Transcript

Introduction and Oktoberfest Focus

Jeff:
[0:18] Welcome to Craft Beer Radio, I am Jeff Behr.

Shannon:
[0:22] I'm Shannon Behr.

Greg:
[0:23] I'm Greg Weiss.

Jeff:
[0:25] And we're back again this week. is almost like old school old style show because we're kind of focusing on Oktoberfest.
It's the literally Oktoberfest right now.

Greg:
[0:34] We should mention that that was Iron Lung by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard who was recommended to us in our Discord by Marinus.

Jeff:
[0:41] Yes. And then kind of why I went and had Shannon, Shannon was out, so I'm like, can you stop and get some Oktoberfest? It's because one of our listeners on our Discord, Greg, was showing pictures of himself today at Oktoberfest.

Shannon:
[0:56] So, so before I made the purchase, I did stop at Starbucks and get the famous pumpkin spice latte.

Jeff:
[1:05] Yes.

Shannon:
[1:07] The first one for the season.

Jeff:
[1:10] These Oktoberfests are all in cans. They're all, three of them are local and one is Sierra Nevada, which is the one we're going to start with.
So, no German Oktoberfest in the show, unfortunately.

Greg:
[1:19] Let me ask about the pumpkin spice latte. Could you get the same experience just by putting some nutmeg and cinnamon and stuff into a regular latte?
Or was there something like distinctive about the pumpkin spiciness of it that was better than like say you can make at home just by pouring in some...

Shannon:
[1:40] Well, first off, I don't make lattes here at home. So...

Greg:
[1:43] Okay, but...

Shannon:
[1:45] I couldn't really give you a good answer to that.

Greg:
[1:48] Fair enough.

Jeff:
[1:48] The McRib is back.

Greg:
[1:50] Oh, gross. Alright, so which one is it?

Jeff:
[1:56] You said Sierra Nevada. Sierra Nevada's Oktoberfest.

Greg:
[1:59] Alright, so this is a collaboration with Curve Rider.
I assume that W is a V. That's just an assumption.
their mutual passions fused fesbeer. Now, I would say this is...
Very golden. So there's a...

Shannon:
[2:22] It's that copperish golden.

Greg:
[2:24] I was looking into this because there is the Martzen style and there's fesbeer, which is kind of a lighter Martzen.
And this looks more like fesbeer.

Jeff:
[2:32] Yeah, this one's like a straight up gold color.
Very clear. Thinking of those pictures that Greg posted today of Polliner Oktoberfest right it was way paler than like what I tend to think of as Oktoberfest which is more of an amber kind of has ruby highlight kind of color to it.

Greg:
[2:55] Yeah close to like a Vienna lager in terms of the look and ingredients. It needs to warm up.

Jeff:
[3:02] Well it's a lager though so you can't warm them up but normally you know they're drink at a cooler temperature.

Greg:
[3:08] Yeah you want these to be pretty cold. So this is 6% dirty IBUs and yeah, warming up a lager is not always the best choice.
It just, they, it's not that they're necessarily bad, it's just that they're, the crispness goes away and so you lose some of that factor that makes lagers.

Jeff:
[3:27] No, I get what you're saying. Every other beer we drink, we warm them up before we eat. Yeah. Or drink them, so it's a habit, totally.
But you know, taste this one and whatnot. For the aroma, what I'm getting on this is this kind of sweet, chewy, like quick bread kind of like.

Greg:
[3:47] Yeah, there's honey in there to me.

Shannon:
[3:49] Apricot.

Greg:
[3:51] I can see that. Yeah, it's, have you tasted it yet? No. The taste is very bready.
So fruitiness is not something, but I can see that the sweetness of apricots there.
Like there's a dried fruit sweetness in this. There's a lot of.

Jeff:
[4:08] Yeah, the sweetness, it is kind of fruity or floral, like there's a floral sweetness to it, like a nectar or something like that.

Greg:
[4:16] Very bready though, like it's got very yeasty.

Shannon:
[4:19] Oh yeah, now that I've tasted it, very bread.

Jeff:
[4:24] It doesn't mean the smell of apricots is wrong.

Shannon:
[4:27] No, no, I definitely smell apricots, but it's definitely bready. I like it.

Jeff:
[4:34] Pretty yummy.

Greg:
[4:38] It's sweet and the coldness prevents it from being cloying. I think that if this were to warm up, it would get cloying.

Jeff:
[4:46] Yeah, we want it to stay a little bit crisp, you know, and because it has more of a malt backbone to it, it could kind of get exactly what you're saying, sweeten up and be a little too much, little too thick, too. Enjoy!

A Balanced Blend of Hops, Bread, and Spice

Greg:
[5:02] They say a punchy blend of German and American hops. I mean, the hopness is there, but it was not on my mind until I even read that.
Because it's the bread, it's the yeast, and there's a bit of spice to kind of lower, I mean, to add some bitterness to lower the sweetness a bit.

Jeff:
[5:25] Yeah, Shannon and I had the, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Shannon:
[5:29] No, there's, the spice isn't overpowering though, which is nice.
Mm-hmm. I like the, there's a nice balance there, yeah. Okay.

Jeff:
[5:41] Shannon and I were at Hitchhiker this week, surprise, and had their Oktoberfest, and it was too damn hoppy.
Like, it was loud, like it was turned up to 11 or 12, and it was a fine beer, but it wasn't, Like when I'm getting an Oktoberfest, I'm kind of looking for this kind of comfort memory, this thing, this, something doesn't always have to be the exact same Oktoberfest, but it should be typical for the style, right?
And theirs was just so loud that I, like I didn't really think it made sense to buy a four pack of it to put on the show.
We got a fruit fly buzzing around, trying to get in our beer.
And I'm trying to think, did you have opinions on the Hitchhiker? Do you remember?

Shannon:
[6:37] I liked it, but not for an Oktoberfest beer. I liked it in general.
But if I was looking for a real Oktoberfest beer, It's not, I mean, it would definitely, if that's what you were in search for, or in search of, I can't talk tonight, then I think you would be disappointed.

Jeff:
[7:06] Another brewery that Shannon ordered it, it was one of those ones where I had blinders from back in the day.
We were at a bar, there's several around Pittsburgh called Dive Bar, and we were there, and on tap there was Peak Organic Pilsner.
And Peak Organic is a brewery that was making beer the first day Craft Beer Radio started back in 2005.
They were widely available in Pittsburgh back in those heady days of where you could get, you know, 30, 40 different breweries at the bottle shop.

Disappointing experiences with Peak Organic beer

[7:40] And it always left Greg and I, Greg, you might remember this, you might not, but it always left me disappointed.
Like it always felt like it left something on the table. And we weren't sure if it was the brewery or if it was because of organic ingredients.
And that sounds kind of counter today in 2023 when organics been around for so long and usually means high quality ingredients, you know, maybe not, but you know, at least that's what marketing leads most people to think, right?
And I can't remember ever really liking a Peak Organic, and Shannon ordered the Pilsner, and I didn't even really notice it. I didn't give it, you know, any kind of consideration on the draft list because it was just, oh, it's just old Pink Organic, but it was fantastic.
It was. It was really, really good. So I don't know if better brewer, brewery's trying harder, ingredients are better, I don't know.
But I wanted to spend some time and just kind of, A, everyone listening who maybe doesn't pay attention to peak organic, because they used to be ho-hum, try the Pilsner, and there are other things, because it was really, really good.

Shannon:
[8:46] It was, and you were even shocked at the fact that I ordered it in the first place.

Jeff:
[8:52] I was surprised that you ordered a Pilsner.

Shannon:
[8:56] I mean, you know, it's- not something I would typically order.

Jeff:
[9:00] You're not in the habit of going to the loggers. I'm barely in the habit of going to the loggers. I wouldn't even call it a habit for me.

Greg:
[9:06] So it's definitely been my go-to in the past year or so. It's been loggers.
When I see them, I react very favorably towards a Kraft logger.
Peak Organic is out of Maine, for those who are wondering.

Jeff:
[9:20] So maybe that's why you like it so much.

Shannon:
[9:21] That's why I like it. Shocker.

Jeff:
[9:24] Where in Maine are they? Portland.

Shannon:
[9:27] Of course they are.

Jeff:
[9:29] Well, shit. How come we didn't even notice them when we were in Portland?

Shannon:
[9:32] When we go back.

Jeff:
[9:34] Apparently they have a farm.

Shannon:
[9:36] Next month. Then next month. Yeah. You know, we're already going to be halfway there.

