Back in the saddle

Oh goodness, has it really been about 3 months since my last post? Those dang timestamps don't lie. Despite the fact that one can't help but feel a certain affection for one's blog, I haven't been keeping up with mine. In an effort to change that, I've decided to stop writing for Examiner.com. There are lots of reasons, but a major one is that I want to write for my blog more often, and Examiner was getting in the way. Even though I didn't post for Examiner all that often, I felt like I should, and thinking about it - feeling guilty about it - took up what little writing space and time I had.

I very recently had the pleasure of formulating my first beer recipe from scratch. Previously, I had made recipes from books or the web, often with some customization, and this was the first time I started with a blank page and built the recipe brick by brick. It's going to be an IPA with New Zealand hops, avoiding the ubiquitous uber-citrus west coast IPA style. Now, don't get me wrong: I love a good uber-citrus west coast IPA. I just don't want to make one this time around. We'll see how the NZ hops go with the malt bill, which will offer up some really rich caramel and biscuit flavors.

I started formulating the recipe on the way back from a quick, exhausting business trip to Utah. It was my second trip out there for work, and I was struck by their small but developing craft beer scene. On the first trip, I enjoyed a terrific IPA and a mighty tasty, rich doppelbock, and on this one I had an American pale ale that went wonderfully with my steak dinner. Utah has really arcane and archaic liquor laws, with a division between regular beers (limited to 4% abv, I believe) and what they refer to as "full strength" beers. You can't buy the latter at many places. In response, the craft beer folks have put out a nice selection of the low-alcohol brews to get into that market while going hog-wild on some huge beers. I am impressed.

So, while I wouldn't have thought Utah would be the place to inspire me to start building a beer recipe from scratch, it was. Flying back to the Great Beer State of Michigan, the plane sleepy and quiet, I stretched out across the row I had to myself, started up Beer Alchemy on my Mac, and was off and running. I followed the initial session with a fair amount of research and lots of tweaking the past few days, and I've now put in the order for the ingredients and look forward to brewing this baby up toward the end of this month.

In the meantime, despite the fact that I may have too much beer in my cellar already - it's gotten to the point where we need to drink it strategically in order to avoid some of it going stale (hey, it's a hard job, but someone's gotta do it) - I keep stumbling across terrific beers and buying them. Again, a nice problem to have. Like the other day, when I went into Arbor Farms for butter and flour... yes, that's right, just butter and flour. And I walked out with five or six single bottles after having a terrific conversation about craft beer with one of their beer buyers, another staffer there who is really into craft beer, and a relative newbie who got a fun education in the process.

Of course, there are also the beer events and regular other visits to Ann Arbor's brewpubs, including pouring for the strong ale tasting at Arbor Brewing the other day. Pouring includes sampling, and the beers were amazing. I might rename this particular tasting the "too much of a good thing" tasting, since with every beer over 7% abv and otherwise huge and rich, I felt like someone had hooked me up to a pump and filled me full of air by the end. I couldn't even finish the "thank you" pint they gave me afterwards.

If you're reading this, thanks for doing so. I hope to be posting more often from. This coming week, I plan to brew a couple of batches - the IPA and an absolutely gargantuan imperial stout - and will post about that. And I'll post about my experience at the Michigan Winter Beer Festival in Grand Rapids. Never has being so cold been so worth it.

Wolverine State Brewing Co. opens in Ann Arbor

Courtesy of Wolverine State Brewing Co.

As I wrote in my Examiner.com column, Wolverine State Brewing Co. is now open right on Ann Arbor's west side.  Folks, this is a nice walk or a quick bike ride from my house, and I gotta admit, I'm excited.

But I'm not just excited about the proximity of this spacious and inviting taproom and brewery.  I'm excited about the people, the community, and the beer.  Ann Arbor has serious craft beer riches, but there's room for more, and Wolverine brings a specialty in lager beer, dedication to the community and craft beer scene, adventurousness, and fresh energy and enthusiasm.

Gulo gulo itself, looking thirsty.
Courtesy of WSBCo.

The beers are gorgeous to look at and to drink.  From the expected straw-golden yellow of Wolverine Premium Lager, an American lager, to the deep red-amber-copper of The Pride of Biscuitville and the comforting, mellow brown of the sessionable and oh-so-tasty Big House Brown lager, these beers have an eye-pleasing clarity from the lagering process.

