FlaSoxxJim

Game! Fock U Nomah!

Never an easy save with Bobby.

QUOTE (whitesoxbrian @ Aug 15, 2009 -> 01:00 AM) You asked how he hits the ball so far. So far, so good?

QUOTE (SockMe @ Aug 15, 2009 -> 01:00 AM) its hard when u have never been an announcer before Then keep him the hell out of the broadcast booth.

From goat to hero. Nice hit, Lexi!

Great Guns Lexi!!!

QUOTE (MHizzle85 @ Aug 15, 2009 -> 12:52 AM) Enough with these cowbells in Oakland. Fockin' tired of extra-ining games this week

extras yippee.

Doesn't look promising here in the 7th.

QUOTE (knightni @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 10:18 PM) With Your Host: FlaSoxxJim. Take it away Flaxx! Awww. you're the best. It just so happens I have three new beers lined up for the weekend. You are all shocked (SHOCKED!), I know. Currently, I'm just finishing a bottle conditioned English old ale (while I watch the wheels fall off our White Sox in the 5th inning) Called "Stingo" from the Samuel Smith Old Tadcaster Brewery — a longtime favorite brewery of mine. "Stingo" English ale is an 8% abv ale, top-fermented in the famous slate "Yorkshire square" open fermenters that give us the gorgeous Sam Smith Nut Brown Ale and Old Brewery Pale Ale, among others. Then, Stingo is aged for over a year in vintage wood casks before being bottled on lees (i.e., with a dose of live yeast) to bottle-condition. The bottle I poured was a 2008 vintage, 550-ml bottle, chilled to somewhat below 54ºF and allowed to warm over ~ 1 hour session. In all honesty, the beer was not what I anticipated it would be. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I expected a malt-accentuated English old ale with just enough alcohol to hold down the fort and a subdued presence of English hops to balance things out. Instead, I'm tasting a classic beer from the wood. Vinuous, lactic notes that typify Belgian gueze lambics and sour brown ales and French country ales dominate the flavor, with all of the traditional British ale traits present but subdued. I shouldn't be shocked that Tadcaster is a brewery of its word, and when they state they age this one in veteran oak barrels, you can believe it. English ale is a living microbiology lesson from the get-go. Add in wooden aging barrels that may be 100 years old (with coopers replacing individual wood staves as needed), and you have a happy, hoppy, infectious microbial party. Like the Belgian ales it resembles, this beer is the beneficiary of unseen microscopic helping hands — odd cultured and wild yeast strains living in the nooks and crannies of the wood that give character to the maturing beer by virtue of timing (secondary rather than primary fermentation) but not allowed enough of a foothold to risk spoiling the beer. Aww crap. I certainly wouldn't have purposely picked such a left-field beer to start off this "Not Drunk" drinking thread. But that's the way it worked out. Bottom line, re recommending this beer: • Yes, if you are an open-minded fan of English craft beers, particularly old ales. • Yes, if you are a fan of Belgian brews on the tart side. • Yes, if you can stomach dropping $13 on a bottle of beer (ouch) • No, if lactic or acid notes are at odds with what you expect beer should taste like For me, a good gauge is often the "would I crack another one" test. If I had another one on hand (and at $13 a pop I do not), I would be uncapping and pouring it right now. I know I haven't fully digested all the flavors going on in this one, and it warrants another spin. Slainté

