Archive for category Rants
Quickie Beer Review – Glutaner
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Beer Tasting, Rants on July 11, 2010
I need to get this one down quickly while its still fresh in my head. I have never had a Gluten-free beer before and after drinking this German-made disaster I will probably never drink one again.
Where to start… Well when I poured it the first thing I thought of was burning plastic in a fire pit. The flavours are far worse, tasting synthetic and bitter. If you have ever eaten the brocolli-like flower from a raw rapini plant, you may understand what this flavour is like. The mouth-feel seals the deal, being grainy, thick and very unpleasant.
Apparently I need to read the labels before buying a beer, because this ‘beer’ actually contains nothing beer about it. Its base is made from some kind of flower called Sorghum, which is apparently used in the production of alcoholic beverages.
How this beer passed the German Beer Purity Laws beats me. Odds are this is exclusively sold as an export because this would never be allowed on the shelf there.
Beer Review – Whitstable Bay Organic Ale
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Beer Tasting, Hiking, Photography, Rants on June 29, 2010
Name: Whitstable Bay Organic Ale
Origin: England
Style: Ale (4.5%)
Appearance: This is a crystal clear, amber colour. Head is medium, head retention is low.
Taste: The smell is citrus, mainly grapefruits. There are some initial notes of crackers on the first taste, but the beer is heavily bitter and citrusy so they are quickly washed out. There is also something of a rice-like flavour to this beer. The beer finishes with a lingering bitter citrus flavour.
Mouth Feel: Due to the strong bitterness of this ale, its leans towards a sharper mouth feel. Not filling and a medium body.
Final Thoughts (3 out of 5): Its a fine ale, but I still stand by my “organic is bull-shit” stance. The lack of standards and controls for ‘certified organic’ products sullies the whole market. Any company can slap ‘organic’ onto a fruit and no one is the wiser.
You want an organic fruit? Walk into the fucking forest, find a berry bush and pick it yourself. You are not going to find it in a store. Just don’t get killed by the beer who is also enjoying those organic berries.
Organic fruits can be found here. Somewhere...
Beer Review – Random Old Guy’s Friends Homebrew
Posted by bradinator in Beer, Beer Tasting, Home Brewing, Rants on January 9, 2010
My brother is a plumber by trade and often gets gifts from customers. On occasion he is given beer, though this time around he was given his first homebrew as a gift. The customer stated it was not his own, but a friends and it was not very good. I am willing to try any beer once, even if someone else thinks its not very good. Beer tastes are well, a matter of taste and maybe this homebrew would will be a revelation; Something that will inspire me to create something as wonderful as this beer…
Name: Random Old Guy’s Friends Homebrew
Origin: Homebrew, Calgary
Style: Unknown
Appearance: Whoa. Even pouring this beer I can smell it and its not very pleasant. Anyways on to the appearance. Its carbonated and produces a nice, foamy head. The colour is a dark yellow and for all intents and purposes it looks like a very good pale ale.
Taste: And its downhill from here. Wow. This beer smells bad enough that I am considering just pouring it down the sink right now. Have you ever eaten a lot of really salty food and taken a piss? Remember that strong urine smell? Well if you can imagine it you can image that it is what this beer smells like. Except maybe more apples. Where most beers smell of flowers, breads and fruit this one reeks of granny Smith apples and dog piss.
Okay. First taste. Here I go. Oh good fucking lord. It was all I could do just to swallow this it beer. Fuck-shit there is nothing beer-like about this. I need to get something to eat with this because all I can taste now is apple and what appears to be a synthetic banana aftertaste reminiscent of banana flavoured starbursts. And something I believe to be urine.
I have never tasted urine before, but I can imagine from the odor what it probably tastes like. What I am consuming now could probably sell as a carbonated pee-flavoured drink. Do you think it would be popular with the kids at the clubs?
Okay. Next sip.
Holy fuck me in the face and die god. This is just… I can’t do it. I just cannot. This is worse then retched. I don’t think English words can describe this level of terrible. The only thing I can think about when I took the last sip was a hot piss on a hot day. Except I am pissing on apples and its giving me splash back all over my face.
How could you give this to you friend? My brother needs to return to this customer and tell him his ‘friend’ may actually be trying to tell him to fuck off and die. Or maybe this friend actually thinks this is what beer tastes like. Maybe he is sitting in his living room right now drinking his beer, holding back his own vomit while his wife and kid gag on the smell.
I cannot do another taste. Even at an arms length away the odor is making me sick. Straight into the toilet for this one and all the other 5 bottles… Oh god. The smell when I was pouring it out was so bad I had to empty an entire can of Fe-breeze into the bathroom. I don’t even want to salvage the bottles for my own homebrews for fear of contamination. I wrapped them all in a garbage bag and tossed them into the garbage outside.
Mouth Feel: I will be honest with you: I could not take a large enough mouth full to make an accurate judgment.
Final Thoughts (0.0 out of 5): This really is it. This is the Worst Beer Ever. There was nothing beer like about this homebrew. Even unfermented wort tastes leaps and bounds better then this. With my experience in homebrewing I am starting to get an idea of what each malt, hop and adjunct will add in terms of flavour to a brew, but this beer left me wondering what the flying-fuck he even used. Did he drink a lot of apple juice, urinate into a fermenter and pitch dextrose and yeast?
This is the second homebrew outside my own I have sampled and I am still shocked that he gave this to a friend. Did he not sample this first? Fucking Big Bear is a massively better beer then this. This must be a form of infection caused by improper sanitizing habits. But I guess if you brew you beer in a dirty toilet these kind of “off-flavours” are to be expect.
