May is American Mild Month

From http://www.mildmonth.com/

Each May in the United Kingdom, the Campaign for Real Ale encourages beer drinkers to hit the pubs and enjoy pints of mild ale. 

Here in the United States, mild ale is practically a forgotten beer, lost in a sea of strong hoppy ales whether pale, amber, dark, or otherwise. 

American Mild Month is about encouraging brewers and drinkers alike to discover the delights of mild, perhaps the single most neglected beer style in the US craft beer scene.
But how do you know if you are drinking mild? 

Mild is traditionally an English style of beer, and back in the mists of time, 'mild' simply meant that the beer in your glass was young, yet to be ravaged by the onset of age and to become 'old'. These days though, 'mild' generally means a low alcohol beer that is generally dark and very much on the malty side, though pale versions do exist in the UK. 

…we are looking at broadly similar beers, malt to the fore, hops in the background, and drinkability a key feature.

Participating local breweries:

• Blue Mountain
• Champion
• South Street
• Three Notch'd 

Beer science

This is a guest post by Alex, a bona fide scientist:

As any beer drinker knows, the ingredients to the world’s greatest beverage are water, yeast, hops, and a starch source, typically malted barley. These basic ingredients have been used for hundreds of years. However, beer producers are not required to list their ingredients, so the typical consumer has no way of knowing whether brewers are using barley or some other sort of starch source, such as corn. Corn ferments faster and is far cheaper than barley, so one could see the desire for lesser-quality brewers to use it in place of barley.

Being a beer purist myself, I used SCIENCE to see which beers contained corn. Corn is a C 4 fixating plant, while barley is C3. This means is that they have different carbon-13 isotopic signatures. I theorized that there would be negative trend between corn content and price. I also theorized that there would be geographic trends of C4 content, such as a lack of corn in German beers and a higher amount of it in American and possibly Mexican beers.

Unfortunately the mass spectrometer broke the first time around and I lost most of the poorer-quality beers (apparently machines find Natty just as disgusting as the rest of us). Having already drank the remainder of my samples and an extremely limited time before the due date of the project, I was stuck with the samples that you see in the graph and unable to confirm or deny either of my hypotheses, although the results are still interesting.

Plants that process carbon by the C4 pathway (such as corn) have a δ13C of about -10‰ to -16‰. C3 plants (barley) have a δ13C of -24‰ to -33‰. Most beers that were sampled were primarily C3 (probably barley, but rice is also a possibility), although several (Dos Equis and Modelo) appear to be partially made of a C4 plant, likely corn. The nitrogen variation (vertical axis) is probably due to differences in fertilizer. What sticks out most is how much Beck’s Non-Alcoholic differs from ordinary Beck’s. And PBR is odd, but I think we all knew that already.

rodeo barstool

Haha, "wings for kids." TV news is stupid. Next time you're in a bar restaurant with stools, you should try this. They won't mind—tell them Cville Drink Specials said it's ok.

Where the eff should you drink tonight?

I know, deciding where to go sucks. Your buddy Jack wants the cheapest beers you can find, but you have the hots for Jill, and she likes the fancy drinks. And by fancy she means vodka that comes in a bottle mixed with cranberry juice that is from concentrate. Oh what to do. Choices suck. Some guy proved it in some book.

I'm here to solve your problems. Again. (The first time being the creation of this site…the things I do for you).

Where the fuck should you drink for dinner?Here's where. Click and start walking.

Alright, so really I just found whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com and thought it was genius and wanted to copy it.

Where is the Sparks Lemon Stinger?

Here in Charlottesville, red Sparks is new. But red Sparks isn't really new. Yellow Sparks is. Sparks Lemon Stinger. Word on the street (midwestern streets, that is…won't find Lemon Stinger on local streets) is that this is the best of flavor of Sparks yet. I hate all Sparks, but that's what Sparks drinkers tell me.

This guy also has an in-depth analysis of Sparks Lemon Stinger:


Deep.

So I've been trying to find some Sparks Lemon Stinger. It doesn't exist. The distributors for Charlottesville, Staunton, Harrisonburg, Lynchburg, and Roanoke don't carry it and have no plans to carry it. Sad.

Then I discovered Frank at Two Holes Are Better Than One, whose goal this year is to shotgun a different canned beverage every day for one year. Genius. And this video:



Yes, that is a Sparks Lemon Stinger in Richmond. Hope.

Or not. That Sparks came from "somewhere in Kentucky." Our sources in Richmond (Frank, from Two Holes Are Better Than One) say Richmond doesn't have Sparks Lemon Stinger either. Fail whale.

UPDATE: Richmond stores do sell Lemon Stinger after all. At least, the convenience store on Broad Street, a block from the convention center sells them. And another update… saw Lemon Stinger at Lucky 7. So they have it in Charlottesville after all.

Speaking of Sparks, I need a new Sparks plug for my car.
If you have kids, you can learn how Sparks will make your kids better at life.
By the way, I'm totally jamming out to the old Sparks album, Kimono My House. It reminds me of my half-Japanese heritage. Because they're wearing kimonos. Which come from Japan. Where I am half from.

What are you paying for your beer?

I made a (maybe) handy chart you can use to figure out if you should get the $3 pint or the $11 pitcher. If you can't figure out how the chart works, you should give up beer. For good. You need those brain cells.

Print it out and keep it next to your social norming BAC card. With the 2 cards, if you're a really smart cookie, you can figure out if you have enough money to get drunk enough to need a cab and still afford a cab. If I catch you trying to drive drunk, I will throw your keys into the grassy knoll where you won't find them until the morning.

CVSSC Flippy Cup league

The Charlottesville Sports and Social Club now has a Flip Cup league. $40 for 8 nights of 3 matches of 7 rounds. Is this a drink special?

Flip cup league:

A 12 pack of PBR from the corner store:

The flip cup league costs you 2.4 times more for beer. What if we compare to PBR at bars...

The moral of the story is it's way cheaper to drink alone at home. And the price for the flip cup league is decent, if you like to take your beer 2 ounces at a time.

Biltmore specials updated—now with Boone's Farm

Biltmore just changed their specials, which isn't that news worthy (uh, news?).

But it is post-worthy that one of those specials is Boone's Farm by the bottle on Fridays! Mmmm, Strawberry Hill. I have a friend who once earned $80 at a house party for chugging a bottle of Blue Hawaiian. This is a petite girl, so it was worth it. And jesus, it's Boone's Farm...puke city (she did not yack). Her husband put a baby in her belly, so she can't do that anymore.

Here's a secret: If you ever need to supply your house party with a variety of Boone's Farm—for, say a Boone's Farm / 1990s party—the IGA on Cherry and 5th has no less than 14 flavors.

Also, what the hell is thumbs & toes?

Update: The Biltmore informs me that thumbs & toes are boneless wings—a 20-year Biltmore tradition, now with 15 new sauces.