Books and Beers

André Gide: Ponarejevalci denarja

2009-10-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

Ponarejevalci denarja so knjiga, ki sem jo žvečil celo večnost. Par mesecev, čeprav je relativno kratka. Zgolj, da ne bom čez tri mesece pozabil, da sem jo bral, so tukaj ključni podatki: izjemno kompleksna zgodba z malim miljonom karakterjev, umetniki, ki "ne mogu da gledaju ljude", vsi heteroseksualni odnosi so napisani pavšalno, res se dogaja zgolj homoseksualcem in te dogodivščine so napisane s takim žarom, da se človeku kar milo stori pri srcu. Naslov izhaja iz dvojnosti, original in kopija originala, tako na ravni umetnosti, kot na ravni medosebnih odnošajev.

Apollo Olive Oil: Mistral Olive Oil

2009-09-05T21:18:00.001-07:00

I tend not to rave about things like oil, but this olive oil really deserves attention. We bough it in the local whole foods and when I saw Maya speaking to the dude I was immediately suspicious since in California people usually put more emphasis on bullshit and organic credentials of ingredients rather than the quality itself. But this guy was different, he was spelling out the various varieties of olives that went into different versions of their oil (I didn't recognise any) rather than go on about tradition, environment, etc. And indeed, these dudes use an advanced vacuum milling technology (allegedly only one of five in the world) and the results are worth talking about. For the first time I am looking forward to taste olive oil in salad rather than just assume it is going to provide some neutral background to the salad itself. Warmly recommended.

Fantôme de Noel

2009-08-07T23:38:00.000-07:00

I've decided to splurge on beer this Thursday and spent $15 on Fantôme de Noel. Fantôme makes expensive beers in a small craft brewery in the French speaking area of Belgium. Well, I got home, opened the beer and it exploded, making a small fountain in my living room and kitchen that took 20 mins to clean up. Now, I was paying $15 for half a bottle of beer. Huh.
But it was good, real good. With wines, price never correlates with taste that much, at least not to my buds, but with beer you can never do wrong with buying an expensive one...

Deschutes: Red Chair IPA

2009-07-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

I am simply too busy at the moment to write much about cool beers I am drinking. However, this one is really quite interesting. Inidian pale ale (IPA) is one of my favourite styles and American microbreweries created their own stream of IPAs characterised by excessive hoppines, bitternes and high alcohol content. This one keeps the hoppines and high alcohol content, but manages to remove bitterness. The result is quite intruiging and novel in addition to be a very drinkable, citrusy beer. Well done, Deschutes!

Lagunitas: Hop Stoopid

2009-05-03T21:38:00.001-07:00

Lagunitas is one my favourite west coast breweries. They are the ones that did the Zappa series (I wrote about the first two and also drank the third). The bottle of this beer shows a wooden farmhouse of some kind, a bizarre tall building (I think it was stretched vertically using photoshop) and you can just imagine a stoopid hillbilly coming out... And the beer lives up to its name, it is stoopidly hopped. It makes me see green. Green, green, here I come.

Magic Hat Brewing: Magic Hat 9

2009-03-27T15:52:00.001-07:00

I've drunk this beer in a dodgy greek restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, yesterday. I must admit that this beer intrigued me somewhat, it smells of honey and fruit, but it actually doesn't taste of honey. It is a bitter, lemony taste with a sweet after taste; it seems that the progression of tastes goes follows an unusual progression. I wouldn't call it a great beer, it didn't seem like a very well balanced taste and nothing amazing in the grand scheme of things. It is, however, an intriguing beer, well worth trying...

