Untappd potential

     "Boy, he can sure put them away." That was an excerpt from a little conversation an ex-girlfriend had with me when her mom noticed the efficiency I put away beers as we traveled. I said I was doing it for a badge on Untappd, "Take It Easy" or 12 beers in one day. We were traveling all day and I'm scared shitless of flying and subsequent crashing. It gave me something to occupy my time and keep my mind off the fiery wreckage that could be.

     I've used the Untappd app for over 5 years now. It was my iPhone 3, so it's been some time. The use of the application is to log the beers you drink. You can take a picture of the brew and where you drink them. You can also rate the beer based on a scale of 1 to 5. Then, there are badges, some pertaining to the styles of beer or locations of the beer. Looking at my badge collection, I have a penchant for India pale ales. I didn't grow up on IPAs. I grew up on cheap, North American adjuncts, cream ales and the such. Never did I think I'd have 100s of IPAs.

     I love the app. On one hand, I use it as a badge of honor. I am the consummate pioneer, forging new lands for things to share with the Old World. My travel has bequeathed onto me a list of beers that people that I grew up with never had the opportunity to try. There is one person on my list where I question the validity of the check-ins. I know that the Buffalo market doesn't provide such brews, so when they check in with a beer exclusive to a certain region, I have to question it. Sure - there are bottle sharing programs, but come on. I was born at night, not last night. There is the pinnacle Uber badge, for those who have had 10,000 individual beers. Not impossible, however, it would require a lot of travel.

     Potential is one thing, but negativity is another. Both can grow exponentially. Have you ever been in a lunchroom talking shit about a customer that was the dumbest one you've ever talked too? Then a co-worker one-ups you with their dumbest. Then it becomes a contest in negativity. Negativity begets negativity and before you know it, you're sitting at your desk bewildered wanting just to go home, order a grilled cheese stuffed pizza and drink a 6 pack of beer and watch sitcom TV. You wake up in the morning regretting the last night's activity. You plan on hitting the gym after work but then you meet up with your mates in the break room and start talking about the dumb customers.

    If you were to ask my ex, Untappd was an excuse for my drinking. It rewarded my lizard brain with a token for the decisions I made to drink. However, I see it as a chance to track what I've had, akin to a baseball card collection. You know, from a young age, we're told that we can be whatever we wanted to be when we grew up. Of course, you're asking 5 and 6 year olds this question and you're going to get the same, tried answers. Doctor, lawyer, soldier. I grew up in a home with beer. Albeit, it was the home of an alcoholic.

    Choice is, ostensibly, ours. Like in judo or jiu jitsu, you can use an opponent's leverage against them. We can use things as a benefit or detriment. Maybe in the first years of my drinking career, it was just about drinking and getting laid, but now it's for style points. I've been drunk more than a few times in my life and now I'm going for the Uber badge. There's smart ways of doing it, not just pounding a 6 pack of whatever I pick up at Fred Meyer's. You can go to a brewery and have a taster or a flight where you can have 5+ samples of whatever a brewery is offering.

Work smarter, not harder. Get drunker.

Riddle of the Liquor: Part 2, Something New

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiates 1:9)

     There is nothing like the Bible to act as a wet blanket on the fire of life. Why don't you just kick my dog and piss in my Wheaties? By the way, did you know that John Henry Kellogg was a doctor and ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium. As a Victorian-era doctor, he believed in wack-a-doodle ideas such as liver secretions affecting the way we act and stuck a combination of yogurt and water up his patients' bums for daily enemas. He also created Corn Flakes because the bland taste was suppose to curb sexual libido. Kooks. So, I decided to go to a local bottle shop. Peach Gose. Cucumber Sours. Chocolate Stouts. 7 hopped IPAs. What do you have to say about that Johnny Bible?

     Take a look at where you buy your brew. I'm willing to bet there is more than Budweiser and Miller there. How could that be? After the prohibition of alcohol, major breweries that survived the purged slurped up local and regional breweries. After consolidation, those larger breweries developed ways to maintain continuity of their product's taste by developing extracts from one source. They could recreate that same flavor anywhere on God's green earth. I remember asking an Irish guy while watching a Liverpool game, why drink a Budweiser in a pub? There were plenty of other beers. His response, "no matter where you go, you're going to get the same thing." That's something I can, at least, understand. I was recently burned when I got a double IPA from a 7-Eleven. Normally, that's not a place to buy craft beer - but I played the odds. It tasted like a pinecone that came out of a skunk's ass.

     Marketing has changed too. In the 1950s, advertisement showed wives burning dinner but at least there was a Schlitz for her man after a hard day's work. Feminism put a kibosh on that sort of advertisement, but in the 1980s, Spuds MacKenzie, a bull terrier, was flanked by gorgeous women and Bud Light. Now, with the craft beer revolution, you see a more artisan approach. Some of it is laughable, because a brewery like Blue Moon who had a great hefeweizen - served with an orange. They were bought out by the Coors-Molson group and who know how that is actually made. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms have changed the scape of beer marketing. We have a closer look of the bearded fellows at the brewery stirring the wort and other pictures of the product. Personally, I'm still trying to understand the essence of that approach. How it motivates the consumer to buy their product. I think it is suppose to be that we're all suppose to be artists. We're all searching for something new so we can show people that we have our fingers on the pulse of something. Much of my Twitter feed, @redefiningform, I speculate on moves that happen within soccer. Recently, Frank de Boer was released from his post at Inter Milan and I speculated that he'd go to Sunderland in the Premier League. Whether that happens or not, who knows?