Brewer Oliver Roberts is embracing his opportunity to stretch out and be creative, whether it's on his fresh, citrusy, piney, floral IPA - one of two ales currently on the tap list - or his toasty Pride of Biscuitville biscuit malt showcase.  Want a hoppy lager for a change of pace?  The Gulo Gulo Northwest Lager is billed as an IPL and features the clean, crisp qualities of a lager married to a Centennial and Cascade hop extravaganza.  It's flat out delicious.  The Wench's Westside Wheat, which is the other ale on tap and comes in at 3.8% abv, has a nice wheaty bite and a pleasantly hoppy finish as an American wheat should.  With its orange-amber color, it's a sunny pour.  Or have an emOATable Lager, a creamy, roasty-toasty dark lager with chocolaty characteristics.

Three of the brews are invitingly sessionable.  Also inviting is the fact that there's no per-ounce premium on the price for a small (12 oz) or medium (15 oz), so patrons shouldn't feel pressed to buy larger beers based on the pricing.  22 oz pours are available as well, as are flights of 7 oz pours.

Snacks are available in-house, or feel free to order from local restaurants.  Their menus are in binders right in the taproom, and they'll deliver to your table or barstool.  Add the in-house wi-fi, and you can hang out for quite some time.  Pull up a barstool, grab a chair at one of the several tables, or have seat on a sofa or easy chair.  Want to play?  Foosball and darts are available as well.

Oliver himself may be staffing the bar, and he's happy to educate you about the beer and help you choose one to fit your palate.  Or maybe Ann Arbor's own Beer Wench, brewery co-owner and director of sales and marketing E.T. Crowe, will be in the house.  My experience thus far is that staff and patrons alike are enthusiastic and friendly, and it's clear that Wolverine is a truly inviting place.

Wolverine is located at 2019 W. Stadium, behind Great Likes Cycling and Fitness and next to Big George's.  Hours are M-Th, 3:00-11:00; F/Sat noon-midnight; and Sun noon-5:00.  One exception is tomorrow, Saturday 11/13, when the taproom won't open until 7:00 p.m., which is when the grand opening celebration starts.

First all-grain batch

So much potential, just waiting...

There is a certain magic in starting with a bunch of malted grain and ending up with beer. Magic, and a fair amount of chemistry, attention to detail, and several hours of rather joyful work.

There is also a lot of pleasure. My first all-grain batch was something that I have been contemplating for quite some time; I even wrote a post about picking up the equipment to start all-grain brewing back in May. Real life has its way of running interference, so I only recently got around to brewing up this batch, an English brown ale. Figuring that my first extract batch was also an English brown and that it would be somehow fitting if my first all-grain batch was as well, I pulled a brown ale recipe out of Charlie Papazian's Complete Joy of Homebrewing; after brewing his Palace Special Bitter and loving it, I wanted to try another of his recipes. So, I found his Monkey's Paw Brown Ale recipe, got the ingredients, and now finally had a chance to brew it up.

Ah, but first, some more preparation was in order. I closely read - and re-read - and re-re-read - the incredibly helpful "First All-Grain Batch" chapter in John Palmer's How to Brew. Palmer also has a great chapter on batch sparging, and a recent issue of Zymurgy also had an article on this easy sparging method, so I read those, too. As any reader of this blog knows, every batch I've brewed has yielded not only beer but lessons - some, I can do without at this point. So, applying the brewer's version of the old adage "measure twice, cut once," I focused on preparation. It paid off.

Brewing on a gorgeous day.

On a beautiful day, sunny and clear, not too hot, I set up right in the doorway of my garage. Once the boil began, I'd be back in familiar territory, but first I had to mash the grain. I heated up water to the right temperature so that when it hit the much cooler mass of 10 pounds of grain, the net result would be right on to convert the starches to fermentable sugars. And it worked! It all worked! I'm still shocked and delighted to report that this stuff works! The pre-heated mash tun held the temperature, I stirred when it was time to stir, I measured temperatures, I added some hotter water as needed to maintain the mash at the conversion temp, and sweet heaven, it all worked! What went in as a bunch of grain and water yielded a goodly amount of deep brown, sweet wort, and a quick iodine test indicated that starch conversion was complete. In the meantime, I had heated more water to sparge with, and it all went smoothly. I ended up with about 6.5 gallons of wort ready to boil.

