Raise that pinky finger, Pretentious Beer Glass Company

Beer glasses in sets called The Pompous Set or The Snobby Set, from the Pretentious Beer Glass Company.

Owner, artist, and designer Matthew Cummings explains,

The PBGC originated from a small drinking club at the Mellwood Arts Center in Louisville, KY. Each Friday afternoon, we would take off work early to sit in the courtyard and drink great craft beer. After a couple too many (all good ideas start this way, right?) the club decided that I should make beer glasses for everyone.

Cummings spent months perfecting his designs before launching his product line and is now working 7 days a week to keep up with orders as he still runs his shop largely on his own. He maintains the pretentious tone throughout the site, including recommended beer pairings with each glass. Descriptions about which types of beer each glass can get to “really sing,” how they can enhance the “aromatic qualities,” or ways in which “you can smell the bouquet of both beers” will either leave you feeling right at home or have you reaching for a Bud Light.

See some of Cummings’ creations below and visit his Etsy page to order one (or a set) for yourself…

The complete “Pretentious Set”

 

Sauvin Glass

Dual Beer Glass

Ale Glass

Malty Beer Glass

Aromatic Beer Glass

Imperial Beer Glass

Subtle Beer Glass

Hoppy Beer Glass

(via Neatorama)

Beer and Bacon: “When Pigs Fly”

Philly.com
POSTED: FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 2014, 12:22 PM
David and Jack Cunicelli have introduced all-natural, house-cured and smoked, thick-cut bacon at their 320 Market Café (713 Chester Rd., Swarthmore)

And what goes better with bacon than beer.

The Cunicellis have launched a beer and bacon flight called “When Pigs Fly” that is available for $12 through April.

You get a sampling of each.

Their tasting notes:

Saison + Balsamic, featuring Stillwater Classique (4.5% ABV): Drizzled with a house-made balsamic reduction, the bacon in this pairing takes you back to the pasture, where farmers historically ended their days with a light and refreshing Saison.

Belgian Tripel + Blood Orange, featuring Allagash Tripel (9.0 ABV): Salty and sweet combine in this pairing, where the bright citrus crispness of blood orange holds its own against savory bacon as the honey notes of a Belgian-style Tripel tie everything together.

Stout + Dark Chocolate, featuring Founder’s Breakfast Stout (8.3% ABV): A thick, roasty stout provides a perfect complement for smooth and dense dark chocolate, while the bacon’s smoky crunch intensifies the richness of the stout and the chocolate.

Bleu Cheese + Bacon, featuring Bell’s Two Hearted Ale (7.0% ABV): A creamy gorgonzola spread amplifies the bacon’s satisfying, salt-cured richness while simultaneously coaxing a subtle sweetness from this traditionally bitter style of beer.

The beer pairing and the bacon sampling are available separately for $8 apiece, for beer lovers who don’t eat bacon or bacon lovers who don’t drink beer.

 

Beer taps installed in Colorado governor’s mansion

DENVER (AP) — Colorado’s governor used to brew beer for a living, and now he has new beer taps in his home.

State officials announced Friday that private donors have paid for a new “draft beer system” in the governor’s mansion.

The mansion now has three taps that will feature changing Colorado-made brews.

The Colorado Craft Brewers Guild helped pay for the taps, along with the Governor’s Mansion Preservation Fund. The price of the taps was not disclosed.

Gov. John Hickenlooper co-founded a downtown Denver brewpub in the late 1980s and frequently espouses his love for Colorado beers.

