Recorded in the beautiful home office of Chateau' Relaxo, FL.
Before we jump into tonight’s episode a few additional thoughts.
Last Saturday was the 20th anniversary of 911, Like most everyone over the age of 30 I have my memory of that day.
I had stopped by the office that Tuesday morning. I was on my way out of town headed to Knoxville, TN for an afternoon meeting. We had just hired three new teams members and they had started the previous day, one of them is still with us. They were headed into a three-day training class and I wanted to make sure they were all set.
Right around 9:00 AM I walked through our breakroom only to see one of the daily morning network shows showing that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center Towers. All of us were speculating that it was just a wayward private prop plane from a local airport. Just a few minutes later as I was staring at the TV, that the second plane slammed into the second tower. At the time I had no idea that the twin towers represented a North and a South tower…. Hell, it could’ve been an East and a West tower or any combination of the four nautical directions.
I remember a numbness falling over me as everything began to unfold. At the time my daughter was in 5th grade and my son was in 1st. Honestly, I don’t recall if their school requested that parents pick up their children all I remember was an edict from corporate that all corporate travel was terminated immediately.
I canceled my Knoxville trip, and I had several co-workers now stranded in Newark and Baltimore they were now struggling to get home to their families.
The following year I was in Thomasville, GA it was Wednesday, September 11th and right around 5:30 AM I was woken by the hotel’s alarm system… blaring. I opened the drapes to see the hotel parking lot filled with police cars and fire trucks, and immediately I thought here we go again. Thankfully the emergency was in response to a rogue smoke alarm, but not anything that anyone wants setting the tone for their day.
Next, a few beer/alcohol airline updates.
Southwest Airlines is pushing back plans to resume selling or providing alcohol on flights after a recent increase in unruly passengers - The airline has not determined new dates for selling alcohol. This begs me to ask, what do I do with the handful of free Southwest drink coupons that will expire in the coming months.
In May we discussed that the president of the flight attendants' union, reported that there were 477 incidents of “misconduct” by passengers on Southwest planes between April 8 and May 15. Almost 13 each day. I’m sure that number has increased in the past 90 days.
But wait there’s more, there’s always more….
Back in June, American Airlines extended its suspension of alcohol services following a Southwest flight attendant who had not one but two of their front teeth knocked out in an alcohol-fueled incident. - The airline said services will remain suspended through September 13. The date coincides with the end of the TSA mask mandate for all planes. So plan for total bedlam on September 14th.
Here’s the always more - American Airlines has now decided to suspend alcohol sales in economy class until at least January 2022. As I’ve said in the past with American Airlines dropping their prices they’ve now become the new Spirit Airlines.
To pile on even more…..The FAA Wants Airport Bars to Stop Selling Alcohol to Go, So while you can’t get hammered at 30,000” you can still stop by an airport bar for a to-go cup.
In case you didn’t know the FAA adopted a Zero-Tolerance policy toward this behavior on airplanes earlier this year, and they are taking the strongest possible legal action against violators.
We’ve talked about this many many times, the movies, TV and even podcasts make #PlaneDrankin romantic… it is not, and often times is a total crash and burn. But have no fear, as most airline gates are with meer feet of a bar, or vice-versa. So drink up, but it’ll be on your own dime.
I’m a beer person, long before the current craft beer movement.
Growing up my Dad was a Schlitz kind of a guy. He’d cut the grass in a v-neck t-shirt and long khaki pants, (cargo shorts and athletic wear were still decades away.) He’d celebrate the completion of his Saturday chore with an iced cold Schlitz.
When we lived in Atlanta, he’d frequent Dallas, Texas on a regular basis and he’d return with several 6-packs of Coors. Coors, for a variety of reasons, wasn’t sold east of the Mississippi River until 1986. The movie Smokey and the Bandit is based on Coors’s limited distribution.
In the mid-70s beer can, collecting was the rage. My friends and I would scour the roadside medians and construction sites looking for various brands as well as different types of cans we didn’t have. There were flat tops that required a church key to open, cone tops, and the current self-opening cans. Many of the self-opening cans had different-sized openings to allow more beer and less air to hit your system quicker. There wasn’t a lot of beer sold in glass bottles back then.
