My Sixteenth Entry - Anchor Brewing Co.'s Anchor Steam Beer

I attended the University of Texas from 1981 to 1988. (I was not a seven-year undergraduate, as much as I would have liked to have been. This was four years in the Plan II program, then three years at the U.T. School of Law.)

In those seven years, I attended just about all of the home football games, a ton of baseball games, and almost no basketball games (weirdly, there was this kind of negative mojo about going to a game at the Frank Erwin Center, which felt like the Astrodome of basketball, too comfortable, too much at a remove from the floor, echoey and cavernous).

Going to Texas football games was one of the reasons you go to Texas - parties before the game, drinking rum-and-cokes during the game made with the booze hidden in my father's Barnoculars, and then parties after the game at frat houses and backyards.  In retrospect, I don't know how I avoided a public intoxication arrest or chronic alcoholism from all the drinking we did during the golden years of the 18-year-old drinking age.

I went to many of the road football games too, including several of the annual Texas-Oklahoma games at the Cotton Bowl, and the two Cotton Bowl games that Texas played during my time there.

The Cotton Bowl games were always tough for us because the winter winds would collect in the stadium and freeze the cold metal bench seats.  So you just had to drink to stay warm - given the choice between the Texas phenomenon of hot Dr Pepper (I don't drink coffee) and my secret flask of Schnapps, the choice was pretty easy.

I don't remember much about the 1982 Cotton Bowl against Alabama, but I have vivid memories of the  really cold January 1, 1984 Cotton Bowl when Texas had the chance to win the national championship, but lost 10-9 to Georgia. I had smuggled bottles of cheap champagne into the stadium (down each sleeve of my winter parka) and we were going to open one each time Texas scored a touchdown. As the score indicates, they never did. We drank the champagne anyway, and then went to a local indoor bar to watch Nebraska win the national championship by upsetting Miami.

The Texas-OU games were always way more enjoyable than the bowl games, if for no other reason than the weather was almost always perfect, and the State Fair was in session.  (By contrast, going to the January bowl game required you to walk through the deserted and creepy fairgrounds in a really dodgy part of Dallas after parking your car on someone's front yard - like going to some kind of post-apocalyptic gathering of the tribes.) You would get your Fletcher's Corny Dog, a cup of beer, and some nachos, and find your way to the student section with your friends, glaring at the OU students.

(By the way - I have a distinct memory that there used to be a regular fight in downtown Dallas between OU and Texas fans.  And by fight, I mean a real physical fight with arrests and furniture thrown out of hotel windows and . . . well, you get the picture. And that in the 1980s, Dallas had enough of it and started blasting the fans with fire hoses to clear the streets. But literally no one I tell this to remembers that. Weird.)

Anyway, the Texas-OU game was always a treat because of the extreme enthusiasm of the respective sides.  The seats are distributed evenly between the schools, so that half of the stadium is red and half is orange.  Each set of fans do their yells (Boomer Sooner for OU; Texas Fight for UT), the bands try to drown each other out, and the Texas fight song ends with "OU sucks!" for this one game. And win or lose, you would leave the stadium and enjoy the rest of the day at the State Fair.

So, when my friend Jerry sent me an email telling me that Texas-OU tickets were available for sale to non-season ticket holders - apparently unusual and reflecting the lukewarm enthusiasm for this year's team - I jumped at the chance to take my wife and son to the game for the first time.

I am not kidding about the first time.  My wife is also a UT alum, but not a football fan. By her account, she went to one game during her undergraduate and law school years. She had never been to the Texas-OU game, and I think never to the State Fair either.

And she still hasn't been.  As the date approached, she told me that she had a commitment in Philadelphia for the weekend and couldn't go. So Josh invited his friend Connor to go in her stead.

On the Friday afternoon before the game, I left work early and went home to get the boys. We loaded up the Highlander and ventured north, Josh behind the wheel during the beginning of rush hour.  He has been doing a lot more driving, getting ready for his license exam this spring, and he was excited about tackling the crowded freeways.

Thirty minutes later, he was ready to give up the wheel.  So I told him to park downtown and I would show him a cool trick.  We traded seats and I got on the HOV lane on I-45 North.  Instead of sitting in the main lanes, moving at about 3 mph, we were dashing down the dedicated lane for carpoolers.