“It just seemed appropriate,” said Gov. John Hickenlooper, a former brewer who founded the Wynkoop Brewing Company in LoDo back when downtown was a ghost town and craft beer wasn’t anything close to the $800 million a year industry it’s become with 232 federally licensed breweries and brewpubs in Colorado.
“If you’d have told me we’d one day have 235 breweries, I’d have laughed,” Hickenlooper told FOX31 Denver Thursday. “I think it’s a symbol of Colorado; I think it stands for freedom, having a lot of choices.
“The mansion is another symbol of Colorado. It’s where we entertain. It’s where we kind of show off Colorado, and beer has become a big part of what Colorado is.”
Not surprisingly, a Wynkoop beer, Silverback Pale Ale, was the first small batch keg tapped at the mansion on Thursday; and the plan is to rotate unique small batch brews from breweries all across the state.
“We’re going to try and rotate all the different breweries, all the different beer,” Hickenlooper said. “So it becomes a showcase for the quality of Colorado.”
The taps will be ready in time for a party at the mansion Friday night to kick off Colorado Craft Beer Week, a celebration of an industry that now employs around 5,000 Coloradans.
“With more than 200 different breweries in Colorado, we’re probably brewing several thousand beers in a year,” said Steve Kurowski with the Colorado Brewers Guild. “These are some of the freshest, some of the most world-class beers being brewed around; to have these on showcase at the mansion is very exciting for our industry.
“They will create a conversation; it’ll be very unique every time there’s an event here and these beers are being poured.”
The industry has grown steadily since the first brewpub was founded in 1979; but the growth is really frothing of late, with 53 new small breweries licensed just last year.
“That’s one new brewery opening up every week,” Kurowski said. “It’s just getting bigger and better every single day.”
Installing the taps inside the mansion’s historic first-floor parlor, already home to a bar and photographs of every governor in Colorado history, wasn’t a done on a whim but with months of planning and consideration for preserving the integrity — structural and historical — of the mansion itself.
But it wasn’t as difficult as some staffers thought it might have been.
“We were lucky,” said Kevin Patterson, Hickenlooper’s deputy chief of staff. “The drain worked extremely well; we were able to just run [the tap line] straight up from the basement. We only had to add a little bit of electrical power for the refrigeration unit downstairs.”
Patterson, who’s been involved with this project from the start, says the former brewpub founder governor hasn’t left much to chance, wanting to sign off on the pint glasses and the pours.
Hickenlooper, who’s been criticized by GOP rivals heading into his reelection year as a “state bartender”, isn’t worried about the new craft beer offerings at the mansion, being tapped now just a few months into Colorado’s recreational marijuana experiment, impacting his own fortunes or the state’s.
“Craft beer doesn’t fit into that notion with the legalization of marijuana that Colorado is a party state,” said Hickenlooper. “If you’re going to get drunk, you’re not drinking craft beer.
“Craft beer is really about drinking less and partying less to some extent, but really enjoying it more. It’s about the flavor and bouquet of the beer.”

Coffee and Beer

 

Brandon Mannino pours a coffee-beer cocktail at Uppers and Downers. (Julie Verive / October 22, 2013)

By John Verive at Los Angeles Times

Coffee finds its way into a lot of beer, and the natural affinity was explored at Uppers and Downers, a weekend event that brought together brewers and coffee roasters at Intelligentsia Coffee’s Pasadena outpost, and which culminated in coffee and beer coming together in novel and delicious ways.

Fans of both brewed beverages filled the Colorado Boulevard coffee shop, which also serves beer and wine, to sample a bevy of coffee beers, snack on luscious charcuterie from Lindy & Grundy, and learn the stories behind the beer from the brewers and roasters themselves.

Read More

 

Bathroom Blowjobs

The euphonium is a valved instrument; nearly all current models are piston valved, though rotary valved models do exist. As a tenor/baritone-voiced brass instrument, the euphonium traces its ancestry to the ophicleide and ultimately back to the serpent.

Professional models have three top-action valves, played with the first three fingers of the right hand. Though the euphonium’s fingerings are no different from those of the trumpet or tuba, beginning euphoniumists will likely experience significant problems with intonation, response, and range compared to other beginning players.

A person who plays the euphonium is sometimes called a euphoniumist, euphophonist, or a euphonist, while British players often colloquially refer to themselves as euphists, oreuphologists. Similarly, the instrument itself is often referred to as eupho or euph.

This Week in Bushwick: Whiskey for Breakfast

Skytown Cafe have added a full espresso bar, “The Counter,” to their operation, in collaboration with the team at Tar Pit Cafe and Ceci Cela baked goods. And, to celebrate, they’ve rolled out “A Shot & A Shot,” which is more or less exactly what it sounds like: a free shot of espresso and a free shot whiskey, available between 8am and 9am every day this week. “Limit one per customer, because anything more would be philistinic,” the owners note.