Ivo Andrić: Most na Drini

2009-03-03T06:17:00.000-08:00

Do te knjige sem bil precej skeptičen, ker sem si v svoji nevednosti megleno predstavljal, da gre za partizansko zgodbo v kateri partizani na koncu most razstrelijo. Kar je precej idiotsko, saj je gospod knjigo dokončal leta 1943, sicer pa zgodba poteka v obliki povezanih kratkih zgodb, osnovanih na resničnih dogodkih, od grandnje mostu v 16. stoletju pa do začeta 1. svetovne vojne.
Zgodba je resnično fascinantna: Mehmed Paša Sokolović, ki so ga Turki kot otroka ukradli iz neke Bosanske vasi se v Turčiji politično povzpe do prvega vizirja, ki praktično vodi državo in da v svoj rojstni kraj postaviti svoji veličini primerni most. Tako Višegrad, rupa najjača, dobi neskončno lep most, ki je trenutno zaščiten s strani UNESCA. Zgodba potem sledi tem ljudem, kako živijo svoje življenje na prepihu zgodovine, malo pod Turki, malo pod Avstro-Ogrskim imperijem in malo pod Srbi naslednjih 400 let. Knjiga po mojem sicer ne zasluži Nobelove nagrade (ki jo je Andrić dobil), stilistično je malo repetitivna in prevod Toneta Potokarja je slab, da o v pički skeniranju v Delovi ediciji niti ne razpravljam. V vsakem primeru je knjiga definitivno vpisala Višegrad na spisek destinaciji, ki jih je treba obiskati pred smrtjo.
Roman je dandanes zanimiv predvsem iz dveh razlogov. Prvič, napisan je je bil pred moderno fantazmo boja ver in strahom pred muslimani; v Višegradu živijo muslimani, pravoslavci in nekaj Židov in sicer se precej štocajo, ampak neke odkrite hostilnosti ni, če pa že je, je predvsem na osnovi narodnosti. Drugič, knjiga se zaključi z razbitjem mostu leta 1914 (3 od 11 stebrov so bili podrti, danes obnovljeni) in umiranju ljudi vseh narodnosti v vojni med Srbijo in Avstro-Ogrsko, kar na pronicljiv napoveduje Višegrajski masaker 1992, v katerem je bilo ubitih 60-200 ljudi in 10,000 izgnanih.

Peroni: Nastro Azzurro

2009-02-06T11:38:00.001-08:00

This is my third week in Italy and while trying to avoid beer so far, opting for wine instead, I've nevertheless drank one of the local mass produced beers, Nastro Azzurro, which can be roughly translated into "blue ribbon". And yes, white I love Italian cousine, this is simply not a good beer. And the mass-production is not an excuse as the Italian mass-produced espresso is often fantastic.

However, it has to be admitted that Italians drink beer in small doses, typically only 2 or 3 dcl and they have a somewhat different perception of the thing. So, while Nastro is nothing more than a somewhat smooth lager, it does go well with Italian fashion and food. Italy is no country for a heavy stout... It still somehow managed to fall behind Union and Lasko on ratebeer.com. Haha!

Harry Markopolos: The World Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud

2009-02-01T08:37:00.000-08:00

Harr Markopolos wrote a 19 page document to SEC discussing why he believes that Bernie Madoff is a fraudster. It can be found here.

It is a really interesting read. Basically, it is quite hard to believe that SEC didn't buy this. He puts out a plethora of arguments, some interesting, some obvious (even to me!) about why Madoff's fund is a fishy. Basically, Madoff claimed to have been using the so called split-strike conversion. This is a simple strategy, where you buy a portfolio of stocks and prevent losses associated with downward motion of these stocks by buying out of money put options on some index correlated with your stocks. You pay this protection by selling out of money call options. In other words, if nothing happens you get the profit on the mean growth and you protect yourself against large losses by forfeiting large gains. So, why is Madoff a fraudster?
Harry puts out many, many reasons, but most interesting are:

The size of the entire market for these options on regulated markets is not enough to cover hist investments, neither for call, nor for put. Why would he be buying such vanilla options over the counter and pay extra for them?
He had virtually not losses over 20 years. Now, to avoid this, he would have to been buying at the money options, rather than out of the money options and the sums don't add up - there is no way he could keep such profits while still paying for these super-expensive options.
Nobody else following this strategy was able to do much better than treasury bills + 1 percent or so.
There was absolutelly no correlation between market movements and Madoff's returns. Since he is buying a real portfolio of stocks, but insuring only on indices, this is mathematically impossible!
Taking private money and returning it with 12% interest to run his strategy is stupid. Why wouldn't he borrow at LIBOR+something rates?
He unwinds all his investment always at the right time, just before market crashes.