Jeff:
[9:42] She keeps, she's like tentatively scheduling our next trip. Like, oh, don't you know, we're going to Maine in three weeks.

Greg:
[9:48] I mean, if you think Pittsburgh gets cold, Maine gets, Maine is near like the Arctic.

Shannon:
[9:54] Yeah, I'm fine with that because it's not bipolar. Once it's cold, it's cold. It stays that way.
Your body has time to adjust to it, here.
The weather's bipolar. Yeah, it's 21 day and it's 45 the next and then it's 36 and raining every day except for four days in the winter where it drops back down into the teens.

Greg:
[10:21] Yeah.

Shannon:
[10:21] And then it's back up.

Greg:
[10:23] And occasionally every, I don't know, seven or eight years there's a blizzard.

Shannon:
[10:25] Yeah, yeah.

Jeff:
[10:28] There we go. I just raised your gain a little bit Shannon. I think you're coming a little bit It's stronger now, so. Cool.
Just do what you're comfortable with. Don't get on the mic, because now you'll be too loud. Oh, okay.

Greg:
[10:38] So you guys mentioned fruit flies, and that brings me to a subject that I want to talk about, which is I recently started growing herbs in an aero garden.

Jeff:
[10:47] Okay. So I don't know, have you seen these?

Shannon:
[10:50] Either of you? No, I don't think so.

Jeff:
[10:52] The hydroponic thing?

Shannon:
[10:53] Oh, okay.

Greg:
[10:54] Yeah, so it's a tabletop hydroponic, about the size of a bread box.
Um, and right now I am growing six herbs in it.

Jeff:
[11:05] It'll be hard to pay, play 20 questions with it. If it's about the size of a bread box.

Greg:
[11:10] Uh, and it's got a little light on it. And the thing is that it's hydroponics.
There's no soil to deal with. You're just water, a tank of water, uh, and a pump that pumps it. You give it food at once every two weeks.
There's a little thing of food that comes with it.
And the light is on for 15 hours a day.
And it's working so well. I'm just I'm so excited because this is a product that does what it says it will do on the on the tin.
After three weeks, everything was sprouting. Everything was coming in.
It's been six weeks, six and a half weeks. I have bountiful herbs.
Nice. With the exception of one that the partially is slow, but I think that's just the partially is slow.
Here is a, here's my current herb garden and you can see how that's, you know, it's impressive.
And this is, I'm someone with a brown thumb. I can't grow anything.

Shannon:
[12:15] We should start one.

Greg:
[12:16] And this is what it started with.
This was about two weeks in, two and a half.

Shannon:
[12:24] We should start one. Okay.

Greg:
[12:26] Okay. So what happened was I got it, and so this was, yeah, this was like three weeks in. And so you can see the growth.
that happens. Cool.

Jeff:
[12:36] So these are for people who can't see the pictures. It's about the size of a bread box. And then the plants, the seeds come in almost like K cup sized things that I guess sit down in the water.

Greg:
[12:47] Yes. So there's like a, there's stuff, it's sort of a cone shape thing that goes into the water.
And so you keep adding water to it cause it, you know, these plants, especially as they're growing, they're going to drink up the water.
Every two weeks you add food, like I said, and in four weeks you dump out the water and put new water in.
But that's the extent of anything that needs to be done.
I got some pruning shears that were like $8 on Amazon so I could do this unnecessary pruning because otherwise it just kind of grows out of bounds and you do want to prune it because that encourages it to drink, to grow properly.
But you just let it go and it does what it needs to do. So the thing that I would say is not a drawback, but it is something that you have to be aware of is that if you have a lot of plants like that growing in your house, you're going to get bugs. Yeah.
So I had a little bit of a flea problem or not flea, a little bit of a gnat problem.
And the way I've gotten around it, the way I figured out how to get through it is because I had a problem.
We had like, if I opened a beer or something, there would be lots of flies going for it. Everywhere. Because I thought, okay, think like a pitcher plant.
I got a little ramekin and put in water and like two tablespoons of sugar and just mix it up until the sugar was completely dissolved.
So that's going to attract these bugs. And then I put one or two drops of dishwashing fluid in it.

Shannon:
[14:16] Yep.

Jeff:
[14:18] That's exactly what he does. That's what we make too. And the soap breaks the surface tension. So the bugs get sucked right in and drowned. So.

Greg:
[14:25] It's perfect, and it worked so well. Yeah. It's just, yeah. Let the magic of surfactants do their work.

Shannon:
[14:33] Mm-hmm.

Jeff:
[14:34] Yep. I, uh, we had ants, and I bought, you know, those tarot trap things, and it wasn't getting rid of the ants.
So then I looked online. I was like, oh, I gotta buy something else.
And I'm like, let's Google for DIY.
And if you just mix, um, I think it's 50% by weight sugar and borax and make a paste.
It, I made it once and it like wiped out the ends.

Shannon:
[15:00] So they're the little tiny ones.

Greg:
[15:02] Oh, those are the worst. Yeah. That reminds me that my parents are telling me that they read online, cause they had a problem with deer is hanging out and eating their stuff. And then what they read online was Irish spring.
They hate the scent of Irish spring.

Jeff:
[15:17] I've heard that, yeah.

Greg:
[15:18] It's true, apparently.

Childhood Soap Carving Mishaps

Jeff:
[15:20] We should buy some and hang it in the trees all around the- I remember when I was in elementary school, I think, it was one of those things, you can probably relate, right, where you're supposed to tell your parents to prep and bring something in, you know, and you don't do it till the very last day.
And we were doing soap carving in our class or something like that.
And so I asked my mom for a bar of soap the very last time and we were an Irish Spring household.
And she was a-mad that she had these, the good Irish Spring you could have bought a bar of Dove or something.
And then everyone else had white soap and I was the only one with green soap.
I felt like such a dingus, you know, like, you know, just all the stupid elementary school things, right? Where you're the oddball and you just feel like, you hate it so much.

Shannon:
[16:04] But the room smelled fresher because of you, right?

Jeff:
[16:08] And then when I, I didn't get the concept of carving, I guess, because what I, I carved like an eagle, but like a cookie cutter version of an Eagle, right?
Just so just like straight down, like no three dimensionality or nothing.
Oh, well, elementary school, right? I know.

Greg:
[16:29] But so my parents, admittedly, what they say is that it's all anecdotal, but because they're not like they have cameras on there, but they used to notice deer and stuff hanging out. What's the matter?

Shannon:
[16:44] We haven't even introduced the spear and we're still having this conversation and he's smelling it.

Greg:
[16:49] I don't care. No, there's no protocol.
Um, my parents are so that, yeah, they say that they, they used to notice deer just hanging out all the time. And now it's very rare that they even see a deer in there, uh, around.
Um, and so again, it's not like they're checking, but my theory is the Irish spring doesn't necessarily like completely repel them, but it makes their place a lot less comfortable to be in than other places around.

Jeff:
[17:18] Yeah. We'll have to give it a try.

Shannon:
[17:22] Yeah, because it's always tick season here.

Jeff:
[17:25] No, not like we've noticed catching any, but we could try putting some around the flowers in the spring when they bloom and see if they don't get eaten.

Shannon:
[17:34] Oh, my tulips. Yeah, it'd be really nice.

Jeff:
[17:37] All right. So this next beer is Helltown Brewing Company here in the Pittsburgh area.

Greg:
[17:43] Now, this is a Martsen. You can tell the color right away, the color difference. It's much more amber.

Shannon:
[17:51] It's got I have floaties.

Greg:
[17:54] Yeah floaties, huh?

Jeff:
[17:54] Yeah, it was a little chunky at the bottom of the can I tried to distribute them but you missed out on the floaties They're an export.
They have a couple different tap rooms. They've one right downtown Didn't I just open one in the strip?
Well, that's what I meant. Oh by downtown.

Greg:
[18:13] Oh, okay and it's not technically downtown, but yeah, that's walking distance of here So all I got on this, because the Helltown Brewery doesn't have anything on it, so I went to untap. This is 6%. 6%. I'll call my volume.

Jeff:
[18:30] The aroma on this one is more sequestered than the last one.
It is bready. It's more like that white bread crust type of aroma, where the last one was more like quick bread, you know, cake kind of flavorings. Yeah.

Shannon:
[18:46] I haven't tasted it yet, but... It doesn't smell as inviting as the last one.