QUOTE (G&T @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 10:42 PM) My next question then is: how do you age? I'm in an apartment so I have no basement. Plenty of interior closets which I doubt get over 75 degrees. That worked fine for the Stone, but I don't know how long it would last. More important, do you wax the bottle caps? I not only have no basement — I live in Florida. I'd crash and burn trying to cellar wines. But 75 degrees is acceptable for laying down ales. 68 degrees is probably ideal for English ales and that reflects their typical fermentation temperatures. You don't have to be in the 54 degree pub cellar range, and in fact that is too cold for lots of flavors to develop. "Experts" might disagree, but big beers (the only kind that age well) are very forgiving at most temperatures unless you exceed 80 degrees. I never have waxed crown caps, but I have been disappointed by oxidized beers that I'd waited years to crack, so I can certainly see a benefit to it. Many of the 750 ml bottles are double capped with cork and crown or cork and basket, so massive oxidation is much less likely. Like wines, corked beers are worth laying down on their sides to keep the corks from drying out.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 10:04 PM) There is nothing stopping a good threadjack as far as I am concerned. BTW, where do you rate Shiner Boch? Shiner Bock gets graded on a generous curve by me by nature of the 100-year history of the Spoetzl Brewery, the same way Yuengling does. The beer itself is a much-appreciated "port in the storm" beer for me, i.e., if your other alternatives out at a bar are American megas, Shiner is perfectly fine. Judged objectively, I'd be harsher on the beer — which I feel bad about. But, tasting reveals it is obviously an adjunct beer ( = lots of corn in the grain bill to save money like the American megas), which leaves the beer too light in body, too nibblets corn-sweet, and too under-malted to stack up to an authentic German bock. It's also over-carbonated for the style and prone to stability issues (that sulfur hint you sometimes get in Shiner. . . an off flavor caused by chemical compounds called mercaptans). But. . . back to the grading on a curve idea. . . for a long time in the US, there were a handful of pre craft era beers that flirted with flavor and authenticity and flavor, and Shiner is one of those. It was a great placeholder while the American craft brewing revolution was gearing up. And it continues to be a good stepping stone beer that helps shepherd drinkers away from Bud and Miller and into real beer. That counts for something.

QUOTE (G&T @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 08:31 PM) Most of this went over my head. But I don't know how you sit on beers for that long. Patience is a virtue. I have very little self-control. Rather, I buy several bottles at a time and then tuck one or two away and try hard to forget about them. We'll treat ourselves to a case of Celebration and Bigfoot each year, so we manage to hang onto a few bottles to enjoy over time.

sagely Ozzie says: "Winning is fun — fun winning" just win already

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 02:37 PM) I am expected to hit 100,000 posts on February 12th, 2083. pace yourself. . .

QUOTE (HeGone33 @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 03:54 PM) Thanks for the help, I guess my next question would be since I suck at art, where could I find someone to put my idea together, so that I could submit it to somewhere like cafe press? There are several SoxTalk Photoshop jocks that would probably be interested. Take a look at some of the sharp Sox sigs to see who does work you like.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 04:01 PM) Anyone going to see Julie & Julia? It looks cute. It looks very good, but I'll wait for DVD on that one.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 09:52 AM) District 9 with a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score. I know what I'll be seeing this weekend. Dying to see that.

QUOTE (G&T @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 02:06 PM) Yeah I read about that. Good stuff though a bit pricey for me right now. Worth every penny. I have a few of the old Eldrigh and Pope vintages tucked away that I can hear calling me to drink them in the middle of the night. I bought an imperial pint bottle of 1989 Hardy's when it came out and I was just starting graduate school, and I said I wouldn't open it until I finished school. Seven %$#*&@! years later, that may have been the best beer I ever tasted.

QUOTE (HeGone33 @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 01:35 PM) So if I wanted to make money off this I'd basically have to make the shirts and sell them myself? The idea would be the type of shirt you see when you are walking down Clark on the way to a Cubs game or through the parking lots at US Cellular. No you don't. Check out setting up an online shop through Cafe Press.

Puh-lease

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 12:35 PM) Cure or treatment? Cure would be huge. Wat too early to tell in this instance. But we do have two sponge-derived natural products in human clinical trials right now that are showing promise in killing a few different cancers including pancreatic cancer. One compound is called discodermolide and it's MOA is as a tubulin stabilizer that basically freezes dividing target cells in the middle of the cell cycle and basically causes them to commit cell suicide (apoptosis). I don't know enough about the glass sponge yet to know the mechanism underlying its bioactivity.

losers

QUOTE (G&T @ Aug 14, 2009 -> 10:41 AM) I'm not a huge barleywine fan because of the hops, but I did sit on a 2007 Stone Old Guardian for about a year and a half. Man that thing was good. Still some definite hop presence, but really well balanced. Another year would have been great. Of course I was "aging" it in a closet, so there's no guarantee that it would have made it another year. Never had a Bigfoot. I'm curious if that amount of aging brought it close to a Thomas Hardy? There's a lot more dark malt in the Bigfoot grain bill compared to Hardy, but as far as the thick, malt-accentuated mouthfeel, yeah there are definitely similarities with enough age on the Bigfoot. More similar would be the Old Guardian after a couple of years. Bad news on the Thomas Hardy front. O'Hanlon's, the brewery that bought the rights to the brand and recipe from Eldridge and Pope when they ceased production has announced they are discontinuing production. Buy up what you can.

fourteen inning game then hope dashed against the rocks by old man griffey