There are many less technical resons to do with secrecy, avoidance of anythign regulatory, etc. But the best bit is Harry's style. He writes as if SEC and himself were good friends, chatting about Madoff over a beer. Sentences like "Leon is a free spirit and if you ask him he'll tell you but you'd understand better if you meet him in a private room...". A really fascinating read!

Anthony Trollope: The Way We Live Now

2009-01-06T06:02:00.000-08:00

At over 750 pages, this is Trollope's longest work. I nevertheless managed to read it in less than 10 days due to my sprained ankle and the victorian soap-operaness that pervades this book. There are many sub-plots, all revolving around Melmotte, the great financial scoundrel that shines like a comet in London for a year. A really infectous read, perfect for christmas holidays next to a fireplace, but not sure if I do like it after all; it has a somewhat overly sweet ending and language-wise Jane Austen wins hands down.

Thomas De Quincey: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

2008-12-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

It took me a long time to actually go through and read this book. It's a truly bizarre literary contraption. It reads as an unedited ramblings of an intelligent and witty, but otherwise stubborn English aristocratic fart. It is an autobiographical account of opium addict from the times, when the addictive properties of opium were not fully understood and you could buy stuff in a drug store. Essentially the dude got a toothache, which he attributed to not washing his face with cold water every morning (?!) so he did water his entire head one evening and ending up having a terrible cold. And so a friend recommends opium as relief (?!). As simple as that.

The best part of the book is the insight you get into the customs and thinking of the time; there is really nothing transcendental about this book, it is as deeply rooted in its time as it gets, together with all class, gender and racial prejudice. And then there is the great English wit. Witness this:

"Neither Coleridge nor Southey is a good reader of verse. Southey is admirable almost in all things, but not in this. Both he and Coleridge read as if crying, or at least wailing lugubriously."

"Positively, in one line of communication to the south of Holborn, for foot passengers (known, I doubt not, to many of my London readers), the road lay through a man's kitchen; and, as it was a small kitchen, you need to steer cautiously, or else you might run foul of the dripping pan."

"Turkish opium eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But, that the reader may judge the degree in which opium is likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the question illustratively rather than argumentatively) describe the way in which I myself often passed on opium evening in London during the period between 1804 and 1812."

And so on and on... Really fascinating stuff.

Fraoch Heather Ale

2008-11-02T19:47:00.000-08:00

This is a terrible photo stolen from flickr, and I like it because the glass is exactly wrong kind of glass for this kind of beer. Anyway, this is one of those beers that you mindlessly put into your basket only to discover it is damn expensive at the checkout (at least in Whole Check Foods, where things are even more expensive than usual). Either way, the beer is quite good, it has a distinctly British character and it is a nice refreshment from the hoppy madness of local American beers. I got an unexpected proustian flashback of my times in England. A very mellow, somewhat sweet taste, balanced to the level you don't really notice anything in particular, a slighly bitter taste and a then an easy Sunday afternoon tipsiness.

UPDATE:
Ok, the owner of the photo has contacted me and is upset about me stealing the pic and saying it is terrible! I now linked the pic to the original source and want to stress that comments were not meant to be derisive but rather playful: I do like the photo! Really!

Michael Pollan: Omnivore's Dilemma

2008-09-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

Reason for reading this book was a very Berkeley one. My colleague was supposed to be organising a series of diners/discussions on food politics and we were all supposed to read Pollan's book. It is quite infamous in Berkeley circles.

I have several reservations about this book. The biggest problem is that it reads as a really long in-flight magazine article. The dude is a journalist and it shows. There is no scholarly rigour, it is mostly a readable entertaining prose, more like a travel documentary rather than a serious book about food. If you like a genre like this, then you might like the book, but it is not very intellectual. Having stated this, the book is still worth reading because of the factual information it provides; it gives several convincing arguments against industrial production of food and puts my dislike of Whole Foods / recent fad on organic food on a firmer basis. Finally, some of the Salatin's methods described in the book are just genius and this book has convinced me that this might be the way to go, after all.

Ommegang: Ommegeddon

2008-09-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

You don't see a beer with an atomic explosion on its bottle every day! It's a beautiful beer from Ommegang Brewery which, according to the label, is "3,264 miles from Brussels, but its heart is right in Belgium". It is also part of Duvel empire (see dude's comment under my Duvel post). It is also very expensive at $11 per bottle. Decently strong at 8%. In some respects it is close to spontaneously fermented beers, mostly in its acidity and fruity after taste (I think it is the Brett yeast that does it). However, much more civilised and drinkable. My drinking partner claims it is "maybe a bit too sweet?". Maybe, I wouldn't have noticed it.

