Expensive Beer, Cheap Wine

Besides Swedish furniture, we also picked up some booze in Minnesota. Nationally, beer is distributed according to state laws, licenses, and proximity, so each state has a different mix of breweries from which to choose. Therefore, I knew what I had to do: go to Beer Advocate to research beer-friendly liquor stores in the Twin Cities area.

After weighing the ratings and geography, we decided to stop at Blue Max Liquors in Burnsville, near the I-35E/W split as you approach the cities from the south. It was a smaller store than I expected (rather cramped for space), but the selection did not disappoint.

In fact, I had a hard time deciding what all to purchase. After filling a certain beer blogger’s order, we bought a bunch of different stuff. Having heard all sorts of great things about Surly (mostly here) I knew that we would buy a 4-pack of each just to try them out. I’ve been very pleased with the smoothness of Bender, the peppery Saison(ish) flavor of CynicAle, and the hop blast of Furious. Haven’t tried the Coffee Bender yet.

Among other things we picked up (sorry the pictures suck):

Dark Horse “One”. Labeled an oatmeal stout ale, this stuff is syrupy. In texture and flavor, it is only slightly less intense than your average imperial stout. Very good.


Brau Bros. Braun Ale. I liked this one too. Dangerously drinkable and tasty. A malty brown, not a lot of hop presence.



Gray’s BULLY PORTER. Really. I had to pick this up, for obvious reasons. Interestingly, it is on the opposite end of the spectrum from our hometown’s namesake. Whereas Boulevard’s version has a dominantly dry-hopped flavor, this one is a bit on the sweet side. It’s a nice beer.


I picked up a bunch of other stuff too.

As I hauled the shopping cart to the register, I asked the fellow ringing me up how long Darkness (Surly’s Imperial Stout and one of the most elusive beers around) lasted on the shelves. The guy manning the next register said they received 5 cases (60 750-ml bottles) of the stuff at the end of October and sold it in 24 hours. I nodded my head and smiled, when suddenly my cashier told me to hold on for just a minute. He disappeared, and the other guy said, “I think he’s going to see Santy Claus”, in his Minnesota accent.

A couple minutes later, our cashier reappeared and said, quietly and secretively, “Do you want one? I can sell you ONE,” adding his index finger for emphasis.

He told the manager we were buying $160 worth of beer, so apparently we surpassed the secret Darkness threshold. I’m surprised no code words or secret handshakes were involved. It turns out they held a sixth case back for employees to sell themselves and potentially cellar for next year.

Of course, even at $18, I bought it.

The manager then came out and said, “I also have some of this.” He held up a bottle of Life & Limb, a collaboration between Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada.

“The state of Minnesota got 5 cases. I got one of them. Would you like a bottle?”

Well, duh.

So we walked out about $200 lighter.

Referring back to the title of this post…our next stop was at Trader Joe’s. We bought a case (12 bottles) of wine.

It cost $68.

With tax.

No Three Buck Chuck either. We do draw a line somewhere; that stuff is awful. Especially when, for $2 or $3 more, you can drink a totally passable bottle of wine (at least for our apparently unrefined palates).

Next Red X Wine Tasting Tomorrow Night

The next Red X Wine Tasting is 5pm-7pm TOMORROW, Thursday, December 10th. There will be pizza and perhaps more wine afterward in Parkville. It’s what we do. Read more here.

Feelin' Minnesota: The Aftermath

I have some catching up to do.

-The trip to Minnesota was a success. We got a metric crapload of stuff at IKEA, Trader Joe’s, and Blue Max Liquors. The rental minivan strained to keep up with the sheer mass and weight of all this tightly-packed, mass-produced Swedish goodness:


We got to see the Minnesota side of our family and spend a little quality time with everyone. It was really nice, the weather cooperated, and the Happy Gnome is a highly recommended stop for great food and beer—lots of local produce and a thoughtful selection of brews on tap.

-IKEA assembly was mostly a success. We bought a bedroom set for the spare room (bed + 2 dressers):


an entire office “suite”:



miscellaneous light fixtures and lamps (not pictured), and a TV "wall" for the living room.

