Rant and Rave Volume 1

Today marks the about-a-month-or-so anniversary of my move to the Midwest. I shouldn’t complain too much because you guys have all been real nice to me, but I might anyway. Maybe this is all shit that should go in the “Biographical Information” section, but I don’t really care. This is more of a rant or a musing about what I have learned so far.

Sorry if I piss you off.

The thing is I am an ass hole. I say sharp and abrupt things with very little concern for people’s feelings. I do not do this for the sake of shock value or to make me feel better about myself, I do this because the things that I say are a real time commentary of the way that I view the world at that particular moment. With that being said, let me provide a little commentary on the beer I have drank, the shit I have seen, and whatever else tickles my pickle over the past month or so.

Early on in my Michiana experience, I picked up some Sunspot by Greenbush Brewing. It tasted like shit. I could give you some snobbery break down of it, but that isn’t how I roll. You won’t hear me speak of IBUs and aromas on this blog. I don’t believe in either of those terms. Ratings, awards, honors, honours with a u, and other such subjective bull shit do not appeal to me–and this is my blog, not yours. There are two ways that something can taste. Good and bad. That is it.

Fortunately, I was able to plug my nose and suck it down and then go buy some other stuff. Robert the Bruce by Three Floyds was a solid choice. It’s a Scottish ale, and there is not much that beats a good Scottish ale. I could drink that shit all day–but I didn’t because I only had six and they were expensive. I stretched them out for a week, which was very difficult. We had a 19-pack of Miller Lite, so my routine was to drink one of the good beers, then follow it with three of the piss-waters.

Before you purists start bitching at me for drinking something as common as a Miller Lite, go fuck yourselves. Piss-water beer has its niche. I mean, shit, McDonald’s isn’t fine dining, but when the kids are in the car, or you are on a long haul, sometimes you have to do it. And when you do it, you are going to supersize that shit because go big or go home. Fuck no, I don’t want McDonald’s for dinner every night, but unlike some of you snobs, I can’t afford to drink four craft brews a night.

The other nice thing about shit beer is that it lacks substance and creates less of a hangover. If I want to drink six Miller Lites I will still function and not get a big ass headache. It doesn’t work that way with a craft beer. Craft beer is not meant to be pounded. Same thing with one of those fancy restaurants that you need reservations for. Good expensive food, but with small portions.

And while I am thinking about it, Michiana is a stupid fucking name. I lived on the Washington-Idaho border for four years, and the Oregon-Washington border for eight. We didn’t start combining names to make our own bullshit region. No. We despised the ass holes across the border, agreed on nothing except that all those fucking Californians need to go back home. Fuck Michiana.

However I will concede that Washingho would have been a cool name for everyone in Spokane Valley-Post Falls and Pullman-Moscow.

I think it is also a waste to be drinking a good craft beer when you are already drunk. Anybody who has ever drank beer has drank themselves to the point where they can’t taste it anymore. What the fuck is the point in that? If you are going to get drunk, do it right.

Busch 30-packs fit perfectly under a college dorm bed for a good reason. That should be any 19 year-old’s go to. The hipsters are ruining PBR for me. Why do they like that shit?

I went through South Bend yesterday and had sometime to kill. I had been to Evil Czech and loved the shit out of it last year, but I wanted to find a place that I had never been before. I used MapQuest to search craft breweries and it took me to three different places that had either been shut down or never existed. I stopped and walked around at Notre Dame a little and remembered that the only thing more irritating than college kids is rich college kids. It made me miss sitting at the Ram next to Husky Stadium in Seattle before UW games. I ended up leaving town without having a beer, which was a damn shame.

A goddamn shame.

You fuckers go on and have yourselves a good week this week. Later.

Evil Czech Brewery, Mishawaka, IN (from July 2014)

What a great name for a brewery. Especially when everything in the area is all about being Irish. But why shouldn’t the place of the North America’s premier Catholic university also be a good drinking town? And it is a good drinking town—if you are 22 and don’t know any better.

There are plenty of nice places to go around campus. The chain restaurants are well represented, and I can only imagine the Hooters down the road is one of the busiest in the country.

Fuck Hooters. It was Taco Tuesday at the ECB.

South Bend, from everything I can tell, is relatively void of good places to drink. It is really just the town Pullman and Corvallis are desperately trying to become. Basically it is the bizzaro Eugene. Where hippy culture spills out into the community around the University of Oregon; the South Bend the upper-class Catholic culture is what gets you here.

ECB is a breath of fresh air. It sits in Mishawaka, which is to South Bend what Springfield is to Eugene. The building is very unassuming on the outside. It could just as well be an attorney’s office or an orthodontist. Inside, it is a full functioning restaurant/bar with character good enough to be a joint in the Northwest. It is one of the few drinking holes in town that seem to function independently of the university—but not in spite of it.

If Notre Dame were to shut its doors tomorrow, Hooters would be gone; Buffalo Wild Wings would be gone; fucking McDonald’s might even be gone; but the Evil Czech would still be there.
When I got there, I sat down, and was advised to drink a pint of the porter. I did and it was good enough. None of the beer I tried was bad, and most of it had an above average alcohol content. I was so happy to not see any sort of Irish stout that was whoring itself off of the university that it took me two beers before I asked the waitress what they had for a Pilsner.

For those of you who don’t have a fucking clue, a Pilsner is the style of beer associated with the city of Plzn in Czech Republic. Someone from Plzn would be a Plzner—thus Pilsner.

There was no Pilsner on tap—and not that I am the biggest Pilsner fan—if I am in a Czech bar, I better fucking try a Pilsner. I don’t think the girl serving understood why I asked, but she did say that the brewmaster only makes one batch of Pilsner a year, and that is on the anniversary of when the
Allies liberated Czechoslovakia in World War II.

That’s pretty fucking cool.

Ironically enough, I was sitting there watching Germany destroy Brazil in a World Cup game, and the whole place was behind them. There had to be some sort of off colored remark to make there, but I felt it was better to keep it to myself.