Monday, April 25, 2011

Innis & Gunn Rum Cask

ABV: 7.4    MSRP:$9.95
Innis & Gunn’s Rum Cask pours with a beautifully thick head and a dark red hue reminiscent of birch beer. It has a strong malty nose, sweet with fruit and slightly citrus. The initial taste is very spicy, but the high point of this beer is the sweet finish imbued by the rum cask conditioning. Get this limited release while it lasts.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Vieux Nice.

I have been short on time lately and have seriously neglected updating the blog. I'm mostly busy with retrofitting a popcorn machine to roast coffee and trying to fit in MTB rides before work. Also, I would like to note that the lack of original photography on this site is due to the fact that I do not own a point and shoot camera. Hopefully this will change soon and I promise there will be many quality posts to come. 

Any photograph posted on this site is my own, Linked photographs are credited to the owners of the link

In the mean time, I would like to share a segment of an essay I wrote titled Impressions of the French Riviera. I haven't been able to do much traveling lately and it is nice to revisit this piece as a form of escapism. The full article can be viewed here. Enjoy.

 
     When the sun sets on old Nice and the store fronts close a new dynamic emerges. The same quaint streets you walked by day are now lined with restaurants and night clubs. Glasses clink and wine is swilled over light Italian fare and southern specialties. Soupe de la mer, salade nicoise or linguine with an array of sauces are common main dishes. After dinner you may skip the national drink de Kir (Créme de cassis et un peu Chablis) for a mix of white rum et le jus de lime, imagining a time when Hemmingway staggered along these alleys. Tonight, the romance is lost. Between your spilled beer and your new friends vomit, the broken glass, and screaming nymphs; Vieux Nice looses its European charm after dark. The battered cobbles soaked in alcohol glisten under the orange glow of streetlights. Loud and uptight Americans sing songs in English, coked-out Russians buy shots of liquor and scheme on their next move, British girls with bad attitudes and worse teeth look for fights while transient backpackers and citizens of the world search for what will happen next. A recent graduate crowd armed with liberal arts degrees and money to burn seek out generic pleasures to remind them of frat row; A collegiate holiday abroad with a goal of adding notches to bedposts and stories to the repertoire. This is a tourist town.
     Before sunrise a lonely man in yellow boots cleans the streets. His day begins as the last night owls limp back to their residences. He solely paces the avenues with a fire hose, diligently cleaning up last night’s mess of people’s sick, excrement, and discarded garments. By the time he is finished all the evidence of the previous night's debauches will be destroyed. He is thorough and takes pride in his job. Shame and regret are rinsed down the gutter and out into the ever-rejuvenating sea. By the time the sun rises and the city of Nice wakes, there will be nothing to distract from the delightful smell of fresh croissants and that Mediterranean breeze.


Cheers up.