And finally, the latest shipment!

As well as a couple I actually found...

 

 

Up top, our first cap is a new version of Third Shift, an "if no one looks, they'll think I'm a craft brew" by MillerCoors under the "Band of Brothers" brand.  Next up is from a dark lager from Session, a Full Sail imprint.  The original Session was a "pre-prohibition beer" much like Third Shift; this one is a dark lager "that doesn't drink like a meal", their website proclaims.  Funny how some of these dark beer brewers are now trying to get those that don't like thick beers to try it.  Next to him with the bee is a Shock Top honey bourbon cask wheat.  Shock Top is basically Anheuser Busch's version of "Band of Brothers Brewing", and this flavor is a honey wheat beer.

 

 

The Arizona flag cap belongs to Oak Creek Brewing out of Sedona, AZ.  It goes to their Amber Ale.  Oak Creek was founded in 1993 by German immigrants Fred and Rita Kraus from Pottenstein, a village near the Czech border between Bayreuth and Nurnburg.  Leading off the second row is the self-explanatory Leine's Lemon Berry Shandy, with blackberry juice.  The blue foot print goes to Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot Ale, a "barleywine style ale", which is a beer brewed like a wine.  They even suggest it gets better with age.  Next is another version of Goose Island.  The next one and it's brother beneath him belong to "Day of the Dead" beers, a label from Cerveceria Mexicano, who brought us the Black Mountain Chili Beers, among others.  The top one belongs to the "Death Rides A Pale Horse" blonde ale, and the lower one is the "Pay The Ferrymen" porter.

 

 

Starting row three is a variation on a Redd's Apple Ale;  Then comes Hop Nosh from Uinta Brewing of Salt Lake City, not to be confused with Uintatheriums, which died out in the ice age.

 

Now Hop Nosh is about the opposite of Session Dark, and claims to be "Literally a hoppy snack."  Ugh.  Next door is another one at the other extreme, the Red Hook KCCO Black Lager, which claims to be "Amazingly light..."  What that has to do with the green ostrich on the cap (which of course I have sitting upside-down), I do not know.

Lastly on the bottom is the Hoegaardens I bought myself.  A wheat beer from Belgium, It's much more to my liking than a "hoppy snack".  Once again we thank the wonderful Stephen T McCarthy, whose debaucheries make these additions possible.  Cheers!

 



Now that I've thouroughly confused you...

People that follow this poor little space of internet knew I messed up and posted this week's Time Machine here about 28 hours before I did.  That was an aberration; I am not planning on simulcasting TM on this channel or anything like that.  Somehow or another, I hit a wrong button.  Can't even blame Blogger this time... though I was about to when I finally sniffed out my culpability.

Anyway, I should have been here before this, as I had won a couple more caps on e-Bay.  One of them, however, was sent by a French-Canadian who not only added what I assume was someone else's merchandise (a packet of postage stamps) but packaged the caps in such a way that one of the many rollers the letter (not package, letter) that they were sent in went through ripped both my cap and a bonus cap they decided to send right out of the package.  Note to self- always send a note to Canadian suppliers to PACKAGE STUFF PROPERLY.  Perhaps the Canuck postal service kid-gloves their mail, but the USPS does not.

(Did I get any recompense?  What do you think?  The USPS said, "Not our fault, bitch at the dumb Canadian", and the dumb Canadian said, "Je ne peux pas vous entendre. Je ne parle pas anglais." (I can't hear you, I don't speak English) )

But I did get one, and then my work buddie Gary contributed one, and then a care package from Arizona arrived.  And that means I got all these:

Let's start with the solid green one in the ring and go clockwise.  This is from Twisted Pine out of that drunken town, Boulder, Colorado.  It came off of their flagship Hoppy Boy IPA.  I learned very little more there because their website takes a full minute to get to any link (at least today).  The purple one is from Nimbus brewing, whose info was also problematic since the Tuscon brewery went belly-up in late January If the angle had been better, you'd see the chimp face on it.

Next came two new colors from Alaska Brewing; the maroon one from their Amber Alt Ale, the green from an IPA.  Next is a Four Peaks Kilt Lifter Scottish type Ale out of Tempe.

