http://aqueousphase.org/

=)

Sometimes I like to drink things that are neither alcoholic, hot, nor tap water — weird, I know. There aren’t a whole lot of liquids that fill that bill, especially since I stopped drinking soda in college. At the time, it was mostly because I wanted to keep having teeth and a functioning pancreas, but since then my palate has shifted enough that I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth anymore.

I do drink fruit juice, but most of it is either too expensive or too sweet/mostly apple juice. Trader Joe’s sells some excellent juices and cocktails, and it would take an entire entry to even provide a respectable cross-section. I’ll save that for another time and just cut to the chase.

• 1 part Trader Joe’s 100% Pomegranate Juice (it comes in a glass bottle and will stain anything. You could drink certain other brands but they tend to cost about twice as much.)
• 1 part sparkling water (if you have to ask what flavor, you’re doing it wrong)

That’s it.

In my opinion, it’s a great combination. It’s not too sweet, it’s a lot lighter than straight pomegranate juice, and, unlike pretty much everything that calls itself “juice” these days, I don’t mind thinking about what’s in it. I’ve been drinking this with dinner the last couple of nights, and it really hits the spot. I’m sure it would work just as well with (real) cranberry or blueberry juice, too.

Of course, it would probably be alright with gin or maybe vodka in it, too. Hmm…

So, when Freshdirect offered a chance to sample 6 Sam Adams in one convenient 12pack for $16.99 of course I took it!

According to their website,

Samuel Adams Winter Classics Variety includes 2 each of the following beers:

Winter Lager – Robust & malty with a crisp finish Old Fezziwig Ale – Full chocolate malt with notes of cinnamon & ginger Holiday Porter – Deep rich malt with traditional English Ale hops Cranberry Lambic – Sweet & tart with a clean vanilla maple note Boston Lager – Full bodied and complex with citrus and pine notes Samuel Adams Light – Smooth with subtle hop notes of mango and apricot

Which was amusingly, a bit of a lie. The Sam Adams Light was (thankfully) replaced by a Cream Stout (light beer? oh, the humanity!).

And the final verdict was… in order from my personal opiniated terrible to excellent:

Sam Adams Old Fezziwig Ale - Very low key initial scent… and oh, how well that first sip went down, balancing that fine line between thick and carbonated. Felt like my mouth was being coated with a layer of silk. Why on earth did it have to completely lack any flavour whatsoever?! Drank it fairly slowly, and it got stale… amazingly fast. I would’ve liked to like it, but this beer just didn’t want to be loved.

Sam Adams Cranberry Lambic - y’know, I’m just not a big cranberry fan. Maybe its the whole growing up outside the States thing, or maybe cranberries are just heavily overrated (do people ever eat them outside of Thanksgiving and fancy salads?). This beer was light, but unfiltered; any hint of complexity was overwhelmed by carbonation. Its got a slight bitter twinge, which, I guess, comes from the crapberry — I mean, cranberry. An interesting lambic in that sense (every other I’ve ever had have been terribly sweet). Definitely drinkable, just not something I would ever go out and buy.

Sam Adams Boston Lager - well. You already know how this one works.

Sam Adams Cream Stout - This definitely lives up to the “Cream” in the name. Wonderful first impression, alike a milk-shakey version of a Sierra Nevada Porter. Got a great full initial taste, but the tail-end of the sip loses that complexity quickly, and there’s not even a hint of an aftertaste. Ah well, just means you should take another sip to relive the initial glory .

Sam Adams Holiday Porter – Mrmm, let’s take a porter, and make a thick chocolate pudding with it. It’s got a widely varied taste profile over time and could (IMO ) make a delicious full meal by itself, kind of like a dessert beer version of Violet Beauregarde‘s downfall in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Minus turning into a giant blueberry of course.

