Drinking Ales

New Draft Beer Technology

This is some awesome new beer technology.  Thought I’d share.

If you have some awesome beer technology to share, join us at the Pub for Beer Enthusiasts, Beertaps.com Pub.

What is Your Favorite Beer?

I love going on the forums and reading through discussions of people’s favorite beers.  I hardly every hear Budweiser, Coors, Miller or anything normal, which is what you see people “normally” drink.

I always see some exotic beer that they’ve had maybe once.  I’ve also caught some people up in their discussions when I realized they hadn’t even had a taste of the beer they were discussing.  What in the world is that about?

Let’s be honest.  We go to the bar and we get our favorite beer.  We get the one we always drink.  We love the exotic beers that are hard to find and not commonly sold.  We love new tastes and textures.  Of course, we’re up when it comes to trying something we’ve never even heard of before.

But, we have a favorite.  It’s the one at the local store.  It’s the one at the liquor store on the way home.  Do we try new things every once in awhile?  Yes.  But, don’t we normally go for what we know?  Most of the time.

If you disagree, please feel free to comment.

So, I’d like to know what you guys drink.  What is your favorite beer?  Throw us anything, worldwide.  But, I would hope that you’ve drank your “Favorite” beer more than once and that it’s not just an exotic beer you thought would be fun to include in this survey.

Break In The New Bar With Some Home Bar Events

Let’s say that you have just finished putting the final pieces together and your home bar is ready to entertain. But, you don’t want to just have people over. You want to do it in style. These ideas will work whether you are having a bar warming, or if it has been awhile since you have had friends over and you want to do something special for the occasion.

Beer Tasting

I have thrown some generic beer tastings together where my friends each brought what they thought was the best and everyone there gave each beer an honest try. It’s fun. There’s not too much work involved. But, there is a way better way of throwing a beer tasting.

You can either make your own beer or invite someone who does make beer. Let them put their beer on display and make a big thing of it. Have other beers there. But, the one that gets highlighted is the one that was homemade. That’s something that will really put some excitement into the beer tasting and get your friends over in drogues.

Beer Games

Of course, just being able to drink a nice cold beer with the game on in a bar setting is an awesome time of itself. But, add some beer games and you’ve got some real beer enthusiasm. There are plenty of games you can play. Of course, remember to drink responsibly.

The greatest beer game going today is beer pong. Obviously, you can have a professional beer pong table and really make an official game out of it. But, beer pong is just as fun when your friends are creating impossible shots that only experts on their best day can nail. Make sure you have some great surfaces ready. Tops of bar stools work. But, you’ll want blocks, boards, bowls, pipes, sticks and everything else that can contribute to very imaginative shots.

Kangaroo Court

This is a unique idea that I didn’t come up with, but I did incorporate the idea from my military life to my civilian life when I built my first home bar. Kangaroo Court is a fun court setting with judges, plaintiffs and defendants. A plaintiff will put a defendant on the stand and the rest of the people in the room will act as the judge like how a jury decides a case. What cases will they be solving?

Nothing serious. The plaintiff is allowed to bring up anything. The plaintiff can tell everyone in the room about a very embarrassing moment in the defendant’s life. Of course, the defendant gets a chance to speak. But, it’s almost like a day time talk show at this point. It’s hard to get the crowd on your side once they’ve already been turned. And it’s obvious what happens when the defendant loses or even better, if the defendant actually has the ability to turn the jury around and the plaintiff loses. The loser has to drink.

Your friends will always love your bar. You’ll always have good times there. But once in awhile, you just want to do something different and get everyone out of the habits they start to build. Make it an event.

Happy Thanksgiving Ales

This year when we’re drinking your home brew for Thanksgiving…

What?  You’re not making beer for Thanksgiving?  You don’t have a home brew that you make special for Thanksgiving?

Well, how weird is that?

It must not be a tradition everyone shares.  But, see if you can relate to any of these:

• Sitting on the couch and eating Thanksgiving while watching football.
• Same thing…sitting on the recliner with a food tray.
• Saying, “It’s not worth it.  We’re going to a restaurant.”
• I ordered Pizza and Wings one year…

That was the year I had just finished my home bar and I made my first home brew for our New Happy Thanksgiving Tradition. 

I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoys their own traditions, whatever they may be!

A Unique Wine Rack Idea

When I saw this wine rack design the other day, I thought how easy it would be to build one for myself.

But, I like sharing DIYs with others and had to figure out how they could enjoy this unique wine rack design without spending a ton of money on it.

And my mind went to town.  But, I was in a hurry to share with everyone.  I haven’t had time to build one for myself.  So, I wrote a Wine Rack Idea article about how it will work.  If you can follow the blueprint in the article, you can enjoy a unique wine rack that might look like it cost you a pretty penny.  But for those of you who may need clearer instructions and step by step pictures, I would be willing to write a DIY for everyone who wants it.

Let me know, email me at beertaps@aweber.com to receive notification when I get the DIY together.  You’ll get a confirmation message from me, Stan Schubridge, and then you’ll stay up to date.  And yes, you can unsubscribe at any time so that’s fine to stay on the list until you get the DIY.

How To Make Your Home Bar More Bar And Less Home

When you are trying to create a bar in your home, of course you begin with the taps and the handles, mirrors and signs.  You built a bar!  It has to look right.  Right?

But when the bar is in place and you think you have it all, what kind of lame bar serves draft beer in plastic cups?  And I’ll be willing to bet that’s what you have.  Red plastic cups that you bought at the grocery store.  Hmm…all that work and then you tap out at the end.

Well, you can add some specialty glasses so that your friends are drinking in style.  This is where it gets tricky, but you can manage.  You don’t just want to get mugs of any kind.  You need to stock up your cabinets with mugs of all kinds.