Spent grains: they gave all they had.

About three weeks later, it was time to crack open the first bottle. I always feel a lot of excitement about that moment, and the excitement was even greater because of this batch being a "first." Fresh, grainy, toasty-roasty, malty aroma with a whiff of floral hops. Deep brown color. Nice, creamy head. Malt forward taste mingling with earthy, floral hops. Notes of chocolate and coffee. Medium mouthfeel, which gave the brew a rich, creamy quality but avoided seeming heavy. I was ecstatic. So was the queen.

I am hooked all over again.

Things that go pop in the night

The sound goes something like this: *pop!*... tinkle ... drip drip drip. It's a bad sound any time. It's worse at 4:18 a.m. I have joined the bottle-bomb club. Beer everywhere. Glass shrapnel. You get the picture, and it wasn't pretty.

The first bottle exploded in the beer cellar, as I discovered when I went down to grab a beer. My nose told me first. My basement and beer cellar tend to be musty, but I don't usually smell beer down there. This time, I did - good beer, even! Smelling it was like a distant warning signal. Something was amiss, and I initially wasn't sure what it was. It made me take an extra look around, and I saw a splattering of brew on the top of a fermentation bucket. Then I saw speckles of beer in more places, then drips, and then puddles. When I found the offending bottle, I discovered it was a 22-oz. bomber (aptly named) of my homebrewed Belgian-style golden strong ale, and it was on the top shelf of the cellar. It had blown its bottom off - a fact that my children later found quite amusing. The bottom was cracked in half, and both halves were right under the bottle. There was evidence of a bit of beer spray, and a few glass shards, but mostly it appeared that the bottom had blown off and the beer had just gushed out.

About half the bottles on that shelf, and half of the bottles on each of the three shelves below, were sitting in pools of beer. I spent a long, frustrating time pulling all of those out, rinsing them off, and mopping up the mess. I did open a 12-oz. bottle of the same beer, wondering if perhaps it had gotten infected in some way and that the infection had caused the explosion, but the beer was really good. Also really carbonated. Hmmm... Let's see. I had used the right amount of priming sugar, and the final gravity had been on target. So had the original gravity. I wasn't sure what had happened. Finally, I decided that the beer was just a very bubbly brew, and that particular bottle had had a weak spot. After all, it was the only one that had gone.

At least up to that point.

I put out the rinsed bottles to dry overnight on dishtowels in the kitchen, and at 4:18 a.m., I awoke to the sound of another one going. It's hard to wake up at that hour, yanked from a deep sleep, and I wasn't sure what I had heard. But I knew something was wrong, and then it dawned on me that what I had heard sounded like it may well have been...

Yes, a bottle - the same type of 22-oz. bomber, with the same beer in it - had blown up in the kitchen. Again, there were some signs of spray, but mostly evidence of a break and a gush of beer. I cleaned it up again, wondering what might be going on here, and this time I put all bottles of the Belgian-style homebrew in a big plastic bin with a lid. If any blew up, they'd be contained and dangerous only to their fellow beers in the bin.

Interestingly, it's now been a couple of weeks, and no others have exploded. Count me lucky. The beer is very tasty, a richly malty, fruity, somewhat peppery brew with a generous head and long finish. Of course, every bottle I've had has been really carbonated, and I now think I know what must have happened. Although I did check to make sure that the final gravity was within the desired range, I should have checked a few days later to make sure it wasn't fermenting further. I suspect that if I had, I would have seen that the beer had attenuated even more. Instead, I was impatient to bottle the beer, which was a high gravity brew and had been in the fermenter a pretty long time already. In short, I was done with fermentation, but the beer wasn't.

Patience isn't my strong suit, to be sure, but attention to detail generally is. The two traits - impatience and attention to detail - don't really get along. But I can hope that this little brewing lesson sticks: Keep on attending to the details, and be patient enough to allow that attention to be paid throughout the length of the brewing and bottling process. Or be prepared to lose some precious homebrew.

Craft beer as a family affair

As I've noted several times, my wife is more than supportive of my homebrewing - thank goodness, since it's pretty time-consuming. She's a craft beer lover more generally as well. The other day, when I called as I was leaving work and found that she was home already, she asked what beer I'd like her to grab from the cellar to chill down a bit before I got home. That is love! [As an aside, we enjoyed a couple of bottles of the special bitter I brewed, perfect on a warm, summery evening. Malt-forward with a light bread-crust aroma and flavor, yeast-driven fruitiness, and very crisp hop bitterness, with a soft hop aroma and flavor. Fine carbonation completes the picture. Extremely refreshing; my go-to summertime session beer, as hoped when I brewed it].

