Bradinator.com » Rants

Routine of the Day – Run

bradinator — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:11:13 +0000

Routine of the Day – Run 4.25 KM (working myself up to 5.0 KM)

Final time was 27:16, giving me an average speed of 9.3 KM/h which is actually under jogging speed. This makes me a great option as a hiking buddy if your worried about bear encounters.

I took my dog also because he is getting terribly fat.

I think he may have an eating disorder.

Quickie Beer Review – Glutaner

bradinator — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:49:01 +0000

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

bradinator — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:29:40 +0000

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

bradinator — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 04:29:39 +0000

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 that you can imagine 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 it. Fuck-shit-cock! There is nothing beer-like about this. I need to get something to eat with this because all I can taste now is apples 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 it’s 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. 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 your 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 take 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 recycling bin.

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, body and appearance, 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. 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

bradinator — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:21:04 +0000

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.