My Pistons are hot! Down 19, they came back to win. They're up 3-0. I suspect a dear friend and Bulls fan will owe me $5 next week.
Not much ordinary blogging today. I spent most of my time on the above rant, but I have time for a few
Brews You Can Use
The Fonz said the supermarket is a great place to meet "chicks" (I use the quotes to attribute it to Fonzie, so everyone realizes I'm not the sexist pig). But there's a new reason: supermarkets are selling more craft beers. It's an interesting story, and this might be the best part: it says Bud is in decline. Thank goodness. There's something about that mass-marketed swill that makes me want to yell "sheep!" when I see my friends drink it (of course, when I drank Miller Lite, they could scream the same thing back at me, but Bud and Bud Lite always seemed just a little worse). Excerpt from article:
For the 13 weeks ended April 28, the top 20 beer brands commanded 72.3 percent of supermarket volume, according to beer sales statistics from Nielsen. That's down a point and a half from 73.8 percent share in 20004.
The single biggest driver of that decline is Budweiser, according to Nielsen's beer industry analysis. Bud accounted for 42.8 percent of the total decline. Michelob Ultra, another Anheuser-Busch beer, represented 22.1 percent of the drop.
Besides the long running decline of Bud, another factor in this fragmentation is the growth of import and craft brands.
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Sam Adams, meanwhile, is kicking rump and taking names. Maybe Anheuser-Busch will buy it, then increase the marketing and water. That'll ruin a great beer line.
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A Brazilian court has ordered local brewer Ambev to pay $49,400 to an alcoholic beer taster who drank more than three pints a day. The employee alleged that the company did not provide the health measures needed to keep him from developing alcoholism, a labor court in the Rio Grande do Sul state said in a statement Friday.
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A blogger at A Good Beer Blog has a continuing monologue about reasons for drinking at a bar/pub, instead of sipping at home. It's pretty good. Here's one solid conclusion:
One reason to drink at the pub is that drinking (beer especially) is a social activity. When you drink beer, you talk. And when you are sitting at a bar next to someone, you invariably end up saying a word or two and sometimes it turns into a conversation. If the bartender knows their business, they'll be talking and they'll do stuff to get conversations going.
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I'm not greatly impressed by the site, but a page dedicated to monastic-like brewing deserves mention on a Catholic blog that discusses drink: Brew Like a Monk.
