The McCarthy Era

Once again Stephen T. McCarthy has provided us with (this time) 3% 0f the total collection in one shot!  Out of 26 caps he sent me, I had a use for 24 (including a Sierra Nevada that replaced a less-lovely doppleganger).  But before we get into these newbies, let me describe some of the processes that go into... well, processing a cap.

First of all, I have a main list on the computer that IDs the cap, tells me how many of that type, tells me the location, and gives me a page in my little cap notebook.  This is backed up by a hard copy of the list which I write newbies in by pen until I print a new list.  On the back of the last page, I write in the ones I don't have room for, tagging them with a number that corresponds to a balloon tied to the location it would go.  Right now, with all the financial fun we're having, the printer is on the DL, and there are 21 balloons currently on the last page.

Then we go to the previously mentioned notebook, which has an entry for each cap with a reasonable likeness and other necessary info so if I get a cap I might have, I can consult the main list for the cap and its page in the book, get a basic idea of what I'm dealing with, and if it proves ominously similar, the location so I can compare.

Then it gets attached to its place in the latest book (except that the latest book has yet to be purchased) after being photographed and researched for the blog post.  And that brings us to the new guys:

So we start with a Bud Light I found this morning (can't let Scrappy have all the glory).  The only other "pry off" BL I have just says, "BL".  Then on to the STM gang.  The next two on the top row, and the little "devil" are (according to STM-and thanks for the ID page- I wish people who send stuff through eBay would do that!) Levitation Ales from Stone brewing.  This is one of their "lighter" ales, described as a dry hopped amber ale.  The quote on the one is from Beverage World Magazine: "...one of the most devoted cult followings this side of the Grateful Dead."  Next to the devil in row two is another Stone Brewing, this time their Smoked Porter, which is an American style (more on the "smoked" part later).  Its logo reads:  "Stone Brewing has quickly established itself as a craft brewery to be reckoned with."- Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY.  And finally, their Arrogant Bastard Ale, a brew strong enough that they tell you on no uncertain terms that it ain't for everyone- barely for anyone.  At 7.72% alcohol, if you can gag down the first slug, the rest will be easy.

Finishing out row two, we have a Stella Artois that was just enough different from my other one to earn a spot, and a Dixie that he got on an amazing trip cross-country in 1983, I believe.  Dixie brewed out of NOLA until Katrina flooded the breweries and the fine people of NOLA looted the plant for everything not bolted down.  The owners still say the plan is to brew in town once again, but as of 2010 they were still contracting out to other companies.

Row 3 opens with a Bacardis Mojito, which is a malt liquor beverage laced with lime and mint.  Then comes a Red Dog, which was once a premium brew on Miller's Plank Road letterhead.  It started to fade from view in the early 2000s, so they re-positioned it between High Life and Old Milwaukee and it's back to doing fine.  Next is a Batch 19, from Coors' version of "Plank Road".  Another "pre-prohibition style"  Vienna lager, supposedly based on recipes in use in 1919.  Next to that ambles a Bear Republic Brewery cap, specifically their Red Rocket Ale a "bastardized Scottish ale" (which apparently means its like a cross between a strong ale and a barleywine.  Don't ask me, STM drank it!).  Finishing out the row is Alaska Breweries' Smoked Porter.  Smoked means it was brewed with barley malt dried over an open flame, giving it a bit of smoky flavor.  The neat thing about this brewery is it was started in the 1980's with recipes based on ones found in the files of the old Douglas Brewing Company which operated from 1899-1907.

Picture Two, row one, leads off with an Odell's, my second, this one their red ale.  The Polish import from Heineken, Zyweic, is fascinating in that the Hapsburg Family of Austria owned the brewery from its founding in 1856 till the Soviet takeover in 1946.  They now operate the most state-of-the-art building on the continent.  That next one has three hummingbirds on it, because it is a Nectar Ales brew, Red Nectar American Amber.  Nectar Ales is now owned by the Firestone Walker Brewery since 2005.

I can honestly say there's no way I'd drink that next one, Black Mountain's Cave Creek Chili Beer, with hot Serrano chilies brewed in.  It would seem this is the only beer that Crazy Ed Chillins' company brews.  The Green Flash at the end of the row is their Hop Head Red, a "West Coast style ale", which one commenter said means, "hops, hops, hops."