My first beer was a warm Old Style during an 8th grade Middle School car wash. One of my classmates was dating an older boy that worked at the Winn Dixie. The same Winn Dixie we were using the water from to raise money for an 8th-grade trip or some sort of a uniform. This was 1978 long before texting and cell phones and this warm beer exchange was a complicated system of hand waves, opening and closing of warehouse doors and several trips to the restroom by classmates before our 6-pack of liquid gold was in our hands. It was a 6-pack of suck, warm beer always sucks. I don’t remember the details, but I bet we left 5 warm beers in the bushes.
My next beer was after a day of cutting grass, this was my first job that didn’t involve bussing tables or washing dishes. My boss, possibly 25 years old threw one my way after an exceptionally hot South Florida day of cutting grass. The carbonation was almost too much to swallow.
My first true night of drinking was1980. At the time the legal drinking age in Florida was 18, and if I recall you could drive with an open container of beer if you were between the Intercoastal Waterway and the beach, which was one road A1A.
The names, except mine, are replaced to protect the innocent.
One evening, Bruce, Scott, and myself, all of us under the legal age of 18, piled into Bruce’s 1972 Beige Pontiac with the slap shifter and headed for the infamous Ft Lauderdale strip. Side note as amazing that the Ft Lauderdale was portrayed, and it was, all trouble came from the locals.
Back to our story, Bruce worked at a local grocery store and managed to grab a case of beer, this time it was cold. I had never really drunk before this and I swore I drank 8, but it was probably more along the lines of 3 possibly 4 beers, either way, I got hammered, as in stumbling-down drunk hammered. Most of my sentences began with - listen, listen, listen.
Two of us had told our parents we were spending the night at Bruce’s house, Bruce on the other hand never bothered to tell his parents to expect any company that evening. Safe to say that two of us slept in Bruce’s Pontiac that night while Bruce slept soundly in his own bed. The next morning my head paid for the night before.
I rented my first apartment in 1984. At most 600 sq ft, one bedroom, a galley kitchen, and no central air, but it was about 3 miles away from the beautiful Pompano Beach and I was 20 years old. Other than the stuff I took from my parent’s home I immediately added two additional things, a BBQ grill and my first set of beer glasses….. Thus beginning my love affair with bar glassware…. More on that later. The weekends were spent grilling in the complex’s courtyard while throwing back Miller Lite. In the 80s there weren’t many choices.
Believe it or not, beer can be a bit confusing when you go for anything beyond Budweiser, Miller, or Corona. The reason…. As in most things in life is that we or someone has decided to make it confusing.
There are no less than eleven main categories of beer. Like I said confusing.
Ale - Ale is a general category of beer: This is where your pale and brown ales come from. This is where beer came from. Ales ferment at warm temperatures and for a relatively short period of time. The home brewers like ales and often start brewing ales first for those two reasons.
Lager - Lagers are a newer style of beer with two key differences from ales. Lagers ferment for a long time at a low temperature. Not sure if that makes them any better, just different.
Porter - Porter beers are known for their dark black color and roasted malt aroma and notes. A bit on the sweet side when it comes to taste. If you like heavy beers then try a porter.
Stout - Like porters, stouts are dark, roasted ales. Stouts taste less sweet than porters and have more of a coffee taste. They are characterized by a thick, creamy head. Think Guinness.
Blonde Ale - Easy to drink and perfect for summer.Very light with a hint of sweetness.
Brown Ales - Brown taste of chocolate, caramel, citrus, or nut notes. This is the Heinze 57 of the beer world.
Pale Ale - An English style of ale, a copper color, and fruity scent.
India Pale Ale or as the CEO says Grapefruit Beer - Originally, the IPA was a British pale ale brewed with extra hops. High levels of this bittering agent made the beer stable enough to survive the long boat trip to India without spoiling. The extra dose of hops gives IPA beers their bitter taste. Depending on the style of hops used, IPAs may have fruit-forward citrus flavors or a taste of resin and pine.