"You see, boys?" I said with the pomposity of a dad teaching young men Important Lessons of Life.  "Those poor fools are going to be there for hours, while we bypass the clogs and get out of town.  The reason this lane works is because you can't get on except from downtown and you can't get off for the next fifteen miles or so."

I started making fun of the cars in the freeway, singing my victory song, full of Schadenfreude and self-satisfaction.

Until I remembered that I had not remembered the tickets to the game.

Fifteen miles or so later, I u-turned back south and went home to get the tickets, passing through downtown and catching the remnants of Friday's rush hour going south.

We arrived in Dallas about midnight.
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On the way, we stopped for dinner. Because I was behind the wheel, I got to choose.  And I chose the Waffle House.

My mother will tell you that the first place our family ate at when we arrived in Texas in 1973 was a Waffle House right next to the motel we were staying at in Lewisville until our house was ready. The motel was terrible - lots of ants - but the Waffle House was just fine.

For some reason, however, we didn't eat there much after that. When we ate out in my teen years, it was Bonanza or Friendly's or even IHOP, but not the Waffle House. It did not have a family-friendly vibe.

I ate there occasionally in college, and then took about a fifteen-year break. On the road to Arkansas, it was never an option for my wife and kids, probably because of the same truck-stop, not family-friendly feeling.

The next time I ate there, however, was memorable enough to change my attitude. Josh and I had attended the funeral at sea of my good friend and saxophone teacher, Ed Sullivan.

Not that Ed Sullivan - this man was a lifelong resident of Houston, a cranky old man at times, but a true friend with a heart of gold.  He taught me saxophone for about five or six years, charging me ten dollars a lesson for thirty minutes, and he drove to my house. He taught music because he liked to help people and enjoyed the company.  After the lesson, we would sip drinks and talk about old Houston - he knew everybody and had amazing stories about Houston and Galveston.  He lived to his late 80s and passed away about four years ago with grace and bravery after a long life well spent.

After he passed away, his friends chartered a boat and we went out to the bay in Galveston and dropped his cremated remains overboard while playing his music.  Josh and I attended, wearing black suits and sunglasses.  He was moved by the ceremony, having known Ed all of his life.

We left the group after the boat docked, and started the drive home. I was hungry and so was Josh, so I looked for a place where we could get some comfort food.

And there was the Waffle House. Josh and I got out in our formal wear, with sunglasses on, and entered the restaurant. The waitress was kind, probably intuiting that we had just attended a funeral, but what was odd about the experience was that no one else really noticed. The Waffle House did not judge and did not discriminate. Underdressed or overdressed, everyone was welcome.

Josh and I had waffles and talked about Ed and felt kind of cool in our FBI attire.  It's a nice memory.

Connor and J-Man and chocolate chip waffles

So when I wanted to eat somewhere on Friday night, and I saw the Waffle House sign, that's where we went.  And despite my son's misgivings - he has not gotten old enough yet to be nostalgic for old good times - the food was just fine, the waitress was funny and pleasant, and the vibe was funky and unique.

Eating in a Waffle House is sui generis - when I told the waitress we were on our way to Dallas (200 miles to go at 8:30 p.m.), the cook turned away from the griddle to look at us and he smiled.  You don't get that at McDonalds.
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When we got to Dallas, we stayed at the Hyatt DFW.  I liked it: it was a nice hotel with easy access to a train that took us the next day to the Bachman Road station where a waiting shuttle took us directly to Fair Park and the game.

The four amigos

When we got there, we met up with my friend Jerry and his family.  A quick visit to Big Tex, and then we went looking for breakfast.

The traditional breakfast at Texas-OU?  Two corny dogs and (for me this year) a fresh lemonade.

Breakfast of champions.

It's game time!

We chatted for awhile with Jerry and his wife, Lori, both of whom I love dearly, and then we were off to the game, taking our seats in the upper corner of the stadium.