Moving to our last full row, the "solar powered brewery" is the Anderson Valley brewery of Booneville, CA; the cap is their Boont Amber Ale.  Next up is my second Full Sail, this one their ESB (extra special bitter) a spring-only "medium-bodied ale."  Middle of the road is a Bridgeport IPA, from a Portland, OR, brewery that was bought by former big player Gambrinus in 1995.  Then comes my second Big Sky, again an IPA.

Finishing out the row is North Coast's Pranqster Golden ale, a Belgian pale ale.  This brewer bought out another of those "former big players,"  Acme ( not the kind that Bugs and Fudd drank).  And all by himself is a Sam Adams Summer Ale, my second- the other was a more readable blue-and-white.


And with that, and after fighting my computer for the ability to download pictures yet again, we have concluded this journey.  The cap total is up to 778.  Just think if I collected all the different rebus-on-the-underside stuff!

Pssst... come closer... shhhh....

This is Scrappy, and I had to tell you what I did tonight! (Thank God for Google Translate, eh?)  Anyway, Daddy took me for a late walk, and, well, his eyes aren't as good as mine at night ( and not much better in daytime, really).  And I found him this:

Daddy says it's a Michelob Light, and it's the first one he's got since 3/18 (which I guess means he's filled 18 pages of caps since then).  Anyway, I wanted to let you all know before you-know-who took the credit!

BTW, I really like beer.  Daddy gave me a sip of something he called Canoe Paddler last night.  Mmmm.  I don't know why he won't share more with me...

KC and more beers

My son KC brought over another mix of beers.  In addition to a six-pack of the Canoe Paddler we tried before, he brought a sample pack that netted me one improved-condition cap and four newbies.

 
The first one I dug into was the Third Shift (which has been pretty heavily advertised by parent Coors).  I can definitely tell you it does NOT taste like Coors.  A "pre-prohibition style" Amber Lager, it actually tasted better a bit warm.  The bitter backflavor becomes more pronounced when colder; it was smoother and better blended of flavors a bit warm.  Scrappy liked it over the Molson Canadian when he was offered.

KC had started off with the Mikes Strawberry Margarita, a flavored beer with (to KC's chagrin) no tequila.  Normally, I wouldn't have put this into the collection, until KC showed me "flavored beer on the neck label.  He then went to a Molson Canadian, which he thought had a "funny smell" and, after the Third Shift, tasted to me like the bottled had been returned to the brewery, filled with water without washing the bottle first, and sent back out.  It had zero flavor cold and vaguely like an olive had marinated in it warm.  I think KC ditched it halfway.

I drew the Victoria next.  It is a Mexican brew made by Modelo, a Vienna Lager.  That is apparently the same thing as a "pre-prohibition style,"  Because they're both amber lagers.  But two strikes against Modelo:  one, the Third Shift was better (perhaps because the Victoria was colder), and while they are the same general style, the TS was 5.3 abv next to the 4.4 of the Vic.  According to the wiki, every bottle has a drawing of King Gambrinus on it, a heritage of the Austrian immigrants who brought the style to Mexico in the late 19th century; unfortunately, I was much too occupied by baseball and pizza to pay attention.

mmmm..... beer....

I forget who had the Labatts, I think KC.  Oh, yeah, I did because then he  got a Michelob Ultra.  I have plenty of Labatt's Blue caps, but only two say imported, and this one is quite a bit different than the other.  You can see it (kinda, it was taken with the old camera) here, sixth picture down, second on the bottom.  One day, I'll have to go through and update those pictures.

I think I ended the night with another Third Shift, and a Canoe Paddler, but by this time a pizza had arrived (just 11 minutes after ordering, somehow), and we were playing music and commiserating on the lack of good vocal performances nowdays, so attention on the beer began to wander.  Scrappy tasted a Budweiser Black Crown, but again preferred the Third Shift (before anyone calls PETA, he basically was licking the mouth of the bottles and got precious little actual liquid- though I think that we considered going ahead with giving him the rest of the Molson Canadian since it was flavored water anyway).

The Leinkugel's Summer Sampler

is what my boy brought over today.  It has three bottles each of four Leinie's brews- Summer Shandy, Honey Weiss, Canoe Paddler, and Berry Weiss.  Of these, I did need the Berry and the Canoe paddler- which gives me 13 caps of ten different Leinkugel brews.