Greg:
[18:53] It is a little bit of a deeper thing, a little bit spicier in the hop, but not like super like hoppy, but more like rye bread in terms of like, maybe there's a deeper like molasses in there.

Jeff:
[19:06] It's nice that it has that kind of spice to it, as opposed to just tasting like bread crust, like plain bread crust.
The spiciness is, yeah, it's kind of bordering on rye. I think that's probably from like Noble Hops giving it the spiciness.

Greg:
[19:21] I don't think this is that, because I think you'd taste the rye if it was here, but I'm just thinking of like darker bread.

Jeff:
[19:28] Yeah, it's pretty dry. Like compared to the last one, this one has a lot drier mid palate to it and finish. What do you think?

Greg:
[19:35] Huh?

Describing the flavor profile of the beer

Shannon:
[19:44] It's definitely drier. Um, more what I.
Yeah, it's kind of like a, you said the rye bread, that the crust off of a rye bread would be a good way to describe it, I think.

Greg:
[20:05] Or if you went like really deep and dark with a regular white bread, you might be able to get a crust that was sort of like this.
A lot of caramelization going on.

Jeff:
[20:14] Their marketing speaks spot on though.
This lager with a celebratory history is brewed with German tradition hops to create subtle notes of herbs and spice.
A rich, bready aroma leads to a slightly sweet and malt-forward flavor followed by a finish that is crisp and semi-dry.

Greg:
[20:36] This isn't as yeasty as the other one. The other one had a lot of like a big yeasty bread type thing.

Shannon:
[20:44] I like this. It's just very different from the last one.

Greg:
[20:49] I kind of think I like this version more. I think I, not that the Sierra Nevada was bad at all, but I think that I, especially if I were to drink something more often than.

Jeff:
[21:00] Yeah, I mean, we only had four ounces, right? So that one, having the sweeter representation of it for a four-round sample kind of like hits you quick and gets you like acclimated.
Think about drinking a liter of an Oktoberfest, right? Like, cause they traditionally come in liter mugs.
This one might be better suited for the session. you know, that kind of thing.

Greg:
[21:27] Well, I think another comparison might be this thing that we have sort of in waiting, threatening us.

Shannon:
[21:39] Let's wait on that. I don't want to mess up my taste buds.

Greg:
[21:44] It will all be revealed soon.

Jeff:
[21:48] We should, I think we, I'll talk about later.
Um, One thing that I put in our like kind of ideas for conversation topics is kind of history repeating itself, like ales preceding lagers, right?
In antiquity, right? Beers were ales for millennia until, you know, like the 14th century or so when in Europe lager use was isolated and lager started being a thing.

Greg:
[22:19] Right. We don't know when Pistorius, the breed of yeast that is used in loggers, came about.
It could have come about as early as that, or it could have been around in nature for a long time. It could have been just a mutation.

Jeff:
[22:36] Well, I mean, I think about it, it's probably, I mean, I would assume that it is in nature, but is out-competed, unless you isolate it and put it in the right conditions, right?
So if you just have a beer that you're fermenting at ale temperatures, and there's some fraction of lager yeast in there, it's going to be out competing, right?
So when they started, you know, the evolution of lagering beer was ...
Probably not a single specific thing, but you know, they were conditioning beer in caves and it was colder temperature Different yeast was propagating at those temperatures, right?
And then it was isolated and refined and whatnot It's more technology then, you know just making ale because You can make ale Just with spontaneous fermentation and all kinds of things I guess the question then is if you were making ale like in Siberia would you have found that it would tend to be more lagerish?
That's a curious question.

The Evolution of Brewing Methods and Beer Preferences

[23:54] It's a very interesting question. I probably would think that if you weren't, I don't know, like there's intentionality and then accident, right?
And like, if it's not intentional, then you have this longer to produce more materials intensive, you know, time intensive process.
Um, but you know, a, a scenario where it's the only way you get beer, you know, would be curious to, if we could, like, if a historian had that, um, you know, maybe in the Alps, you know, or something like that.

Greg:
[24:29] I mean, it, it, it's, it's pretty apparent that people who would have been brewing in Tiberia probably didn't keep good enough records for us to know. So...

Jeff:
[24:37] I would presume that brewing happened in the summertime and they made kvass.

Greg:
[24:42] Yeah.

Jeff:
[24:42] Things like that. But like so that was in antiquity and then, you know, there's like in early colonial times, right. It was all ales.
And then loggers took over at, you know, kind of post pro post prohibition.

Greg:
[25:00] Once refrigeration became easier. I think that both for early like 1890s, like there was more refrigeration in terms of you were able to get a supply chain for ice and stuff like that to where you were. Yeah.

Jeff:
[25:18] Or the infrastructure to dig caves, things like that, where in the 1700s and whatnot, American beer was ales.
German beers were lagers, but America didn't have the infrastructure to make lagers.

Greg:
[25:32] America's lower than Germany is for most of it in terms of where it is on the world, so you'd expect it's going to be more humid and more ...

Jeff:
[25:41] Right. So ales preceded lagers a second time. And then in craft beer, it's a different reason.
Ales, I think there's several reasons that ales preceded lagers.
Like ales turned faster and were less resource intensive to make.
So, and then I think a big part of it for you and I specifically, and probably a lot of people in our generation, is ooh, new flavors that's not in my dad's beer, you know, and so we all gravitated towards ales and I remember not liking lagers.
I thought they tasted tinny or penny-like or something like that.
And then, you know, we finally learned to taste and enjoy lagers.
The first lager I enjoyed was Great Lakes L8NS, which was a Vienna lager, kind of like Sam Adams.
And, you know, shortly after that, I learned that Sam Adams is a good one, too.
But it wasn't very popular in craft beer. And now, like, the past couple of years, right, it's crazy. It's like the thing.
So that's like three times.

Greg:
[26:42] It's not the thing. The thing is Hazy's.

Jeff:
[26:43] Well, OK, so.

Greg:
[26:46] Like, if you go to your average craft beer place, it's going to be hard.
You're not, you're going to have 10 hazes on tap, maybe a lager.

Jeff:
[26:55] But lagers are surging right now.

Greg:
[26:57] Good.

Shannon:
[26:58] Yeah. Definitely have noticed more lagers.

Jeff:
[27:01] They're surging. And...

Greg:
[27:02] I mean, one thing to think about though, is that this is the time of year where lagers surge.

Jeff:
[27:06] No, I mean, over the past like year and a half, they've started the surge.

Greg:
[27:10] I haven't noticed it.

Jeff:
[27:11] Okay. Well, we went to 42 breweries in the past.

Greg:
[27:17] You have a, you have more of a- 17 days. You definitely have a larger sample than I do.

Jeff:
[27:23] So like the thing that got me thinking about this is like, is there some kind of like, what is it that it takes time, but it drives drinkers to prefer lagers? Like, I don't know.
That's a little premature to say craft beer drinkers are going to prefer lagers, But like it's already happened twice before you know like in history like is it going to happen again?

Greg:
[27:48] Well All right, so there's a lot of factors here, so I don't know How to answer that or how to begin to try to answer it right because I mean first of all I think okay Well, it's just a pendulum swing back and forth right then that's part of it, also a big part of the big part of the So how big loggers got was the industrialization of the loggering process by people like Anheuser-Busch.
and understand and making that into a commodity product.
Doing that large scale, I don't know whether it's cheap or necessarily do it for lagers, but it's certainly what they landed on and what a lot of, you know, the huge scale commodity beers, I can't think of one that's an ale.

Jeff:
[28:50] Oh, yeah, no, it's lager. So there's something about, if you take a wide enough drinking audience, they prefer lager flavors.
And that hasn't, if you take all of beer drinkers for the last 30 years, it really hasn't changed at all, right? I mean, Bud Light, Budweiser sells so much beer, but like used to sell a lot of beer.
It was more of just like...

Greg:
[29:17] Because they went woke. Yep.

Jeff:
[29:18] It was more of, this whole thing was more of just this ponderous thought of like, like almost like, you know, things want to get to their lowest energy state kind of thing.
Like, like thinking of that, like there's some kind of trend towards lagers and there's this pendulum and it, you know, goes back and forth and there's revolution and this and that, but it, it seems that maybe it's more, maybe pendulum is a better way to think of it.
But it's like, you know, over history, it's at least three times where loggers have like taken on.

Greg:
[29:46] I mean, the principle of least action should come into play.
It's a universal principle, so it should manifest itself all over the place. So. All right.

Jeff:
[29:57] So now we have fat heads.

Greg:
[30:00] Back to a thesphere. Yes.

