Red Menace
One reason to love Seattle and the northwest is the plentiful and
ready access to great microbrews. When I moved here I had the great
luck to find
Fey looking for a roommate. At the time he was brewing a number of
beers and even mead, which takes forever to ferment but I bet is
reaching it’s peak right around now. Anyway, growing up in Minnesota,
“beer” usually meant Schmidt from a can, “three two” (lower alcohol
content beer sold in grocery stores), or, more often than not a 40 or
two of Mickey’s and usually consumed on the athletic fields of my high
school. Those were certainly the days…
But that beer was piss! Today I can go to any grocery store and
expect to have 20 local microbrews to choose from, or I can pick from
one of the big name local breweries - Red Hook, Pyramid, Hale’s,
etc. All of their beers are great and right now Hale’s has an
especially tasty amber cleverly named “Red Menace” which features VI
Lenin’s mug on the bottle (the
statue from Fremont a few blocks from the Hale’s brewery). There
are days when I swear I’ll never drink again but thank god hangovers
pass and I regain my better sense and don’t turn my back on our great
beers forever.
The other exciting development in this area is that last weekend I was
the high bidder on a homebrewing kit at an aucition for
cat will henceforth be known as “Hosehead,” eh.