Sam Adams Winter Lager - Wow. Wow! Smells like a lighter version of the cream stout, but a very distinct flavour. Goes down candy light with a lingering aftertaste full of cinnamon & nutmeg. It’s like a good chewy spicy cookie in beer form. Even better, it doesn’t fall into the “just make it heavier” winter seasonal beer trap. Definitely my favourite out of the bunch! (Though, as an post-editorial note, I did try this on tap when I was in Boston and while still good, didn’t quite live up to my initial expectations). This beer needs to be snapped up quickly when released though — by the time I got around to ordering a 6pack of this by itself, it was already gone from Freshdirect. =(

Mrm. Sam Adams. You are my friend. Especially during these East Coast winters.

I don’t normally eat breakfast — in fact, I try not to be awake at that time of the day — but I was starving on my commute (a 15 minute walk) this morning. Lunch was three hours in the future, so I dropped into my friendly neighborhood donut shop. It seemed like a better choice than the gas station.

Standing in line, anxious to purchase blueberry muffin with large granules of sugar baked into the browned, delectable crust, I saw a sign of the upcoming apocalypse: a cardboard display for what they called a “Milky Way Hot Chocolate“.

This is the point where Dave Barry would swear that he were not making this up, but this is the digital age and I’m hipper than he is, so I’ll just provide a hyperlink.

Would that I could have been a fly on the wall at that board meeting!

Generic Executive (henceforth “Atilla”): *standing in front of a whiteboard* I hate everything.

Chairman (henceforth “Ghengis”): You’re right, Atilla, the world should drown in its own filth. Faster than it is, I mean. *murmurs of agreement from board members, most of whom have goatees*

Atilla: But I don’t want to get my slightly-expensive suit dirty. *more agreement* There just has to be some way for a dedicated group of rich pudgy caucasian men to erode all that is humane and wholesome. Other than letting minority groups who aren’t hurting anybody do what they want. I mean, this is Massachusetts and we are a for-profit enterprise.

Ghengis: I have to admit, that was what I was thinking. I hear good things about superplagues though. And bombs.

Atilla: Bombs are just a fad. Viruses are trendy for a reason, I have to say, but we all kinda suck at biology, don’t we? *nervous whispers. Ghengis is visibly displeased* Never fear though, because I have something that should knock ‘em dead. *Writes on board: “Candy Bar + Hot Beverage = Civilization“* The Milky Way Hot Chocolate. *audible gasps from the board*

Ghengis: …Is that what I think it is?

Atilla: You’re damn right. People will die of diabetes, heart disease, and gingivitis faster than they can say “Diseases of excess”!

Ghengis: My sleeping god, you’re right!

Atilla: Oh, I know… MUAHAHAHAHA

Ghengis: MUAHAHAHAHA

All: MUAHAHAHAHA

Okay, maybe that’s not how it actually transpired. But if it is you heard it here first.

In response to the inevitable question, did I man up and try it for science? No I didn’t. I thought about it, but then I remembered what happened to me when I tried the Cherry Lime Sobe Coolatta one hot day last summer. I focused on my mission, and left with just a pastry.

I wish I were making that last bit up.

I got through the first hurdle of my grad school qualifying exam today! So to celebrate, I opened up a bottle of sherry I got recently (the cheap stuff, but hush, it’s my first time) and decided pretty soon after pouring off a taster size portion into my wine glass that 1) port is better and 2) maybe I should’ve spent more than $4.49 on the sherry. Now what to do with a whole bottle that I don’t particularly want to drink from again. I’ll definitely cook with it a bit, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make cocktails out of the stuff too. A quick Google search tells me that Cream Sherry Flips are the most common cocktail made with cream sherry… but it involves an egg.

Cream Sherry Flip

2½ oz Cream Sherry
2 tsp Table Cream
1 tsp Simple Syrup (2:1)
1 Fresh Egg
Nutmeg

Instructions: In a cocktail shaker combine sherry, cream simple syrup and an egg. Shake vigorously (or use a stick blender) for 30 seconds. Add ice and shake again for 30 more seconds. Strain in to a mug or coffee cup and sprinkle with nutmeg.

