Market Power

Past vs. Present - Where Would You Rather Be?

This video fits in with looking at old newspaper ads or old Christmas catalogs, reminders of what we have today (and at what price) that past generations could only dream about. 

All the stuff they talk about were brought to us by, as Adam Smith once said about how we get our dinners, "... not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest."

Via Cafe Hayek (HT Eric Parsons).

Boulder Beer Flashback 30th Anniversary Ale

Tonight's beer is the Flashback 30th Anniversary Ale from Boulder Beer, an India style brown ale.  An India pale ale (IPA) is a beer style that comes from the beer brewed in England and shipped to British troops stationed in India.  To keep the beer fresh in the long trip around the Cape of Good Hope, IPA's differ from typical pale ales in the amount of hops added during the boil.  Here's the label.

True to this form, the present ale is brewed with Cascade hops which, according to the label, are added five times during the brewing.  I do not know how many hops are added during the brewing process, nor do I know what type of addition (bittering, flavor, aroma, cold hop).  The brewers also use biscuit (aka Victory) malt and chocolate malt.

The Cascade hops and the biscuit malt gives the brew a citrusy flavor, and thus gives it the lingering feel, not unlike that of orange juice, after swallowing a mouthful.  The chocolate malt adds the nutty flavor, but the brew is overly malty for my taste..  Highly hopped, it's not a smooth finish, but lovers of malty, darker ales should like this brew.

Phil's rating:  12
Plusses:  hoppy
Minuses: overly malty and citrusy, a combo that seems like overkill

Trent Reznor on the Pricing of Concert Tickets and Scalping

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails gives some insights on ticket pricing and scalping and what his band has done to limit it.  His explanation for why bands don't charge more for their tickets even though they could:  they don't want to come off as being "greedy pricks." 

Via Eric Crampton .

Quinoa Pilsner - Partial Mash

This recipe uses a basic partial mash Pilsner recipe with quinoa grains added in.  I bought the quinoa in bulk from a local grocery store.  If quinoa isn't fully rinsed, it can taste soapy because of a chemical called saponin.  The resulting beer was very good and had no indication of a soapy taste, indicating that the quinoa had been rinsed of its saponin.

Ingredients:

• 3# Extra Light DME
• 3.5# Weyerrmann Pilsner malt
• 8 oz Carapils malt
• 8 oz Munich malt 10L
• 1# quinoa grains
• 1oz Saaz bittering hops (5.8% alpha) - 60"
• 1 oz Saaz flavoring hops (5.8% alpha) - 15"
• 1 oz Saaz aroma hops (5.8% alpha) - 2"
• 1t Irish moss
• White Labs Pilsner lager yeast #WL800

Notes:

I can't find my record for my starting gravity.  The recipe from Midwest Brewing on which this recipe is based calls for an original gravity of 1.042-1.046

After pitching the yeast, I began fermentation at room temperature.  1 day later, after vigorous fermentation had begun, I moved the brew to my lagering refrigerator (48 degrees).  1 week after brew day, I racked the brew to a secondary fermentation vessel and kept it lagering for just under 3 weeks (19 days).

The specific gravity at the time of transfer to the secondary was 1.016.

The specific gravity at the time of kegging was 1.016 as before.  Since the gravity had been unchanged in the two weeks since I racked to the secondary, I felt it was time to keg.

I kegged the brew to a sanitized Cornelius (Corny) keg and I started carbonating at 12 psi.

9 days later I tasted the brew.  It tasted like a typical Pilsner should, but had not fully carbonated.  Another week of carbonation at 12 psi should do the trick.

Update:  The additional week of carbonating at 12 psi resulted in more carbonation, but did not result in sufficient carbonation.  So I upped the CO2 to 30 psi for three more days.  That did the trick.  This is an excellent pilsner.

Oktoberfest Maerzen - Partial Mash Recipe

Ingredients

• 3.3# Amber LME
• 1.4# Alexander's Pale Kicker
• 4# Weyermann Pilsner malt
• 8 oz Caramel malt 60L
• 8 oz Victory malt
• 3 oz Chocolate malt
• 2 oz Hallertau hops 3.8% alpha - bittering - 60"
• 1 oz US Tettnang hops 4.8% alpha - aroma - 2"
• 1t Irish moss
• White Labs German lager yeast #WL830

Notes:
I made a yeast starter using 1C of amber DME and 1 Qt of water.

OG = 1.056
SpGr at the time I racked the brew to the secondary:  1.019

I started the fermentation at room temperature and moved to the lagering temperature (48 degrees F) after noticing vigorous fermentation (after approximately 19 hours after pitching the yeast).

I racked to the secondary one week after brew day.

Sam Adams Longshot Cranberry Wit

This is the first in what may be, or may not be, the start of a Market Power beer ranking system.  Chad the Elder at Fraters Libertas has no need to have a monopoly on the MOB beer ranking system, so I'll see if I have the wherewithal to continue this ranking.