Everything went smoothly…except the TV stand portion of the wall. Here it is after I assembled it the first time:


The furniture was listed as 15-3/4” deep on the box, website…everywhere. The problem is that the shelf the TV is to sit on is only 7” deep. Even the stand for a flat screen is considerably bigger (ours is about 12” deep). There is no mention of this anywhere. The only way for anyone to use this furniture as intended is to mount the TV directly onto the back of this shelf as if it is a wall. The problem, of course, is that there is also no mention of this fact ANYWHERE. Worse, it would require 2 additional rails, which of course would require another visit to IKEA or a huge shipping fee.

We decided to improvise instead. She used a router to cut a hole in the bottom of the board that would be behind the TV. This would allow us to slip the TV stand below it, mostly unnoticeably.



Of course, this unique, contoured board with specially-measured holes and couplings then fell to the ground and snapped in two.

Yeah.

The next day, she bought a bracket at Home Depot to repair the board, at least enough so that we could be done with it. We also had to make holes in the board for wires because they stuck too far out of the back of the TV. Fortunately the TV itself hides all this:


End result, with side elements added:


Honestly, it looks great. That said, you may want to stay away from the Besta line @ IKEA. We’ve now had two major problems with products in this line, and being so far away from a store it's not easy to resolve them.

More to come (about things other than IKEA) once I find the time.

Feelin' Minnesota

We’re heading up to the Twin Cities this weekend to see the northern outpost of our family and knock out some overdue IKEA/Trader Joe’s shopping.

Every time I go up there I find a reason I would love to live there. Before I leave I inevitably see something that confirms I’m just fine right here, thankyouverymuch.

First off, if you haven’t been, it’s about time you went—it’s a fun place. It’s a straight shot right up I-35. It only takes about 6-1/2 hours from KC if you keep yours stops brief.

The metroplex is larger than Kansas City by a good 60%. In turn, they have many more options for shopping, restaurants, music, theater, sports teams, and other things that generally make a city desirable.

The city feels much more urban than Kansas City, with more public transit, denser population, more innovative architecture, and more truly self-contained neighborhoods.

The population is well-educated; this is to be expected in a city that contains one of the five largest colleges in the country (the University of Minnesota). I’m usually taken aback by how kind people are there. “Minnesota Nice” is not an ironic concept.

By the end of each trip I’m reminded:

The largeness of the metroplex also means it is far more difficult to get around. The traffic snarls are nearly constant, exacerbated by seemingly never-ending construction projects.

The cost of housing is much higher there. Yes, this is what happens when you have a desirable place to live, but I like having an affordable mortgage payment. (Wages are only slightly higher there.)

And then…there’s the weather. On average, it is FIFTEEN degrees colder there than in KC from December to February (and this is the warm part of Minnesota we’re talking about). Think about how you feel on a cold, windy January day in KC…now subtract those 15 ticks off the thermometer. Yeah. The ground is frozen for months.

To be fair, a hot summer there is far more pleasant than a hot summer here. They average 8 degrees cooler temps from June to August with far less humidity.

However, I remember walking two blocks from a bar to our car a couple winters ago. It was a windy night, and my fiancée was almost painfully uncomfortable. She said something to the effect of “this is ridiculous and please remind me of this if I ever mention moving back here”.

I told her, “The bad part of all this? This isn’t even THAT COLD for Minneapolis.”

It was 14º at the time. The average—AVERAGE—low in January is 4º.

No thanks.

Greinke Wins Cy Young

25 out of 28 voters got it right.

That is all.

Dead Canary? Doodle?

I'm looking to someone who keeps up on these things better than I:

Have you heard anything new about the progress at Dead Canary Brewing or Doodle Brewing?

For those who don't know, Dead Canary was started by two women who work at Flying Saucer and have done extensive homebrewing. According to their blog, they have built a space in the West Bottoms that includes an upstairs taproom and dodgeball/beer pong facilities.

They've met with Adam Avery of the badass Avery Brewing Company to discuss both the beer and the business side of things. Unfortunately, that was in January - and that was their last post on the blog.

As for Doodle Brewing, a former 75th Street brewer who has worked in the craft beer industry for over 6 years (including a stop at Harpoon in Boston) planned to open a brewery in Liberty.

Doodle's blog hasn't been updated since July 24th, at which point he was fully financed, construction was 99% done, test batches had been approved, and he hoped to have beer for sale in KS and/or MO by August.

