You can make a comment on this blog post.
You can email me at beerpour@yahoo.com .
Either way, I'll give extremely serious consideration to your beer specials, your new beverage arrivals, or your upcoming adult-beverage related events in the greater Myrtle Beach area.
Cheers!
I had just written an article about beer-and-food pairings. I had not included chicken salad in the beer-and-food pairings mix, but the next day, a friend visited for lunch and we had chicken salad sandwiches with Rogue Morimoto Soba Ale.
Excellent pairing. My friend agreed. I knew it would be close. Rogue includes little pairing icons on its larger, single-sale bottles (one pint + six ounces), and the Morimoto Soba Ale included a fish icon and a bird icon. Morimoto Soba Ale was light enough and zippy enough to compliment white meat, even when that white meat is mixed with mayonnaise and grapes.
You can read the beer-and-food pairing article here.
I saw a Styrofoam cooler at a local grocery store for $5.99. I figured you could pack 18 cans and ice into it - and then pick the beer off the ground when the bottom busts out.
If you're going to buy a cooler, make a little investment. Skip the Styrofoam.
A better idea would be to look for the Thermos collapsible can cooler, which expands from a cloth ring into an insulated cylinder full of brews. It holds 54 cans plus ice, keeps the beer cold for three days, and retails locally for around $20.
Better yet, try the 64-quart Coleman Extreme, a traditional rectangular structure, outfitted with wheels, and enough space inside to pack 85 cans. It can keep the brews cold for five days, and retails locally for around $60.
Just remember - if you're going to invest in a nice cooler, put some decent beer in it.
Miller Brewing Co. so badly wants every-day, unpretentious people to drink Steel Reserve 211 high-gravity lager, it comes in masculine silver cans with tough typography. The "UNION MADE" notification even seems a bit larger than it appears on other beers. See, this high-gravity beer ain't for sissies with British accents -- get it? It's a real man's beer, none of this handcrafted, black-turtleneck stuff.
But wait -- they're not taking the beer snob for granted. The can (I'm holding an empty 24-ounce size) also says "EXTRA MALTED BARLEY & SELECT HOPS FOR EXTRA GRAVITY" and "SLOW BREWED...." What's more, the parent company, Miller Brewing, appears nowhere on the can, as if the marketing and packaging geniuses wanted to leave room for me to believe that it might just be brewed by a ballsy microbrewery or an gutsy small company. Well, it worked. I had hoped.
And now, the meaning of the 211. It's the medieval symbol for steel.
How elemental.
The taste of this beer is well-balanced and targeted at mainstream drinkers, the kinds of folks who like Bud and Coors and MGD but might be persuaded by the 6-percent rating to try something stronger than normal. (I didn't know we called anything above 5 percent "high-gravity;" I mean, with most high-gravity beers in the 7-10 percent range, Steel Reserve 211 only counts as a high-gravity beer in the very technical sense of the definition.) The marketing and packaging folks are eager to boast about the beer with all the strong, manly writing all over the can, but the taste is determined not to offend. Ergo, it is a bit bland, if well-balanced and accessible.
That being said, members of BeerAdvocate.com gave it low scores.
I think it's a cool thing, however, to see a high-gravity beer in cans. I drank a 24-ouncer ($1.33), and I've also seen 12-packs ($7.20). Maybe Steel Reserve 211, backed by Miller Brewing Co., will start a new trend of high-gravity canned brews.
cheers,
Colin Foote Burch
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
Posts
All Comments
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
