Drink Up Yinz Bitches

So I wanted to throw one of those random thought posts in before the next segment on hops. To get you warmed up for the hops, just fast forward to 1:16 in the Super Bad video. I can't tell you how many times I've said, "I hear they recently added more hops!"

Also I wanted to take a second and shout out my Super Bowl beer of choice for this weekend. I'm from the Pittsburgh area so I figured I should be drinking some type of Pittsburgh beer. My first though was , "Well I live 3 minutes from a microbrewery so I should get my growler filled and treat myself to some Firehouse Red, Jack Frost Winter Warmer, or Winter's Gold." Then I thought, "Well I'd like to have more than 5.333 repeating beers for the game." (capacity of the growler 64 oz divided by 12 oz). I wanted to get a case of something, but what should it be? Some of you maybe thinking: Iron City, Rolling Rock, Penn Pilsner.....well I'm actually going with the hot hand in my opinion. I've been riding the Duquesne Beer hot hand since the first batch came out in late August 2010. At first I had no idea what it would taste like or how much it would cost. All I know is my grandfather used to drink it and it had a reputation for being a blue-collar working man's beer. AKA it used to taste like shit and was pretty cheap, so most people drank it on a steel mill salary. When I saw that Mark Dudash was bringing the beer back from the dead I was intrigued. I had questions....big questions. How do you take a beer that was at one time Pittsburgh's best selling beer, and make it into something that's your own brand, flavor, and style? Well according to Mark you basically "can", no pun intended, the shitty ingredients and go with two row barley instead of 6 row barley. I'll answer that question before you can ask it. According to the Duquesne beer site, 2 row barley has greater fermentable sugar content. 2 row barley is used a lot in Germany and the Czech Republic. This sets it apart from 6 row barley because it has lower protein content and tastes less like animal feed. 6 row barley is more suitable for animal feed? I'm guessing I don't want my beer tasting like that, though I do hear you can make it taste just like that if you screw up your finishing hops step in home brewing. - Note to self - don't do that. And to make my decision a little easier, I hadn't had a Duquesne Pilsner in about a month. My decision is made and I'm going with Duquesne beer for the Super Bowl. Brewed in Latrobe, PA at the old Rolling Rock plant. The plant is now owned by City Brewing and brews other varieties of beer, malt beverages, and iced tea. My favorite being 4 Loko (joke), which is pretty much banned in PA (except for college kids selling it for $300 a case). I'm definitely going to get my growler filled tonight as well. I need a good micro brew for Friday and Saturday night. I think I'm set on the Jack Frost Winter Warmer. I had one last weekend at dinner and it was one of the best tasting 

Duke
The Prince of Pilsner

beers I've ever tried. It's a malty ale beer that leaves you feeling like you just had 3 beers, when you've only reached the bottom of your first glass. 

I'll dabble into the wide world of HOPS in my next post. In the meantime, drink up yinz bitches!!!