An egg? What kind of egg? Egg white? Egg yolk? Well, what the hell, I figure. *smashes a whole egg and puts it in*. I don’t have a cocktail shaker (what kind of cocktail aficionado are you?! … uh, well, not one… yet!!), so I use appropriately sized tupperware (one that doesn’t smell like yesterday’s lunch of bacon with… mrm… bacon cocktails…). I never have cream lying around the house, so I use some hazelnut CoffeeMate as-artificial-as-it-gets creamer. I figure the creamer will make it sweet enough that the simple syrup isn’t needed. And you can never have enough cinnamon & nutmeg right? So I put the whole mess together in the tupperware with a couple cubes of ice, scramble the eggs a bit with a fork, and then shake as vigorously as I can. The tupperware, unfortunately, objects to this treatment, and protests by spurting out little bits of alcoholic dead chick embryo all over my dinner table. But damn, is the drink starting to look pretty and smell pretty good, even in Gladware.

I pour the concoction into a wine glass… look at the ominous coloration floating on the surface… and take a deep sip. And it’s good! It’s delicioso! Mrm, I can taste the sherry, the nutmeg, the cinnamon, and the egg brings the whole monstrous mix into something creamy and smooth in texture. I’m about halfway through the glass as I’m idly going through the same site I found the cream sherry flip recipe from and found an article on Egg Whites & Cocktails… and realise that I was probably not supposed to use the whole egg — just the egg white.

c

So now I’m sitting here, wine glass empty (well I have to finish what I begin…) and a stomach probably full of happy salmonella bacteriums. And the power of suggestion is playing tricks on my mind. I feel my ribs contracting, a slimey sort of phelgm at the back of my throat, and I can almost see my weary innate immunity cells coming out with their old battle armor on, saying, “what the hell did she try eating this time.”

But it’ll be fine I’m sure. At least the Cream Sherry Flip was awesome — will definitely make again (with perhaps, just the egg white. Maybe even pasteurized egg whites. Supposedly you can find powdered egg whites). Or maybe I’ll just use the whole egg again. After all, if I’m not dead from eating “sashimi” from defrosted Costco packs of salmon, then I’m pretty much invincible, right?

P.S. Don’t try this at home kids, and if you do, you saw the recipe on a different site.

This is what death looks like. Its got specks of nutmeg on top.

My parents tend not to talk about the past — well, I take that back, they can talk all day about the stupid things I did as a kid. But they tend not to talk about their past, their upbringings, etc. It comes out in spurts over the course of years and the gist of it is usually that it kinda sucked. I don’t know anything about their childhood, their teens, or their late twenties, but they do talk about their early twenties occasionally.

It was the era of Cultural Revolution and among other (pretty terrible things), universities were shut down for a period of 10 years. To a society where education had traditionally been the only means of social advancement, these were catastrophic times. All the things that happened to my parents and their families during that time really deserve their own novel but that’ll never be written, because nobody likes talking about the Cultural Revolution.

Anyways, back to my mother. It’s 1977. Deng Xiaopeng had just reinstated the meritocratic system of university admissions. 10 years of high school graduates were now eligible for a simultaneous nationwide admissions exam. They have a couple weeks to cram. But they jump at the opportunitiy — 10 years of jobs being assigned by the state had left a generation of youth wanting, needing, something, anything, better than the life they had been assigned. My mother was working in a coal factory at the time and despite years of trying to be the picture perfect worker so her supervisor might recommend her for further education and training, she still came home every night covered with soot, and spent fruitless nights crying in front of the mirror, trying to wash off the black stains on her hands, face, & all over, thinking, “there has to be more to life than this. this can’t be all there is.“

But she’s 22. She hasn’t picked up a textbook in half a decade. She’s the oldest child, female, and the only expectation is that she get married. Soon. She has a little brother fresh out of high school and her family spends all of its resources in prepping him for the exams. She doesn’t even want anyone to know that she’s applying because the idea is just so ridiculous.