The bottle explains the bomb picture: "And remember: 'Don't wait for the Last Judgement. It happens every day.' (Camus)". Oh, yeah!

Russian River: Beatification

2008-08-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

This is possibly the most expensive beer that I have ever bought. $13 for a bottle of 375ml, i.e equivalent of a $26 per a wine bottle, but taking into account the poshness premium on wine, it is more like a $100 wine bottle. Anyway, it is a mixture of two spontaneously fermented beers, which are in turn fermented again in the bottle. Spontaneous fermentation is my favourite, it is a true art of Belgians that make beer rot and acquire random bugs from the air in a semi controlled manner - this makes each batch unique (my was batch #2). It is extremely sour, like a lemonade and quite fizzy due to secondary fermentation. Not complex, but with a beuatifuly simple vision instead. A truly acquired taste that I wish I could afford to sample more often.

Green Flash: Trippel

2008-07-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

"Rich pale malt flavors provide a solid base for zesty Styrian Golding and Czech Saaz hopping. Trappist ale yeast contributes the fruity, spicy profile of classic, monk-brewed, Belgian ales. Our Trippel is luscious, fiery, golden brew and a contemporary rendition of traditional Belgian Trippel." I am drinking this beer for the second day in a row. Yesterday it was my pick and today's it was Maya's. Her claim is that it is "definitelly too sweet". Off record she would also say that it is "too dense". I concur.
Note however, that it uses famous Slovenian Styrian Golding hops - that was my main motivation for buying it in the first place. Plus, green flash is an astronomical event...

Sierra Nevada: Harvest

2008-07-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

I am suspicious of Sierra Nevada. I have yet to drink a good Sierra Nevada beer. But this time, they convinced me with claim of fusion of "fresh New Zeland hops with the finest North American malts". Fusion my arse, the beer, while expectedly very hoppy, misses a clear vision or balance and ends up just about drinkable, without excess in any one direction... Another disappointment by Sierra...

Best American Short Stories of 2007

2008-07-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

I am, in general, not too keen on short stories - to me it always seems to be a cockout for a writer to write a bunch of short stories rather than one proper novel. However, this book is different, because it is a compilation of short stories and even more than that, it is a selection of the best short stories. I am intrigued by the selection of Stephen King as the editor, as I have and still think of him as a pulp fiction writer. Nevertheless, the stories inside are, while not annoyingly arty-farty, still a good read (as opposed to most SK stuff). It takes one or two days to read each of them and there is a lot of variety, styles... basically one gets a taster for each writer.The overwhelming theme is plain, sad, everyday life, not even life slotted into the grand scheme of larger forces influencing us as was the case with the realism at the end of 19th century, but the real depressing stuff of pointlessness of our life. My favourite ones were Toga party by J Barth, My brother Eli by J Epstein, Where will you go when your skin cannot contain you by W Gay, Wake by B Jensen, Horseman by R Russo and maybe Sans Farine by J Shepard.

Anchor Small Beer

2008-05-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

I learn new and exciting things about beer every day. I bought this beer out of support for my local SF brewery that tends to brew an okish, but fairly non-descript beer. However, this one is a gem. The label says:

The tradition of brewing two distinct beers from one mash has existed for thousands of years, and for centuries the term "small beer" was used in English to describe the lighter and weaker second beer. By association, the term came to mean something of little importance.
We make our Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale from the rich first runnings of an all-malt mash, and Anchor Small Beer is our attempt to duplicate the "small beers" of old by sparging that same mash: sprinkling warm water over the Old Foghorn mash after the first wort has run off, thereby creating a second, lighter brew from the resulting thinner wort. Technically, both beers are "ales" because they are made with top-fermenting yeast.

The beer itself is very interesting. I definitely would call it bitter, more like a sparkly, not very strong, but very bitter lager. And I liked it a lot...

