re: meat product recycling
As we move into spring, I'm having to find seasonally appropriate beverages to replace the porters and stouts I've been drinking for most of the last few months. Several recent finds, the first two of which also continue my project of learning more about Belgian-style beers. There's Clipper City's Holy Sheet, described as an Über Abbey Ale. It's a bit over the top, in the way of many American craft beers. I like it, altho maybe not as much as CC's saison ale from last year. Also Belgian, and in a more classic style, is the Allagash Dubbel. I'd put this right up there with Ommegang as the best Belgian-style American craft beers I've tried. Finally, and moving away from Belgium, there's Terrapin's Rye Squared. Like the Holy Sheet, this has an ass-kicking ABV -- it ain't a chugging beer. It definitely is part of the US craft beer "if bigger is better, then biggest is best" style of manic over-hopping (Dogfish Head and Stone are some of the best at that, I think). I've enjoyed the regular Terrapin Rye IPA on tap at Dain's so when one of the guys at Sam's recommended the Rye Squared, I knew I had to check it out. Spendy but worth it.
On a related note: I saw a comment somewhere recently which expressed amazement that people would pay $10 for a sixpack of Rogue. No other context was provided so I don't know if this was: (a) a slap against the quality of Rogue; (b) a get-off-my-lawn moment of surprise at how damn expensive everything is these days; © reverse beer snobbery holding that since a sixer of Bud only costs $5 that it's crazy to pay twice that for a microbrew.
On a completely unrelated note: Tennessee getting stomped last night pretty much wrecked my last good bracket. And, as I type this, Davidson's up 19 on Wisconsin which would finish me. But, hey, go Davidson! If anyone in your pool actually had the gonadal fortitude to pick Davidson into the Elite 8, you oughta just call the damn thing now and give them the money.