With a few weeks to the exam, there’s no time to be spared. She goes back to her old high school teacher, begs to borrow some old textbooks, and studies every night after getting back home from the coal factory. She needed something to keep her awake in those late hours, and if you consider that green tea has about 4-5 times less caffeine than coffee — jeezus. That’s a ridiculous volume of green tea to be consuming. And so she developed a very severe green tea addiction that has lasted to this day, 30 years later. I don’t think she’s ever tried quitting, but I would be more worried about the physiological symptoms of withdrawal than the addiction itself.

But the important thing is — she did it. She was one of the 273,000 admitted candidates out of a 5.7 million applicants that sat for the exam — and got into the 3rd highest ranked university in the country to boot.

And well, the rest. Met my dad. Got a math degree. Immigrated. Immigrated again. And even through all of Franzen‘s laments about 21st century surburban life — the house in the ‘burbs, 2 kids, 3 cars, 3 TVs, a cubicle job and not much in the way of friends… its a far cry from being that 22 year old in 1977 wondering if shoveling coal in a factory was all you had to look forward to for the rest of your life.

It’s 2008 now; I’m in my early 20s, and starting to drink green tea, as my mother did in ’77, and every cup has become something more than mere green tea. It’s a reminder that I live in an era with opportunity abound — where the only factor stopping me from reaching my fullest potential is myself. That I’m lucky. That there can be, should be, more to life than what we started with.

Cheers.

Let’s try again: generally, wherever I go, a cup of black coffee is more than sufficient. In fact, it’s generally what I insist on; while I like a nice cup of tea, they’re hard to come by commercially — there’s no way I’m paying more than about a quarter for some pitiful teabag and some almost-hot water, and nobody seems interested in selling me that product for less than six times that. While I have some respect for the school that puts cream or milk in their coffee, I fell out of the habit long ago. (My Southern ancestors would call it “whitener” and it would come in powder form; I myself try to abstain from any product whose first bloody ingredient is “Corn Syrup Solids”.) Sugar, on the other hand, is something I find weird and a little silly; my private suspicion is that people who take their coffee with sugar don’t actually like coffee, but instead are merely feeding their caffeine addictions in the most painless way they can find. (Said ancestors would naturally put a few spoonfuls of sugar in with their light brown corn-syrup slurry.)

Unless there’s cappuccino on the menu. I love cappuccino.

Not café lattes. Not any of that milk-and-espresso crap that people buy by the liter at Starbucks (I’m not saying that Starbucks is incapable of making a decent beverage, just that most of the menu doesn’t qualify). Nothing with ice cubes.

In theory I know how they’re made: a little porcelain mug, a shot of espresso, some foamed milk (but no liquid!), no sweat. But in theory I know how to drive a bus, too; some things should just be left to professionals. I don’t own an espresso machine and probably never will.

Now, I’m not even faintly Italian; I can’t even pull off the Nintendo it’s-a-mee. I imagine that in Italy the consumption of coffee is a social action, done over brioces at the little cafe down the street when you’re already half an hour late for work, because isn’t that what it means to enjoy life? And certainly I’d like that to be true in my own life.

The reality is rather different though. The need usually strikes me in the middle of the afternoon, at that rare hour when my coworkers are all actually working. While working invariably entails drinking coffee, making an expedition to get cappuccino is a hard sell when the workplace provides unlimited free coffee.

So I’ll grab my computer and perhaps some papers and strike out towards my cafe of choice (which is currently C3 at Central Square, by the way – it’s a long walk but it’s sooo much better than Cosí), affix my thousand-yard stare when I pass the bums on Mass Ave and leave it on when I enter the cafe: this may be a place where people go to socialize with their friends, and I may have come here alone, but that doesn’t matter — I am a busy man who wants coffee, at least as far as you know. I know that unless you’re the barista I am invisible to you, but you’re invisible to me too.

I’ll place my order, be silently thankful the barista doesn’t recognize me, stake out a table by the window or wherever’s the farthest from everyone else. I’ll flip through my paper if I brought one, scribbling notes in the margins even though I don’t really understand what’s going on. Perhaps I’ll check my email. When my beverage is ready I’ll retrieve it and ask for a spoon, then grab a single packet of unbleached sugar.

