Death by Doughnut

Beer #194 Double D Blonde Ale / Hop Valley Brewing Company

Today's beer is the Double D Blonde Ale from Hop Valley Brewing, which we picked up in Whole Foods and drank back in the hotel to close out the night.  It had a clear gold color with a fair amount of effervescence and a white head.  You get the aroma of grain, and this is an easy drinking beer with flavors of wheat and barley.  Checks in at 4.9% ABV.  With a name like Double D, I was expecting something., perhaps.... a bit more full sized from this beer.

Hotels need to start providing me with pint glasses

Thing to Think About Today:
The Pacific Northwest is an incredibly beautiful region filled with countless outdoor adventures.  Which totally explains why we waited in line for fifteen minutes last night to eat doughnuts.  But not just any doughnuts - Voodoo Dooughnut, home of possibly the greatest doughnuts in the world.  Look, I love Dunkin Donuts as much of the next guy, but my local DD doesn't offer up the Old Dirty Bastard, a raised doughnut with chocolate frosting, crushed Oreos, and peanut butter on top.  Voodoo also offers up delights like the Memphis Mafia, which is glazed fried dough with banana and cinnamon, with chocolate frosting, peanut butter, peanuts, and chocolate chips on top.  I can't even begin to to imagine how much weight I gained during this trip, but having the chance to eat at places like Voodoo is totally worth it.

The Voodoo Doll doughnut. Your doughnuts are now irrelevant.

Beer: SATs :: This Blog: Hemmingway

Beer #56 Gran Met / Voodoo Brewing Company, Meadville, PA
You remember those analogy questions on the SAT where you'd have to determine the relationship of the two words, and then figure out what other two words have the same relationship?  I'll give you an example:

1. Eagle : Bird ::
A) Food : Handsome
B) Car : Mike Tyson
C) Dachshund : Dog
D) Brown : BROWN!!!!

Now you remember.  And by the way, if you got that one wrong, I'm not sure why you're reading this blog, as I'm sure there's a coloring book somewhere you'll find more entertaining.  Anyway, I bring this up because we've been seeing a growing number of offerings from Voodoo Brewery in our local Wegman's.  I see Voodoo as the brewery name, and immediately switch into SAT analogy mode.  Voodoo : New Orleans.  Right?

Imagine my surprise when I found out this brewery is from that well established home for voodoo rituals, Meadville, Pennsylvania.  Wait, where?  Located halfway between Erie and I guess Slippery Rock, Meadville is decidedly not a home to underground religious practices.  So I'm not sure where the voodoo name comes from, but that's all a bit irrelevant as the beers are good.  Today I went with the Gran Met (translates to Grand Master), a Belgian tripel.  The beer pours a hazy gold with orange hues, with a thin wispy head.  The aroma is light and not overpowering, and the taste brings notes of bread, sweetness, and a hint of fruit (not sure which one).  There's a pleasant bitterness, with a nice peppery finish.  Definitely recommend you try this, or another one of their offerings.

So, yeah - the brewery name definitely still fails the analogy test.  There goes my perfect SAT score.  Maybe the voodoo is that great beer can come from anywhere, even the suburbs of the suburbs of the suburbs of Erie?  To paraphrase a mildly better writer than me, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.  These guys can call their brewery anything they want as long as they continue to crank out some fantastic beers.

Thing to Think About Today:
If we're thinking about high school and the SAT, you might as well go ahead and think about detention (especially if you got the analogy question wrong).  I encourage you to think back to the Breakfast Club today.  One of John Hughes' smash hits from the 80's, it's still a classic:

You mess with the bull, you get the horns.

Beer 39: Voodoo Love Child

Imagine getting this instead of your favorite beer-related blog!

I'm postponing today's post in support of the SOPA / PIPA online protest.

Since I’m not going to summarize it any better, I’ll allow Wikipedia to do the writing:  Fighting online piracy is important. The most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding. There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs.

If you are like some people I encountered today, you may be wondering why you should care.  SOPA and PIPA represent two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate respectively. SOPA =  Stop Online Piracy Act.  PIPA =  Protect IP Act (IP being intellectual property).

At their heart, both bills have the good intention of attempting to stop copyright infringement.  What they will most likely end up doing if passed, is infringing on free speech and limiting the growth of the Internet.  An immense burden will be put on website owners requiring them to police user-contributed media.  Your access to online information will be severely curtailed.  Think about how many times you’ve visited Wikipedia, YouTube, fashion or sports blogs (This beer and lifestyle blog! Oh my!), message boards or…ahem…adult entertainment sites.  It’s all at risk.

If you are bothered at all by the thought of limited free speech, write your representative or senator.  Share your thoughts.  Make yourself heard.  Be part of the process.

***

Beer and Pupperoni!  Yum!

Tonight we're drinking Voodoo Brewing's  Love Child.  Voodoo Brewing is based in Meadville, Pennsylvania - a tiny little hamlet near Erie, Pennsylvania.  After checking out their website - quite possibly created by crackheads - it's pretty certain these guys are dedicated to their beer and aren't worried about anything else.  I love it.

Love Child is advertised as a golden ale aged on raspberries, cherries and passion fruit.  It's described as a bastardized Belgian fruit style beer.  Wow.  I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I do.  But maybe that was due to the mildly disturbing image on the label.

Yes, I see a rotund man in a thong wearing a helmet too.

I wasn't sure what style glass to use for a bastard beer so I went tulip.  It poured with a surprising red hue that didn't really translate well in this photo.  It barely had a head and what was there fizzled out quickly.  A swirl released a nose full of raspberry but it wasn't cloying.

Drinking it revealed big carbonation, lots of fruit and a sweetness with a mild bite.  The fruit is best described as strong undertones of fruit.  This Love Child is by no means fruity.  Based on the scent, I was expecting more lambic qualities and when they weren't there, my fondness for this beer grew immensely.  That being said, at 9.5% ABV, one of these bad boys is good; two would be daring.  Three may have you stripping in front of a roaring fire while yelling at your co-workers that it's too hot.  (Man I worked with some lunatics over the years!)

So here's to you, friends - appropriate and inappropriate - and here's to freedom of speech and all the porn you can handle!  Cheers!