Wheat - or as I call it “Lawn Beer” - An easy-drinking, light style of beer, wheat beers are known for a soft, smooth flavor and a hazy body. Wheat beers tend to taste like spices or citrus, with the hefeweizen or unfiltered wheat beer being one of the more common styles.
Pilsner - A subspecies of lager, pilsner beers are distinguished by their water, which varies from neutral to hard. Pilsners are among the hoppiest lagers and generally have a dry, slightly bitter flavor. Their light golden color, clear body, and crisp finish make Pilsners a popular summer beer.
Sour Ale - These beers are known for a tart tang that pairs well with tropical fruit and spices. Within sour beers, you'll find lambics, which are Belgian sour beers mixed with fruit, goses, a German sour beer made with coriander and sea salt, and Flanders, a Belgian sour beer fermented in wood tanks.
Beer glasses - There are at least 10 different styles of types of beer glasses, The reason I say at least 10 is because I have at least 10 styles of beer glasses.
There’s the pint glass, this is what your local bar generally serves beer in. Very utilitarian, they’re thick and you can get them with just about anything painted on the side, Harley logos, your monogram, and even your local brewery. Here’s a quick business tip if one of your bucket list items is to own a bar, do not put your bar’s logo on the glass, go with the standard Budweiser or Miller logos. The reason if you brand your glasses you will find yourself spending a decent amount of your operating budget replacing pint glasses due to people stealing them. Not a many people steal Budweiser and Miller glasses. We probably have 15 or 20 of these here at Chateau’ Relaxo.
The classic beer mug is a tankard, thicker and heavier than a pint glass. Find yourself in a bar fight and need a bit of an advantage then grab one of these and start swinging. We always have one or two of these in the garage fridge for when guests are here. Why, because we’re a bit fancy around here.
You can’t leave out the beer stein, get one from Germany or Epcot, they’re beautiful but not very practical except for the yearly Octoberfest celebration just make sure to pair it with some Schnitzel or Bratwursts.
Many beer glasses support form and function - For example, the Pilsner glass is formed to allow your beer to stay carbonated. No one wants a flat beer.
Tulip glasses are designed with a belly that allows you to gently swirl your beer so you can get the aroma of what you are about to drink.
Flight glasses, when you go to a brewery it can be a bit overwhelming they may have a dozen or more beers they’re offering. You might not know what you want and drinking 12oz at a time till you find the one you want might lead to really bad decisions. So breweries offer up flights, 3 or 4 oz pours of 5 or 6 beers allowing you to sample without getting hammered.
Some people have flight parties where friends bring 3 or 4 unique beers for everyone to sample. If you want a set or two of flight glasses wait till the week after Christmas or Father’s Day and head to Kohls. Go to the men’s section find the clearance table and more than likely you’ll find several sets with glasses and a paddle to serve them on.
Then don’t forget novelty glasses -
The Hopside Downglass - Double-walled acrylic with the inside wall molded as an upsidedown beer bottle.
The Boot glass, another acrylic beer mug that’s molded into the shape of a boot.
The Yard glass, you see these in New Orleans, Renaissance Festivals, and concerts. They look like a giant test tube and typically hold around 40 ozs of beer.
The Hoopside Down, Boot, and Yard all look like they’d be great gifts for the beer enthusiast in your life…. Well, they’re not, most of the time they end up in the donation pile for Goodwill.
My goto glass style, actually there are two. First, one is a mason jar, the classic mason jar like Grandma used for canning. These aren’t the clear mason jars they sell at Publix. These glasses are in these translucent shades of blue and green and embossed with the jar company logos. I probably have 5 or 6 of them in the cabinet, one dating back to the 1960s.
The other glass is a goblet or snifter, think squatty wine glass. I drink a lot of IPA’s and Double IPA’s and the goblets design allow for the beer to really open up and breathe. Yes, nerdy but enjoying a beer is one of the things I do for enjoyment so I try to make it the best that I can. Besides I’m not a power drinker doing funnels and keg-stands.
The other worn-hole that my love of beer has pulled me into is bottle openers.40 years ago I had two bottle openers, one was on my Swiss Army Knife and the other was on the side of my Coleman cooler.