Jeff:
[30:02] It is. Yes.

Greg:
[30:06] So, pale, straw color. Mm-hm.
Let's see, this one...

Shannon:
[30:15] Not as bready on the nose at all.

Jeff:
[30:18] Yeah, this one has a little bit more of... It's similar, it's more similar to the first one, where it has a touch of like honey bread versus wonder bread crust, you know, that kind of thing.
And the colors kind of corroborate that as well.

Greg:
[30:34] This one is 5% alcohol by volume, 25 IBU, and they call it a Fesbier.
They say it's Bavarian style.

Shannon:
[30:42] The Varian style, yes. The Varian style sauerkraut.

Greg:
[30:50] As you said that, I was smelling it for some reason.

Jeff:
[30:52] Yeah. It has, um, it's intensity of aroma is tighter than the very first beer.
Um, but it does have that kind of sweet honey, kind of honey bread type thing.

Greg:
[31:07] Okay. So just took a taste. In comparison to the other beers, It tastes almost sour. Really?

Shannon:
[31:14] I haven't tasted it yet.

Jeff:
[31:16] It has, it doesn't have the bready body to it. It has more of a cremal type flavor, like a corn type thing. Thinner body, lower attenuation.

Greg:
[31:27] It's probably a little bit of DMS on this, speaking of something else that we can talk about.

Jeff:
[31:31] Corn type? What do you got?

Shannon:
[31:34] I have not tasted it yet. Just on the nose, it's reminding me of the ones that we did a month ago or whatever from Hill Farmstead.

Jeff:
[31:47] Okay Like a saison or something like yes You know, I mean because it's so thin and dry and has a tartness to it.

Greg:
[31:58] I could see where this is It has a tartness to because of what it's missing not because of what what's in it. It's missing a malt backbone What's there is like a saltine cracker.
It's got nothing else.
So So the hops become noticeable and it tends towards almost a sourness.

Jeff:
[32:17] Yeah. Thinking about other lagers, this kind of has a bit of like Italian lager type flavor with a body or a feel, like with a thinner body, the kind of light malt, maybe not, maybe, maybe not like that corn.
I keep saying it has this corn thing, but it reminds me of kind of like Italian lager or something like that. It really doesn't taste like an Oktoberfest.

Greg:
[32:46] Yeah, I don't think the corn thing is wrong. I do think like, I would say this is very drinkable. If you had this at a bar, you'd down it quick.
But if you're- It's only 5%, so. If you're comparing it to these other beers we've had, it's noticeably less than.

Tangy Oktoberfest Beer: Thirst Quenching or Infected?

Jeff:
[33:01] I do like the tanginess though. It's kind of like, um, a thirst quencher, you know, the like, if I'm drinking for the session at an Oktoberfest or something like that, it fatheads Oktoberfest.
Um, especially if it's a warm, sunny day, that kind of tangy thing is pretty thirst quenching. I could see it having its place.

Greg:
[33:25] Yeah, no, again, I don't want to overly insult the beer. Cause it's not like there's bad flavors.

Jeff:
[33:31] Do you think like a lavender thing or something like that, like this, like it's in the late aftertaste?

Greg:
[33:35] I think it has the hops, I think.

Jeff:
[33:37] Yeah, but it has this kind of floral...

Shannon:
[33:39] It does.

Jeff:
[33:41] Polony thing. Mm-hmm.

Greg:
[33:45] Yeah, a little bit.
I guess when my expectations are primed by the big sweetness when I get this, it feels, uh, so different that I'm, my, I'm having trouble adapting to it.

Shannon:
[34:05] It's because you're expecting an October 1st and it really doesn't resemble an October 1st.

Greg:
[34:11] No, it really doesn't.

Jeff:
[34:12] If I had this at, you know, a brew pub, I would think it's getting infected.
And I thought didn't cross my mind until just now now.
I'm not sure Mm-hmm, but like if I had this on tap at a brew pub, I'd be like dude your beers infected, you know Low low attenuation that tanginess it it does have all the hallmarks of like a dirty tap line infected Draft beer.
Yeah Yeah, fine, but we do have a second can of this Yeah, you think it's worth trying a different can to see if it has a different they come from the same place Yeah, then I don't think so Yeah, probably from the same case so So only if there was a packaging with this can but I mean the seams not popped or anything so Yeah, this what's the date on this guy July 17, it's crazy July, they're canning.

Greg:
[35:14] I mean, that's when you have to have it out for. You gotta have it prepared.
You can't just, if you do it two weeks before and then there's a mess up in your supply for whatever reason, all of a sudden you don't have a beer to sell.
So I get it, you gotta prepare, but especially if you have a lot of distribution to do.

Jeff:
[35:33] So just kinda, I only posted this in because it's funny, but there's this article about the James Webb a space telescope that they found tantalizing signs of possible life on a faraway world.
And the spectroscope found DMS, dimethyl sulfide, which is that kind of green bean flavor you get in beer.
Usually, main culprit is if you don't chill your wort fast enough after you're done boiling.
Rolling Rock, made here in Pennsylvania, was famous for having tons of DMS because their brewery couldn't chill the wort very fast.
So I posted this in the show, I should have posted it just in the general chat so people could have laughed about it.
But I posted this in the show notes and then my commentary was they need the chill the wort faster. Yeah. Got a whole planet of people that are making beer that aren't chilling the wort.

Greg:
[36:24] For those who are wondering, I mean, this is the kind of stuff that I do, look into when it happens.
The, the detection was at a pretty low Sigma. It was like 2.3, even lower than that. It was like, well, so that's like a one in 66 chance that it's just a fluke.
And that's, that's too big a chance.
Uh, and in addition, there's kind of, it's only it's data that's not released yet.
Cause, cause the James Webb Space Telescope, the data, this team had access to it, but the data takes a year for it to get fully public.
I mean, so no one else did the analysis and it was only analysis through, I think one, one band.
So I, and, and it was a degenerate analysis in the sense that you, other things could be, could be making this signal.
It's not exclusively DMS that can make this signal. Okay.
So there's a lot of reasons to think that this is not like It would be a huge story were it true But still not necessarily saying that life is there just the DMS is there but It is not at all.

Jeff:
[37:41] I think the point where you can say yes, there's DMS in the atmosphere of this planet All right Triggs our last Oktoberfest not our last beverage this evening, but our last Oktoberfest is from trugs and and 6.1%.

Shannon:
[37:54] APB.

Jeff:
[37:55] Awesome. Had this beer on draft yesterday and it was fantastic.
So that's part of the whole thing that inspired.

Greg:
[38:06] We went Fassbier Marz and Fassbier Marz because this is Marz. Yes, it is, yes.

Jeff:
[38:12] Yeah, super duper clear. This one has a more brownish tint to the gold compared to, uh, oh, I guess that was the first one. Yeah. It was like, um, yeah.
So we went from gold to Amber to gold to dark gold.
This is more dark gold to me.

Greg:
[38:38] I, I think that I see what you're saying. Okay. I see what you're saying.
I'm not going to fight over it. I'm not dying on this hill. It's more Marzini.

Jeff:
[38:48] Okay.

Greg:
[38:50] This is Hillertal Tradition and Pilsner Munich Malts. As Shannon said, it's 6.1% alcohol by volume. Smell on this guy.

Jeff:
[38:57] Beautiful. Very bready.
You get the breadiness. There's a little bit of that Wonder Bread crust flavor, but there's more malt character.

Greg:
[39:08] Yeah, as opposed to the closed off aroma from, Uh, was it the Helltown or was it?

Jeff:
[39:14] Helltown was pretty closed off and so was the fat heads.

Greg:
[39:17] Yeah.
This one's very open. and it's got a lot of breadiness to it.

Oktoberfest Beer Tasting and Vienna Malt

Jeff:
[39:28] I mean, this is kind of right smack dab in the middle, what I'm looking for in Oktoberfest, right?
There's a moderately full body. There's sweet, bready flavor up through it.
It does dry off at the end, but it doesn't dry prematurely. So you can enjoy that kind of Vienna malt and Munich malt in there. And...

Greg:
[39:50] Another factor we didn't mention though, just want to put in here, is this has been sitting around the longest and so it means it's warmed up the most.
So that may be why the rum is more open, for example.

Shannon:
[40:02] Maybe.

Jeff:
[40:03] It could be. I mean, it was also delicious beer, the two drafts that I had yesterday, so.

Shannon:
[40:09] And I had one too.

Jeff:
[40:10] Did you?

