Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer

How do you introduce Nashville?  It isn’t easy folks.  The capital of three states pretending to be one, known far and wide as the Music City, Nashville is the delicate tendon connecting Deep Southern west Tennessee to Appalachian east Tennessee, an urban asterisk punctuating and dominating the agricultural middlelands. Nashville is the birthplace of the Goo-Goo Cluster, the nesting place of the world’s oldest radio show The Grand Ole’ Opry, and one of the great centers of the American Civil Rights Movement.  It is a city of art and parks and the Parthenon, a fantastic museum and recreation of the ancient Athenian Parthenon.  Nashville is a city of universities and cutting-edge medicine, professional sports, cowboys, poets, yodelers, New York-style delis and passels of ghosts.

Oh.  And the beer.  I almost forgot.  Nashville is one of the centers of the American beer renaissance.   We're sampling TWELVE beers, selected by our guest from Jackalope Brewing Company, Mill Creek Brewing, Nashville, Nolansville, Tennessee, Tennessee Brew Works, Yazoo Brewing. 

Today we’re talking about more of these beers than Carter has little pills. Today on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer we’re talking about Nashville.

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

How do you introduce Nashville?  It isn’t easy folks.  The capital of three states pretending to be one, known far and wide as the Music City, Nashville is the delicate tendon connecting Deep Southern west Tennessee to Appalachian east Tennessee, an urban asterisk punctuating and dominating the agricultural middlelands. Nashville is the birthplace of the Goo-Goo Cluster, the nesting place of the world’s oldest radio show The Grand Ole’ Opry, and one of the great centers of the American Civil Rights Movement.  It is a city of art and parks and the Parthenon, a fantastic museum and recreation of the ancient Athenian Parthenon.  Nashville is a city of universities and cutting-edge medicine, professional sports, cowboys, poets, yodelers, New York-style delis and passels of ghosts.

Oh.  And the beer.  I almost forgot.  Nashville is one of the centers of the American beer renaissance.  

Today we’re talking about more of these beers than Carterhas little pills. Today on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer we’re talking aboutNashville. 

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

Thailand is a country dominated by macrobrews – strict beer and brewing laws mean that craft and home brewing are nearly absent from the nation (at least legally).  Not only that, it remains a nation in which locally brewed beers remain the dominant type.  Today’s beer is the flagship of one of the two breweries that utterly dominate the small, southeast Asian nation, a beer that assiduously (and purposefully) follows the German purity laws, a beer that since the late 1980s has become a global export, found now in nearly every country of North America, Europe, and Asia, as well as Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia. 

Today we’re reviewing the beer most often ordered (and mispronounced) in untold nations’ Thai restaurants.  Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer, we’re talking about Singha Beer.

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

Thailand is a country dominated by macrobrews – strict beer and brewing laws mean that craft and home brewing are nearly absent from the nation (at least legally).  Not only that, it remains a nation in which locally brewed beers remain the dominant type.  Today’s beer is the flagship of one of the two breweries that utterly dominate the small, southeast Asian nation, a beer that assiduously (and purposefully) follows the German purity laws, a beer that since the late 1980s has become a global export, found now in nearly every country of North America, Europe, and Asia, as well as Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia. 

Today we’re reviewing the beer most often ordered (and mispronounced) in untold nations’ Thai restaurants.  Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer, we’re talking about Singha Beer.

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

What happens when a tiny Scandinavian nation ends a 68 year long prohibition on beers over 2.25% alcohol by volume?  Hold up.  What happens when some American brewers, only a few years later, fall in love with that same nation’s legendarily delicious fresh water?

Well, let’s be honest.  This isn’t much of a riddle.  So today we’re talking about a quaff that links the brewing traditions of the United States and Iceland, a product that is the largest beer export of Iceland, and a beer that – and I’m speculating here – is probably consumed in vast quantities by grog-swilling trolls, ale-guzzling dwarfs, and beer-nipping elves.

Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer we’re talkingabout Einstök beer.

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

What happens when a tiny Scandinavian nation ends a 68 year long prohibition on beers over 2.25% alcohol by volume?  Hold up.  What happens when some American brewers, only a few years later, fall in love with that same nation’s legendarily delicious fresh water?

Well, let’s be honest.  This isn’t much of a riddle.  So today we’re talking about a quaff that links the brewing traditions of the United States and Iceland, a product that is the largest beer export of Iceland, and a beer that – and I’m speculating here – is probably consumed in vast quantities by grog-swilling trolls, ale-guzzling dwarfs, and beer-nipping elves.

Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer we’re talking about Einstök beer.

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

From its independence in 1844 until the year 1916, well, the Dominican Republic had a rough go of it.  More than 50 presidents came and went, as well as 19 different constitutions.  Instability was the name of the game, and was only to grow worse as the world itself became generally more unhinged in the looming shadows of the First World War.  The internal chaos led government to grind to a meager pace in the Republic, including in terms of its ability to collect and redistribute income. 

 This was a problem – the Dominican Republic owed many nations a great deal of money, and with most of the great powers on war-setting, the failure of the small nation to pay its debts to the USA and other nations invited foreign interference.  Acting on the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine the US took this moment to invade the Republic, imposing its rule on until 1924. 

 Five years later another American invasion, of a sort, would occur – Charles H. Wanzer, an American industrialist whose fortune was founded in light generators and petroleum development in Latin America founded a brewery in the city of Santiago.  It took awhile, another six years in fact, but eventually that brewery began selling the earliest version of the beer we’re discussing today.

