Category: Drinking

Bøgedal No. 146

Bøgedal 146, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ram­say.

My friend Tom­my told me that Bøgedal and Mikkeller were the two must-have Dan­ish beers. I man­aged to tuck a bot­tle of the for­mer into my lug­gage on the trip home and I can assure you that this dark Christ­mas beer did­n’t disappoint.

I need to find a way to get more of this stuff!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

Flights of Fancy

Mem­phis Tap­room Flight, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ram­say.

Mem­phis Tap­room intro­duced flights dur­ing their Mys­tery Beer Week­end and nev­er stopped. For just $10 it’s a great way to sam­ple sev­er­al dif­fer­ent beers with­out dent­ing your wallet…or your head. I went home hap­py after tast­ing these three beauties.

From left to right: Schlenker­la Urbock; Weis­seno­he Monk’s Fest; Russ­ian Riv­er Damnation.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

Dogfish Head Simul-cask @ Memphis Taproom

Last Thurs­day was a ban­ner night for this beer lover. I met my friend Adam and we strolled on over to Mem­phis Tap­room to enjoy a great Dog­fish Head stunt tap­ping for their 75 Minute IPA. We got there a lit­tle ear­ly think­ing we might have to twid­dle our thumbs for a minute before they tapped the cask, but no, we were just in time to knock down a few pints of this great IPA.The 75 Minute IPA blends their trade­mark 60 and 90 Minute IPAs, result­ing in a remark­ably smooth IPA that will still knock you flat if you’re not careful.

Adam and I end­ed up hav­ing a won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion with my friend Der­rick, anoth­er Mem­phis Tap reg­u­lar and ama­teur beer afi­ciona­do like myself. We dis­cussed the mer­its of Dog­fish Head­’s approach to brew­ing and how great it is to be sand­wiched between so many great brew­eries, all of which are doing dif­fer­ent, dis­tinc­tive things. Dog­fish Head real­ly does a great job of brew­ing sig­na­ture IPAs, com­ple­ment­ed nice­ly by great sea­son­als. I think their spring and sum­mer beers, both of which fea­ture great fruit fla­vors, are among the most refresh­ing I drink, with­out being sick­en­ing­ly sweet.

As an aside, I want­ed to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to men­tion Jay Hin­man’s great beer blog, Hedo­nist Beer Jive. Some of you may rec­og­nize Jay from his leg­endary music blog, Agony Short­hand. Now, instead of debat­ing issues of race with Black to Comm, he’s telling you why he won’t pony up for expen­sive bombers of Russ­ian Riv­er Con­se­cra­tion (and I don’t blame him!) Jay’s always been a great read, and his beer writ­ing is just as fun and engag­ing as his music writ­ing ever was.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

Geeking Out at Memphis Taproom


Weyer­bach­er Fireside
Orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ramsay

I met Kei­th Fitzger­ald at Mem­phis Tap­room last night to talk about blogs, apps, and all the oth­er fun geek stuff our wives tell us “sounds fun” as we walk out the door.

Our won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion was aid­ed and abet­ted by some deli­cious beer as the No Repeat Beer Week rolls on! I start­ed the night with a smoky Weyer­bach­er Fire­side (pic­tured) before delv­ing into a bunch of beefy IPAs. Here’s last night’s list:

I took it easy since it was a school night, but I can assure you I had no dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting up this morn­ing for a quick three-mile run.

Our con­ver­sa­tion end­ed with an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about how RSS is the blood cours­ing through the veins of the Inter­net, yet we still find our­selves join­ing every known social media plat­form that comes down the pike. Isn’t RSS sup­posed to make our lives real­ly simple?

Speak­ing of which, we also chat­ted about Pitch­fork’s head­scratch­er of a redesign. It remind­ed me of Paper Thin Walls after it was redesigned and made ready for a social net­work that nev­er took off. Ouch. I told Kei­th that Pitch­fork should’ve looked to ESPN.com’s redesign and focused on their video pro­duc­tion. Why they’re still mar­ried to the con­cept of a music webzine escapes me.

Kei­th also shared his pet project with me: a run­ning app for the 3G iPhone that should blow Map­MyRun and its ilk out of the water. I’m con­sid­er­ing buy­ing a new iPhone just to beta test it against my Garmin watch. It sounds great for begin­ners and advanced run­ners alike. There’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for an iPhone app like this to meet the needs of Garmin cus­tomers who’re still wait­ing for Garmin to roll out their Mac features.

It was a great night for geek­ing out on beer and the Inter­net. I’m look­ing for­ward to work­ing with Kei­th on tweak­ing and adding fea­tures to Kens­ing­ton Blues over the next few weeks. To that end, can any­one rec­om­mend a clean, free, 2‑column Word­Press theme?

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 2