Shannon:
[40:10] I think so. Cool. Okay, I ordered one.

Greg:
[40:13] But this nails that, like you were saying.

Shannon:
[40:15] I ordered a lot of shit.

Greg:
[40:17] That bit of sweet, but not too sweet, bready but not overly yeasty.
Enough hoppiness to get down but not to at all really influence the palate.

Shannon:
[40:36] No. Yeah.

Jeff:
[40:40] It's this is the trogues Oktoberfest if you are in the trogues market and can get this Get this definitely the best Oktoberfest I've had so far this year and it is are we driving Past there on our way no to me We are going to the Catskill Mountain Maker Camp next week, I know No, we can't, like, drive through Hershey to...
Well, I want to talk about that and not your delusional dream that we're going to move to Maine next week.

Shannon:
[41:15] No, no, no. To hit, drive through Hershey to get there. I mean, I know it's...

Jeff:
[41:20] Do you want the trip to take longer than it has to? There's breweries on the way. I got them mapped out. Don't worry. Of course you do. Of course you do.
So, yeah, so we are, a couple of big developments, I guess, since the last show.
We've talked about Protohaven a lot.
Currently Shannon and I are no longer involved with Protohaven.

Shannon:
[41:42] I resigned from the board.

Jeff:
[41:44] Politics and things.
So there's that. I was doing a lot of woodturning, you know, bowls and stuff. You got that awesome bowl.

Greg:
[41:54] You want it back because now you need it in order to...

Jeff:
[41:57] No, no, I don't need it back. No, keep it. It's still like the best bowl that I've made.

Shannon:
[42:02] That's why I'm like, maybe you want it back.

Jeff:
[42:06] No. No way. from you, I'll just have to make hundreds more until I can make another one that good.
I bought a lathe on Facebook Marketplace. It's a smaller one than the one at Proto Haven, but it's the biggest one that can run 120 volts.
I'm happy with it so far. I've spent almost all day today out there messing around with it. Just today.

Shannon:
[42:29] Just today?

Jeff:
[42:30] I've done some other stuff, but all day today.
Then got, then I'm like, oh, okay, now I need a bandsaw so I can make bowl blanks.
So got this great deal on a— Been a slippery slope. But it was such a good deal.
A $60 bandsaw. Yeah. And then I had to put $40 of parts in it, and now I have good bandsaw.

Shannon:
[42:51] I don't know. I came home the other day and there were six Amazon packages sitting there piled up on the porch, but there's been deliveries every day this week.

Jeff:
[43:02] Most of them are cheap, but so been, you know, got my own kind of shed cleaned up and my own woodshop, which is our woodshop.
Kind of nice not having, it's kind of like, you know, I was in a significant leadership role of like volunteer organization at Protohaven and it's been nice not having to put that time in.

Updates on Protohaven and Woodworking, Discussing Weed Farmers

[43:28] So anyway, there's all of that. And then we met back up with the guy that we did our rings with, Craig, and he kind of reminded us about the Catskill Mountain Maker Camp.
So this is up in upstate New York, in the Catskills. He goes every year.
So we're going to go camping next week up there, and they have like, on the weekend they And they have these...
Like when you buy your ticket you can go and like learn how to weld or Wood turn or all this other stuff. Yeah, it sounds like it'll be pretty pretty cool And then you hang out after the sun goes down seven thousand people going Bring your mushrooms.

Shannon:
[44:10] I'm pretty sure that's what he said something around somewhere around seven thousand Yeah, it's an insane amount and well, it's in new york, right?

Greg:
[44:19] So all the weed is good.

Jeff:
[44:21] Yeah. No, no, he was talking about how um There's like, you know, weed farmers and you're there.
You know how like the serving size for stuff you can get like in Maine or whatnot, it's like 10 milligrams or whatever.
He had a candy bar, it was a 420 bar. So it was 10 squares. Each one was 42.

Greg:
[44:44] That was like the one that I had, which was 35 each square.

Jeff:
[44:50] So 42 each square Insane that's the medical marijuana any time for like 10 bucks.

Shannon:
[44:58] Mm-hmm the whole bar not a square That's the story so yeah, we might be looking for the farmers up there.

Jeff:
[45:12] I don't know we'll see So that'll be fun and I don't know is there anything else we want to talk about?

Greg:
[45:20] I did want to talk about, so last time I was here we did karaoke which was a blast, it was so much fun.
But I wanted to talk about the game that you sort of discovered and we ended up playing near the end which was awesome.
Do you remember? No.

Shannon:
[45:35] I was three sheets to the wind by the time. It was what? Three o'clock in the morning by the time we finished up that night? Celebrating your birthday?
It was a late night. It was a late night.

Greg:
[45:45] But, Normally you get tired and sort of lose a little bit, but oh, I remember the game.
Yeah, I Chose what you had to sing and we went around the room kind of doing that What you do is you pick somebody that that's an artist that you know The other person's gonna like but is also has lots of songs So they're not necessarily gonna want to sing the most popular song, but they can choose from the list So they then get to choose.
What's the song that I'm I'm, I'm going to nail, like, I'm going to love to sing this song.
So the idea is to sort of give somebody a, a, a challenge in the sense of here, this is the artist, find something.
And, and if they don't find something, you give them another artist because you want them, the goal is you want them to have fun trying something that is not common. Yeah.
And it was, It worked out because every one of us then just was like going up and pushing our limits. Yeah, going for it.

Jeff:
[46:48] I wore out my voice that night.

Shannon:
[46:51] Our poor neighbors.

Jeff:
[46:52] I sing hard.

Greg:
[46:55] They're far enough away. they're probably getting here. Yeah.
We're just paying them off. It was a great game. I told my sister about it because she thought it was great too.
So I think it was a great game to play.
So if any of you like doing karaoke, try this.
It's a great method to just be like, to bring out, especially if, you know, everyone's a little tired or something like that, this will bring out the excitement of doing the karaoke and the fun of it because you get people to do a song they really want to do not just not the song that everyone's heard before.

Jeff:
[47:32] All right. So our next beverage is nitro Pepsi.

Greg:
[47:38] Nitro Pepsi.

Shannon:
[47:40] Non-alcoholic, I might say.

Jeff:
[47:42] Listen to that.

Shannon:
[47:42] Yes.

Jeff:
[47:43] Fizz and fuzz.

Greg:
[47:44] So this is a...

Shannon:
[47:45] I think I need to rinse my glass for this because...

Jeff:
[47:48] I don't know.

Shannon:
[47:49] Well, no, I really don't.

Jeff:
[47:50] It's like Guinness, except it's Pepsi with a little nitro widget, so it should be creamy.

Shannon:
[47:57] It's Pepsi.

Jeff:
[47:58] I don't know.

Greg:
[47:59] I mean, so...

Shannon:
[48:00] All right. No, it's the Discord. Okay, so everyone needs to know...
First of all, no, no, let me talk, let me talk.
I need everybody who's listening and is on our Discord, Pepsi or Coke.
Just let's vote. Pepsi or Coke.

Jeff:
[48:13] We should do the Pepsi challenge.

Pepsi vs. Coke: The Sweetness Debate

Greg:
[48:16] The Pepsi challenge only... I want to know. I believe the Pepsi challenge only works because you're tying a little bit and when you're tying a little bit, the sweeter things will tend to win.
But over a whole drink, I think you're going to much more appreciate...

Jeff:
[48:30] Is Pepsi sweeter?

Greg:
[48:31] Yes.

Jeff:
[48:32] Okay.

Greg:
[48:32] A lot.

Shannon:
[48:33] It is straight up sugar water. It's disgusting.

Greg:
[48:34] I mean, both of them were straight up sugar water, but at least Coke has like nutmeg and things like that.

Shannon:
[48:42] So you're a Coke person.

Greg:
[48:44] If I had to choose...

Shannon:
[48:45] Yeah, me too. I won't even drink Pepsi.

Greg:
[48:48] I don't know why I'm smelling it.

Shannon:
[48:49] Well, I don't drink soda that often.

Jeff:
[48:51] No, it's all about the mouthfeel.

Shannon:
[48:55] It tastes like flat Pepsi. Why am I smelling it?

Jeff:
[48:57] It does taste like flat Pepsi.

Greg:
[48:58] Why do I want that?

Jeff:
[49:00] I don't know.

Shannon:
[49:01] It's making me burp on there.

Jeff:
[49:03] All right, so Nitro Pepsi tastes like flat Pepsi.