     We've come a long way since apes discovered eating fruit that has fallen from the tree  ferments if you leave it there and you can get drunk. We've evolved from Babylonian and Egyptian beers. Hell, if you were to have a beer that was brewed by the Founding Fathers of America, it would taste like someone had just begun home brewing and they didn't wash out the gear and it tastes like Band-Aids. Despite what the Bible says, I believe that as long as science and ingredients provide, that we can have unlimited potential.  I believe that with yeast strains, hop strains and malts - we can have plenty of brand new beers as longs as brewers push the boundaries of what's possible.

     Next week, I'll delve into the next part of the phrase: something borrowed. What is the things what we borrow from other brewers? Other bloggers? Other drinkers? If you are a fan, I would appreciate feedback. What is something that we all share when it comes to drinking. Please tweet me at @Drunkproduction on Twitter or email me adrunkenproduction@gmail.com.

Champion of the daily grind

     Soon, it will be 7 AM. I just went to bed at 1 AM because I just got home from unloading a truck full of cheap, Asian-made wares that Asian relatives will buy in a department store and then send back it back to Asia because they have disposable income working contract jobs with American corporations to send things back. In all of the Donald Trump fervor of nationalism - this is nothing new. Yet, here I am.

     I've always subscribed to the Protestant work ethic despite my grandmother being an Irish Catholic. The Protestant work ethic is the idea that a person's duty is to achieve success through hard work and thrift. It was something that fueled my Depression-era grandparents. Both grandparents lived through hard time, had minimal education, but worked tireless hours for their daughters to provide them with a home and the ability to do more than what they had. One of my grandfather's sayings was "you've got champagne dreams and a beer wallet." Obviously, 15 plus years later, that mantra sticks with me. I left my mother's house at 16 years old because I wanted to work a summer job instead of staying home and watching my brother and sister while she worked. It was a message that was emphasized over generations - how was it not suppose to resonate within a guy named Brandon? When I moved out, I got my worker's permit for a 16 year old and had a job washing dishes within a week. You can't stop the Irish from working. The earnings were not enough for an aspiring 16 year old, so I got another job at a rival restaurant and worked the maximum amount of hours. It was New York, no one was checking in on that.

    In a previous article, I wrote about the yeoman's work. After working a 12 hour day, I would come home to a 12 pack of cheap, domestic beer, such as Genesee Cream Ale - just like my Trampa. You set two beers at the opposite sides of the driveway and you take a sip with each pass of the shovel or snow blower. There was an honesty within those sips, each earned through labor. In Industrial-era Buffalo, bars and taverns would be full of workers eating a cheap meat sandwich and a pint or two of Iroquois or Phoenix. There was a tacit agreement between worker and employer where if you were going to subject your workers to a grueling regimen, you gave them a luxurious lunch hour where they could imbibe a pint or two to deal with the drudgery of the day. The wives would trudge over snow banks to go to the neighborhood brewery or bar and fill up a gallon of beer for the yeoman to come home and enjoy the fruits of his labor.    

     A lot of us working class ilk have bought into the idea of the Protestant work ethic. It's the driving force of the American dream. Work hard, find a class braud to make children with and house them in a 2 room, 1 bathroom home paid through a mortgage and backed by a college education. However, the rules of engagement have changed. God forbid you live in a desirable plot of land - you'll end up fighting for a reasonable studio apartment that takes 50 percent of your income. Student loans leave you strapped for cash. You worry about the having children because you can't provide them the same dreams and aspirations your parents had.

     Some employers in the Pacific Northwest have beer refrigerators. As a wage slave, I find that completely amazing. Employers aren't advocating for their employees to get blitzed at lunchtime, but understand that there are holistic qualities of having a cold one with a sandwich. It's like moving into your first apartment and having ice cream for dinner. You're not going to do it all the time but it's a nice treat. You could also speculate that it may dissipate the urge to binge drink on the weekend - not letting the stress to build up for five days to explode all over the weekend. There are cultures in Europe that don't have the prevalence of alcoholism because of the normalization of the act.

 *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* Time to make the goddamn donuts (if you remember the 1980s Dunkin Donuts commercial.) I believe it is time to revise the early ideas of industry and work that the American workforce has embraced since the 1920s. Do you know what else happened in that era? Prohibition. We no longer wear suits to the office and Spot, the company dog is laying by your feet at your stand up desk. We cling to old and outdated ideas. Yes - it worked before but perhaps it's time to reinvent the wheel. I believe a majority of people want to work hard, but we've all been worn down to such a point where we're just apathetic. We have two days to recharge after five days of depleting our energy. There are small, nominal things employers can do to make their employees happier and more productive. Even if the answer is working less.

So, let's have a beer at the 1 o'clock meeting, get the creative juices flowing and let's figure this thing out.