Vintage mugs from old fashioned beers add such a touch of class.  Especially when you have friends asking you where you got the mugs.  That’s when you realize saving money on those red plastic cups wasn’t worth it after all.

But, don’t stop there.  You should have Pilsners and Pints, Dimpled Mugs and Retro Pubs.  Get mugs with different logos like Coors, Molson, Blue Moon and Killian.  It’s a blast to make sure that you drink out of the right glass for the right kind of draft.

Logo Beer Glasses

DIY Kegerator – A Beer Keg In Your Refrigerator Or Wherever Else

It’s been a dream for many beer drinkers around the world.  But, putting a keg in an old refrigerator for your apartment, den or garage isn’t that hard to do when you have the right material.

A Kegerator Conversion Kit is all you need and there is something that you may have never thought about, but it’s a surprise and I’ll tell you in a minute.  These conversion kits change any old refrigerator into a kegerator in minutes.  Install the shank and faucet directly in to the door of your refrigerator and hook up the Co2 inside.  You’ll be drinking from your kegerator in no time at all.

But, here’s something that not many people think about.  The Kegerator Conversion Kit can also be used for other home bar designs.  Wall mount it to a closet.  That’s right!  Turn your closet into a kegerator.

All you need to do is install the shank and faucet on the wall the way you would the door of your refrigerator.  Then, grab a large trash can full of ice just like you would for a normal keg party.  Hook up the Co2 inside the closet and you are ready to drink some cold beer with the keg hidden in the closet, fully functional for your party.  Of course, this is really only good for keg parties when you have them.  But, you can try to keep ice in the trash can as you keep swapping out kegs.

As this idea starts to spark the imagination, I want to see Kegerators everywhere!  Garages, Bedrooms, Kitchens, Living Rooms, Bathrooms, through the wall to the Patio outside…etc.

Beertaps has the Kegerator Conversion Kit you need!

Can You Make Money Drinking Beer?

You watch people on television having a great time.  Some of the reality television shows allow their contestants to be viewed while drinking.  Some actors like Norm have made a career out of it.  But, can you get paid to drink beer?

It would be nice to know, wouldn’t it?

I loved watching Tara Reid get drunk on the Wild On… episodes that she hosted and on the Taradise show that had a short run.  You sit back and watch the show thinking, “Man, why can’t I land a gig as sweet as that?”

You get paid to roam around the world, find the best places ever and drink their alcohol to show people at home how fun it is.  That’s the gig of the century.  But, then the thought occurs to you that only blessed people like Tara Reid get gigs like that.

Well, not anymore.  Getting paid to drink is no longer a gig for the beautiful and talented.  It’s a job all of us can have.

It seems that there are plenty of beer companies starting a trend.  They love to pay people to drink their beer and give them feedback.

“Just two nights ago I attended a beer & wine discussion group and for about 1 hour of my time, sampling a few different beers and wines and answering some questions I received $70.” Tim Costello, author of Make Money Drinking Beer.

It does appear that the blessings have been passed on to the rest of us.  So, if you think you can participate in a drinking group where people will be drinking and talking about drinking, the learn more about how to make money drinking beer…

The Ultimate Drunk People Compilation

Garrison Keillor – View of Cincinnati, Love of Beer

Cincinnati Poem

We’re in Cincinnati and it’s good to be here
In a city of pork and a city of beer.
Old beer signs everywhere you walk:
“Good Old” Brucks, Brenner’s XL Pilsener, John Hauck
Barbarossa, King Gambrinus, or Crown.
You eat you some Pork hocks with leeks and garlic cloves, you need beer to wash it down.
Similarly, to go along with a pint of beer, you need more than a pretzel
You need Pork Meatloaf with brown gravy and spaetzle.
A big pork sandwich and something to drink,
Geisbauer, Bierbrauer, Linck.
Nothing chintzy
Here in Cincy.
Like it or not, Cincinnati was not vegetarian.
It went for pork shanks with bread dumplings and a pitcher of Bavarian.
No lemonade, no cranberry juice, no apple cider,
But a big mug of Weber’s, Lackman, Jackson, Mohawk, Gerke, Burger, or Foss-Schneider.
And all of the pig was used, even the snout
To make Bierwurst, Mettwurst, Bratwurst, piled high with sauerkraut.

Beers with distinguished names like Butcher & Weidmann and Windisch-Muhlhauser
To give a sense of dignity to the drunken carouser
City of suds and city of swine,
Some greasy goetta sausage and a glass of Christian Moerlein,
Or Little Kings cream ale

Beer by the bottle, the barrel, the hogshead, and the pail,
Golden brown glasses of beer with nice big heads
And Hudepohl-Schoenling, Cincinnati’s finest, hu-dey “Hu dey think gonna beat them Reds”
It was the national capital of beer.
In 1890, they produced a million barrels a year.
Old breweries along McMicken Avenue on the hill north of Liberty Street,
Making beer out of water, yeast, sugar, plenty of hops, and wheat.
Oh in Cincinnati there was lots to do:
You had a Hudy and a Pork cordon bleu.
Cincinnati was a regular culinary riot.
How sad to be on a diet.
What a terrible loss.
To miss out on the roast pork loin with beer sauce.
And it is politically incorrect
And you may object
To my saying so, but I suspect
Something joyful and boisterous and profane
Was lost when we decided to abstain.
A man sitting down to pork braised, roasted, fried, boiled, battered, with a glass upraised,
A man who is a little fried himself and his eyes are glazed.
That may have been the night he became your daddy
Here in Cincinnati.

_____

If you ever find a place that you want to call home

and you can name off the reasons why,

then you’ll be as lucky as this guy!