Greg:
[49:08] That's just gross.
That's just sugar water.

Jeff:
[49:14] All right, Shannon, can you go dump those in our insu-glasses?

Shannon:
[49:17] You bought that shit.

Jeff:
[49:18] I'm stuck here. I'll make- Oh, are you?

Greg:
[49:20] Oh, come on.

Shannon:
[49:21] Fine, I'll squeeze out, but if I make a bunch of noise- I even tasted it.
I didn't want it. I didn't want it.

Greg:
[49:27] Wire it.

Shannon:
[49:30] I tasted it for you. It's foul.

Greg:
[49:33] I don't... Like, I get the idea of Draft Cola in the sense that...
You know you sometimes the fountain tastes better than than I can to some people it does but yeah, that's not nitrous That's still carbon dioxide. Yeah I don't know.

Jeff:
[49:53] I saw it and i'm like well, that's a kill That's no, I don't think that That doesn't count. It don't count.

Shannon:
[50:02] Oh, we're not gonna put that on the kill list.

Greg:
[50:05] It's not no Oh, cause it's too easy.

Jeff:
[50:08] All right. So we have our next beer.

Shannon:
[50:09] Well, I'm writing F.

Jeff:
[50:11] Perhaps our last beer. Uh, this is when we picked up on the Sellers Tour at Allagash. This is Allagash Interlude from 2014. What?

Shannon:
[50:18] We're opening that? We should wait until 2024. So it's an entire.
Eh. Eh. Come. Eh. Cat. Page is cracking.

Jeff:
[50:28] Page is already off.

Shannon:
[50:29] I'm crying. My soul is being crushed. There it goes.

Jeff:
[50:35] See, I feel. A few months away.

Greg:
[50:38] There it's gone. It's only a few months away from 2024.
This can't be the only soul-crushing thing that happened to you this week.
Oh, no. So, here, This is a type of bacteria.

Shannon:
[51:06] That bacteria that they're, wasn't that the one that they?

Jeff:
[51:09] It's a yeast.

Greg:
[51:10] Oh, it's a yeast. That's right, it is a yeast.

Shannon:
[51:12] But wasn't it the one that they actually discovered? No.

Greg:
[51:16] Oh. No, it's a yeast that they discovered.

Jeff:
[51:18] No, they do have a yeast that they discovered. It's called, it's a Portlandia or Portlandias or something. I can't, I have to look it up.

Shannon:
[51:27] I can't remember.

Greg:
[51:28] Bread is what you don't want if you're making wine. Bread is like the killer for wine. I don't know necessarily why.

Jeff:
[51:36] Um, that being said, there's a Spanish wine that we've been getting at the liquor store that is fantastic and it has bread in it Which one that spanish tamper neo with the red?

Greg:
[51:48] So this also has a saison yeast in it, are you okay over there?

Shannon:
[51:51] No, it's a freaking pepsi is it Oh took one sip caramel.

Greg:
[51:56] I'm so dying. Yeah, I can still taste it caramel malt red wheat pilsner malt It's hops are with nugget and stressful spalt Stressel spalt.

Shannon:
[52:05] What's a stressel spalt? Somebody tell me.

Jeff:
[52:08] It's a German hop. Okay.

Shannon:
[52:09] I've never heard of it.

Greg:
[52:10] I think it's a noble hop.

Jeff:
[52:12] Yeah. It's one of those ones that you see in German lagers that are kind of non-distinct in their flavor.

Greg:
[52:20] Sort of spiciness, not really much of this. But nuggets are strong ones and nuggets an interesting one to have in here.
It also has, we said the yeast is saison and babeniases and the spices and other has turbinado sugar in it, which is just to give it probably just a little bit extra body, and small portion of 20-month-old interlude.

Shannon:
[52:43] It smells like a really sour...

Jeff:
[52:45] Yes. So 20 months, so that 20-month-old interlude's already more than 10 years old, so... Yeah.

Shannon:
[52:54] Wish... still should have waited until...

Jeff:
[53:00] Oh, it's it's it's not only it's October 2014. Huh. I didn't realize I had a month on it.

Shannon:
[53:05] Oh, so see. Yeah, I should have. A whole nother year.

Greg:
[53:09] Nine and ten aren't all that different from each other. Eleven would be more interesting because it's prime.

Jeff:
[53:19] All right, the aroma on this one is a little bit of that funky brett aromas coming out.
that there's kind of this oaky wine barrel thing, too?

Shannon:
[53:29] There's a fruit that's...
Strawberry, okay You guys getting a hint of strawberry because I'm getting a hint of strawberry hint of something More grape strawberry I'm tasting or I'm not tasting I haven't tasted it yet.

Jeff:
[53:51] Actually when you move on to the flavor It's kind of like underwriting strawberry.
Is it? Yeah, really? All right. It's a mix between tart strawberry underwrite and like strawberry lollipop Yeah, so or starburst like strawberry starburst.
There's totally in there.

Shannon:
[54:08] It reminds me of Back in the band high school band days and We at the strawberry festival in Plant City, Florida when I worked in the band booth and we made strawberry shortcake Day in and day out for everybody. That's what I'm smelling.

Jeff:
[54:30] That's why I smell the strawberry Yeah, it's definitely tastes like those pink little chews from Starburst. Oh, yeah It's not the only thing it tastes like but it's in there for sure.

Shannon:
[54:41] Oh, it is. Mm-hmm.

Greg:
[54:43] My favorite ones, too Oh, I like this But then it goes a different way Because it's it's more tangy than it is sour first of all So, um, the Brett is noticeable, but not like overwhelming, but it's giving it the, that uh, tip of the tongue kind of thing.
I don't know how else to describe it, but it's a little bit, it takes away the deeper notes.

Shannon:
[55:20] It's very, it's, I taste a lot of tannins at the end.

Greg:
[55:29] Yeah, that's the red wine barrels, I bet. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
There's oaky and red wine notes that are all being kind of forced into submission by the brett, so you don't get the deeper notes of those. You just get sort of the top notes.

Jeff:
[55:47] I'm getting baking spices too. Like this is running a bit of like a mold cider or something something like that with cardamom and allspice and anise and stuff like that.
I'm getting like a, almost like the flavors from like a calculator.

Greg:
[56:04] Well, it's got that turbinado sugar in it, right? So it's got warm molasses. Yeah, okay.

Jeff:
[56:08] This is yummy.

Shannon:
[56:12] It is.

Jeff:
[56:12] I likey. Greg, have you ever heard of earthquake lights?

Greg:
[56:17] Yes, yes I have. What?

Jeff:
[56:19] I had just heard about these for the first time after the earthquake in Peru, right?

Greg:
[56:25] No, not Peru. Morocco?

Jeff:
[56:26] Morocco, yes.
So for people who don't know, there's this phenomenon that's not well understood, at least as far as I know, maybe Greg knows more, that like preceding an earthquake or during an earthquake, like you'll get these like lights and it's almost like you would think maybe they're transformers exploding or something like that, but they're not.
I guess they're kind of like ball lightning sometimes.

Shannon:
[56:51] I think it's very important to know whether it's preceding.

Jeff:
[56:55] It is preceding.

Shannon:
[56:55] It is preceding.

Greg:
[56:56] It's preceding, but just barely. Not any time that you can...

Shannon:
[57:00] Because of, I mean, if it was...

Jeff:
[57:02] Like, no, seconds.

Nighttime Earthquakes and Limited Surveillance

Greg:
[57:04] Oh, that's a shame. So, and also not visible during the day. Oh, yeah.
One of the reasons why it was hard to confirm is nighttime earthquakes.
It's not like there's the kind of surveillance before that there is now.
And that's what I think is important. And I think that's what we need to do.
a, you might tend to forget if there's lights and a big earthquake happens, you might tend to be more have more important things to do than remember.
Oh, there were some weird lights in the sky.
But my guess is this is just a guess.
This is not anything like that.
You should take into consideration is like a real thing, but there's pizzo electric properties of the ground as it's being compressed, compressed, which is going to cause currents and it's going to therefore cause releases of plasma, probably like lightning going up as opposed to going down.
Even though most lighting does sort of go up, but...

Jeff:
[58:05] No, the piezoelectric effect was something I was thinking about too.
So for people who don't know, the little sparker in a lighter, like a grill lighter, like the one, either the one you press on the grill or the ones that are kind of wand shaped and you pull the trigger and it goes snap.
Oh, that's a hammer hitting a crystal.
And that impact on the crystal makes an electric current.

