Beerambassador

I don't post here much, but I was just thinking about how Star Trek lore holds that professional baseball died in 2042. Sometimes I think someone (a cartel even) at MLB is a big trekkie and is trying to make this come true.

Are post-interview thank you letters still a thing? I've been a hiring manager for a couple of years and I don't think I've ever had a candidate send me one post interview. I've been looking for work myself and have sent an email to the HR person who coordinated my interviews and have asked them to pass along to the interview group. It just seems like check the box formality and a thing of the past. Do any of you send one post-interview?

That "Children of Children" solo at the end is killer.

Just an awful name. Doesn't mesh with the rest of the league.

How's the sizing on these knock offs? Do they run quite a bit smaller? Was looking at ordering a few but the Packers one I got a few years ago was pretty tiny.

Rec-Tec is one of the brands I'd been looking at. The Weber Smokefire is really appealing since it's a true grill and will get up to 600 degrees, but the launch has been pretty rocky. It's been getting savaged on youtube, but I'm finding others are more enthusiastic about the product. I'm tempted to wait for the Smokefire 2.0 whenever that launches.

Bumping this topic with warmer temps. I've got a Weber kettle that I use almost exclusively for smoking and a Weber gas grill for my grilling. I'm happy with them, but my kettle is junk (bent, rusting, etc) and screaming to be replaced. I've got kids that are involved in everything, which makes it difficult to babysit a kettle all day for smoking, so I've really been thinking about a pellet grill to replace the kettle. I'm aware of the downsides of them and the pros. Wondering if anyone here has a pellet that they either love or hate or somewhere in between?

I grew up in Green Bay and really like Jake's Pizza. My parents say it isn't the same since they re-opened on Broadway, but I like it. We ate a lot of Aldo's Pizza growing up and I see they're still going in Green Bay. Also delicious up Green Bay way is Wild Tomato in Door County. I saw someone else mentioned it, I also loved Luigi's in River Falls when I went to school there. Blue Moon in Lake Mills is very good pizza. The hours are weird, they're only occasionally open for dine-in. In the Madison area, Salvatore's is fantastic.

It's not good.

Yadier Molina

Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell are "next level" stuff. Simpson is really pushing the boundaries of country music and Isbell is one of the finest songwriters in any genre.

I went to a game about six or seven years ago and went to The Bullpen before the game. It was just a bunch of freight cars stacked together to create an enclosure, but they had live music, food trucks and beer and it was across the street from the park. I don't know if this is still the case, but when I went to a game I went with a couple of local police officers and they told me the neighborhood was gentrifying but still not somewhere you'd want to be after the crowds die down post game. We left as soon as the game was over to have beers in a nicer neighborhood.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I called the mechanic back this morning and we're going to scrap it. I guess our plan is to double up the car payments on our other car, get it paid off and then go buy a mini van. Might have to look for a reliable used car in the meantime as I deliver pizzas a few nights a week and don't like delivering in our nice car (hurts my tips, lol).

I guess a lot of my hesitation has to do with the fact that we've had no problems with the car. It's been incredibly reliable. Other than brakes last year, we haven't had any major work done on the car in years. It seems like a rock solid car and I hate to dump something after it breaks down once. I was really hoping to get one more year out of it, but it sounds like the consensus here is that it's a bad gamble on my part.

I've seen a few car repair threads here and have seen people get good advice, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I had my 2001 Dodge Stratus with 190,000 miles break down a few weeks back. The repair shop (a reputable one for what it's worth) says that the timing belt snapped and maybe the water pump but he can't be sure about the pump until he starts the work. The car has always treated us well and has brand new brakes and we were really hoping to get another year out of it so we can finish paying off our other car before we take on another car payment. The repair guy, however, is really trying to talk me out of fixing it. Crazy. He says I'm looking at anywhere from $5-800 in repairs, depending on the water pump. He seems to think the head gasket will go soon (and then that's a big money repair), but when pressed on the head gasket he doesn't say why, other than saying 200,000 miles is a lot of miles on a Stratus. If he has a real concrete reason on why he thinks the head gasket is about to go, he's not saying or he just isn't good at communicating it. It's almost bewildering how hard he's trying to talk me out of fixing the car, but he just isn't making a convincing argument. Am I crazy to spend the money on the car? Or is it a good gamble seeing as we can pay off our other car in less than a year if we don't take on another car payment? I'd usually just say "fix it" but his hesitation is really making me double guess my judgement.

