Dan Conley

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”

— Abraham Lincoln

He may have suspended habeas corpus, but he sure had a way with words.

The issue, as I see it, is that the people aren’t getting ‘the real facts.’ What they’re being given is presented as truth and as such they take it. I’m a firm disbeliever in the whole ‘liberal media’ nonsense, but I do wholeheartedly believe that we as a nation are being done a disservice by neutered journalism.

Which is, I suppose, where the beer comes in.

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If there are two things I love, it’s How I Met Your Mother and beer.

Allow me to rephrase before I get smacked when I get home: if there are two things I love besides my wife, it’s How I Met Your Mother and beer.

So during last night’s episode, involving the best burger in NYC, Elizabeth declared that she wanted a burger. Immediately. I wasn’t wearing pants at the time (which was also covered in the episode, giving me yet another reason to love it) and so I promised that we’d go out to the place that had the best burger tonight. Then I set out to find where it was we were going.

Libraryman to the rescue!

The winner, by a hair, as far as I can tell is Grover’s. It gets the Yahoo local vote, one from a local blogger, something called Yelp, foodry.com and — most importantly for someone concerned with authority — the immediate vote of my boss. The issue is that it’s about half an hour from our house and has a tendency to be packed: thinking back, we tried to go here once but gave up when the place was so full we had trouble even getting our name on the board. We’ll need to check it out, but not tonight (especially because I have to be done in time to film something for Beer-O-Vision). Also, for the record, it’s cash only (which isn’t a mark against it, but is good to know going in).

Coming in second, depending on who you ask, is Sterling Place. We love Sterling Place: great food, great beer, down the street from us. As such, it was nice to see it getting recognition as the best from e:strip, Buffalo Homecoming, Buffalo Rising, Buffalo Spree and Bill Rapaport’s Restaurant Guide (with a review for Grover’s saying that Sterling is better). I’ve gotten a burger here once, but generally we come for the amazing fish fry on Fridays. Looks like we need to reconsider our orders, or at least go on non-Fridays. Also cash only, and the burgers can take up to 90 minutes depending on their crowd, but they’re very up front with both. Have another beer while you wait.

Third place came Vizzi’s, which is also fairly close. Though it won the top spot from the Buffalo News (the article itself doesn’t seem to be available, unless you have access to Lexis-Nexis like I do), my visit was marred by their poor beer selection (and from a bar, no less!). A waitress should never say ‘Tell me what you want and I’ll tell you if we have it’ unless the list is long and/or esoteric, and as Vizzi’s highlights are Sam Adams and Yuengling (in bottles; the best draft selection they have is Labatt’s)… the burger was good, at least. Cole’s also got quite a few mentions (including another from Yelp), and I’ve been meaning to check out their beer selection, but that will have to wait for another time.

I feel like a fool for not having realized that one of the city’s best burgers is sitting in the same kitchen next to our favorite fish fry, but there you have it! We’ll be heading to Sterling Place tonight, but will have to choose a weekday we aren’t busy to take the trip to Grover’s and finally see what the fuss is about.

It’s also worth noting that the locals on Twitter were absolutely useless in the compilation of this data.

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I know what you’re thinking:

Dan, you post too much!

I know, right? Well, because my activity on this site is so fast and furious, I thought I’d spread it out more. I’m now writing on two other sites. I never claimed to have good judgment…

Gaming Shenanigans is a new site being run by my future-brother-in-law-in-law Dave and me (the same due that’s been doing The Riot for over two years now). We’ve branched out and want to talk about all sorts of games. Board games, card games, video games, games of tag, you name it. As we’re just getting started, the site may be a little sparse, but bear with us. I think it’s got the potential to be a really cool place for obscure things… though I suppose that’s obvious. ‘This site sucks!’ isn’t really something I’d be thinking as I dedicated time to writing on it, would it?

Beer O Vision, on the other hand, has been around for quite time. Ethan knows a hell of a lot more about beer than I do, and is a much more experienced brewer, so collaborating with him will be a great learning experience. He’s also the mastermind doing the planning for the Buffalo Homebrewing Collective, which looks to be a very cool idea. I’m not altogether sure what I’ll be writing about for BOV, but that’s part of the challenge, isn’t it?

Now then, if tiny decided to throw another Blog War at me, I’d be thoroughly hosed.