(By the way, note the guy next to Josh in the rain poncho. He was super-intense throughout the game and even as the weather cleared - and it did not rain on us at all - he never took the poncho off. He was one of those guys, I think, with all of his tools on pegboards in his garage, and a strict deed restriction enforcer. You know the type.)



We enjoyed the game - Texas had its chances, but kept making silly mistakes and, after a furious comeback in the fourth quarter, closing it to four points, couldn't make a stop to get the ball back until it was too late.

I can tell that Josh is now getting more enamored with the college lifestyle. He's a watchful kid, quiet and smart, absorbing everything going on around him. I can see a new maturity developing in so many aspects of his life, and I couldn't be prouder of him.

After the game, we got funnel cake and the traditional turkey leg:

Then a quick ride in the Skyway back to the other side of the park, and back to the hotel.

I had a great time.  Josh and Connor are great company, and I'm looking forward to more of these football weekends.


(And maybe we can get my wife to come out next time, although, to her credit, she did get a genuine Philly cheesesteak here while she was there.)

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This week's beer is one that I've been wanting to try for awhile - Anchor Steam beer from San Francisco, California.  This is a California Common beer, also known as a "steam" beer, brewed in one of the first craft microbreweries in the country.  Although there has been an Anchor Steam beer around since 1896, the current version was first brewed in 1971 by Frederick Louis "Fritz" Maytag, who had purchased the brewery in 1965 after it had developed a reputation for sour beer, and who turned it around with artisanal, sanitary brewing techniques.

(c) JDurfee99

The "steam" in the name of this beer allegedly comes from a unique element in their brewing process:

Anchor Steam Beer derives its unusual name from the 19th century when “steam” was a nickname for beer brewed on the West Coast of America under primitive conditions and without ice. While the origin of the name remains shrouded in mystery, it likely relates to the original practice of fermenting the beer on San Francisco’s rooftops in a cool climate. In lieu of ice, the foggy night air naturally cooled the fermenting beer, creating steam off the warm open pans.

Good ol' Wikipedia suggests another explanation:

It is also possible that the name or brewing process derive from Dampfbier (literally steam beer), a traditional German beer that was also fermented at unusually high temperatures and that may have been known to 19th-century American brewers, many of whom were of German descent; Dampfbier is an ale, however, not a lager. 

Anchor Steam describes its ingredients as "a blend of pale and caramel malts, fermentation with lager yeast at warmer ale temperatures in shallow open-air fermenters, and gentle carbonation in our cellars through an all-natural process called kräusening."

What is "kräusening"? Good ol' Wikipedia tells us:

Kräusening is a conditioning method in which fermenting wort is added to the finished beer. The active yeast will restart fermentation in the finished beer, and so introduce fresh carbon dioxide; the conditioning tank will be then sealed so that the carbon dioxide is dissolved into the beer producing a lively "condition" or level of carbonation.

In other words, the beer goes through a second fermentation after the beer is initially done, kind of like folding egg whites into a cake batter to lighten it up before it's baked.

And I can taste the second fermentation in the Anchor Steam. The beer is super-light and has a fizzier mouthfeel than other beers. It also has just enough hoppiness to keep it from drifting towards being too sweetly malty.  I guess there's some psychology working here - the fizzier and lighter the beer, the more it makes you think of the drink as a carbonated barley soda instead of a beer with substance and gravity. So to combat that, you add just enough hops to bitter it up and slow you down, but not so much that the hops kill off the light drinkable mouthfeel.

The hops give a good balance here. Anchor Steam uses Northern Brewer hops that, coincidentally, Beer Advocate calls "[a] strong fragrant hop with a rich rough-hewn flavor and aroma, ideal for steam-style beers and ales" with a "unique mint-like evergreen flavor."

Could I taste the evergreen (which seems like a good choice for a Northern California beer)? I guess I could, just from the back of my throat. The beer was not flavor-forward like aggressive craft brews can be - as I got to the bottom of the pint glass, it was mostly the caramel malt I was detecting. Not terribly complex, but easy drinking.

The bottle design was pretty literal. A anchor, some hops, some barley, and the name of the beer on a red ribbon with the advisory, "Brewed in San Francisco since 1896." But when you look at the label on the neck of the beer, there's a bunch of tiny type providing the tasting notes, history and salesmanship that can help you pass the time as you contemplate the bottle you're drinking from.

