Pop your package of beer-making ingredients into this special cask, just add water, and pop it away for a week, then come back to perfectly brewed beer? Sounds awesome.
It’s about $150 and it makes 10 L of beer at a go, so you could get a fast payback, that’s for sure.
Is it too late for Christmas? That’s okay, I’ll forgive you the belated gift.
(thanks, Andrea!)
A Klein bottle is like a Mobius strip in three-dimensions, but that’s not really accurate because a Mobius strip is actually a two-dimensional form expressed in three dimensions, and the Klein bottle is actually a four-dimensional form expressed in three dimensions.
Essentially, the inside of the bottle is also its outside. If you were able to perceive the Klein bottle in four dimensions, it wouldn’t plunge into itself (there would be no self-intersections).
The “no inside, all outside” of the bottle is what makes it cleverly perfect for opening a beer bottle. Or, as Bathsheba Sculpture puts it:
The problem of beer That it is within a ‘bottle’, i.e. a boundaryless compact 2-manifold homeomorphic to the sphere. Since beer bottles are not (usually) pathological or “wild” spheres, but smooth manifolds, they separate 3-space into two non-communicating regions: inside, containing beer, and outside, containing you. This state must not remain.
A proposed solution Clearly the elegant course is to introduce a non-orientable manifold, which has one side and does not divide 3-space. When juxtaposed with the beer-bounding manifold described above, it acts to disrupt the continuity thereof, canceling the outdated paradigm of distinction between interior and exterior. This enables the desired interaction between beer and self.
Implementation The Klein Bottle Opener shown above is an example. It is palm-sized, durably constructed in stainless steel, effective, and blissfully ergonomic.
Q E D You need one.
You can buy these, at Bathsheba Sculpture. And they actually work. But they are a jaw-dropping $78, which is insane for a bottle opener, but I suppose the price is actually fairly reasonable for a fourth-dimensional object.
(via Scienceblogs)
Talk about a solution in search of a problem! These glasses, available for $20 for a set of two (currently out of stock) are too clever by half, in my opinion.
Sure, sometimes I want a shot with a beer chaser, but the whole idea is that once you’re done the shot, the beer is right there. Who wants to slam their shot glass down and then calmly pour themselves a pint?
Also, who wants to alternate hard liquor and beer dripping onto the table or bar as they flip a glass upside down over and over again?
Also, have the designers behind this glass never done a drop shot?
(via Gizmodo)
It’s a cooler, with a catapult in it, remote-controlled. Just load up 12 cans of beer, and have them launched to you whenever you’re thirsty.
And it doesn’t matter how thirsty you are — it can reload in just two seconds.
Awesome?
ShootABrew is available for pre-order. It’s $300, and they don’t say if it’ll ship before Christmas or not.
If I had seen this recipe about a month ago, so that there was time to brew it before Hallowe’en, I would have been all over it. All. Over. It.
Next time, Gadget. Next time.
Click on the image to see it larger, or, because I know you’re not a cheapskate, why not click over to Pop Chart Lab, where you can buy a big ol’ poster for just $25, and you can mount it in your home office, or rumpus room or on the back of your dorm room door, and you can highlight or something all the beers that you’ve sampled.
Mmmmm, this poster makes me thirsty.
There sure is a lot of chaff to sort through on your way to the wheat, but every now and then there something that reminds me of the good in newspaper readership. They’re not all illiterate, knee-jerk racists.
For example, in today’s Winnipeg Free Press, they’re highlighting a story of recovered two-century-old beer from the bottom of the Baltic. The story comes with a picture:
The tale is mouthwatering:
Divers who found what’s believed to be the world’s oldest drinkable champagne say they have also discovered two-centuries-old bottles of beer at a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea …. Researchers who tried drops of the dark, foamy liquid liked the taste of it.
But what really made me laugh was this comment, by “kiov”:
They must be quite valuable given the care that is going in to protecting them. I always place all of my rare, breakable artifacts on a stack of papers on the edge of a desk while I send emails a few feet away.
Ha! Touché!
The Diablo Royale Este is a giant Mexican-themed saloon in New York City. They will sell you a beer popsicle:
the barman-witchdoctors at Diablo … [inject] the beer with simple syrup and lime juice, jamming a wooden stick into the hole of the can and then putting it in the freezer. For four days.
The result is a genuine beer popsicle, which the bartender must saw in half with a serrated steak knife (or samurai sword) to open. Then it’s up to you to push the wooden stick upward to dispense the hopsicle in true Push Pop style, and decide if you want your savory sweet frozen joyride bathed in tequila as well (note: you want this).
Sounds way better than what I normally do, which is bring home some warm beer, pop a few in the freezer to try and chill them quickly, but forget about them, and then, days later, discover that I’ve got burst beers all over my freezer.
You know who likes frozen beer drippings that melt all down the side of your fridge? Ants, that’s who. Ants that will crawl up into your freezer and freeze, trying to get at what they must assume is the motherload.
Anyway, I’m still going to try this hopsicle thing.
