January 15, 2005

• Hell, there are hundreds of "open source" recipies for beer on the net. The added cafeine is a cute, but not all together original idea. I think on the Drew Carrey show they had a combo coffee/beer drink. I've made cherry spice ale and even did a brew where I replaced half of the malt sugar with date sugar (it was really good). Nonetheless, you should try to do a home brew Nostril. It's a lot of fun and you get to get drunk at the end of it all. Actually, in a perfect world, you should get drunk with the previous batch as you brew your new one.
• Does the stimulant effect of the caffeine simply counter the depressant effect of the ethanol? I saw this a couple of days ago, but refrained from posting it for fear that I would be encouraging the weak-minded to pollute their beer.
• Oh don't be such an old fuddy-duddy, Skrik. This is the 21st century. Flying cars. Jet packs. Domed cities on the Moooooon.
• It's a poor man's speed ball (cocaine and heroin). It's a combo upper downer thing. Folks do it all the time with red bull and vodka. Not my style though. I like my highs high and my lows low.
• Naaah, you're going too far there, imho. I used to drink my own protein mix of guarana powder in a banana smoothie after a meal, then have a lotta beers for a marathon video session. There's no conflict of the stimulant/depressants, really, I just found myself having a good time for longer, rather than getting really sleepy & passing out after a few hours on the couch. Then again, my neurology is slightly different to most. And different beers do different things. Guinness makes me really emotional after a long sesh. Lager or ales just make me sleepy. I suppose it's an individual thing. Skol!
• Since recipies can't be patented ALL recipies are open source. It's the reason Coke is so protective of it's formulation. I also can't see how the CC license would hold up in court.
• I dunno about adding guarana to beer but I've always wanted to try home brewing. Haven't yet got around to it because I'm such a lazy bastard. I noticed this Beer Machine thingy in the stores around Christmas and wondered if it would produce an acceptable brew. Have any monkeys tried it?
• Big positive vote for the Beer Machine. Easiest way to get into beer making and makes good beer. Only fault is it's small size. Eventually you will want to move to bigger batchs. (or I just drink too much beer.
• You can combine home beer brewing with hydroponics. The carbon dioxide given off by the fermenting brew boosts the growth of your 'tomato' plants. /huge grin
• I wonder if you could replace some of the hops with 'tomato' buds, thus producing a THC enhanced brew?
• You can! I've got a recipe from an old copy of High Times I photocopied years ago for just that! The beer is called "Two's Too Much". /guffaw. Always wanted to try making it, but one needs an excess of 'tomato'.
• Well, THC (Tomato-hydra-canibinol), or rather the oil in which it resides, is soluble in alcohol, but it would have to be in much higher amounts than in beer (around 6%) to extract it into a solution. What I would do is to put your tomato buds into a pan with something like everclear (180 proof) and heat it very carefully over a very low flame. Drain off the liquid after an hour or so, reserve it and repeat about four or five times. Then add your alcohol/tomato extract to your beer after it has finished it's initial brewing before you prime it for the bottle. Now, that's a foamy head for a head.
• BTW, I don't know if you all are aware, but hopps, the plant that is used to flavor and (way back when) preserve beer is a very close relative to marijuana, so close that some heads were growing marijuana stalks, grafting hopp buds on to it and having a resultant "legal plant" that would produce THC in the hopp buds. They would then use pretty much the procedure that I describe above to extract it from the hybrid hopp buds. I actuall think the plant wasn't indeed strictly speaking legal, but it looked like a hopp plant and would pass the inspection of the fuzz.
• him name is Hops-kin Stoned Frog
• BTW, I don't know if you all are aware, but hopps, the plant that is used to flavor and (way back when) preserve beer is a very close relative to marijuana, so close that some heads were growing marijuana stalks, grafting hopp buds on to it and having a resultant "legal plant" that would produce THC in the hopp buds. myth, unfortunately (because I'd love it if it were true)
• The added cafeine is a cute, but not all together original idea. I think on the Drew Carrey show they had a combo coffee/beer drink. It's a familiar feeling - the surge of euphoria you feel after having come up with a revolutionary new idea, then the pain of having it cruelly undercut when you discover somebody else has already thought of it. I think there sould be a carefully calibrated scale to describe the variations on this feeling. Discovering that, say, Albert Einstein already thought of your idea is amongst the least painful - it may even be a pleasing feeling. A little further down the scale is discovering that your idea was first mentioned in a footnote to Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. Just below that, by a Congressional sub-committee in the sixties. Much further down, described in rap lyrics. Very far down now, by a sports personality in a post-match interview. Right down near the bottom is being told that your idea was first had by a presenter of "Crossfire". I'm not sure where "staff writer for The Drew Carey Show" comes on this scale, but I'm betting it's not a good thing.
• Bwahh! Bees wins! That'll be $19 US for a non-caffienated keyboard please
• Yes, he does.