I’m out of the country starting last night through September 30th, so I requested some Twitter questions to make a quick and easy post. This is that post, submitted for your enjoyment while I tour Amsterdam, Munich for Oktoberfest, and Prague.
That’s an easy one. I learned from the best. If you don’t know, Ted routinely does a Friday Twitter Q&A at Tedquarters. I wonder if Metsopotamia is big enough for TWO Q&A posts this Friday. To truly make this ridiculous, I’m going to schedule a tweet to this post for Ted on Friday in hopes of getting the Internet stuck in a recursion error.
Amusingly, I had responded to a question by Emily Ragle on this earlier in the week.
She asked: “#craftbeer fans: Do any of you actually have a favorite beer? I can’t ever choose, and it’s the most common question I’m asked.”
So my response will be the same one I gave her: It depends on my mood and the season. Right now for example I recently had a Founders Cerise, which is a delicious Michigan cherry fermented ale, and it’s the first thing to come to mind. I’ll be in Oktoberfest in eight days though, and Oktoberfest/fall is still my favorite beer season, so that would get a nod if someone asking was looking for recommendations. Visiting Hawaii two years ago I discovered a Toasted Coconut Ale at Kona Brewing Company that I absolutely fell in love with. If you’d asked me before visiting the isles, I would’ve told you I didn’t like coconut, and now I love it. I actually created a similar homebrew recipe for it, and it’s recently become available on the mainland in bottles and called Kona Koko Brown.
But this question is misleading. Paul asks for my favorite beer of all time, and I haven’t yet experienced all of time yet. I’ve been drinking craft beer for less than 10 years, and there are some really amazing beers that just haven’t been thought of yet. So unless I stumble upon a TARDIS, I’m going to reserve final judgement.
More beer questions? I thought I wrote a Mets blog? Fittingly enough, Eno Sarris was talking about IPAs on Twitter recently so I had this answer readily available as well. It’s Sixpoint Resin. “Whatever flames upon the night. Man’s own resinous heart has fed.” The beer is 9.1% alcohol and a whopping 103 IBU. (International bittering units. 103 is extremely high) It comes in a nifty narrow green nanokeg (can) that I once heard someone describe as fitting perfectly among shampoo bottles in the shower. IPAs can be a sore point for people that want to like more beer but find it daunting. The bittering often turns people off, and is definitely an acquired taste. A good IPA that I like to recommend is Flying Fish Hopfish; I find the malt in it balances the bitterness extremely well and makes for a delicious beer that’s not too harsh.
At least ‘ballpark’ is a baseball word, from the Banner Day winner. This is a tough one. At Oktoberfest beer is only served in liter-sized steins, called Maß and pronounced ‘mas. These go for nearly 10 Euros, which as of this writing goes for about $12.8 since the Euro is doing it’s best 2007 Mets imitation and collapsing. Plenty of beer in New York City is $5 for a pint, plus a dollar tip, so the prices doesn’t even seem bad. Still, drinking liters of beer in one sitting in one tent is probably a poor way to see Oktoberfest, Munich, or Europe in general.
We will be there for 15 days, not including the plane travel days. Three days in Amsterdam, Nine in Germany, and four in Prague. Three of these will feature long train rides, and four of them with some extended family of my wife’s, which will probably raise the average amount I drink if what I’m being told about my German in-laws is true. So let’s measure pints, because we’re American and it’s a decent enough beer measurement. Given all the great beer and beer halls and the like around Europe, I suspect I’ll be drinking every day and mostly beer. I’m going to guess three pints a day on average, with the travel days and jet-lag days dragging the average down. So I’ll figure 45 pints of beer. Feel free to weigh in over or under in the comments. Assigning a, probably low, 200 calorie value to a beer, that’s 9000 calories which I’ll need to run ~50 miles on treadmill when I get back to burn off.
Yay, Mets questions! When I started planning this trip early in the year, before the season even started, I knew there was a possibility I could be missing some big baseball games. Clearly that’s not the case, and the way the Mets are playing right now is frustrating. 7:10 starts are 1:10 am starts in Germany however, so I imagine I’ll check in in the morning while checking email. I’m sad there are only three games left, the final series in Miami, that I can watch though, and will probably click open a boxscore to see if David Wright has collected the hits needed to pass Kranepool for most in franchise history, if R.A. Dickey collected a win, or just to see who had a good game.
Greatest team ever, obviously. Baseball is the greatest sport ever, with the possible exception of Calvinball, so the best team ever would have to be a baseball team. New York is the greatest city in the world, so clearly the best team would be located in that city right? The designated hitter is an abomination, eliminating the transplants from Baltimore, the Yankees. The Giants and Dodgers have now played more games in California than New York. The Mets, born of New Yorkers’ thirst for National League baseball, are clearly the greatest. Q.E.D.
Everything I’ve read about Oktoberfest suggests I’ll have lots of stories. I suspect I’ll even tell some of them, probably at the non-Mets blog Garden Variety New Yorker, where I tend to post stuff I think should probably stay off a Mets blog. I’m sure if I have WiFi here and there I’ll be tweeting the occasional European observation and picture. I bet Jeff would appreciate a picture of the traditional Bavarian beer maid carrying way too many Maß of beer as well. I’ve heard great things about Prague, and clearly it’s Beltran’s fault I’ll eventually have to leave there.
Thanks for the questions everybody. I’m scheduling this for Friday morning, and by then It’ll be afternoon in Amsterdam and I’ll have just arrived. I’m probably sitting on a rooftop bar at the hotel looking out over the city right now.
Lots and love and support for Shannon Forde at the fundraising dinner last night. 1000 people that have crossed her path in the 18 years she’s worked for the Mets showed up to show their support, and not least among them Sandy Alderson and Jeff Wilpon.