(side note: I’m giving up and getting ecto; hopefully it will be the last you’ll have to hear about it)

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In talking with my boss yesterday about brewing in Buffalo, she reminded me that the Erie County website has a map of Buffalo from 1894. You can click on the red numebrs in each section to zoom in, and there’s a surprising amount of detail provided: the type of building, number of floors, business name, etc. I think I was most surprised that the city has been essentially unchanged in the past 114 years… there’s just so much more stuff! My street had one house on it, and my mom’s had none. Some street names are different, and some had alternate names (Colvin was also ‘Niagara Falls Boulevard’? Really?)

To keep this slightly brewery related, we followed some of the directions on Peter Jablonski’s Edifices of Buffalo Breweries and found quite a few on Plate 34 (a little over halfway down on the lefthand side, by Washington and Burton).

(Don’t care about Buffalo? St Louis has a similar map from 1875)

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There’s a post or two itself in the train of thought of how I get here, but for now just accept that we’ve arrived.

I’ve recently started reading Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. I really should have started when I was linked to his post on whether Kolsch was an ale, but for some reason I didn’t add it to my Bloglines section (creating the ‘Beer/Brewing’ category) until Ethan recommended it.

It’s great reading if you’re interested in some of the aspects of brewing that most people would consider dry. He has tables of historical original gravity comparisons! Who would be interested in that?

Oh, right. Me.

I realized that, while I want to get better at brewing, I also just have come to love beer. As I have a bachelors degree in history, I also sort of like reading about the history of things… why not combine the two? We went to Barnes and Noble tonight and I figured I would pick up a book on something beer related: the history of brewing in the US, maybe something a little farther back, European, Belgian, German, whatever.

Except that Barnes and Noble doesn’t have any of that in stock, with the exception of Ambitious Brew, which seems a little more… mainstream? Than I’d like. I know stuff is out there, though, so when we got home I left Elizabeth to enjoy her new Nora Roberts books while I looked around. From SUABP I found AbeBooks; it didn’t have anything I needed, but it seems like it could be useful for the future.

Well, what would I specifically be interested in? Buffalo seems like it could have a nice brewing history… and a quick Google reveals that I was right. There’s an entire book about the city’s brewing history, Rushing the Growler. It’s out of print, but parts of it are available online. ‘Crap,’ I said. ‘How am I going to get it? Oh right, I’m a librarian.’ Luckily, the central branch has three copies. Hopefull I’ll get to read it soon… and maybe they have more on the subject!

One final link that I need to look at more: Buffalonet’s brewing ‘unindexed picture archive.’ There doesn’t appear to be much else to the Buffalonet brewing site, but the old beer ads and photos could contain some nifty gems.

I think I have a new sub-obsession.

Edit: In case anyone is interested, I’ve set up a del.icio.us feed of links I’ve found about brewing history in Buffalo. Most of the links seem to be fairly old (linking to pages that no longer exist, in some cases), and as this post is on the second page of Google for ‘buffalo beer brewing history’ half an hour after it was written, it appears that there isn’t much, at least online.

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• The alt is in bottles, havign trouble carbonating because Buffalo was (until this weekend) stubbornly refusing to realize that it is May and should be warm
• The American pale ale, my first all grain, is in secondary and I should probably bottle it early next week. This means I should find some bottles…
• On Monday I made a batch of cider (not as strong as the first applehol, which was 10.5%) and mead. The cider has been fermenting like there’s no tomorrow and the mead has yet to bubble

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I think I’m sort of unofficially naming the altbier that we bottled* on Tuesday ‘the secret alt’ — I have to specificy that a beer I made has an unofficial name? I hope you see the depths of my self importance — because in stark contrast to the porter and raspberry wheat that I brewed last summer, I never blogged about it. Onoes! However will the internets (all seven of them) know what I’m doing?

It was my first partial mash, and I again got it as a kit from Niagara Traditions (they were very nice, by the way, and made one for me fresh because they were out). I wanted to get back into the swing of things before I made my own partial mash recipes, got one from Homebrewtalk, etc. Well, I got back into the swing of things. By saying ‘to hell with partial mashes, I’m going all grain!’ My theory was that I can get the equipment to mash and do it halfassed, or I could go all the way.

So, that lead to converting a 10 gallon Rubbermaid cooler ala FlyGuy, buying a turkey fryer (I suppose at some point I could also fry turkeys), getting 50 feet of copper tubing at the much cheaper CopperTubingSales.com… this Saturday it’s on, and starting around 7 am (which in reality will probably be 8:30 at the earliest) I’ll be starting up my first batch, five gallons of Bee Cave Brewery’s Haus Ale (ie an American Pale Ale). Mostly because I can, I’ve decided that in all likelihood I’m also going to be broadcasting the event live on Mogulus (if you visit that link before Saturday it will be extremely boring, as opposed to the only ‘very boring’ that 60 minutes of a Rubbermaid cooler sitting there will be).