Greg:
[58:30] Briefly, but enough to give that little spark.

Jeff:
[58:33] It's not, I used to think that there was some kind of transformer in there, some kind of, some kind of magnet moving through a coil. Like that's what, how I thought the spark was made.
And, um, no, it's, it's a, it's a hammer hitting a crystal.

Greg:
[58:49] You're putting a crystal under stress, and that stress causes the electronic configuration to change enough, on a large enough scale, that you're creating a temporary voltage difference, which then gives you a burst.

The Complexity of Geology and Visible Phenomena

Jeff:
[59:05] So I was wondering and the article I read really didn't get into that part of it But it seemed like that you that's your guess. That was kind of my gut too Mm-hmm is that it's what you don't see it all the time.

Greg:
[59:18] The geology has to be right for it to happen You know and you need to have a large amount of stress to have a noticeable things.
You need an earthquake. You need that kind of stress on the rock to make something visible to a large number of people.

Jeff:
[59:36] Speaking of voltage differential, I was watching some Alpha Phoenix on YouTube.
Okay. And he did a really neat one about, he used water to kind of as an analog for voltage and amperage and things like that.
Yep. But there was one part he didn't cover, like, that I thought he could have, you know, he had so much material, but he made this little water trough with, you know, gates.
And when the gate is small, it's a resistor and voltage is shown by kind of the slope of water as it goes through the channel. And the channel should be careful.

Greg:
[1:00:12] It's water plus gravity.

Jeff:
[1:00:14] Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes. But the channel is narrow enough that the surface of water keeps it from equalizing right away.
So it helps analog that, but you know, he was showing resistance.
He also could have shown capacitance by having a deeper channel, like in certain places, because that would have fit the same way with all the other analogies that he did in that thing.
But it was really cool. It gave, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the electricity stuff.
Voltage is the kind of the term that everybody knows. It's the weirdest part of the whole thing though.

Greg:
[1:00:57] It's the most universal part of it because it's the potential.
So it is the thing that crosses domains, if you will.

Jeff:
[1:01:04] But it's also the part that is like.
not as straightforwardly explainable.

Greg:
[1:01:13] Yeah, because it's not, because it requires gravity, first of all, for it to manifest in water.

Jeff:
[1:01:20] Yeah. But having voltage, like explaining how voltage is made and stuff, like a voltage drop over a resistor and things like that, you know, just in electricity is like the other concepts that he covered amperage and whatnot were pretty straightforward.
And then like, okay, now voltage. And like, he didn't make it difficult on purpose.
It's, it's a more complicated concept, which I thought was real quick.
I just thought it was curious because if you went on family feud and said, name an electricity term, voltage is going to be the top one, but it's kind of the weirdest phenomenon of electricity of the core basic stuff.

Greg:
[1:02:04] I mean, I guess I don't see it as weird, but that's cause I'm, I'm more trained in thinking of potentials in different ways.
But because you have a dipolar potential in electricity, it's harder to imagine than gravitational potential where it's just a hill, right? I mean, that is relatively easy.
But to understand that there are two different potentials, and so I mean, it gets complicated real, real quick.
I would not say that I'm at all like good at making circuits or anything like that.
I know, I know the principles behind it, but you know, my learning has gone in a different direction. So I'm not good at necessarily, I can explain things like potentials and use some of the analogies, but probably that.

Jeff:
[1:02:54] Well, like one of the experiments he did was he had some resistive wire, like the stuff that's in a toaster and he sampled the voltage potential to ground to ground at different points along the wire. And it was linear, right? So halfway around the coil was half the voltage.
And he took the same wire and he put a resistor, a small resistor, but a resistor at the beginning or the end, wherever he put it.
And it's like a dam in a river. It keeps the voltage high on the front side of the resistor and super low on the backside of the resistor, just like a dam in the river. and, I was aware of voltage drop across resistors and stuff like that, but I never saw it.
Well, I never saw an experiment with resistive wire. All the wires that you use in normal stuff is very low resistance.

Greg:
[1:03:45] And when you're diagramming, you usually assume zero.

Jeff:
[1:03:47] Yeah, because you're only using several inches of wire and the resistance over that copper wire or aluminum wire is negligible.
But using the resistive wire and just throwing a tiny little resistor in there it uh it was a damn like it was full voltage like if you were one-third of the way through and you'd expect to lose one-third of the voltage with a resistor beyond it you have full voltage even though the wire is still resistive.

Greg:
[1:04:13] You should mention here Shannon fully checked out.

Shannon:
[1:04:17] I'm sorry I have it's I'm taking care of something for both of us actually right now. Sorry. All right.

Greg:
[1:04:28] So as long as we're doing a sciencey thing.

Shannon:
[1:04:30] I mean, it's the perfect time, right?

Greg:
[1:04:32] Yeah.

Jeff:
[1:04:33] We could, um, we could do the wrap the show and go to the post show and do the sciencey thing. If you think that might be better.

Shannon:
[1:04:39] Yeah.

Greg:
[1:04:39] There's more stuff I have to talk about, but.

Shannon:
[1:04:43] Are we done?

Jeff:
[1:04:44] That's all the beers I brought up.

Greg:
[1:04:46] You want another beer?

Jeff:
[1:04:47] We can do the post show. Then we'll actually keep the show at like an hour.

Shannon:
[1:04:53] Yeah, well, we probably don't have anything going on now tomorrow.
So I'm taking care of that right now.

Jeff:
[1:05:00] Oh, the, the photo shoots canceled?

Shannon:
[1:05:02] Probably due to the weather. Forecast is not looking good for us.
So I'm letting everybody know.

Greg:
[1:05:09] Let's do the shtick. All right.

Jeff:
[1:05:10] All right.

Uncertainty and Disregard for Rules

Greg:
[1:05:19] Well, sure. This does throw this away.

Jeff:
[1:05:21] Okay. Did not qualify. No. Oh, I wanted to, you can rank it.
You can rank it if you want to. You can do whatever you want.
There's no rules. The only rule is there is no rules and you have to rank.

Navigating the Rules of Engagement

Greg:
[1:05:44] Of course, there are rules. All right. Sure. Right, like that. Kinda.

Ranking the Beers: Contemplating the Order

Shannon:
[1:06:06] I'm trying to decide if this is my order or not And so first of all Do we Before we start ranking.
I really want to know like It's really hard to put this one in there.

Greg:
[1:06:30] Yeah, I feel like We shouldn't be, ranking this alligash against the Oktoberfests because then don't just like you're not ranking the nitro you can or you are ranking the nitro you can you can decide to not rank the alligash I mean I would say that the alligash has an unfair Advantage over the others because well, that's that that's not how I would look at it.

Shannon:
[1:07:04] Okay.
All right Well, right come on, but you got to put Pepsi in there The suspense is killing.

Jeff:
[1:07:12] Where do you write the Pepsi Greg?

Shannon:
[1:07:13] Okay.

Greg:
[1:07:14] All right I'll write the Pepsi, but it will not be a part of my fuck Mary kill That's that's the compromise.
Oh, I'm killing that thing It's too easy to kill the Pepsi. I mean the Pepsi just sort of dies by association It's it's already dead.
You can't you can't kill anymore Yeah, okay, so the Pepsi gets in last place of course in, Right behind it, right in front of it, just by order, is the Fat Heads Oktoberfest.
Because it was just kind of a cracker.

Jeff:
[1:07:55] Potentially spoiled.

Greg:
[1:07:58] Potentially. And it just didn't have so much of what the other stuff had, all the other beers had.

Shannon:
[1:08:04] It was very disappointing because I expected more out of Fat Heads.

Greg:
[1:08:08] Still drinkable. Still, if you had it in a bar, you'd be fine with it.

Shannon:
[1:08:10] Oh, yeah. Yeah, especially if it was happy hour and it was half price.

Greg:
[1:08:15] I think to me it's interesting that the two Fests beers rank pretty close to each other.
I think the Sierra Nevada was the first one we had. It was, it was, I enjoyed it, but it was a little too sweet.
I think it was, uh, just compared to the other stuff, I'm, I'm more, uh, a straight Martinson guy.
So I think that the Martinsons were going to win out for me either way.
I'm going to put the Allagash in third place. I think it's, I mean, it's good.
How much did you, do you know how much this one cost you?

Jeff:
[1:08:50] No, we bought.

Shannon:
[1:08:51] Too much.

Jeff:
[1:08:54] I think it was like $180 worth of beer from Elegash.

