Let's Be Friends

Beer #290 Les Biere des Amis / Dock Street Brewing Company,  Philadelphia, PA

Creeping up on 80% of the 365 challenge completed, so I decided to celebrate by waking up today with a cold.  Hey, can't win them all, right?  Thankfully, I am able to work from home today, thus avoiding dirty looks from everyone in the office when I coughed on them repeatedly.

For our beer today, I'll take one off the shelf and review Les Biere des Amis, a saison which I had on draft at TJ's last evening.  For those of you who aren't fluent in French like me, that translates to 'The Beer of Friends', and I'm really not fluent in French, but like to pretend I am.  Regardless, this is a collaboration between Dock Street and Brasserie Thiriez in France.  As it was brewed in Philly, I'm giving Dock Street the credit for our list.  This beer has a pale yellow hue with a thin white head.  The aroma is tart lemon, and the taste is slightly tart, with some earthy grain notes and a bit of citrus before you hit a clean, dry finish.  Eminently drinkable at 4.5% ABV, I highly encourage you to seek out this limited release beer.

Why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends.....

Per Dock Street's website, this is the first collaboration with a French brewery on American soil.  Not sure who exactly is keeping track of that, but if they say so, I'll believe them.

Thing to Think About Today:
If we're discussing beer of friends, it probably makes sense to take a moment and think about Friends, one of the funniest sitcoms of the twenty years.  Running from 1994 to 2004 (or to think of it another way, almost all of my twenties), the show explored the intertwined relationships of six people living in New York.  In the process, it became one of the most popular sitcoms ever, earning award after award.  The cast was older than we were, yet we could completely relate to the love stories, the madcap antics, and the continually clever writing.

Below is a clip of highlights, and there are some good ones in there.  But just watching this made me realize there are so many other great episodes out there that aren't included: the prom video scene, Ross and Monica's dance routine, Joey on $25,000 Pyramid, Chandler dating Janice..... the list goes on and on and on.  Might be time to get the season disks on Netflix and hunker down for a Friends marathon this weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aGRV1lMdeU