Better than last week's Yeti Imperial Stout?  Of the two, I'd probably want to drink another Anchor Steam, so it wins the belt. Plus, there's so much history on this beer, I really enjoyed the experience. Drinking and learning - maybe this could be a new educational technique for our schools.  It's how I got into law school, after all.

See you next week.

My Fifteenth Entry - Great Divide Brewing Co.'s Yeti Imperial Stout

I'm baaaack.

Not sure if there's anyone left in the room after my five month break, but sometimes the muse is there ... and then sometimes it goes on vacation for awhile.  If you're there, thanks for sticking with me.  If you're not, well, you're not.

Lots of stuff happened while I was gone.  As Mickey the Escaped Convict says to Pee-wee Herman towards the end of Pee-wee's Big Adventure, my summer was "action-packed!"

Let's review, shall we?

*    My daughter graduated from high school in Reliant Stadium with about six hundred other kids.  She and her boyfriend (who she's still dating long-distance) were radiant and I couldn't have been prouder.  You want a picture?  Nope - no family pictures on this blog. Hope you're not offended, but over the summer, I got religion again on family privacy. Speaking twice on social media will do that to a man, which may be why I walked away from the blog for awhile.  You can't be too careful.

In August, we moved her into college.  It was pretty cool - we schlepped a room full of stuff into an old-fashioned jail cell dorm room and dressed it up.  Before long, it was actually kind of livable, with rugs on the concrete floor, framed art on the walls, and a tension-rod curtain over her open closet.

When we were done, she couldn't have wanted us out of there more quickly.  And weirdly, my wife was ready to go too.  I kept waiting for the Hallmark moment - tears, hugs, the culmination of 18 years of child-rearing - but everyone was so tired, and so on edge from the various and sundry small irritations that come with this kind of move that we were ready to go.  And so we went.  And about 24 hours later, my wife started crying. I didn't cry for about another day after that.  My son . . . I don't know when he cried - he hasn't told me yet.  (Update: My son read this and assured me that he has not cried.  Yet.)

She's doing great at Anonymous U.  She joined a sorority, has made many new friends, and allegedly made good grades on her first round of tests.  The weird part about it for me is that she's there and we're here and it's alright.  We love her, we miss her, and we find we're doing a lot more mom-and-dad dinners and shows and stuff now that she's gone.  (If you're reading this, honey, skip the last part of that sentence. Daddy didn't mean it - it's just blog humor.)

*    I spoke at the Texas District and County Attorneys Association (TDCAA) Civil Law Seminar in May on the ethics of social media (killed), the State Bar of Texas's Suing and Defending Governmental Entities Government Law Boot Camp in July on open government (killed), the TDCAA Annual Meeting in September on ethics of social media (killed again), and the DA's Office later in September on HIPAA (tough room).  If you haven't gathered it from this, I kind of teach a lot - it must be some kind of pathological need to impress and be approved, or just a need to take a day off from work and hang out with smart people at legal conferences in nice hotels.  They keep asking, so I keep doing it.

The Boot Camp gig was kind of funny because I was scheduled to speak in Austin at 9:00 a.m., but I didn't want to miss my regular Tuesday night poker game.  So . . . I played until about 11:30, got in my car, and drove to Austin.  Arrived at the Sheridan in downtown Austin at about 2:30 and checked in. (BTW: I highly recommend checking into a hotel in the middle of night, at least once in your life: the desk clerk and the bellman were what you would expect at 2:30 a.m. - a little dodgy and a little punchy from sleep deprivation (or maybe that was me).)  The clerk told me that my room might be empty, or it might be occupied.  "I can't tell - the computer's sending me mixed signals," he said.

So he sent me up to the room at 2:45 a.m. with the bellguy, who knocked on the door and then let himself into the room while I waited in the hall.

You know what Darrell Royal once said about the forward pass?  "There are three things that could happen, two of which are bad."  The same could be said about walking into a hotel room at 2:45 in the morning, except the ratio is probably closer to nine things that could happen, eight of which are bad, seven of which involve angry, semi-clad hotel room occupants.