Canoe Paddler was our first try.  A Kolsch beer- from Cologne, Gremany, warm fermented and then lagered- it was light and nice.  Then we did the Honey Weiss- while we didn't taste the honey it still was pretty good.  A bit heavier than the CP, with a hint of bitter aftertaste.  Now, from here, I was thinking, this might get really gross, because flavored beer is not my métier.

The Berry was next- and where the CP smelled like beer, and the HW didn't really have a smell, this stuff smelled like cough syrup to me.  Packed with loganberry, blackberry, and elderberry, it tasted to me just like the legendary MD 20/20, "mad dog" wine.  I really thought I wouldn't like it, but it wasn't bad.  KC actually liked it best.

Then came the one he was waiting on, the Summer Shandy.  A shandy is a beer mixed with a soft drink or juice, and this one has been heavily advertised around here, thus KC was anxious to try it.  First sniff had "lemon-fresh Joy" written all over it.  The taste though seemed about a 70-30 lemonade to beer mix.  It wasn't bad, though not what I'd mix with beer.  KC was not impressed, but Scrappy liked it.

Unfortunately, the lay-off has prevented me from getting a new binder, and Berry Weiss took the last spot in Book #4.  Canoe Paddler leads off book #5, which for now is a page from an old photo album without a home.

Okay, I've a Summer Shandy to finish off- eventually- so that's the story from the Summer Sampler taste test.

And now, Stephen T. McCarthy

One of my most thoughtful and thought-provoking blog friends, he stars over at Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends  (No, this is not a Frank Burns tribute site), and along with something else I will mention after I have enjoyed it, he has sent me four new caps....

In apologia for taking the picture upside down, I'll start with the Odell on the upper right.  It comes from their IPA.  Odell is a craft brew founded in a converted 1915 grain elevator near Ft. Collins, CO.  Diagonal down from it, we have an entry from Deschutes Brewery from Bend, OR.  (The A's used to have a rookie-league team in Bend...)  Deschutes, as of 2010, is only behind Boston (Sam Adams), Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, and Spoetzel  on the most sales list.  The cap came from Mirror Pond Pale Ale, their "base camp" brew.

The other two ( and the font of a long comment discussion you can read here)  Belong to Lagunitas Brewery of a town of the same name in California.  The green fellow is their "Little Sumpin' Sumpin' Ale", a kind of a wheat beer/IPA combo- which, given my last experience with an IPA, might be the only way I could take one.  (Raised on lager, sorry!)  The other is their "Sucks", which was born as a substitute for their Brown Shugga ale when a bottleneck between desire and capacity forced them to forego the Brown Shugga one season.   The Brown Shugga was born of a similar story; apparently this brown sugar ale was itself a failed attempt at making their Olde GnarleyWine Ale that ended up good.

Again, I want to thank STM for the caps (and the other thing...), and also for sending the descriptions along so that I could tell you the story of each without spending two hours hunting them on the interwebs!  (Of course, thanks to a psychotic PlayMemories program, it took two hours to download the picture- and that's why you get the Odell upside down!)

Unexpected riches

I started out today thinking I had but two caps to show you.

The first is my latest "eBaby", a King's Tavern Ale.  This cork cap is of 1934-9 vintage and brewed by what was then the Flint Hill Brewery, which eventually took on the name of it's home town, Frankenmuth Michigan.  The Frankenmuth brewery was bought in 1989 by a German investor, but it burned down the next year.  He sold it to another group who rebuilt as a craft brewpub, and by 1993 it was up and running again.  Then in 1996 it was the target of an F3 tornado.  Again it rose from the ashes only to be shut down when a bank loan was turned down.  Still another group re-established it in 2009.

The other is what my son has been drinking, Redd's Apple Cider Ale by Miller.  It has "natural apple flavor"- IOW, no apples were harmed in the brewing.

As I said, I thought that was it.  But Juli over at Surviving Boys said she'd send me some caps she'd acquired, and I checked the mailbox to see if they arrived.  Hoo Boy, did they!

SEVENTEEN caps, all new to the collection!  On the top row that you see, these caps are ones I have, but not this design or style.  The first is Brooklyn Pennant Ale.  Then comes a Saranac with a nifty New York State silhouette in the middle.  That Troeg's is just a couple shades different on the maize color than the one I have.  The next one is from Bluepoint out of Long Island.  After that is a Bud Select that I didn't have, and ending the top row is a Wauchusett which is like one I had, but the reverse color scheme.

