 of Michigan, they’re pretty popular. I haven’t had a lot of their brands, but the Oberon is indeed a tasty wheat (it’s on my top 10 beer list). I’ve only had one Octoberfest so far (I plan to have the second tonight) so I don’t want to make any judgement yet. Octoberfests are a special beer (unfinished). Like most beers, I prefer draft to bottled, but I think this is more true with Octoberfests. We’ll see.
We’ve live up here going on a month and half and I thought I should catch you up on what I’ve been drinking.
I think that’s it. A pretty modest list, but I’m finding having a nice tasty beer every once in a while is so satisfying.
On an extremely sad note: I won’t be attending Mad Anthony’s Octobeerfest this year. Unfortunately there’s just too much going on.
Just on the spurs of a comment about teaching my oldest to program in my post on programming games, a couple blogs I read noted that Sun has put up a resource for young programmers. This would probably be a good resource for any non-programmers wanting to give it go. I know at least one of you Bud Light swilling heathens has made a comment to that effect to me before.
Wings had a great weekend. Hopefully they can avoid duplicating what happened in the Nashville series in games 3 and 4. I’m gonna be a tired puppy this week with these late start times. Nephew #2 has bad mouthed Chelios probably since the Wings got him. I usually defend him, more to annoy my nephew than anything, though I did see value in his skills. My opinion may be changing. I’m starting to really cringe whenever Chelios is on the ice. I’m starting to see a lot of mistakes and problems that weren’t occurring in the past. It’s a little worrisome.
How many pictures does a 2GB SD card give my 4 mega pixel Kodak LS443? 1,650 pictures. Want to know what’s even scarier? I’ve got two cards. I can record 80 minutes of video on each card. Someday I’d like to get smaller camera that fits in my pocket easier. One of those digital video cameras would be cool too. Someday…
The wif-al unit has taken a very nice upswing from her surgery. She’s acting more like herself now. I’m very glad. She still needs to avoid any sickies, as that wouldn’t be good at this stage.
I went with my youngest on a zoo field trip last week. It turned out, she was the only child in my group. We had a blast. Wish I could do that more with the girlywogs.
For those worried about my programming studies, fear not. Over the last 2-3 weeks I studied myself silly. I worked on a nice little project for someone and have very nearly burnt myself out. I need to get back into things after a little break. I probably should continue to work on my Hibernate/Spring project, but I’m very tempted to start learning Groovy.
I picked up some Sapporo from the IGA last week to enjoy during the Wings’ games. This is my Japanese beer of choice when eating at a hibachi restaurant. This batch wasn’t so good. I’m wondering how long it’s been sitting there, because it tastes a bit skunky.
Looks like a big decision will need to be made this week. Hopefully two. One cool, one not so cool. But a stressful decision nonetheless.