So, my wife and I share a passion for great beer. But as Father's Day approaches, I've been thinking: what about our kids? Where do they fit in? No, I'm not talking about kids drinking, as in the Brewed for Tots parody - which I thought was mostly hilarious and just a wee bit scary. But how aware should kids be that their folks are craft beer lovers?

Actually, I think quite aware. This nation sports an uncomfortable combination of a hyper-individualistic, stimulation-seeking, anything goes attitude and pretty significant remnants of puritanism. Together, those clashing values set the stage for some reckless behavior. On top of that, unlike many other countries that have a far lower frequency of alcohol abuse and a lower drinking age, we set our drinking age at 21, marking alcohol as a forbidden fruit and perhaps reducing the opportunities for parents to build alcohol awareness before kids leave home. As we all know, a lot of stupid - and sometimes tragic - behavior ensues. People love to jump into things, and when that involves a hefty dose of rebellion... well, it can all go rather far in a hurry. I wonder if some of that can be avoided - or the risk reduced - by instilling the values of alcohol appreciation and moderation, all the while having fun with cooking and science via homebrewing.

From the start of my homebrewing adventure several months ago, I involved my kids in the process. My son was part of the crazy emergency trip around town to find a big enough pot to brew my first batch in - after I had started and found that the pot I was using was too small. For his trouble, the first batch was named after him, and since it was an English-style brown ale, he associated it with the knights and castles of medieval England, which he's totally in to. He's also been to the homebrew shop with me, and he was fascinated by all of the equipment and ingredient kits. When we go to a good beer store, he points out Stone beers (gotta love the gargoyles!), Rogue Dead Guy Ale (both of my kids think that the name and the label are just hilarious), and Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter (he has learned a lot about the Edmund Fitzgerald disaster and can readily recognize the ship). Together, we're keeping track of the amazing growth and "behavior" of our hop plants, one of which is nearly twice as tall as I am now. He's been amazed at how fast they grow, how they wind themselves around the lines I set up, how they seem to seek out something to climb on, and how their one-way barbs allow them to cling to whatever they can grab. And he knows what hops smell like from homebrewing - "wow, Dad, those smell weird! But kinda good!"

My daughter, who's a couple of years older than her brother, loves to garden and helped me with stringing lines for the hop plants. She's been fascinated by the idea that we put flowers in beer, and that those flowers help preserve it, and that they have these oils in them that impart flavor and aroma. Since she bakes with my wife, who loves to make sourdough bread and other goodies, she has developed a pretty good understanding of yeast. With a bit of explanation from me, she was able to connect the notions of how yeast makes bread rise and how it ferments beer. She also gets the whole sanitation thing - we don't want other critters in the beer! Like her brother, she's had a batch named for her. At her request, my IPA was even named for her favorite doll, becoming Rosie's Rocket No. 1 IPA. She's tasted malt extract (yum! sweet!) and smelled hops (less keen on them than her brother, at least for now), and like her brother, she asks how the sample is on bottling day and how the beer turned out when I crack that first one open.

Interestingly, my kids have no desire to try beer. They have never asked to try it, and they've specifically and spontaneously stated that it's a grown up drink. They understand more than most kids about how it's made and how much work goes into it, and they know that my wife and I appreciate and enjoy it and that I write about it from time to time. They also know that while we drink it frequently, we drink fairly little in a sitting. In fact, they frequently see us take one 12-oz. beer and split it over dinner, pouring it into two wine glasses. They - especially my daughter - understand that there are sugars trapped in those malted grains, and that malted grains are like any sprouting seed. They understand that when a brewer gets those sugars out, yeast cells just love to eat them up, and those critters make bubbles and alcohol. And they know that we add hops for several reasons during and sometimes after the boil. They've watched me stare at an airlock and sniff at it, and they've asked how things are coming along. I think they respect the process and the result, and I think that the respect they have now could pay huge dividends in the future. As with all things to do with beer - and with lots of other subjects - time will tell.

I wish all of my fellow dads a great Father's Day full of joy and fun. Cheers!