Next is an Avery brewing, also from Boulder. Then comes one from Sudwerk Brewing, a local hangout of UC-Davis students.  The Shock Top is different from my other one in that the text is white rather than yellow.   The Bear Republic difference from the one I had is just as subtle- the website address is absent from the bottom of this one.  Following is a Woodpecker Cider, technically not a beer, but a pretty cap to an alcoholic beverage, so I bent the rules slightly for it.

The brew, which comes from the UK, they say is in "managed decline"; they've lost 1/3 of sales in the last 13 years.  Next is a third different New Belgium for me, this one Trippel Ale, brewed with a touch of coriander.  The last member of the ring is a Colorado Native, which is one of Coors' "craft brews", made with "Rocky Mountain water, Colorado hops, Colorado barley grown in the San Luis Valley, and Colorado yeast, and sold only in Colorado."

On the inside are the other two I got.  The Schlitz, with the reversed color pattern, was one of their last cork caps, used from 1960-65.  The other is the brand new Miller Fortune, which is basically Miller's way to eat into the growing wine and spirits market by upping the alcohol content of their normal beer to 6.9%.

And somehow missing the boat was this one:

This is an Orkney Brewing Skull Splitter.  Brewed by the Orkney Brewery on the Orkney Islands off Scotland, it is named for the 7th Earl of Orkney, a Viking ruler named Thorfinn Torf-Einarsson, nicknamed the skull-splitter, though I confess the facts and fictions of his story are such that I couldn't tell if he was a warrior, or just got really bad hangovers.


Once again, a tip of the hat to ST MCCarthy and Gary Williams.  And if you shop on eBay, beware of seller ly***v  from Quebec- you may have to specify how you want your stuff shipped if you want them to arrive.

Knock knock...

I've been getting a lot of traffic here from new followers who've hopped on my profile and see my blogs sitting there in alphabetical order.  Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't seem to give one a way to adjust that.  So let me make this announcement now:  If you want to follow me where I mostly blog, go to Tilting At Windmills.  If you really really like beer caps, then this blog is okay too, but I'm only on it as necessary.  (Though I guess if you think about it, do you really want to hear from me 4 or five times a week- or once a month or so?  Maybe it isn't a mistake...

And when you have time off and a big snow coming....

...you go out and buy a mixed six pack!  Actually, you also go get something else in case you don't like the things you picked in the mixed bunch, too, but even that turned out aces this time.

First off, a word on what you didn't see:  I tried once again the Upland Wheat Ale.  I had this before, it had the cinnamon-stick kind of back taste.  At this point, we were halfway through the Chiefs/Colts debacle Saturday, so I devised a drinking game.  I really had to compromise on the "hot chicks" section, since NBC is afraid to show cheerleaders (Thank God for Morgan Smith Goodwin), but at least I did get a hit on the "Peyton Manning mentions" category, as well as several on the "ref blew the call" and "announcer is full of crap" sides.  Anyway, the beer that kicked this off was Bell's Oarsman Ale, which is hyped for it's tartness.  Me, I gagged my way down it, but Scrappy actually seemed to like it better.   I also had an Abita Amber Ale in the mix... for me, the coffee smell was enough.  Now, onto the three that made the collection:

First off is one of the Mickey's Malt Liquors I bought to give me something I knew I'd like (or wouldn't care much after a few).  I have a smaller one with the bee, but not a big mouth and not with the web address on it.  Next is the hit of the party, the Bells Winter White.  Next time, it might be a six-pack of these.  And that oddball on the end comes from Three Floyd's Brewing.  Their Pride and Joy ale was another that Scrappy liked far better than me- heck, when I grabbed it, I thought I was grabbing a Barking Squirrel, but obviously SOMETHING was misplaced.  They are brewed by father and two-son act, Mike, Nick, and Simon Floyd from Hammond, Indiana.  They started out in 1996 using an old swiss cheese aging barrel for a fermentation tank.  That explains a bit...it is described as "a great session beer which still has pale ale characteristics."  At least the cap was neat.