 Hold on!  In 1930 one of the nastiest characters in modern politics comes into absolute power in the Dominican Republic, Rafael “El Jefe” Trujillo – a cruel man responsible for tens of thousands of deaths – thanks to the combined efforts of a coup, some of the least subtle voter fraud in human history, and of course a rather nasty hurricane. Trujillo would rule the eastern half of Hispanola until 1961 when, on a dark road, he was shot by a group of conspirators.  While he ruled, however, it was generally considered sensible to butter Trujillo’s biscuits, so to speak, and so Wanzer and his co-investers named their beer after the dictator, if only indirectly – “Presidente.” 

 A lot has happened since those dark days.  In the unstable years after Trujillo’s death there would eventually be a military uprising, prompting the US to fear the emergence of another Cuba and, predictably, invade, occupying the island this time from 1965 to 1966 and leading to the imposition of the kind of democracy one wouldn’t necessarily call free nor fair.  At around the same time Presidente beer made a major shift as well, from a dark beer to a light, pilsner-style – unsurprisingly, perhaps, an American style adjunct. 

 The Republic would continue to be plagued by instability and illiberal rule until the end of the Cold War, stabilizing in the 1980s (when Presidente became the property of Grupo Leon Jimenes, a Dominican tobacco company) and achieving what political scientists would deem full democratization only in the 1990s.  But with the post-Cold War period came post-Cold War beer politics – including the Beer Wars, and eventually the little Dominican brewery that could found itself enmeshed in the machinations of two giants – AB InBev and Heineken.  In 2012 the former would finally win out, acquiring 51% shares in Presidente and dominance of the Caribbean market. 

 Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer we’re talking about Presidente. 

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

From its independence in 1844 until the year 1916, well, the Dominican Republic had a rough go of it.  More than 50 presidents came and went, as well as 19 different constitutions.  Instability was the name of the game, and was only to grow worse as the world itself became generally more unhinged in the looming shadows of the First World War.  The internal chaos led government to grind to a meager pace in the Republic, including in terms of its ability to collect and redistribute income.

This was a problem – the Dominican Republic owed many nations a great deal of money, and with most of the great powers on war-setting, the failure of the small nation to pay its debts to the USA and other nations invited foreign interference.  Acting on the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine the US took this moment to invade the Republic, imposing its rule on until 1924. 

Five years later another American invasion, of a sort, would occur – Charles H. Wanzer, an American industrialist whose fortune was founded in light generators and petroleum development in Latin America founded a brewery in the city of Santiago.  It took awhile, another six years in fact, but eventually that brewery began selling the earliest version of the beer we’re discussing today.

Hold on!  In 1930 one of the nastiest characters in modern politics comes into absolute power in the Dominican Republic, Rafael “El Jefe” Trujillo – a cruel man responsible for tens of thousands of deaths – thanks to the combined efforts of a coup, some of the least subtle voter fraud in human history, and of course a rather nasty hurricane. Trujillo would rule the eastern half of Hispanola until 1961 when, on a dark road, he was shot by a group of conspirators.  While he ruled, however, it was generally considered sensible to butter Trujillo’s biscuits, so to speak, and so Wanzer and his co-investers named their beer after the dictator, if only indirectly – “Presidente.” 

A lot has happened since those dark days.  In the unstable years after Trujillo’s death there would eventually be a military uprising, prompting the US to fear the emergence of another Cuba and, predictably, invade, occupying the island this time from 1965 to 1966 and leading to the imposition of the kind of democracy one wouldn’t necessarily call free nor fair.  At around the same time Presidente beer made a major shift as well, from a dark beer to a light, pilsner-style – unsurprisingly, perhaps, an American style adjunct. 

The Republic would continue to be plagued by instability and illiberal rule until the end of the Cold War, stabilizing in the 1980s (when Presidente became the property of Grupo Leon Jimenes, a Dominican tobacco company) and achieving what political scientists would deem full democratization only in the 1990s.  But with the post-Cold War period came post-Cold War beer politics – including the Beer Wars, and eventually the little Dominican brewery that could found itself enmeshed in the machinations of two giants – AB InBev and Heineken.  In 2012 the former would finally win out, acquiring 51% shares in Presidente and dominance of the Caribbean market. 

Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer we’re talking about Presidente. 

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer

Close your eyes.  Unless your driving, of course. C’mon.  I don’t even know why I have to say that. Sheesh.  But otherwise close your eyes.  Imagine the coolers, foggy and pleasant, of your favorite grocery or gas station.  You want a beer, but what to buy?  You’re not sure, but you’re sure to notice the stubby green bottles in the shape of a grenade, lightly gilt, alit with a golden hornet.  What you’re seeing, there, gleaming like a malty emerald in your mind’s eye, is Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor – a beer that, whether you’ve tried it or not, you recognize, despite its limited reliance on advertising. Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer, we’re talking about the most famous child of Evansville, Indiana.  Today, friends, we’re talking about Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor. 

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

Close your eyes.  Unless your driving, of course. C’mon.  I don’t even know why I have to say that. Sheesh.  But otherwise close your eyes.  Imagine the coolers, foggy and pleasant, of your favorite grocery or gas station.  You want a beer, but what to buy?  You’re not sure, but you’re sure to notice the stubby green bottles in the shape of a grenade, lightly gilt, alit with a golden hornet.  What you’re seeing, there, gleaming like a malty emerald in your mind’s eye, is Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor – a beer that, whether you’ve tried it or not, you recognize, despite its limited reliance on advertising.  

Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer, we’re talking about the most famous child of Evansville, Indiana.  Today, friends, we’re talking about Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor. 

http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com