So I stumbled across this Halloween costume from a Wake Forest tailgate. Normally dressing as a cowboy would be a bit of a cop out, but I must say I was impressed with the Leather Beer Holster. Turns out you can buy them from beeroutlaw.com. Their cheapest one costs $29 and you can get one personalized with a college logo for $40. Not a bad way to mosey around campus. If you were to get a pair of holsters and top it off with a belt buckle bottle opener you could become some type of drunken Billy the Kid.
As part of their Tailgate Approved commercials, apparently the Bud Light Speaker Box is for sale now. I spotted the display below at the Sherlock’s on Barrett Parkway. I guess the ideal use is to hook up your ipod to the speaker and use it for an away game tailgate. Of course, you still need to get the beer cold, so essentially it’s a birthday card quality speaker attached to an empty cardboard box for most of the day. But it is disposable.
There are several benefits to opting for canned beers while tailgating. You can fit more of them into a cooler, they are easy to dispose of, and they are more discreet if the situation calls for it. But only so many quality beers are available as cans. Within the last couple of years it’s become more common for liquor stores to stock Mexican beers in cans. But when the temperature dips lower I like a heavier beer. My local liquor store, Tower Package, sent me a newsletter today with a profile of the beers available from Oskar Blues Brewery. Wondering about the cans? Here’s what they say on their website:
In 2002 we became the first US microbrewery to brew and can its own beer. We started hand canning our beer two cans at a time, on a small table-top machine.
Why cans? We thought the idea of our bold, hoppy pale ale squeezed into a little can was hilarious. It made us laugh for weeks.
But then we discovered that the belief that cans impart flavor to beer is a myth. The modern-day aluminum can and its lid are lined with a water-based coating, so the beer and the can never touch. Cans, we discovered, are actually good for beer. Cans keep beer especially fresh by fully protecting it from light and oxygen. Our cans also hold extremely low amounts of dissolved oxygen, so our beer stays especially fresh for longer. Cans are also easier to recycle and less fuel-consuming to ship.
Below is Tower’s guide to four of the canned selections from Oskar Blues:
Dale’s Pale Ale is their flagship beer and America’s first hand-canned craft beer. It’s an assertive but deftly balanced beer brewed with hefty amounts of European malts and American hops. It features a copper color, and a hoppy nose. To complement its hoppy first impression, Dale’s also sports a rich middle of malts and hops, and a bracing finish at 6.5% alcohol by volume.
Mama’s Little Yella Pils is a delicious, small-batch versionMama’s Little Yellow Pilsner of the beer that made Pilsen, Czechoslovakia famous. Mama’s is made with hearty amounts of pale malt, German specialty malts, and traditional (Saaz) and 21st century Bavarian hops. It’s fermented at cool temperatures with a German yeast. While it’s rich with Czeched-out flavor, Mama’s gentle hopping and low ABV (just 5.3%) makes it a luxurious but low-dose beer.
Old Chub is a Scottish strong ale brewed with hearty amounts of seven different malts, including crystal and chocolate malts, and a smidge of US and UK hops. Old Chub also gets a dash of beechwood-smoked grains imported from Bamburg, Germany, home of the world’s greatest smoked beers. Old Chub is 8% alcohol by volume.
Gordon is a hybrid version of strong ale, somewhere between an Imperial Red and a Double IPA. Made with six different malts and three types of hops, it’s then dry-hopped with a motherlode of Amarillo hops. It is 8.7% alcohol by volume and features a gooey, resiny aroma and a luscious mouthfeel. The result is an assertive yet exceptionally smooth version of strong beer.
I’m posting this video for two reasons. And neither one of them are because this guy handles a beer bong like a champ. I’m going to ignore the fact that he deliberates and stalls for so long before starting his ever so slow finishing of bong. I’d like to focus on two different subtleties in the video.
1) Look on the left side of the video and spot the two little kids watching all of this go down. Where are their parents? I guess you got to learn how to chug a beer at some point in life. Might as well start early.
2) Apparently USC fans did not get the memo about men over the age of 12 wearing jerseys to the game. It appears that guys not wearing a jersey are in the minority.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that belt buckles with bottle openers and college logos are a cool idea in theory only. There are lots of college football fans who wear belt buckles. A large percentage of those belt buckled fans also drink beer. But the chances that those people will have to quote Adam Sandler at some point in the day are around 80%.
Dale’s Pale Ale is their flagship beer and America’s first hand-canned craft beer. It’s an assertive but deftly balanced beer brewed with hefty amounts of European malts and American hops. It features a copper color, and a hoppy nose. To complement its hoppy first impression, Dale’s also sports a rich middle of malts and hops, and a bracing finish at 6.5% alcohol by volume.
Mama’s Little Yella Pils is a delicious, small-batch versionMama’s Little Yellow Pilsner of the beer that made Pilsen, Czechoslovakia famous. Mama’s is made with hearty amounts of pale malt, German specialty malts, and traditional (Saaz) and 21st century Bavarian hops. It’s fermented at cool temperatures with a German yeast. While it’s rich with Czeched-out flavor, Mama’s gentle hopping and low ABV (just 5.3%) makes it a luxurious but low-dose beer.
Old Chub is a Scottish strong ale brewed with hearty amounts of seven different malts, including crystal and chocolate malts, and a smidge of US and UK hops. Old Chub also gets a dash of beechwood-smoked grains imported from Bamburg, Germany, home of the world’s greatest smoked beers. Old Chub is 8% alcohol by volume.
Gordon is a hybrid version of strong ale, somewhere between an Imperial Red and a Double IPA. Made with six different malts and three types of hops, it’s then dry-hopped with a motherlode of Amarillo hops. It is 8.7% alcohol by volume and features a gooey, resiny aroma and a luscious mouthfeel. The result is an assertive yet exceptionally smooth version of strong beer.