Growth by leaps and bounds

I've got brewing on my mind.

In fact, I find that's the case much of the time. I've caught the bug, bad, and it isn't letting go. I see that as a good thing. After all, the result is delicious homebrew.

Most recently, I brewed two batches about two weeks apart. The first was an organic Belgian-style golden strong ale based on the extract version of the recipe that won the organic brewing competition a year or two ago. After getting it into the fermenter, I had an urge to brew a good session beer for the summer and decided on a bitter, basically following the recipe for Palace Bitter in Charlie Papazian's Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

The Belgian has been bottled, and it hit the targets for original and final gravity. The sample was very promising, spicy and potent, and I'm eager to see how it matures. The bitter should be ready to bottle by about now. With every batch, I've gotten more and more relaxed about the process. In fact, I find it rather meditative, and I'm able to think more closely about each aspect of brewing. I've gotten into altering recipes to suit my tastes. I've also played around with beginning to create my own recipes. Beer is one of my favorite things; why not make it my favorite ways? I've been encouraged as well by the fact that some of the detail work has become more routine. I'm attentive to it, but I'm not sweating it as much and can really enjoy each aspect of the experience. My wife's been great about it, too. She experiences similar joys in creating fermented foods. Besides, she loves the beer, and that's best of all.

In addition to brewing more, I've started a hop garden, which now includes a few cascades and a couple of nuggets, courtesy of generous homebrewing friends. It's set against the south wall of the house, and I spent some time today running lines as high as I could get them given my ladder. Now all they've got to do is climb and produce. Thanks to our other cooking pursuits, we have a dehydrator, so any hops I don't use fresh can get dehydrated and stored. In addition to my little hop garden growing, and countless others like it, I'm excited that hop farming is catching on in Michigan! Hops grown right here in the great beer state.

Another kind of growth is on my mind as well. Until now, I've been doing malt extract brews with specialty grains. But homebrewing taps right into my creative side, and I have been dying to do all-grain. I want to experience brewing from the starting line.

After reading a wonderful post by Jon Abernathy on Hop Press about leaping into all-grain - actually, he referred to it as "stumbling," but I still see it as a leap, and a joyous one at that - I just had to do it. I couldn't not do it. So, I picked up some additional equipment from Adventures in Homebrewing over in Taylor. It's a hike from here, but man, those folks are fantastic. Going over there reminds me of going to an old-style, full-serve gas station. You know, the ones that were called "service stations" for a good reason? There was one pretty close to my house in L.A. when I was growing up, and the owner would even stop by our house to check out our car if we were having trouble with it. He and his crew seemed able to fix anything, and the folks at Adventures in Homebrewing are similar. They know homebrewing through and through. Patient and enthusiastic, they'll help with every bit of the shopping and set you up right. Well, now I'm all set up, and I bought the ingredients for a brown ale. My first extract/specialty grain batch was a brown ale, and it feels right that it should be my first all-grain batch as well.

As I've delved deeper into brewing, I've thought increasingly about what goes into the amazing commercial beers I enjoy and the folks that make them. When I'm able to do so time-wise, I'd like to write a series - probably cross-posted on my Examiner.com column - of in-depth features on each of our local breweries. We have some great ones, and I'd like to highlight the folks that make them great and the impact they have on our community.

Trappist and bock tasting at Arbor Brewing Co.

Perhaps you can have too much of a good thing.

I attended the bock and Belgian Trappist beer tasting at Arbor Brewing this past Thursday. I had a great time, but my goodness, it's tough to sample quite so many huge beers. It wasn't the alcohol. It was the richness! I was walking around feeling stuffed, grossly stuffed, too full to enjoy the nice buffet they always put out at these tastings, which happen on the second Thursday of each month.

I know, I know, poor me.

I am no bock and Trappist expert, though I do remember a lovely evening spent at Great Lakes Brewing Co. in Cleveland when I was 21 or so, enjoying a pitcher of their Rockefeller Bock with friends as I finished up college at Oberlin. That was one of the best beer drinking experiences I have ever had. Since then, I've had bock beers and Trappist ales from time to time, but I wouldn't claim much familiarity. Of course, a tasting is a perfect way to change that.