The next row are all new to me.  Rogue Ale- "for the Rogue in all of us"- is out of Oregon, and (hey Deadliest Catch fans) one of their beers is Captain Sig's Northwestern Ale.  That dude has his name on everything!

Beer, coffee, salmon patties- even popcorn fish!

Anyway, that next white cap is an O.K. beer from Okocim brewery near Warsaw, Poland.  This is from Carlsburg Polska, the Polish division of Carlsburg brewing, and is their premium lager.  Then comes an Affligem Blonde, a pale ale brewed on license to the Affligem abbey in Belgium and distributed by Heineken.  If you look all the way to the end of line two, you'll see another foreign beer distributed by Heineken.  It is a style called La Rossa, a doppelbock (double bock) brewed by Italy's Birra Moretti out of Udine.

After the Affligem is a pair from Ommegang, a company out of Cooperstown, NY that brews Belgian style ales.  They were formed originally from a US beer importer and three Belgian breweries which have since been absorbed, plus another Belgian brewer, Duvel Moortgat, who bought out the whole thing in 2003.

Finally in row two, and additionally in row three are a pair from Abita, an outfit out of New Orleans.  The brown one is a Munich lager they call Amber; the purple is called Purple Haze, and has raspberry flavor.  Next to the Purple Haze is one from Heavy Seas from Clipper City brewery.  It's founder, Baltimore's Hugh Sisson, was behind making craft beer legal in Maryland, and they brew 24 different styles in 3 "fleets".

Those last two were a pain in the butt as they had no ID on them.  The first is a Scottish Ale brewed in Belgium (I didn't make that up) by the Scotch de Silly brewery (didn't make that up either; Silly is a town of about 8,000 in central Belgium where the brewery is).  The other turned out to be my second Steinlager ( and first that didn't say "Steinlager" on it).

My best addition says we're at 745 caps now!  Not as big as many, but if you consider I don't count caps that have different things on the bottom (like playing cards or rebuses) as different and stay away from "non-beer" caps as much as possible, it ain't bad!

And now... a glimmer of hope...

Long ages ago, when I was assisting my can-collecting nephew, we went to an old dumping ground my dad called "Sowtown".  A little research years later told me it was the former site of a platted town called Centerville that died as quickly as it was born when the railroad decided to put its depot a few miles southeast in Monroeville.  Or perhaps, as my memories are no longer clear, it might have been a dump we discovered in the wild area of Pokagon State Park.  In either event we found a can that was almost unidentifiable.  It was fragile and about 95% rust.  But we had discovered the "magic" of boric acid solution, and took it back to see what could be salvaged.  What we saw- barely- once looked like what you see above.  Its value was negligible- its condition on the lower end of the "poor" category- but I fell in love nonetheless.  I always did have a thing for rusty, "antiquey" cans.

I was hooked then and there on Drewrys, though it would be years later when I could drink it legally.  Soon after I found a cork "big D" cap in my dad's 1937 Chevy upholstery.  But you remember the 1990's- Budweiser marched over everything and everyone like the Wehrmacht over Eastern Europe, and Drewrys became another on the long list of "Hey, remember that beer" brands.

So the other day, I hit something I couldn't believe on eBay, and today it came home.

That's right, a little Drewrys Draft "shortie", formerly the holder of 12 ounces of South Bend's most refreshing beer.  And since I have another cap coming, I was going to wait and post this sometime this weekend.  But then I did a little research, and was knocked over by this bit of news:

Though Drewrys labeled beer has been non-existent  since it was last produced in 1997, Drewrys was purchased in 2011 by Chicago-based entrepreneur, Francis Manzo. The city of South Bend will be the site of launch for the rebranded beer as this was the location for Drewrys largest operation. Production is slated for 2013.

WHAAAAT?

I quickly found the website for the reborn company, and learned that it's TRUE!!!  Sometime this year- and I signed up for the newsletter and liked them on Facebook so that I can get some as soon as possible.  To be sure, it will NOT be the original recipe- diligent searching came up with a verdict of "recipe lost", which we will blame on Pittsburgh Brewing, since they had the rights last (though they never brewed it).  However, they have looked at notes and consulted experts to come up with as close as they can to the original flavor.  Also, they hope to be able to produce it in South Bend as soon as feasible.  It seems that for now it will be brewed in the last location it was brewed- Evansville- and will be mainly marketed to the South Bend area.

South Bend is just under 2 hours away.  I can't wait!