Any news on either of these ventures?

Vacation, Part 3: Last Day in the Canyon

We spent the morning exploring the east end of the South Rim, where the overlooks are farther apart and a car is required.

We were amazed by all the different languages we heard in our time there, as people from all over the world were drawn to visit. It drives home how truly unique and renowned the Grand Canyon is.

A few more photos, some of which show the Colorado River thousands of feet below:





We traveled the entire length of the highway to the east entrance of the park (some 20 miles), and as we turned back it began to rain a bit. We made it back to where we started, and before we left the park we pulled over to get one last look.

Here's what we got:




And this:



We're thinking we might go back someday.

Vacation, Part 2: Elevation, Shmel...*catches breath*...evation

Our second day at the Grand Canyon would be one of our most exhausting in recent memory. I mean this in the best possible sense.

We chose to take a day hike, descending on the South Kaibab Trail into the canyon. We weren't sure how far we would go; we decided to see what "felt" right.

The trailhead is at an elevation of 7200 feet. The Colorado River is at 2500 feet. Translation? The trail tends to look like this:


The views were absolutely amazing, though:


This was our view for lunch:


We descended further, until we turned around and saw how far we'd come (gulp):


Yes, we had to make it all the way back to the top, so we figured it was time to turn back.

The downside of hiking into a canyon is that the hard part comes LAST. You're already worn out from coming DOWN the rocky trail, and two and a half hours later you realize you've descended something like 1500 feet.

Now, consider that you're still at almost 6000 feet altitude, and...well, your midwestern lungs just aren't happy with you. We had to stop about every 5 minutes on the way up and take a serious break. We recovered fairly quickly, but we couldn't go far between breathers. Looking back to see how far we'd climbed kept us going, because the canyon rim never seemed to get any closer.

Finally, we made it. This sign was apropos:


To give you some perspective, here's a view of the ridge we traversed:


We celebrated with some haute cuisine:


After all this, we still walked another several miles (on level ground, thank you) to take in more of the views. We were absolutely beat, and we gorged on pizza once we got back to the hotel.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Vacation, Part 1: Erosion is Beautiful

I landed in Vegas at 10am; my fiancee didn't arrive until 8pm as she was flying in from Boston. After a quick spin down the Strip to see what was in store for us later in the week, we got to our brand spankin' new Comfort Suites to get some sleep before our road trip.

About 30 miles south of Vegas is the Hoover Dam. Many statistics are thrown out there about the enormity of this thing. My two favorites are:

1. The dam was finished in 1935. Some concrete deep in the heart of the dam is STILL curing.

2. The dam contains enough concrete to build a 2-lane highway from San Francisco to New York.

It's big. Them are cars up on top.


I pushed our rental Sonata pretty hard; we didn't see the legal side of 90 mph for much of the trip. The speed limit was 75 and we were mostly just keeping up with traffic, so I didn't feel I was being reckless or anything.

The scenery through Arizona got progressively nicer as we approached the highway that would take us to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. We got to our Best Western (quite nice - I would recommend it), relaxed for a moment, then made our way into the park.

There are no words to adequately prepare you for the first time you walk up to the rim and see the vastness and colors and shapes come together. There are no pictures to do it justice, which doesn't stop me from posting some anyway.

You really have to go. Everyone should see this at least once in his or her life:


Here are the layers of rock, all of which are exposed at certain points in the canyon:


The canyon:


You must see the canyon, especially at sunset:


Eventually it looks like this:


We finished our evening with a lovely meal at El Tovar, a lodge next to the canyon that was built in 1905.

More to come...

McCoy's Dinner = Great Success

Check out photos of the event here

IMO, every course and pairing was a hit. Just look at the pictures...your eyes will agree.

I've already got tickets for December, where some of the beers on the menu include McCoy's Winter Warmer, St. Bernardus Abt. 12 (a quadrupel and part of the beer cycle), Samichlaus (with which a Foundry bartender once tried to kill me, and a special Christmas treat from Boulevard (it's a secret!).

Thanks to N & D for attending, and it was nice to meet with owners, chefs, brewmasters, and bloggers (LC, holla!) who made the event possible.