Trappist Ales

A mere seven monasteries, six in Belgium and one in the Netherlands, produce Trappist beers. Elegant and complex, many consider these beers to be some of the finest beverages ever made. I was particularly entranced by the tasting table featuring Rochefort 6, 8, and 10. The 6 was a light-bodied brew that featured a roasted nut aroma that carried into the flavor, where it combined with citrus peel. It was dry in the finish, and burnt sugar was prominent there. The 8 was sweeter, fruity, and medium-bodied. It had qualities of brown sugar and toast. The 10 was amazingly complex, managing to have caramel notes, fruitiness, and dryness in the aroma. You might be wondering how it could be dry in the aroma; I wish I could explain better, but that was the impression I had. It was bready, slightly sweet, and fruity on the palate, and coffee and cocoa featured in the finish. I could have lived at the Rochefort table, but that would have meant missing so much goodness elsewhere.

I had a bock beer produced by the Dutch Trappist brewery Koningshoeven. Malty and fruity, I noted a distinct sherry quality as well as chocolate and spice. This beer was rich and smooth, with a velvety, creamy mouthfeel. A real delight.

An example that featured hops more prominently was the Chimay Blue. It had a floral aroma that also had caramel notes, and that caramel quality was prominent in the flavor profile.

Achel Brune was one I had never tried and had heard little about, but I enjoyed it tremendously. There was orange peel and breadiness in the aroma, and a nice combination of spice and orange was present in the taste.

Two examples from Westmalle were available. The dubbel had molasses in the aroma and toast and some roast in the flavors. Then, in the finish, some citrus came through. The tripel was a hazy, golden brew that was earthy and citrusy. It was bready and somewhat tart and fruity in the finish.

Finally, I tried the Orval. It had some funk and citrus in the aroma. This orange-amber brew was dry on the palate, with a bit of spiciness, followed by citrus peel and earthy hops in the finish.

Bock Beers
The tasting featured a very wide variety of bocks, a veritable festival of these strong lagers. I very much enjoyed Arbor Brewing's own Usktratch Mai Bock, which was deliciously toasty-malty and had a balancing bitterness that created a very clean brew.

Anchor Bock was new to me; in fact, I can't recall seeing it in stores here. It was roasty and malty, but then it suddenly changed in character with a really crisp, dry quality. It seemed to start as a heavy beer and then become much lighter at the end.

There was a table with two Aventinus brews. I first tried their Dunkel Weizenbock. I noted some smoke in the aroma, but also a hint of banana. It was an intriguing combination, making me think of well-made fried plantains that get a nice, chewy caramelization. The banana carried through to the flavor, and then this huge, alcoholic warming finish hit. Wow. As if that wasn't enough, I then tried their Weizen Eisbock. This was an astoundingly delicious, smooth beer (at 12% abv, no less). Spice - particularly cinnamon - was notable in the flavor profile. There was a lot more there, but frankly, words don't suffice. Just have some if you get the chance.

I enjoyed two very different Michigan dopplebocks. Bell's Consecrator had a very fruity aroma and prominent caramel flavor. Dark Horse Perkulator was for the coffee lover: this beer was a coffee brew through and through, from aroma to finish, yet it was smooth and tasty. As the pourer said: drink this one only if you like coffee. Luckily, I do.

Spaten Optimator was a full-bodied malt bomb, rich, caramely, bready, but with a mildly bitter finish. It ended up a nicely balanced brew.

Weihenstephan Korbinian featured caramel and toffee in the aroma. Coffee and caramel, a pleasing combination, were present in the flavor. Another brew that had strong toffee notes - as well as roast nut - was Ayinger Celebrator. It finished with a pleasant hop bitterness.

Finally, I'll just mention Ettaler Curator. This was like beer concentrate, syrupy and thick, with chocolate and dark fruit aromas and roast nuts - perhaps chestnut? - and cocoa in the flavor profile.

To shift gears a moment, I just want to mention that I had a very tasty and provocative dopplebock on my recent trip to Utah. Now, as you can imagine, Utah has some interesting alcohol laws, and there's a fair amount of tension about all things related to alcohol. Wasatch Brewing makes a dopplebock called Devastator. The label features the requisite billy goat, but this is one pissed-off goat, rampaging through the streets of Salt Lake City and knocking aside landmarks like the LDS temple and state capitol. I'm sure that's popular amongst some in the state. The write-up on the side of the bottle is worth noting as well. I've include pictures here (with apologies for the quality).