KC Beer Blog: The Feeling is Mutual Budweiser.

And let’s set the record straight on beechwood aging once and for all. The only purpose beechwood aging serves is to speed up the lagering process and boost profits. The beechwood draws out yeast and proteins among other things in the beer faster than would naturally occur during lagering. AB even goes through an extensive bleaching process of the beechwood so that it won’t contribute any flavor whatsoever to the beer.

Contributes the flavors of peepee.

Budweiser has been the brewery’s core beer for the last 125 years, but its sales have dropped nearly 70% in the last 25 years.

Good riddance and move over for original Budweiser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser#Name_origin_and_dispute

After Seamus Heaney’s Blackberry Picking

Mid-July, given heavy rain and sun
for a full week, the blackberry wit would call.
At first, just one, a glossy brown bottle
passed others, stout, pilz, IPAs quite a lot.
You drank that first one and its undertone wasn’t too sweet,
unlike thickened wine: which brewer’s blood was in it?
No taste remains upon the tongue and it lusts for
more. The better ones passed up and that hunger
sent us out for milk-stouts, saisons, wits with bite
that brewers crafted and wet grass bleached our boots.
Small head, golden color and barely a fruit-tinged nose
we drank and drank until the bottle was empty,
until its tinkling bottom had been uncovered
to little bubbles, and in the fridge another bottle waited
like a bored soldier. Our noses weren’t peppered
with blackberry, nor pleased with this wit-non/wit.
We craved more berries in the mouth.
And when the tasting was done we thought it bland,
A sub-par brew, cluttering our cache.
Slightly warm, the brew was blah too. Out of the fridge
the fruit still vaporous, the wit no more bold.
I almost felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
that this the lovely idea couldn’t decide what it was.
With each wit I hope Sam Adams succeeds, I’m concerned they will not.

After The Beatles’ Happiness is a Warm Gun

It’s not a beer that misses much
Do do do do do do, oh, yeah

It’s well acquainted
With the touch of my eager hand
Like a king on a winning reign
The beer in the glass with the
Evergrowing head on its straw body

Bubbling with its fizz
While its spices are busy working overtime
A grand impression upon my taste buds
Which I swirl and sniff and hold up to the light

I need a drink; this beer’s going down
Down to the belly that is growing round
I need a drink; this beer’s going down

Blvd Brewco brewed the one
Blvd Brewco brewed the one
Blvd Brewco brewed the one
Blvd Brewco brewed the one
Blvd Brewco brewed the one
Blvd Brewco brewed the one

Happiness is a cool ZŌN
(Gulp gulp, swig swig)
Happiness is a cool ZŌN mama
(Gulp gulp, swig swig)
When I drink you on my porch
(Oh yeah)
And I get my fill of your perfection
(Ooo, oh yeah)
I know nobody can do me no harm
(Ooo, oh yeah)

Because happiness is a cool ZŌN mama
(Gulp gulp, swig swig)
Happiness is a cool ZŌN, yes it is
(Gulp gulp, swig swig)
Happiness is a cool, yes it is, ZŌN
(Happiness, gulp gulp, swig swig)
Well, don’t you know that happiness is a cool ZŌN mama
(Happiness is a cool ZŌN yeah)

After Robert Louis Stevenson’s Stout Marches Lead to Certain Ends

STOUT beer leads to certain ends,
I sought no Holy Brew, my friends –
That style should find us every day
Some stoutening stoutness is its way.

This beer pours dark from east to west,
Malted aromatics stretches nose then rests.
The head has crowned – pint glass, not a yard.
Chestnut in color, this won’t be too hard.

We two are friendly friends, me and this beer
The other STL brewery snores far and near.
So wretchedly they brew their make,
Yet Schlafly begs to be the one you take!

– Standard stout! this is no A+ way,
A thousand other stouts wait for a day;
With us, they march in from left and right,
A thousand bottled black golds seek the light.

After Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Panther

This vision, from the constantly pouring bottle,
has grown so thickly golden that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to me there are
a thousand Hefes and in front of them all, Paulaner’s.

As it fills my pint glass, over and over,
the rising of a pleasant, aromatic, puffy head
is like a ritual dance around the glass lip
in which a mighty thirst will soon partake.

Time after time, the mouthfeel of the brew
engages, subtly—. A perfect taste enters in,
rushes down over tested, tried taste buds,
wins over my heart and my mind.

After Archibald MacLeish’s The End of the World

Quite expectedly, as Unibroue
The beautiful brew co has brewed
A tripel between great and second-to-none,
And Jay the taster was engaged in drinking
The beer of Fin Du Monde while the bottle
Emptied, and Sarah was about to sip
In no-time watching Jay tilt his glass
Quite unexpectedly to view muted, liquid gold:

And there, there within, there, there under fragrant head
Those thousands of beer cells, that carbed mouthfeel,
There in the hazy brew, the nose, the flavor,
There with a lemon pepper across cloved orange,
There in the sudden swallow the high alcohol
It’s everything, everything, everything — everything and all.

After Wang Xiaoni’s White Moon

The midnight moon exposes every fail.

I smell no hints of spice.
All the Witbier’s flavors
are missing like Charlie Horman.
The beer is a no.

No single drink
can make this seem a Wit.
I lift my tongue to swirl beer
hope for hints of citrus
until I forget to swallow.

White Ale’s lasting impression
is as an unnecessary remake of Summer Ale.
The beer lands in my belly
leaving my wanting mouth.