Deus ex Mashina...

Hmm, I sense a divine influence here. Has Bacchus awakened from his centuries-long slumber to once again plunge the world into liquid decadence? Harlan Ellison, in the introduction to his speculative fiction collection Deathbird Stories, wrote "when belief in a god dies, the god dies." Perhaps belief had only passed out. How else to explain this coincidence of metaphysical proportions?

Seems that if we’d held the upcoming Bootlegger’s Bliss event on the original date (the day before its newly rescheduled date), a day that was more or less randomly chosen, we would have been swapping homebrews on a little-known annual international thing called "Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day.” TFHD is an event that sprung from the wet brains of the American Homebrewers Association, and its goal is similar to that of our own little event, minus the offroad ride component.

Speaking of which, my Broken Cherry Stout (concocted and decocted too late for the Bliss) is spitting CO2 bubbles like bullets from a gatlin gun, gurgling with the rhythm of a metronome; the yeast is bombed on an endless sugar buzz, the gods are in their heavens, and the Bliss, well, the Bliss is on...


POSTSCRIPT: Sierra Nevada's excellent Celebration Ale is on the market now here in the northeast, tipping the scales at a healthy 6.8% abv.

Seems to me to taste a bit hoppier than last year's release, but I've been assured this is only a chimera, the product of an overzealous imagination and an amnesic palate. An excellent IPA that I'll reach for again and again this time of year over my usual favorites. Bonus? As with all of SN's offerings, the screw-off cap means never having to use your pedal for anything other than spinning a crank.