The Great Taste of the Midwest should be on every craft beer lovers bucket list. What a fantastic time! I did really well pacing and enjoying myself until it started raining with about an hour left. Then things just went downhill as I raced to sample as much as I could. I had a lot of fantastic, but alas not readily available in Wisconsin, beer. I won't go on about the rare stuff I tried, because it's almost pointless since it's so hard to find most of the stuff. But New Glarus had their two upcoming beers, a crystal weizen and a black IPA. The black IPA will be very, very satisfying for hop heads. Phenomenal. The crystal weizen was also very nice.

So...Who's going to the Great Taste of the Midwest this weekend? First timer and I'm crazy excited!

I went to the Twin Cities last week and got to try four varieties of Surly. Well worth the hype. Furious is an outstanding IPA with big, rich stinky hops. Bitter Brewer is an outstanding session ale with a huge hoppy nose and only 4% ABV. CynicAle was maybe a little too sweet for a true saison, but very tasty nonetheless with a big continental hop flavor. Bender, a brown ale, was just okay, but I'm not a big fan of brown ales. Having lived in the cities area during college, I was skeptical that Surly would be as good as I heard. Minnesotans tend to get really excited and over hype their local places/people/products/sports teams, but Surly is some darn good stuff. Already trying to figure out how I can get some more.

If you like history - and you've got a few hours to spare - I really enjoyed Reds.

I haven't bought it yet, but I'm really intrigued by Sam Adams Latitude 48 IPA Deconstructed 12-pack. 48's brewed with 5 different hops, so the 12-pack is two bottles of 48 and then two bottles each of a single hop beer brewed with only one of the hops used in the beer (Hallertau Mittelfrueh, East Kent Goldings, Zeus, Simcoe, and Ahtanum). A few other brewers have done single hop beers, but some of them have been pretty pricey. It's a neat way to see what each hop adds to the beer. The only complaint I've read so far is that 48 has a kind of "loud" malt base that doesn't really let the hops shine front and center, which to me almost defeats the purpose of something like this. Still sounds cool and it would probably be a lot of fun to drink this with a few beer loving buddies.

For the fanatics, Dancing Man is out in some markets. Saw it in Madison the other weekend.

If you're in the Milwaukee area just go to Northern Brewer. Otherwise, just about any home brewing store has a beginners kit. It's a great hobby. I really enjoy it.

Another one to try might be New Glarus Two Women. I had high hopes for this one after picking up an R&D bottle of it at the brewery last summer. It WAS a nice, light and crisp German Pilsner with nice hop aroma/flavor. The beer they actually put out now is not the same beer. It's still a nice beer, but it's got more of a malt emphasis and is a tad darker than the R&D. Nice and smooth with very little hop bite or aroma to it. Not really up my alley, but it makes a great intro to beer, IMO. Oh yeah, this isn't a "newbie" beer, but Lakefront's Black IPA is pretty darn good. I haven't cared for other black IPAs I've had, but this one was very well done and exactly like I thought one should be like. The aroma was all hops. If you'd smell it blind, you'd swear it's a normal IPA. The taste was mostly hops, but with a nice dryness from the darker malts. Fantastic! And I'm generally not big on Lakefront beer. One more thing. The Malt House in Madison is one of the most fantastic bars I've ever been in. Wow. Can't believe it took me that long to finally go there, but I loved it! Beer geek heaven.

Not necessarily, but it's unique to the west coast/mountain west and it's darn good. Probably of comparable quality though.

Forgot to ever update on my beer finds from the Chicago area. I decided to concentrate on local and picked up some Half Acre and Two Brothers. Half Acre, as best as I can tell, is only available in the Chicago area and Two Brothers supposedly distributes in Wisconsin, but I live in the Madison area and I never see it anywhere. Half Acre Daisy Cutter Pale Ale - Very nice APA. Light golden body, finishes very crisp with a big citrusy hop aroma and flavor. Had a can last night with some indian food and it was a great pairing. http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18006/54770 Half Acre Gossamer Golden Ale - This beer was a big surprise for me. I equate Golden Ale with bland, but this was anything but. Very light and drinkable but with a prominent Noble hop (I think) aroma and flavor. I thought it was pretty similar to a light lager in terms of drinkability and overall profile, but with more character. I could drink buckets of this. Well done beer. http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/689/30502 Two Brothers Cane & Ebel - I thought this was the best of the beer I picked up. It's a Rye IPA, so it's got a dry spicy flavor from the rye, but also a big citrus hop flavor. My wife really liked it. Very nice beer and highly recommended. I thought Half Acre makes some pretty solid beer that's worth checking out if you're in the area. I know there's a lot of hype around it and it's sort of "hip" but they make some solid beer. Cane & Ebel was just fantastic. I've had one other Two Brothers beer, and thought it was OK. This was much better. I also ate at the Lucky Monk brewpub. Beer was nothing to write home about, but the hamburgers were amazing.