Greg:
[1:08:56] It's what, a 750 milliliter? Was that all it was?
It's a 750 milliliter bottle, and I'd say based on the content, it's worth, you know, about 20, 25 bucks.
You know, probably paid somewhere. Yeah. It's a, it's a decent, you get the bang for your buck. I think, I think I was expecting more.
I was expecting something with more pizzazz with more character.
This sort of felt, uh, muted in a sense.

Helltown vs. Troegs: Dark Notes and Fruit Delight

[1:09:30] I think that Brett can do that, but you work with Brett. I mean, that's the point you, you, if you're going to use Brett, you really, should understand Brett so I mean I'm missing out on like the red wine barrel stuff I think that you kind of miss it um then I'm gonna go with the helltown as the second and the trogues in first place the fruit drugs was friggin delicious but the helltown was really good too like those that like dark kind of rye-like note was so good, so.
In essence, that's what I have. And fuck, marry, kill comes later after everybody else. So, you know, your turn, Sean, my turn.

Shannon:
[1:10:15] I can go if you want. Yeah, go ahead.

Jeff:
[1:10:16] All right. Uh, pepsi last place.

Shannon:
[1:10:18] It's hard to find.

Jeff:
[1:10:19] Second to last place is the fat heads. Um, same reason Greg said, right?

Shannon:
[1:10:23] Take a picture. Wait, stop. Hold on. You gotta gotta get the picture before we start.

Jeff:
[1:10:27] The picture does help me when I do the shortcuts. So, all right.

Shannon:
[1:10:31] But I can still talk while you take a picture. Trying to get all the shitty mess in the background.

Jeff:
[1:10:36] I don't post the picture, I just look at it.

Shannon:
[1:10:40] Oh, pictures are posted. No, no.

Greg:
[1:10:42] Some of them are. No, only on our channel. Oh. I haven't paid attention.
Yeah, there are secret channels in Discord just for us.

Jeff:
[1:10:50] All right, Fat Heads is in the last beer spot.
It had this, well I thought it could be this refreshing hot weather thing.
It just didn't really fit what I was looking for in Oktoberfest.
It might have been going spoiled. I don't know. And then I'm going to put in fourth place the Helltown.
It was a little bit drier than I'm looking for in Oktoberfest.
I think that's the main reason compared to like the next place beer.
A little bit drier. I wanted a little bit more cracker and bread and stuff like that.
And it seemed like it was missing it a bit. it. I am going to put the Sierra Nevada in third place.
These are the beers I enjoyed quite a bit.
Definitely would want to drink more of that. It had that kind of honey bread type flavor. Dug it.
I am going to put the Allagash in second place. Really liked it.
Greg mentioned that it was muted or subdued. I think it brought it.
I think, you know, you're getting, got that strawberry early on.
Now I'm getting kind of tart cherries.

Greg:
[1:12:06] It did bring it enough, to be clear. It did bring enough to be worth like, you know, Yeah, you said like 25 bucks.

Jeff:
[1:12:11] So, I mean, that's a decent price point. I enjoyed it. Shannon might want the rest of that. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
I think because it's an Octoberfest show and also because Troves is so damn good it wins the first place.
Would it win it if it wasn't an Oktoberfest show? I think it would.
I really, it's dead center in what I want in an Oktoberfest. I really enjoy it.
Go trogues. All right.

Greg:
[1:12:42] Now, Shannon, you have nothing else.

Jeff:
[1:12:45] And you can put your Pepsi in first place.

Shannon:
[1:12:47] I can? All right. Did you want to take a picture? Oh, yes. You should probably do that.

Jeff:
[1:12:52] Please, I don't think my phone's.

Shannon:
[1:12:56] I was, it's right there.

Jeff:
[1:12:58] Oh, here it is.

Shannon:
[1:12:58] I was writing while you were talking, but I think we might be the same.

Jeff:
[1:13:04] I'm not allowed. Change your order.

Rankings: Pepsi last, Fatheads not malty enough

Shannon:
[1:13:15] All right, so in last place, if I'm not going to, okay, I'll keep the Pepsi in there, so Pepsi's last.
And then next we're going to go with the fatheads. It just, it's not an Oktoberfest.
It wasn't malty. Didn't have enough body.
it's I don't know it's just I mean like we talked about it, it would be fine at a bar I would enjoy it but I yeah it's it's not what I would expect in Octoberfest so and then I would go with Helltown again I don't know do I have to give you all the reasons I wrote them down, but if you want to, if you don't, don't.

Greg:
[1:14:11] Um, and then it'd be mysterious.

Shannon:
[1:14:14] Okay. It is. Cause I, I, I, I liked it.
I actually, we didn't bring this up and we, I thought about it, but we were onto something else, so I wrote it down, but I did get a hint of caramel in there that we didn't talk about.
I really did like it, but it's up against some good ones. So anyways, next we're going with the Sierra Nevada, which I love.
I really did. I really enjoyed it. I love that sweetness, the bready.
Yeastiness too. Yeastiness, yeah. It's just very balanced.

Jeff:
[1:15:04] The top of the can says, family owned, operated, and argued over.

Shannon:
[1:15:09] Argued over. I wonder what that means. Your family. Yeah. So if I have to keep Alligash in with the Oktoberfest, then I'm gonna bring that one up to the second place.
And that's just because the trogues.
Telling you guys, if you can get your hands on it, You should definitely do it because that is what I am looking for in an Oktoberfest.

Greg:
[1:15:38] Make sure you take a picture.

Shannon:
[1:15:39] Absolutely.

Jeff:
[1:15:41] They just high five in case it doesn't really match, you know, the bearers match.

Shannon:
[1:15:45] Wow.

Greg:
[1:15:46] In case it doesn't, in case the AI takes it out, they just high fived.

Shannon:
[1:15:50] We did.

Greg:
[1:15:51] We did. Take a picture. So we have it.

Shannon:
[1:15:53] And although it's the same, but, you know, yeah, got to have it, got to have it.

Greg:
[1:15:59] So fuck, marry, kill, relatively easy as far as I'm concerned. The trogues is...
Marry because it's it's wonderful.

Shannon:
[1:16:10] You never want to get tired of it. So you do want to marry it.

Greg:
[1:16:13] Yeah Yeah, yeah Fuck I honestly would say the hell town because those caramel notes you're talking about and kill it's going to be well what I'm gonna do is I'm going to you know, come on to both the Pepsi and the Fat heads have them fight in the gladiatorial fight where clearly the fat heads will kill The nitro Pepsi and then I'll just have you release the lion killed.
You'll have it makes it real easy Yeah, I like it All right for me.

Jeff:
[1:16:50] I'm going to marry the trogues I'm gonna fuck the alagash And I'm gonna kill the fat heads Awesome.

Same rankings: Marry Trogues, Fuck Alligash, Kill Fatheads

Shannon:
[1:16:59] Well, we're- Well, it's yeah- We're the same.

Greg:
[1:17:06] Well, it's yeah- We're the same.

Shannon:
[1:17:07] Okay. I mean, I'm marrying Trogs. We're gonna have a menage a trois instead of allagash.

Jeff:
[1:17:11] I'm fucking the shit out of allagash. In this house, polygamy works.

Greg:
[1:17:13] I'm killing fat heads but I'm really, really, really, really killing that Pepsi Nitro.

Shannon:
[1:17:14] We're gonna have a menage a trois Fucking a shit out of our gash in this house polygamy works I'm Killing fat heads, but I'm really really really Killing that Pepsi Nitro Because that shouldn't even be on a shelf anywhere for sale All right, that was episode 513 of craft beer radio.

Jeff:
[1:17:38] Thank you everyone for listening to the show If you're not on our discord go to craft beer radio calm and look for the link to join our discord Cuz that is the fun place where we have all our fun people and we do fun things with them You know, we miss out and being in the fun place. Do you know?

Shannon:
[1:17:54] It's the fun zone. Yeah Fans on fun.

Jeff:
[1:17:58] Yeah, that's going on right the home zone the zombie hot dog beer hot, wait just did a episode on Greg's hot dog beer when he was in town for the world beer cup and uh Chicago style hot dog beer yeah so they're chatting about that right now on our discord I thought it would be a beer made with hot dog water like you get in the well maybe you could make Chicago hot dog beer even better with hot dog water yeah And we got a king gizzard the lizard wizard here on the radio.
Thank you Who was it it was Marinus yes Thank you all.

Greg:
[1:18:43] Bye bye.

Shannon:
[1:18:44] See you next time.