I have no set system with which to judge, but my favorite beer is Avery Brewery's IPA.  I will base my rankings on my comparison of the brew to the Avery IPA.  It should also be noted that I have a taste for hoppy beers.  So I prefer an IPA, a Cascade Pale Ale, or an ESB.  Now you know my biases.  I will give the Avery a score of 16.  A perfect beer will have a rating of, say, 18. 

This evening's brew is a Longshot Cranberry Wit brewed by Sam Adams.  Recently Sam Adams brewery has been holding a contest for homebrewers where brewers send their homebrew off to be judged.  Winners get to have their brew made by Sam Adams. 

This beer was created by Carissa Sweigart, an employee of the Boston Beer Co.  She entered the 2008 homebrew contest and was one of three winners.  Her brew is brewed with cranberry, cinnamon, orange peel, coriander, and grains of paradise.  It is a fairly cloudy beer, golden in color with a bit of a red hue (probably from the cranberries).  This picture is close to what I have in the glass in front of me.

It is a very light-tasting beer, has little mouthfeel, and does not have much hop in the flavor.  The orange peel comes out fully in the aroma of the beer and it leaves an after taste not unlike that left after drinking orange juice.  The back label  says it is reminiscient of an autumn day in New England, but I think the beer would make a good tailgating beer for an Indian Summer football game.

Phil's rating:  11
Plusses:  refreshing, light
Minuses: no hop flavor, not much body

Cascade Pale Ale - All Grain Recipe

Ingredients

• 10 pounds 2-row American malt
• 8 oz Carapils malt
• 8 oz Caramel 10L malt
• 1 oz Cascade hops (7.1% alpha acid) - bittering (60")
• 1oz Cascade hops (7.1% alpha acid) - flavor (15")
• 1oz Cascade hops (7.1% alpha acid) - aroma (2")
• 1t Irish moss
• White Labs California ale yeast (WL001)

OG - 1.051

Notes:  I mashed the grains at 152-151 F for 60 minutes.  I used 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain.  My mash tun lost 1 degree of temperature during the mash.  I started out at 152 and ended at 151.

This was my first all-grain batch.  I heated the mash water to about 170 degrees, but adding the grains did not bring the temperature down to 152F.  I added enough ice to bring the temperature down to 152F.  I think heating the mash water to 165F will suffice.

At the end of the mash, I drew off 2 gallons of wort (a quart at a time) and poured back into the grains to rinse out grain specks.  My goal was to get clear wort running out of the mash tun.   I think drawing off 1.5 gallons would have sufficed.

I sparged the grains with 170 F sparge water using 0.5 gallons per pound of grain.  I collected a total of 7 gallons of wort into my brew pot.

I brought the wort to a boil and boiled for a total of 60". 

I cooled the wort to below 70 degrees, transferred to my plastic fermenter, pitched the yeast, and sealed with a lid and an airlock.  I wrapped the fermenter with towels (swaddling clothes) and placed on my dining room table.  The temperature in that room is kept at about 70-72 degrees in the summer.

I had vigorous fermentation within 24-36 hours.

I initially used a turkey fryer to try heating the wort to a boil, but the fryer was not powerful enough to do this.  So I put the pot on my stove (covering two burners) and was able to heat my wort to a boil.  I did not get the rolling boil I had grown accustomed to in my extract brews, but the resulting gravity measurements and fermentation activity seem just fine.

Update:  Sp Gr on 7/25/2009 - 1.006 (very low by my experience).  But it tasted comparable to Point Brewery's Cascade Pale Ale although the Point Ale was poured from a chilled bottle.  So that's a good sign!

You Do Not Own a Copy of this Book, Dear Reader, Even Though You Bought It

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

Post here via via Kip.  The following is so true:

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

The Kindle seems kind of cool, but this will make me think twice should I ever think about buying one.

Unemployment Now Above 10% in 16 States - AP

Story here:

The U.S. Labor Department says unemployment topped 10 percent in 16 states last month. The rate in Michigan surpassed 15 percent, the first time any state hit that mark since 1984.

Home to the nation's struggling auto makers, Michigan has been clobbered by lost factory jobs. Its jobless rate of 15.2 percent in June was the highest in the country, but the record-high for the state was 16.9 percent in November 1982.

Still, the government says it's the first time in 25 years that any state has suffered an unemployment rate of at least 15 percent. In 1984, it was West Virginia.

The national unemployment rate is 9.5 percent, a 26-year high, and is expected to hit 10 percent by year-end.

Here is the BLS news release.

The Cost of Organ Transplantation

Despite the law in the US that states that humans cannot sell their organs to other humans (they can only be donated), organ transplantation is far from being free.  This article has some interesting numbers on the cost of organ transplantation in the US.

Japanese who traveled to the United States to get new hearts were charged as much as about $1.63 million for the operation in 2008, or five times higher than in previous years, medical sources well-versed in organ transplants said Thursday.

...In the U.S., the only country that accepts Japanese for heart transplants, nationals are charged $300,000 on average in hospital and physician fees for the operation, they said, adding that the figure does not include pre- and posttreatment fees.

HT to Al Roth