End result?  I lucked into the one good thing - the room turned out to be empty - so I got about five hours sleep and then spoke for one hour at 9:00 a.m. (and killed, as noted above).

Nice surprise: I won TDCAA's Civil Practitioner of the Year this year at the Civil Law Seminar. Nice plaque, really nice comments from people I hugely respect.  Thanks, TDCAA!

Fortunately, I only have one speaking gig left this year - open government at the TDCAA Elected Prosecutors' Conference in December.  It's a good gig because its a chance to impress my boss, who attends the conference.  As long as I kill - which I almost always do.


*    We travelled a lot this summer.  Went to Carmel twice - once to drop my son off at a golf camp there, and once to pick him up and vacation in Big Sur.  We whale-watched, drove around Monterey Bay, and enjoyed the best view on Earth.  This is not hyperbole - from the Hyatt Highlands in Carmel, where we stayed, here's the view.

(And this doesn't even capture thirty percent of the panoramic view of the Pacific Coast you get in person.  The blues, the rocks, the whitecaps, the endless horizon.  To give you a sense of what this view was worth, there was a property for sale across the street from the hotel about 150 feet below the view you see here.  1250 square feet - 2.5 million dollars. And if I could afford it, I'd be there right now.  That's how awesome that view was.)

We did not play Pebble Beach (my game is not worth $500 per round), but we lunched at the restaurant on the 18th green. After lunch, my son and I went down to the green to take a picture.

Nice, right?  It gets better.  While we're there, this guy asks my son to take a picture of him and his girlfriend.  Notice the fence in the foreground: that's the dividing line between the $500 a round golfers and the rest of us.  Strictly enforced - like, we'll kick you off the course, and out of town if you jump that ankle-high fence.  (I know this because they made me take my Pebble Beach souvenir hat off while dining inside the clubhouse.  It's that kind of place.)

As Josh sets up, the guy jumps the fence, dragging his girlfriend with him.  She's mortified, and the bystanders nearby are scandalized.  He then drops to a knee and asks her to marry him.  I look at Josh and he starts taking pictures.  I don't know if the pictures turned out - she said yes, the guy thanked Josh, and they disappeared into the nearby hotel - but it was pretty remarkable.

Me and a friend in Monterey.

The other thing that was really great: in Carmel in July, the high temperature was in the 70s.  Kind of the perfect place.  Of the various places I've been, it was the hardest to leave.

My first selfie, with some kid on the Monterey Peninsula. 

*   We also spent some time in Galveston with my family - it was a wonderful time, very relaxing - and Lisa and I went to New York for a quick weekend to see some shows on American Airlines' dime (they lost my luggage last year during my visit to Tokyo to see my brother and his family, and they gave me a travel voucher to compensate me - nice if you can get it).

But the second-best trip I took was to Las Vegas with some of my poker buddies to watch one of our crew play in a World Series of Poker event (and play some events ourselves). We stayed at the Rio - my buddies Bert, Wojo, Rick, and Bill - and I played cards from Wednesday through Saturday.  Did not cash in any of the tournaments - my best finish was 81st out of 796 in a deep-stack tournament - but I learned a great deal and came back to Houston a better player.  Since coming back, I've won two of my Tuesday tournaments and finished close to the money in several others.

I'm all in.

Plus, I got my Heisenberg on.  The cool thing about playing cards in Vegas is that you can be whoever you want to be. Here, I was trying on the Vegas lizard look.  It didn't work, but it was fun being someone else for awhile.

There's a rule about poker: however interesting you think your bad-beat story is . . . it's not.  So I won't regale you with the various and extremely boring ways my dominant hands got beat just as I was going to cash in the tournament.  If you want to hear those stories, you'll just have to ask me in person.

Rick and I also played the Wynn golf course - cheaper than Pebble Beach, and we had a caddy (first time for me).  Beautiful course, hot as hell.  I played lousy, but Rick was great company and I fully appreciated the weird dissonance of playing on lush grass in the middle of the Strip.  (Weird but true story: because his vision is quickly deteriorating, Steve Wynn himself does not play on his own course except to hit a few balls now and then down the first fairway.  Who knew that it's actually possible to be sympathetic for a billionaire?)

