Bourbon Heritage Month

It's been a little while since I last posted something to the site. It's not that I ran out of ideas, or that I'm tired of blogging, or I'm overworks. I'm always tire and overworked. OK, maybe I have been a little preoccupied, but for a good reason. I haven't posted in a while because I haven't been sober enough.


For the past few weeks I've been celebrating...hard. What have I been celebrating? Well, National Bourbon Heritage Month of course.

Since 2007, the month of September has been officially recognized as National Bourbon Heritage Month by the United States. Apparently even the US government squeezes out a nugget of genius every 40 years or so (repeal of prohibition, legalization of homebrew, Bourbon Heritage Month).

If you're one of the two readers out there that already know about this month, that's awesome...cheers! We here at JABB, well, we like to celebrate bourbon all 12 months out of the year. Now, if your asking yourself "Why is the government passing bills like this? Don't they have better things to do?", you obviously have stumbled upon the wrong site. You must be in the wrong place or were looking for justanotherboobsblog.

Sorry, I don't have that site up and running yet. Anyways, this month is important because back in 1964 Congress recognized bourbon as "America's Native Spirit", and God damn it, we should have a month to celebrate it.

I'm not going to get into all the history of bourbon and it's origins (***cough*** Pennsylvania). There is more than enough info out there on that subject. Just check Wikipedia and the rest of the interweb. In celebration of what I love, I'm just going to sit here in front of my computer and drink. Yes, I know it's the morning, and I'm at work. There's a reason why God made ginger ale the color it is. I've got a couple of bottles of various bourbons that are on there last legs, so I figured I'd just finish them off.

In keeping this short, so as not to cut into valuable drinking time, bourbon kicks ass. It spans all walks of life. From the inbred hillbilly to the affluent aristocrat, bourbon yields a kinship that breaks down societal walls (kind of like mullets).

Two people who can't agree on which is a better car, a Bentley or an IROC, can at least sit down with a glass and agree that "that is some damn fine bourbon."

So back to the bottle I go. Don't expect much more out of me for the rest of the month. See you in October.

Cracked? More like Ripped.... off! (Ok, not really.)

Cracked.com has an article today with a part that looks awfully familiar...

Did you catch it? It's Richard Dicks' article on 10 cent beer night with the Cleveland Indians. Well... not really.

At first glance, I thought we really might have been ripped off... and I felt honored! I really like Cracked. Hell, I frequently rip off their style of trying to compensate for lackluster writing by including semi-related pictures with mildly humorous captions.




Cracked's article was about business promotions that went horribly wrong, and segment #4 (Cracked's writers get hardons over lists) was on the same topic as Richard's post about 10 cent beer night with the Indians. And the first picture in Cracked's version was one that Richard Dicks has used more than once.




I was surprised, touched, and a bit pissed off. But then I actually read the article, and realized it was nowhere close to Richard's. In fact, Richard's article is better. It not only has more information about what happened, it's far funnier! Even if no one gets my joke with the picture of Robert Wagner.

But it seems to just be a coincidence that they chose a topic and picture Richard had used. Let's face it, it is a good story and a good picture, so the pairing isn't entirely unlikely. I didn't see any verbiage that smacked of plagiarism.

But in this post-modern world of sampled music and remade movies, is this any surprise at all? I check out Cracked every day, so obviously their writers have a style I enjoy and cover topics I'm interested in. And Richard and I have been friends for a couple decades, so we have similar tastes and interests. So is it any wonder at all that Richard and Cracked would whip up something similar?

Maybe Richard and I should talk to Cracked about writing for them. What do you think? It seems we're on the same page, and I could use the money. Perhaps Richard and I should talk to them about that. That'd be pretty cool! Writing amongst such dick joke gods as Robert Brockway, Gladstone, and Dan O'Brien. Do you think they could use a weekly article on alcohol?

Well, check back next week for Richard's "5 Worst Liquors To Put On Your Penis" and my newest article: "Top 10 Photos Involving Beer And Boobs!"

Fermentation Friday: Fire, boobs, and beer

Standing around a turkey fryer in the driveway after sundown really gives you a feeling for the mystical side of brewing beer. The stars twinkling in the crisp, cool spring air. An owl hoots in a nearby tree, the breeze picks up and chills you just a bit. It's such an ancient process, and creates such a historically important item that it almost feels holy somehow. Standing there next to the licking flames and hollow whoosh of the propane burner, you can almost picture hooded monks standing around wood-fired kettles. Scantily-clad pagans smeared with paint praying to some since forgotten deity that their brew yields fermented goodness. Ancient Greeks making some form of offering to Bacchus. Hell, the oldest written recipe on record was for making beer! Alcohol in one form or another has been vital and sacred to so many societies over the years... but no more.

Now it's frowned upon. Decried and denounced as the work of the devil, not holy men. Hatchet in one hand, bible in the other, alcohol has been inextricably linked with the evil some men do under its influence. Needless. Senseless. Wrong.

We've lost that holy connection. That mystical feeling that comes with practicing the arcane alchemy of producing alcohol. And on a crisp spring night, the season of pagan rites of rebirth and fertility, the absence of mysticism from the beer making process seems even more obvious. Empty.

Well, let's bring it back, damnit! Let's take booze back to being something magical. Get our your hooded robes and body paint, we're gonna make some fucking beer!

Hey, there's a thought! Fucking beer... yeah.... that could work! Some kind of pagan rite during the brewing process. Once the boil is going, everyone strips off their hooded robes to reveal nude bodies covered in crude body paintings. Then the ritual sex will begin. And by ritual, I mean free-for-all. It'll be epic! And in the middle, the brew in the turkey fryer will be bubbling away.

Maybe take a break for some kind of neo-pagan events like fire-breathing and... fire breathing. Maybe take care of some little brewing details like sparging. Then back to the orgy! There'll be penises and breasts flopping all over the place (note to self: get some girls to participate). Old school mysticism. The spectacle will be awesome to behold!

No, not like that...

That's what I'm talking about!

It'll be so wild, we'll have to be careful not to forget to take the starting specific gravity. Then we dump it in the primary, pitch the yeast, and put the airlock on, passing around the bottle of cheap vodka so everyone can take a swig before we pour it in the airlock. You know, for good luck. Then, if our randomly chosen divinities smile on us, the beer should be ready to drink by the time the summer solstice comes along, and another batch can be brewed in a similar ceremony while the old batch is consumed! It'll represent... something.

So that's my goal for brewing this spring: turn it into a pseudo-religious orgy festival with fire.


Or maybe I'll make a lager. That'd be cool.