Beer Review: Smithwicks

I’m working on the hypothesis that the better tasting beers come from breweries that are at least a couple hundred years old, and the older the brewery, the better.

Smithwicks supports my hypothesis, being the delicious product of a brewery established in 1710. John Smithwick built his brewery upon land provided to him by the Duke of Ormonde. The site was that of a former Franciscan Abbey, the resident monks having brewed ale as far back as the 14th century.

Being established in 1710, Swithwicks is the oldest continuously operating brewery in Ireland. In 1965, Smithwicks was made part of Guinness and has only been available in the United States for the last five years or so.

San Diego afforded me ample time to get familiar with a few different beers, such as the previously reviewed Steinlager. While glad for the experience of having tried New Zealand’s famous brew, I won’t repeat that experience.

Striking out against the grain, fighting peer pressure to stay with the tried and true Guinness, I found myself enjoying a Smithwicks.

A dark ale but not as dark as Guinness. Reviewers talk about “nuttiness” or “bitterness” of beers. I found Smithwicks to be neither nutty nor bitter, and one review I discovered described Smithwicks as having a “complex” finish. What the hell does “complex” mean?

Smithwicks had what I would call a smooth finish, meaning no icky bitter aftertaste. The flavor was smooth all the way through, all the way to the bottom of the glass. Maybe a little bitter but not so much so as to be a problem. As a beer warms to room temperate, I am attentive to how the character of the taste changes. Ask yourself when you drink a beer, as it warms, can you finish it? Or, do you pour it out? If you have to pour it out, the beer is probably not all that good. Smithwicks I found to be good all the way through.

When I returned to Murray, I ate at a local restaurant, a small regional chain. At the bar, I discovered Guinness on tap. Ordering up one, I discovered the bartender had no idea how to pour one. Drinking my badly poured Guinness, I found that either the delivery system was wrong, or the pour was wrong. Either way, ick. I opted for a bottled Smithwicks, and was delighted to discover that a bottled Smithwicks was better than a badly poured Guinness.

Bottom-line, either bottled or on tap Smithwicks is a very good choice as far as ales go.

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Beer Review: Steinlager

Steinlager is purported to be New Zealand’s premium exported beer. Surely, to God, they have something better than this.

Brewed in New Market, a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand, my first experience with this beer was in an English pub in San Diego.

Across the bar, a neon sign broadcast to everyone that Steinlager was on tap, and since neon lights illuminate all that is good and holy on the earth, I instantly became mesmerized by the notion I could have a Kiwi beer in San Diego.

If one is going to drink beer, it is my belief that it should be a quest. Not a quest for the quickest buzz, but a quest for the best taste, flavor, aroma, finish, color, and overall quality. Anyone can sit down and drink a PBR or a Busch, but for many, sitting down to a Smithwick’s is like sitting down for sushi – a foreign concept.

Beer also has a geographic quality, in that beers produced globally can vary in taste, color, and quality. For some cultures, i.e. Thai or Japanese, the brewing of beer is a relatively new endeavor, introduced by a colonial power. For others, i.e. the Czechs and Germans, brewing beer has been around for a thousand years.

Steinlager was created in 1957 under the auspices of the New Zealand government to replace imported beers in New Zealand with a domestic beer. Man, do I feel sorry for the New Zealanders . . .

What is the bottom line, then? Is this beer worth drinking? In a word, no; save your money.

I have consumed a fairly wide variety of beers, not quantities of beer, but a variety of beers, and I have to say I have tasted none as bad as this beer in a long time.

I’m pretty sure I figured out how it was “brewed” and I use that term loosely.

First, good beer is imported from abroad. The beer is then consumed by whatever is available, people, or perhaps sheep, since sheep outnumber people in New Zealand about 12:1. Kidneys are then used to filter the beer, and the kidney output is collected and piped into bottles containing the Steinlager label for resale abroad.

Pure speculation on my part, of course, but I suspect that my formula hits close to the mark.

Your mileage may vary.

Technorati Tags: beer,new zealand,steinlager

Movie Review: Hotel Rwanda

I always have a hard time remembering which side was which in this conflict. Not good considering I have blogged on this before, and have to remind myself all the time before I cover material regarding Africa.

The Tutsis were the Belgian supported minority in Rwanda and were left in power when the Belgians turned the country over to the local populations in the late ‘50s.

The Hutus represent the largest of the three ethnic groups in Rwanda, the third group being the Twa, a pygmy people who are quite different in appearance from the Hutu and Tutsi.

No real difference between the Hutu and Tutsi is distinguishable, as the two groups have intermarried. To learn whether one was Hutu or Tutsi requires personal knowledge of the person, or a glance at their identification card. However, Hutus tended to be of a lower social class than Tutsis, as a result of the favoritism shown the Tutsis by the Belgians. The Hutus generally were the farmers, the manual laborers, while the Tutsis tended to be the administrators.

As for this movie, while good and worthy of watching, I still think Sometime in April is a better movie. Don Cheadle is a great actor and there is nothing wrong with his performance, nor the performance of most of the actors in the movie, with the exception of Nick Nolte. Nearing anyone could have been cast in his role, as he didn’t really bring anything to the movie.

Much of the action depicted in the movie seems like it was true to events, as much as I know them. I am sure that some were probably contrived events, used to help explain or illustrate the level of violence, as Hollywood tends to do. But that is just a feeling of mine and I have no real basis for that opinion.

The Interahamwe was the Hutu militia, created to chase down and kill the Tutsis and the Hutu sympathizers. Friendships and marriages made this genocide a difficult situation, as families that were previously friends could find themselves torn apart and bitter enemies. Hutus protecting Tutsi friends could find themselves  being hacked apart just as easily as the Tutsis by the Interahamwe.

The Tutsis are also referred to as “cockroaches” in the movie.

Technorati Tags: Don Cheadle,hotel rwanda,rwanda,genocide,hutu,tutsi