Co-owner Jeff Pan also explained via email, “Various unaccredited health experts have conclusively agreed that with its low carbohydrate content and zero fat, whiskey fits most, if not all, of the criteria for food consumption in a balanced, healthy diet.” Which is not necessarily untrue, we think? Regardless, you now know where to get your free morning whiskey (and coffee) this week. Do with this information what you will.

Bartender Reveals The Truth About Working For A Dive Bar In Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The Abby Bar is the Shangri-La of freedom. No managers, you’re in charge, no doorman. You’ve got to bust your asses, but you’re in charge. The only way you get a job at the Abby Bar is by drinking there. Alcohol reveals your personality, and the bartender is always watching. I was a regular there, talking about how much I didn’t like my job, and one day, this bartender Joe Lazzari, was like, do you want a job? I was the first person hired there in about three years.

“there’s no security, no insurance, you can basically sleep with anyone you want” — and that it’s nearly impossible to escape the environment once you’ve gotten wrapped up in it

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/williamsburg-abbey-bar-bartender-2012-5#ixzz1uTqtqtTs

The Drunkest Bartender In New York

Via The New York Observer 

Frank Mortagua of Nancy Whiskey

“He’s either at this side of the bar or the other,” said Bob Cendella, a painter who has immortalized Mr. Mortagua—and Nancy Whiskey’s loyal fanbase of blue collar workers and bohemians— in two murals that hang on the bar’s walls.

Whatever side of the bar he is on, Mr. Mortagua will still be drinking with you.

Frank, 53, was born the son of Portugese immigrants and raised on 6th Avenue and Broome, what he says was once called “The Lower West Side.”

He said he worked just about every kind of job, from a delivery boy for a laundry shop to a motorcycle messenger and a plumber.

“I delivered Bob Dylan his clean clothes,” he boasted. Read more…

Lakeside Lounge, the Alphabet City Hangout, To Close

The East Village must be getting used to all these closings by now. First, it was Mars Bars on East First Street; then Banjo Jim’s on East Ninth Street; and, now, the Lakeside Lounge on Avenue B will see its doors close for good. In an e-mail message to Runnin’ Scared, co-owner Eric Ambel confirmed that, “after 16 years on Avenue B, our last night will be April 30.” What a shame.

In 1997, just as Alphabet City was recovering from a decade of turmoil and crime, Jim Marshall and Eric Ambel opened the Lounge right next door to the now-closed Life Cafe on 10th and B. It was a place where “the stories you’ve heard [about it] are most certainly true,” according to its website.

Known for its local musical acts and jukebox, the Lounge soon joined the ranks of the East Village underground rock scene, giving a home to groups like Spanking Charlene and Tom Clark & the High Action Boys. It didn’t pay the bands or charge a cover; it was a symbiotic relationship where the bands got airtime and the bar goers were entertained for the night.

Unfortunately, with a real estate market that now averages $3,000 a month for a two bedroom window-less apartment, this business structure of cheap drinks and basically free acts was not enough for the bar to make ends meet.

The acts will continue to play until the end of the month, with Ambel’s band playing the closing night. Stop by the Lounge before then to see what the East Village is really all about.

A Postmodern Elks Club Serving Some of the World’s Best Beer

From the parking lot the convenience store looks like any other 7-Eleven knock-off: A freezer that reads I-C-E hums out front. A lottery sign in the window flashes this week’s Powerball pipe dream. Open the door: See the racks crammed with Twinkies and Cheetos and lip balm and aspirin and fishing magazines and single rolls of toilet paper. Behind the register are Swisher Sweets and Camels, and the Korean shop owner who will ring it all up for you.

This convenience store may be the oddest place in North America to enjoy some of the best beers around — a quirky testament to Seattle’s redoubled passion for the frothy stuff. Long a good microbrew town, the city that birthed Redhook in 1981 has undergone a craft-beer Renaissance in the last few years. Today some 30 breweries call the Greater Seattle area home, and with a raft of newer taprooms pouring the best stuff from here and around the world, residents of the Emerald City are drowning in great draughts. Read more…