Walker's Firestone Reserve Porter

2008-04-29T22:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, I haven't updated this blog for a long time and I have drunk an entire slew of very good beers recently. So, if I post a lot about good beers, it is not because my standards are falling, but because that even though I've drunk lot of shit beer, there were quite a few jewels.
Walker's Reserve Porter is one such good beer. It is an excellent beer in the old sub-stout porter style. Very smooth, liquid beer that still manages to punch an incredibly smooth bitterness with strong unmistakably chocolate taste, which actually made me look at the label to see if this is a chocolate beer. Not too strong for American standards at 5.9 %, Reserver Porter makes an excellent, excellent desert beer.

Jon Lee Anderson: Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

2008-04-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

It took me 9 months to read this book, it is 800 pages long. If there is one thing that cannot be denied about this book is that it is extremely well researched. The guy interviewed literally hundreds of people and went painstakingly through all available archives (including Russian and CIA's ones). The outcome is probably more or less as complete biography about Che as we will ever have (or need). The book is quite objective and while it is clear that the author likes Che, it steers away from an unfettered adoration that is present in so much work about Che.

The resulting image of Che remains, even after all bad things are taken into account, that of a positive historical figure. While Fidel's struggle was about power rather than personal convictions, Che was an everlasting idealist. True, he was naive, he never doubted in Fidel and he killed people. However, he did so because he saw himself as an inevitable force of history. Rather than retire in Cuba, where he could have lived a comfortable life of a revolutionary hero, he went on and fought on, first in Congo in Africa and then in Bolivia, where he was killed. And while in Cuba, he lived a manic frugal life, thinking it is a duty of revolutionaries to live an exemplary anti-capitalist life. He was also incredibly creative, authoring several books on economy, from which it is clear that he was critical of the Soviet system and had a deep understanding of Marxism. His main theoretical weakness was near fatal attraction to the armed struggle - armed struggle was elevated to literary epic proportions and was in Che's view crucial for development of the "New Man". Most fascinatingly, excerpts from his letters and poems show an incredible mastering of language - he would have been a writer if not a revolutionary.

The story goes that when his executioner came to do his job, he invited him: "Go on, you're only going to kill a man." [and not an idea]. Essential reading for both moonbats and wingbats alike...

Young's Luxury Double Chocolate Stout

2008-02-18T22:10:00.000-08:00

Young's really made a hit with this one. It drinks like a mousse desert, not much sweetness, just a balanced taste of dark, bitter chocolate accompanied by an appropriate chocolate malts and with a yummy thick head. I am not really keen of flavoured beers, but this one just shows that you can make a really good one if you try hard enough. Strongly recommended.
And btw, while British drinkers will inevitably get the violet label reference - it is better than the original...

Butte Creek: Train Wreck

2008-02-12T22:45:00.001-08:00

I bought this beer tonight and started drinking it before the dinner. By the time I managed to get my dinner on the table, I was already fairly wasted. Then I read "You'll be lucky to walk away from this one!" on the bottle. Hummm, good to know! Train wreck indeed.
This beer is at10.6%, which is 2% more than the infamous Skull Splitter!! Anyway, this beer belongs to the Barley Wine class, very strong kind of beers, bitter, hoppy and one can actually taste the high alcohol content. Characterized by long periods of fermentation and maturation. Some American brewers actually use wine yeasts which are capable of producing higher alcohol content. Definitely a style to consider for my future Slovene brewery...

Vielle Provision: Saison Dupont

2008-02-10T21:35:00.001-08:00

Another beer that got 96th percentile at ratebeer. Very dense, unfiltered beer that tastes a bit like a wheat beer, but considerably more bitter with a cider-like texture. The back blurb says that it is a classic example of "Saison" style. Ultimate beer book informs that the "saison" is inevitably summer. And that Belgians like strong beers. What a surprise, haha...

Lagunitas' Lumpy Gravy

2008-02-04T21:46:00.001-08:00

Lagunitas did it again. This is the new beer in the Zappa anniversary line (see my previous post about Kill Ugly Radio). A standard brown ale this time, goes well with well cooked pork or lamb. Released in celebration of "the 40th anniversary of the release of the second part of FZ's 3-Phaze masterwork". Lagunitas is probably the only brewer that has a 420 section on their website. When I grow up, I'll be a brewer as well!