All told, a great trip - much love to my understanding wife, who let me go (and did not blink when I told her how much I'd lost).

*   Finally, we had some great visitors.  My Aunt Vicki and Uncle Bill visited from New York and helped me assemble a new gas grill (it didn't blow up, despite my best efforts).  I will return the favor next year - visiting, that is, not building cooking equipment.

I also got to hang out with two of my law school buddies here in Houston when they came to town for the LSU-Wisconsin game.  I took them to the Last Concert Cafe for lunch (they were impressed by the fact that the waiter brought me my regular meal without my ordering it), the Saint Arnold's brewery for a few tasty brews, and then to an Astros game.  As much as I love my friends here in Houston, it's special to reconnect with those guys.  It's like taking a time machine back to 1987 - easy and unconditional friendship based on sharing a really difficult but fulfilling experience. It's not like we were in the Army together, but the next closest thing I can think of.

I'm sure there some other stuff that we did this summer that I'm forgetting, but I reserve the right to supplement my briefing (this is an old appellate lawyer saw).  Suffice to say, this has been a great year, even if I let the blog languish for a little bit.

Sorry!
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This week's beer is the Great Divide Brewing Co.'s Yeti Imperial Stout.  Josh picked it out for me.

In fact, he's probably the reason I'm writing again.  He's the hardest kid in the world to impress, but after a dentist appointment today, we came home and he told me, out of the blue, "Dad, I read your blog today.  It's pretty good.  You should do more of it."

I was floored.

He went on: "I'm going to get a beer for you right now.  Get to work!"

I had thought about writing in the blog again when we went to Galveston this summer.  I brought three beers with me and planned on drinking them and writing about them while I relaxed in the beach house.  But it didn't happen.  In fact, I don't think I drank any beer at all that week - my sister mixed super-potent margaritas and left me in an alcoholic daze for much of the time as we played cards and built sand castles on the beach.

When we got back, I kept going out to the garage and looking at the 36 remaining beers. The number of beers left was kind of daunting, and I was beginning to worry that the beers were not going to be fresh (a legitimate concern that I promise to address in some future blog entry).  With so much going on in my life, I found it hard to set aside the time to write.

But when your hard-to-impress son tells you he likes what you write . . . that's a motivator.

So here's the story about this beer.  Great Divide Brewing Co. is a craft brewery based in Denver, Colorado,  celebrating its twenty-year anniversary this year.  They work out of a converted dairy processing plant and brew 9 year-round beers and 12 seasonals.  They brew with a green philosophy which I like and which is consistent, I think, with the craft brewery ethos.

I like the bottle - simple brown and tan colors, a profile of the mysterious Yeti in the foreground of the logo, and some pretty cool hype:

Yeti Imperial Stout is an onslaught of the senses.  It starts with big, roasty malt flavor that gives way to rich caramel and toffee notes.  YETI gets its bold hop character from an enormous quantity of American hops.  It weighs in at a hefty 75 IBUs.

What does "Imperial" signify?  It's short for Russian Imperial and good ol' Wikipedia tells us that it is "a strong dark beer or stout in the style that was brewed in the 18th century by Thrale's brewery in London, England for export to the court of Catherine II of Russia."  According to Beer Advocate, this is the "king of stouts" with "high alcohol by volume," "plenty of malt character," and "huge roasted, chocolate, and burnt malt flavors."


No kidding.  Yeti has an ABV of 9.5% - enough to give you that warm-all-over feeling as you imbibe.  It's a classic stout, dark chocolate with a nice caramelly finish, very smooth and drinkable.  Taking a long sniff in the pint glass, the roasted malts take over, along with an alcoholic vaporousness.

I liked it, and so do others: according to Great Divide's website, Yeti is Number 36 on Beer Advocate's Top 100 Beers on Earth list.  I'm sure that Catherine II would have liked it too.

Is it the best of the 50 beers?  Heck, it's been so long since I've written this blog, I don't even remember what the champ is.  So Yeti Imperial Stout - you take the belt!

As for me, am I back?  Yep, for as long as the muse is here and the beers are in the fridge. Thanks for your patience and welcome back!