Launch ad campaigns, not missiles! North Korea has launched a new ad campaign for their locally brewed Taedonggang beer. The BBC has an article about it here, although I’m having trouble getting the video to play here. Maybe you’ll have better luck.
How I’d love to have a bottle of this for the ol’ collection. I’ve been to South Korea — where Taedonggang is sometimes available — but don’t recall ever seeing it. Hite seemed to be the most popular brand. Fairly mild but quite drinkable and very welcome alongside a slab of kalbi.
Kalbi cooked at the table in Daegu, South Korea (bottle of Hite at top center)
Friend of this site and unofficial, off-site beerologist, Chad Case, has been bugging us asking us nicely for a Travel by the Pint ringtone for his iPhone. Awesome idea! And so we’ve created one and made it available for download from the Merchandise and Free Stuff page of our site.
If you have an iPhone and a Mac, just double-click the downloaded file and it will be added to the ringtone library in iTunes. After syncing your phone, the ringtone should be available through your settings app. If you have some other kind of phone or are on a PC — consult your manual or someone under the age of 15 for instructions.
Tonight, we popped the caps on our first two bottles of home brew — which Sally has christened “Doobie Blonde” in honor of the suspected doobie-smokin’-hippies that built our beloved house back in the early ’70s.
Our expectations were low. After all, how could a kit beer actually be good? We were pleasantly surprised. Not only did the whole experiment work (it feels a bit magical to actually make beer) but it’s not half bad. Pretty good, in fact. We’re definitely energized to try another batch and make our way toward an all-grain brew. For the record, this kit came from Homebrewers Outpost and I wouldn’t hesitate to order from them again. In fact, I see they have some all-grain kits…
We’ve decided to get our hands dirty. If we truly want to better understand beer, we can’t just talk to people who make it — we need to make it ourselves. Thus, yesterday afternoon, we set up our homebrewing station and put the first batch in the fermenter.
We decided to start small and went with a kit we purchased from Homebrewers Outpost & Mail Order Company. Nothing flashy, just a simple blonde ale. Our thinking is to start with a kit or two to get the basics down and build some confidence. Then, we’ll slowly build on our skills, moving toward brewing from scratch and being able to predict and influence the end product through different ingredients and techniques. But for now… we just need to know how to brew beer.
Down the road, we have big plans. Suffice it to say for now that we’re going to be planting five varieties of hops this Spring. We don’t expect a useable crop until next year at the earliest so we’ll get the basics down while we wait for the vines to mature.
We’ll post progress updates on this blog — successes and failures — so stay tuned.
I ran across this article on CreativePro.com that says Pantone — the “global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries” — has announced their pick for the color of the year for 2009: PANTONE® 14-0848 Mimosa.
Pantone’s predictions reflect trends in fashion and other fields of design. Their color matching systems help to create consistent hues between fabrics, paints, printing inks, etc. While they describe Mimosa as exemplifying the “warmth and nuturing quality of the sun” I can’t help by be reminded of something else… beer. Perhaps a Munich Helles or a nice Pilsner to be more specific.
More information is available on how beer colors are referenced on Wikipedia and you can even order your own wallet-sized guide from Beer Color Laboratories. It’s hard to judge on-screen images of fabric and liquids but I’d say Mimosa is somewhere around 5 to 7 degrees Lovibond, although it looks closer to 8 or 10 SRM on the Wikipedia page putting it closer to a Weissbier or a Bass Pale Ale.
All I know is that 2009 looks to be a great year.
On another note, yesterday (December 5) was the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition in the United States. Cheers!
It’s almost here! Travel by the Pint will soon be launching Season One: A Taste of the Heartland. To give you some idea of what’s in store, we’ve put together this season preview clip. Click the image above to take a look.
Welcome to the Travel by the Pint blog where we will share news of the Travel by the Pint vidcast and other beer-related news and reviews. For more information, please visit our web site.
Season one of our vidcast will be launching soon so stay tuned. In the meantime, here’s a teaser:
