Miller Highlife Sausages or Plinywurst?

All summer Hillshire Farms has been assailing unsuspecting craft beer lovers with commercials for their brats boiled in Miller High Life. What in the world is a hungry craft beer obsessed individual to do? The answer, seek out quality links made from the finest heirloom pork and imbued with, you guessed it, craft beer.

At Northern California’s beloved temple of pork the Fatted Calf you can buy craft beer links made with everything from a seasonal brew by 21 Amendment to Russian River Brewing Company’s highly-coveted Pliny the Elder. According to Fatted Calf owner, Taylor Boetticher, they switch the type beer up weekly and only use heritage pork from either Hudson Ranch or Heritage Foods USA, which makes for one amazing craft sausage.

You can find Fatted Calf Craft Beer Links at the following locations:

• The Oxbow Public Market, 644c First Street Napa
• Berkeley Saturday Farmer’s Market, Center Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street
• Ferry Plaza Saturday Farmer’s Market, 1 Ferry Building
• Coming soon to Hayes Valley.

Check out Fatted Calf on Facebook.

All through September and October, the Washington State Wine Commission has organized “World-Class Wine in Your Own Backyard” promotion, their first ever, targeting Washingtonians.  The promotion features over 70 Washington restaurants, more than 50 winery tasting rooms and 9 retail stores offering up sweet deals on WA Wines such at 50% off bottles of wines. Continue Reading »

In theory, if something is fermentable, you can make booze out of it. Things high in sugar content happen to be excellent candidates for distilling. Corn, potatoes, cane sugar — all great foundations for spirits.

And what about urine? Apparently so…

For the life of me, I cannot even begin to understand the thought process behind distilling human pee. Who even comes up with this idea, let alone executes it? And if that wasn’t hard enough to contemplate, the fact that people have actually tasted such a product completely blows my mind.

Let me explain. There is a man, a very unique man, by the name of James Gilpin, who has decided to focused his research and design on the future of health care and the implementation of new biomedical technologies. Mr. Gilpin is particularly preoccupied with diabetes, as he himself is a type 1 diabetic. During his research, Mr. Gilpin observed that large amounts of sugar are excreted on a daily basis by type-two diabetic patients, especially in the urine of the elderly. Continue Reading »

This is a great example of why the Internet is awesome. If it was not for the fine folks at Chow.com, I might never have known about what quite possibly might be the most amazing “soda pop shop” in the world!

Chow.om recently released an insightful and inspirational video featuring John Nese, the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop. Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles, CA carries over 450 different sodas in glass bottles, old-fashioned candies that people have forgotten about and over 500 different beers from around the world. And everything but the beer is available for purchase online.

In the video, John Nese discusses the history of Galco’s Pop Stop, glass bottles, corn syrup vs. cane sugar, diet sodas, big business, the CRV, and addresses the question: What kind of soda would you make?

“What I would like to see is a rootbeer-cola. There was actually a company about a hundred years ago called ‘Roobeer Cola’ — and it was a cross between a rootbeer and a cola. And I’m just fascinated with that. Or I’d like to see a pineapple-cream. I just think that is would be delicious and I’ve been trying to get someone to make it. So, we’ll see.” — John Nese.

Check it out! Continue Reading »

The kids over at Geekologie always seem to be in the know about new, crazy happenings in the fine beverage industry. Case and point: they recently announce that Jones Soda is planning to release a bacon flavored soda and a pizza flavored soda.

Might sound outlandish, but considering its track record with odd flavors such as “Turkey & Gravy”, “Green Bean Casserole”, and “Tofurky & Gravy”, these flavors really aren’t that extreme. Especially with the recent bacon craze sweeping across just about every industry. Bacon vodka, bacon jelly beans, bacon toothpicks, bacon beers, etc. — you name it, and there is probably a bacon version available. Continue Reading »

The first-ever Virtual Colorado Beer Tasting will take place on Thursday, September 9th. You might be asking yourself, what exactly happens during a virtual beer tasting? Well, for this particular event, social media savvy beer lovers across the country will join together to drink Colorado beers, and share their thoughts via Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet platforms.

The virtual tasting is organized by Zephyr Adventures, planner of the upcoming Beer Bloggers Conference scheduled for November 5-7 in Boulder. “Our goal is to raise awareness of the conference and also of the many great Colorado beers.” — Allan Wright, President of Zephyr Adventures and native Coloradan. Continue Reading »

I can’t really explain what is going on in this photo, but all I can say is that I want whatever they are drinking. And as far as I can tell, they are chugging Red Bull like its going out of style.

Technically, the event is over. But I guarantee that if Mutineer Chief Energyologist, Jeff Dorenbush, got wind of Red Bull’s Flugtag, he would have been all over this action-packed, super intense, energy drink-enforced “flying” experience. If given the proper preparation time, Jeff probably would have crafted his own wings from back copies of Mutineer Magazine sprinkled with fairy dust and rubbed with Kryptonite… with one hand holding a Red Bull the entire time.

This past Labor Day, Red Bull went all out for its annual “Red Bull Flugtag” in Philadelphia. “Red Bull Flugtag, which means “flying day” in German, is a competition that dares both the brave and the brainy to design, build and pilot homemade flying machines off a 30-foot high ramp in hopes of achieving human-powered flight.” Continue Reading »

The following video discusses the delicate subject of micro distilleries and home distilling. It is no secret that home beer brewing has been legal since the 1970’s. But oddly enough, home distilling is still illegal and punishable by hefty fines and prison sentences.

Authors and moonshine experts, Matthew Rowley and Max Watman, make appearances to discuss the legal ramifications and the advantages of home distilling. The reason home distilling is still illegal points simply to the Prohibition Era issues, mostly regarding taxability of spirits.

Just think of the greatness that has come out in the craft beer movement and all the unique flavors, processes and styles born out of home brewing experimentation. We’re seeing more micro distilleries open across the United States each year. Although the process is costly and complicated, the end result is some extremely nice spirits that impart flavors which are typically missed in commercially distilled liquors. Continue Reading »