Beer, Broadway, and Big Winners

Day #371 Grisette / Sly Fox Brewing Company, Phoenixville, PA 
Previously from this brewery: Phoenix Pale Ale, Ichor

Our first award for the past year was the Worst Label Art category, so let's put a more positive spin on things and present an award for the Best Label Art.

The Nominees:
21st Amendment - Hell or High Watermelon
Breckenridge Brewery - Agave Wheat
Brouwerij Verhaege - Duchess du Bourgogne
Brasserei Fantome - Fantome Saison
Hop City - Barking Squirrel
John Smith's - Extra Smooth
Rust Belt - Coke Oven Stout
Brasserie La Choulette - Sans Culottes
Spring House - Seven Gates

And your winner?  A round of applause, please, for Brasserie Fantome!

Winner!

I tend to gravitate toward designs that are clean, classic, and noticeable in a crowd.  Fantome definitely hits those marks with their simple, but effective and fun ghost logo.  I realize this category is unfair, as I wasn't considering any of the breweries or beers we had on draft, just those we had in a bottle.  Hey, life isn't fair.

Plenty more awards to come over the next few days, so stay tuned.  I'll go ahead and shift gears to today's beer, the Grisette from local brewery Sly Fox, which was on draft at Teresa's Next Door.  In the glass, this beer has a cloudy, hazy straw color with a fluffy white head.  There are aromas of citrus and yeast, and when you take a sip you find more yeast, with grain, grass, and lemon, with a touch of peppery spice.  This beer is really well done - dry and light, with a manageable 5.6% ABV.  I could (and at some point probably will) drink this beer all day.

Tastes as good as it looks

If you aren't familiar with grisette, you will be in the future as more breweries are turning out their version of a traditional Belgian ale.  A Grisette is similar to a saison, and takes its name from the the French working class women who wore plain gray dresses and handed beers to workers as they would leave the mines (and were sort of also prostitutes).  The grisette is a popular figure in art and literature, and features prominently in the popular show Les Misérables, as the character Fantine is considered a grisette.  Although, I think I would like Les Mis more if they handed out beer, like back in the old days.  Just saying.

Thing to Think About Today:
Okay, so I'm dropping Les Mis references into my beer write up today.  Yeah, I try to pretend that I'm all cultured, but in reality, I don't terribly enjoy Broadway musicals.  I'm sorry, they're just not my thing.  We see shows every now and again, and I can certainly appreciate the immense talent those performers have, but it's not my preferred form of entertainment.  UNLESS.....

Unless, of course, that Broadway show features extremely profane puppets, such as the delightful Avenue Q.  The tale of a young puppet who moves to New York after graduating college and learns lessons about life, love, lowered expectations, porn, racism, Gary Coleman, and the reality that life sometimes just isn't all that that great.  This show is without a doubt one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my adult life, and if you've never seen it, you need to think about getting tickets to the next possible show.  For a preview, check out this wonderful rendition of It Sucks to Be Me.  I highly recommend listening to this whenever you have a bad day - guaranteed to make you feel better about yourself!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7N6KrVrG8I