And he really gave it to his friend. Unreal.
Bradinator.com – Neglectful out of laziness
Posted by bradinator in Hobbies, Rants on June 17, 2009
Looking at my last twenty or so post I have come to realize something: Basically they have all been beer reviews or beer related in nature. This might make the handful of people that view this page wonder if I have slipped into alcoholism, dismissing my other time consuming hobbies like fitness and Japanese study to make more time for drinking.
Sadly that’s not true and my life is still the structure routine of getting up in the morning, eating a healthy breakfast, studying Japanese, eating again, working, eating, working more, eating again, exercising and rarely updating this blog. The real reason I have not been updating or blogging the other sections of my site is because I did not know what to write.
Starting today that is going to change! “How is that going to change?”, you ask sternly. “Shut up and stop interrupting!” , I shout back, bits of partially-chewed cottage cheese and carrot spraying into your face from my mouth. Starting today I plan to update this blog with a combination of semi-daily ‘Routines of the Day – RotD’ (most coming from the very awesome www.Crossfit.com – I love you : D ), healthy minimal effort recipes and a ‘Japanese Word/Phrase/Kanji/Grammar of the Day – JpWPKGotD’ and of course the ‘Beer Review of the Day’.
Hopefully someone can benefit from the mixed bag of semi-useful, non-defined, seemingly randomness that are my hobbies. If not and you just came here because, you are obviously lost or wasting time.
The Sumo Diet – How close is it to your own?
Posted by bradinator in Diet, Nutrition, Rants on February 14, 2009
You ever wonder how a Sumo wrestlers eat? You may see some very scary similarities.
Without speaking to a Sumo wrestler in training directly I can only go off of my research. So lets look at what I found:
- They skip breakfast everyday
- They eat a large lunch, generally followed immediately by a nap or very sedentary activity (desk job anybody?). This is very important for young Sumo’s in training as it is very effective at putting on weight.
- They eat a large, communal dinner a few hours before bed. Beer and Sake are are usually consumed during this meal as well.
- Typically they eat about 4500 calories a day (including drinks)
Do you skip your breakfasts? Do you eat a large lunch (anything over 1000 calories) followed by a low energy consuming activity? Is your next meal a large late night dinner? Drink any calorie laden beverages today with your meals, juice, soda, beer or otherwise? I hope you answered no to most if not all of those questions. Even if you keep your calories low so you should be losing weight, allowing yourself to enter starvation mode (going 4+ hours without food) will -NOT- help you lose weight. It actually does the opposite and helps your gain weight more effectively.
Like any athlete a Sumo wrestler will eat and train a certain way to achieve the goals necessary to excel at his sport. Being big just happens to be one of those parts. So unless you are a Sumo wrestler or planning to become one in the near future I think its safe to say your goals are not the same. If that is the case then why are you eating like one?
If you are eating like this hopefully your still getting as much exercise as a training Sumo does…
Trans Fats
Posted by bradinator in Nutrition, Rants on January 26, 2009
I won’t deny the fact that I am pretty zealous about my diet. I follow a pretty rigid eating plan 80% of the time and rarely deviate during the weekdays. With that said I still frequent the candy dish in the office, enjoy a few beers during the week and make small exceptions on a daily basis to keep myself happy (and sane). That is bar one rule which I never make an exception for: Absolutely no Trans Fats.
For those not in the know, let me give you the simplified dirt on this toxic product we are nearly forced to consume on a daily basis. Lets start by looking at the basic structure of a fat that is ingested into the body. In its simplest form each fat molecule has two ends, one that connects to your fat wall and the other that hangs freely. The free end can be grabbed by the body, pulled from your cellular wall and used as energy in times on need. The science behind this is probably far more complicated but I don’t care enough to delve any deeper then this on the subject.
A Trans Fat is created when you take a typical liquid oil, heat it to extremely high temperatures and inject hydrogen into it. This causes the the free end of the fat molecule to become bonded with the hydrogen atom. This free end which was used by our bodies to pull the fat from the cell wall to use as energy has now become mutated, making it impossible for the body to use. So in a nut shell a Trans Fat is a fatty acid the body cannot use and therefore sticks to your cell wall permanently (Not truly permanent — It dissipates in about 2 years with your normal cell wall regeneration). Scary stuff eh?
In my opinion Trans Fats are one of the leading causes in the obesity epidemic in North America. Only in the last few years have people become aware of it. Trans Fats are labeled on most grocery products which is good, but it is not law in restuarants yet. I wouldn’t go as far as banning eating a restaruants, but I have black marked any store bought food containing it. With that said the rule is simple: I will never knowingly eat a Trans Fat.
On a final note: The World Health Organization sets the intake limit for Trans Fats at 1% of your daily calories or about 6 grams a day based on a 2500 calorie diet. I don’t knowingly consume that much Trans Fat in a year.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/fat.htm
http://www.bantransfats.com/
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/nutrition/gras-trans-fats/tfa-age_question-eng.php
The World is awash
Posted by bradinator in Misc, Rants on January 25, 2009
I wanted to make a website based around fitness and health but it would seem that the Internet is already awash in information and misinformation on these topics. There must be tens of thousands of websites selling “the real” fitness secrets and thousands more giving it away for free. I world just be a squeak of information drowned out in a deafening roar of sales promises, long lost secrets and money back guarantees.
Instead this website will blog about things important to me. This does include fitness and health, but it also includes funner things like beer, language study and travel. Hopefully someone can benefit from my inane knowledge and experiences, but if no one does I really don’t care.