I’ll sprinkle some sugar on the top layer of foam and eat that with the spoon. I saw some Europeans doing that once, but I do it because I like it; I don’t need to be European and even if I did nobody will be watching. The rest of the cappuccino I’ll drink the normal way, deliberately. Perhaps I’ll gaze out the window at traffic, perhaps I’ll study my computer or my paper; I won’t even steal a glance at the café or the people in it, though.

I might have the recurring thought that psychological addictions are more pleasant that physiological ones. I won’t eavesdrop on the couples or the businessmen a few tables away. When my mug is empty, I won’t linger; I’ll pack my stuff, bus my table, and go.

And I’ll walk back to my office in the cold, happy as a clam because I had a cappuccino and it was good.

That’s what this story is about, after all.

Suffering slightly from beer ADHD, we figured we’d go with 2 tasting flights to start the night. Which lead to another flight. Which lead to two very happy liquid bloggers. The following notes are in chronological order and are exactly what we wrote down in the bar — meaning you probably shouldn’t take the last couple seriously. (Also, we need to figure out a better notes taking system that doesn’t look like I’m listening to an organic chemistry lecture in the middle of a bar).

Chimay Cinq Cents
Doesn’t smell like much — too light, dry Belgian ale

Piraat
Sweet smell, “sweet cheese” taste. But i likey!!

St. Bernardus Prior 8
Light smell. Very faintly hoppy @ end. weird/simple.

ABT12
Smooth belgian ale. That’s all.

St. Raz Porter
Not supposed to taste like it smells…

BBC Coffee
It’s an italian soda that tastes like beer.

2 Headed Beast
Smells like a porter, but “spice is never forgivable” (sez neil. methinks spice is forgivable… winter seasonals anyone?!)

Smulty Baltic Porter
No smell. Tastes like a porter. That’s all.

Celebration Doppel Bock
Faintly fruity, middle-end heavy, wheaty.

Rogue Dead Guy
No smell, non offensive IPA. good, could drink again

Allegash Black
Very faint coffee order. Creamy dark in nqumel?? (handwriting spasms)

Sierra Nevada Bigfoot
Citrusy. 1 part H20, 1 part ethanol, 1 part hops, 1 part awesome
hella alusy? (more handwriting spasms), but its good

And then we went back to Cambridge for more beers! Also tried a Allegash White that night — a bit like the Sierra Nevada Bigfoot; a nice lrefreshing mix of citrusy & wheat.

I think our favorite by far was definitely Piraat, followed by the Allegashes & Sierra Nevada Bigfoot.

Now to find the equivalent beer bar in New York…!

• Get on the “B” edition of the Green Line. Protip: Prudential is very different from Hynes/ICA in this regard.
• You’ll be surrounded by BU and BC undergrads. Don’t panic; they’re noisy but not dangerous. Probably they won’t even all be ugly. (Oh snap!)
• Get off at Harvard Ave. Walk north; hang a right on Brighton.
• Shortly you’ll arrive at Linden Street. On the corner, right next to you, is the Sunset Grill and Tap.
• Genuflect.
• Go inside.
• The rest should take care of itself, but if it doesn’t, let us recommend the Piraat.

This is quite seriously the place you’ve been dreaming about all your life. They claim to have 112 beers on tap (I know they have a huge number of beers in bottles). Due to the wonder of samplers, we made our way through 10% of those.

To preemptively address a concern I know I had going in: they seem to use CO₂ to compress the beer – at least, none of it tasted stale.

Also, while I don’t normally like barleywines very much, the Sierra Nevada Bigfoot is pretty darn good.

I think they serve food or something, but I couldn’t tell you what I ate.

Like true scientists, we took notes… for a while. I don’t have a copy — maybe Dandan will transcribe them if she ever gets unburied from her lab work.

But, like true drunks, we did take pictures:

I can’t wait to go back.