One of my favourite sights is a half-full wine bottle with a cork stuck into it. It looks more inviting, friendlier, than a bottle not yet opened.
It’s also a great way to save a bottle that you didn’t finish, and set it aside to enjoy later.
Perhaps you’d like to do this with beer, as well as with wine?
Beer Savers are silicone bottle camp charms, and they should fit most nearly any bottle of beer. They’re designed, according to the website, “to help keep beer fresh and safe.”
Fresh — maybe. I’m sure that it would be better than just leaving a beer lying around, but no second capping will keep a beer well-carbonated for longer than a few extra hours, I’m sure.
Safe is the one that gets me. “beersavers™ help keep your beer safely identified when in clubs, bars and restaurants,” they tout.
Surely would-be date-rape druggists could pop off a silicone cap? And, really, do you see anyone actually using this while on a night out at the bar? Beers are for sipping — a cap would quickly get annoying.
Anyway, they’re for sale. Eight bucks for six.
Ever since I hurt my foot (a year ago) I’ve been having trouble running. Like many things, this is a vicious cycle: the less I exercise, the less I feel like exercising.
What could bust me out of that cycle? Perhaps some kind of reward that I give myself for successful completion of exercise?
Thank goodness, then, for Colin, who pointed out the way to me. “The Way” is actually a blog devoted to running a half-marathon (which I have done) while drinking a beer every mile (which I have not).
There’s 13 miles in a half-marathon, and there’s 13 beers in a dozen, if you also buy one extra. Coincidence? I think not.
Exercising While Intoxicated is funny, and informative:
Several of you told me that I was “going to die” if I drank 13 beers while running the San Francisco Half Marathon. I did not die. I puked three times, blacked out for miles 11 and 12, and needed five hours to finish.
Then, his mouth filled up with vomit as “two cute Asian girls” took his finish line picture. They skedaddled. The full story’s worth a read.
So, who’s up for a run?
Yes, you can freeze a beer in just a couple of seconds — provided you are willing to invest a couple of hours in preparation, which makes this “trick” a little “trickier” than I’d hoped.
Still, it’s a neat science experiment. Um, if you want to waste a beer:
(via Coudal)
A little while ago, I saw this recipe come across the news wire as “excellent for Father’s Day.” Well, I dunno about that, but it certainly caught my eye.
The concept is simple — use a dark porter (they’re all the rage, recently, seems like every brewery is coming out with a dark beer) and add some vanilla ice cream to it.
Hmmmm. Because the source of the recipe was the Rickard’s brewery, and because my mom had decided to have ice cream as dessert for us on Father’s Day, and because when I went over there, there was Rickard’s Dark in the fridge, I figured I would try one of these floats.
The only other ingredient besides beer and vanilla ice cream is a drizzle of maple syrup. On the side of the bottle of Rickard’s Dark, it says it’s brewed with maple syrup, so I guess that makes sense.
Anyway, just like ice cream in Coke, the beer suds up in a foamy way, and the flavour combination works actually pretty well. I mean, it’s not mind-blowingly awesome, but I would do it again.
My sister, who doesn’t drink beer, said she would try one again. No one who took a sip spit it out in disgust. It worked better as the ice cream melted and the flavours ran together a bit — otherwise, you’re just drinking cold, foamy beer and then eating ice cream (actually, that’s a problem with all floats) — but it certainly wasn’t terrible.
Verdict: Worth trying once, just to say that you did.
by Amy Breen
First it was the “Cold Certified” bottle, in which the label changed colour when it was sufficiently cold enough, and now Coors has made another leap in cold innovation.
Enter the “Cold Activation Window.” It’s a little window in the box that turns transparent when the beer is cold enough.
I, like most people, don’t want warm beer. But seriously, when did touching the bottle not become good enough? Or just putting in the freezer for five minutes? Yes, it’s good for when you’re at the vendor and you know what was just put in the cooler, but come on, you’re not drinking the beer the moment you step outside.
Instead of focusing all of their energy on ways for you to see that your beer is cold, maybe they should focus on making it taste decent — more like Coors Original, which is great (but you can’t get in Canada).
(via Geekologie)
I know, I know, it’s not even Mother’s Day yet, and I’m posting about Father’s Day? But I just came across this neat idea for packaging that I think would make a great gift, some Sunday in June. Check it:
That’s right, Dapper Beer features a tie on the label, nicely, ahem, tying together two father-y stereotypes. Put a hammer on their other beers, and you’re set.
I’m not actually sure if this is a microbrew you can buy, or if it’s a one-off project for a guy making beer at home who happens to work at a design agency (it was designed by David Day and Associates) but I love the concept. They even have a six-pack box designed.
I could see different ties denoting different brews — skinny ties, paisley patterns, bow ties — and a whole line of beers that aim for a sophisticated look.
(Found at Lovely Package.)
This is part of a British Film Institute series on “King Coal” and the British coal mining industry. But thank goodness they decided to take a detour into the “local” (pub) and show us how coal contributes to brewing beer circa 1959.
BFI has a ton more films on their YouTube channel.
(via A Continuous Lean)