Also, before I head out, I have to give a ton of thanks to Ethan and the rest of the Niagara Association of Homebrewers, as they’ve been incredibly helpful and friendly. The Amber Waves of Grain banquet seems like it’s going to be a rollickin’ good time (as though an event with a s’mores bar could not be!)

* Elizabeth filled them all and then was capping the second half (she’s better at bottling than I am, which means I need to start kegging immediately for my ego’s sake) when all of a sudden I heard breaking glass. She pushed the capper down (see fig. 1) and apparently used so much force that the top of the bottle was crushed instantly. Don’t mess with her.

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(via icanhascheezburger)

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I’m doing my best to, finally, get back into — very into — beer. Tomorrow I’ll be stopping into Niagara Tradition, though I can’t decide if I should get an extract kit to get back on the horse or jump straight into partial mash. We’ll see, I suppose.

So, in preparation, I headed to the closest Consumer’s Beverage in the hopes of getting a shiny new growler full of whatever looked tasty at the time. When I got there, though, I realized that unlike the Village Beer Merchant‘s $2.98 growlers, Consumer’s were $20*. Um, I’ll take a six pack please.

After wandering around for a bit I finally found a nice balance between something that looked good, that I thought would be good that night, and that wasn’t too expensive. I settled on Dogfish Head’s Raison D’etre, ‘A deep mahogany ale brewed with Belgian beer sugars, green raisins & a sense of purpose.’ You’re telling me I can drink a play on words? To the check out counter!

When I got home from the gym (to partake in my standard late night yogurt/apple eating, Daily Show/Colbert Report viewing and beer drinking) I took out a bottle and realized that I had no idea what kind of glass to put it in. I settled on a pint glass, but after smelling its spicy/fruity aroma and realizing it said ‘Belgian’ on the bottle I decided I should probably have used something else. The first sip, which was even spicier than it smelled, confirmed that I had screwed up. This tasted like something that belonged in a snifter.

Additionally, it tasted like something that was much more alcoholic than a standard beer. A quick re-check of the bottle revealed that yes, it was 8% abv. A check of the Dogfish Head’s website confirmed that, also yes, it should ideally be poured into a ‘goblet or snifter.’ It was nice to see that, while I’m still learning, I can still get a few things right when flying blind.

So, while not at all what I was expecting (maybe some sort of slightly fruity ale?), the Raison D’Etre was still very enjoyable. It’s not something you chug down: it definitely demands your attention. Even so, as something to savor at night (rather than drinking absent-mindedly), it does a damn good job. I’ll be enjoying the remaining five bottles, that’s for sure.

* In all fairness, I think it’s because the VBM’s are clear and Consumer’s were the brown flip-tops; the same thing at Niagara Tradition is actually $25

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I bit the bullet and downloaded ecto. By the time the 21 day free trial is up I’ll either have the required $18 or be able to say ‘eh, it’s not that great.’

So far I like that you can add and remove categories from the editor (another thing Deepest Sender doesn’t do). Let’s see how it handles images by talking about Beamish, shall we?

Now, of course, I have to deal with Beast Blog’s only real downside: a really, really thin content box. I could fix it easily enough, of course, but that would take more effort than I’m liable to include

I haven’t had Guinness in a while, so I can’t compare directly, but Beamish is certainly a stout. (Damn, why don’t I just hand myself that BJCP certification now?) I think I’m more of a fan of porters, at least over Irish Stouts, because they have ‘dark’ and ‘bitter’ down but — in my horribly inexpert opinion — don’t have as much in the flavor department. Of course not all stouts are Irish, and I’ll drink it if you give it to me.

Beamish cans also have the nitrogen widget that Guinness bottles do, though Beamish advises that I pour ‘in one smooth motion’ (paraphrased) while I believe Guinness says ‘drink straight from the bottle.’ I haven’t bought it since I started using glassware, so I’m not sure if Guinness pours well.

Not being an expert on the style, there’s really not much I can say. Again, this post was mostly an excuse to use ecto’s Flickr integration. I have a problem with Guinness’ popularity, though — I consider it a brand more than a beer — and as such my counter-culture tendencies, or at least my pretensions, mean that if given the choice I’d probably go with Beamish.

Rating: 4 stars out of my ass

(see what I did there?)

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