In the past twenty years, I’ve accumulated close to 100 openers, I have one fashioned after one of the green army men from my youth, one opener was a 40 caliber bullet in a former life. There’s the custom hand-forged one made out of iron, one made out of a bicycle chain, and no less than 20 of the classic speed openers each emblazoned with a different companies name.
Not one to call myself a trendsetter, but I was ahead of this trend, so much so that I stood up a website for it way back in 2011….. is the Shower Beer. Enjoying an ice-cold beer while you take a shower, extra points if you take the shower after working in the yard. What kept me from going mainstream was that I called it “A Beer In The Shower”, not a “Shower Beer”. Dammit…...
A few additional items that I have thoughts about when it comes to beer…….
Beer holsters, beer salt, and beer-guzzling helmets, the ones where the beers are attached to a helmet, you drink them through a straw. The theory is you can drink without actually having to hold the beer allowing your hand to do other important stuff like using a circular saw, light fireworks, or shoot a gun. All of those things are stupid, and no one wants them as a gift.
Beer Koozies - I rarely use them, and I have a drawer full of them. Koozies are a great SWAG for companies to brand and give away, and that’s the reason I have a drawer full of them. The reason I don’t use them is that I drink beer out of a glass. And the reason that I drink beer out of a glass is that 30 years ago beer cans were manufactured differently, or maybe I was manufactured differently but all I could taste was the aluminum of the can so I started drinking beer out of bottles, and it’s kind of stuck. However, aluminum cans have gotten much better over the years so I do have several Yeti beer can koozies that get used on occasion.
Kegerators, why don’t I have one? Because having to drink 15 plus gallons of the same beer isn’t appealing. Our weekend beer runs are centered around what I’ll be doing and what we’ll be cooking. I love Cigar City and their Jai Aali IPA but if I’m planning to spend the day in the yard working Jai Alai isn’t what I want to be drinking while I’m doing it.
Home beer brewing - I have lots of friends that do it and do it relatively well, but it’s not for me. I love hobbies that contain lots of details, which brewing beer does, I just don’t have the patience to wait several weeks for a batch to ferment and process. Also, there’s no way to know, that in 5 weeks I’ll be in the mood for a lager so I better get brewing right now.
When it comes to actual beer or breweries, here’s my shortlist -
Beers
Hop Gun from Funky Buddha Brewery in Oakland Park Florida. 7% ABV
Fosters Lager Oil Cans - don’t judge but it’s my favorite yard beer. 5% ABV
Samuel Adams - Wicked Double. This one is hazy, almost grapefruit in appearance. 8.3% ABV
Sweetwater 420 Strain - Canibis infused IPA, what’s not to like? 6% ABV
Breweries
Sweetwater - Based in Atlanta tucked in between downtown and Buckhead they offer the quintessential brewery experience. Food, tours, entertainment and fresh cold beer. If you want a huge variety in beer Sweetwater is the brewery
Terrapin - Another Georgia brewhouse. This one is located in Athens Georgia and also offers a wide variety of brews. Try the HOPSECUTIONER a 7.3% ABV IPA.
Both Sweetwater and Terrapin are widely distributed and can be found on tap at many locations.
I often talk about eating local and drinking local and this next place puts checks in both those boxes. Three Odd Guys in Apopka Florida is less than 10 minutes from Chateau’ Relaxo and they brew amazing beer. I love their MidKnight Bikeride which is a double IPA weighing in at 8.3% APV. There are always activities, trivia several nights each week, food trucks, and on most Friday’s it’s teacher appreciation time.
If you want to expand your beer palate most grocery stores now allow you to build your own six-pack So grab a ringer and fill it with beers you’ve never heard of, or fill it with cool-looking labels, either way, you’ll expand your beer horizon.
That does it, my thoughts on beer…. If you want detailed show notes, links and pictures head over to podpage.com/travel-stories/
Leave a message onAnchor, or shoot me an email at TravelFrick@gmail.com.
As I always say, travel safe, stay safe, and thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening.
My Thoughts On Beer - Travel Stories, Episode 149 -