Kinky yeast, gold medals, cat food

We contest too many things.

These dumb days I keep complaining that “Americans are too” this or too that, but in fairness I might just mean “humans” instead of Americans, because I don’t really know much about how they get down in other places. So even though I read books and used to take vacations, I’m not qualified to declare that Americans are more competitive than New Zealandians, say, but for the sake of the next couple paragraphs let’s assume it’s true and also that it’s bad. 

Competition has its place but it’s too often a distraction, a false goal that hinders progress toward any truly useful outcome. Yes obviously I’m talking about Chuck and Nancy here, our best examples of the sickness that holds attaining status as its own reward, entirely divorced from the notion of deploying said status to accomplish anything for anyone. But who cares about those old sacks, they’re just TV characters. OK, but counterproductive interpersonal competition fucks up so many parts of our own daily lives, too. You know those stories about people who resent their partners for making more money than they do? What if those sickos actually exist?? Or people who care about having the deepest pool in the neighborhood rather than aspiring to the precisely right backyard piss pot for their own specific needs, that kind of thing, the competitiveness that clearly serves consumerism and stifles cooperation and makes me so angry! It even affects beer, and that’s my fault. 

I used to rank beers for some semblance of a living, which is, in hindsight, exactly what it was in foresight: absurd. But I’ve done even more depraved things for money, like make Greek-style pizza and banish my mom’s cursed birthday from my lucky Keno number, so I can live with the shame. We all do what we gotta do, and what I had to do in 2015 was tell sports blog readers that a certain cheap beer was 8th best and another nearly identical one was 22nd. It was dumb and fun, and I got a $500 bonus once. 

Now that I’m wiser and kinder and commercial websites have stopped paying me to rank things, I’ve mostly retired that particular gimmick. As your beer life coach, of course I’m still available for individual consultations--you send me a picture of your fridge and $5, and I’ll tell you what order to drink the beers in. But as for big-picture pronouncements on what’s the best or the worst, what do I know? Only what I like, which might not be terribly useful information for those of you who do not live inside my mouth, which is, mercifully, the vast majority of you. 

What I’m getting at is that judged beer competitions are anti-proletarian propaganda devices that serve only to distract us from our common goal, except when they’re not, and they’re not when I happen to agree with the outcome. I’ve never been to the Great American Beer Festival, but I pay attention to the medal announcements every year, mostly to sneer at the crude folly of trying to rank, sort, and assign numerical value to something as ethereal, subjective, and divine as the majestic brewski, and also to occasionally yell things like “You’re goddamn right Off Color Very, Very Far was the best Belgian-Style Other Ale of 2019!”

Off Color is one of my favorite breweries, and I insist you visit their taproom, the Mousetrap, one fine and vaccinated day in the middle to distant future. It’s in Chicago, naturally, because that’s where the good breweries are these days. They don’t make IPA. Lots of their beer is aged in weird barrels and/or brewed with weird yeasts harvested from weird fruits by a—you guessed it—exceedingly normal guy, and they have the finest labels in the business. I haven’t had Very, Very Far since February and I don’t trust myself to properly convey its beauty, so I’ll steal this from Off Color’s website: 

Golden multifaceted Belgian style ale with subtle fruit cocktail notes of grapefruit and lychee complimented with apricot hop character and a layer of black peppercorn phenols. 6.0 % alc/vol.

Very, Very Far adds a twist on the spirit of Belgian mixed fermentation brewing by utilizing a non-traditional wine yeast, Torulaspora delbrueckii. The Torulaspora yeast feasts on the simple sugars before fermentation is completed with the addition of a traditional Belgian yeast strain. The symbiotic fermentation causes an elevated ethyl ester fruit profile in the final beer.

It’s a fantastic beer, one of the best!

Speaking of the best, here is Cindy Lou Who:

Today’s other recommendation is to cook some chicken for your cat (if this directive requires that you get a cat, then get a cat). I envy dog owners every time I walk down the pet treat aisle. They sell everything from bones and jerkies to tax prep software and velour tracksuits for dogs, yet almost nothing for cats. That’s where you and I come in: next time you’re cooking chicken parts, slice off a human ear’s worth and poach it for a couple minutes, chop it up real small, and voila. You are your cat’s hero for 30 seconds.