January 06, 2010

Bell's Christmas Ale.

This review is a couple of weeks late. I meant to do it on Christmas day, but time got away from me. So I’ll be doing it tonight. Bruce donated this beer. He, like Petey, is trying to get a second enabler glass. Tonight I review Bell’s Christmas Ale from Bell’s Brewery Inc in Comstock, MI.

Christmas_Ale.jpg

It came in a standard 12 oz brown bottle. The label has a picture of a field with a lone Christmas tree on it. The company’s logo is above the tree. On the back label there is a brief description of the beer.

The color is a nice rich amber. It has haziness to it of an unfiltered beer. After a while the beer starts to become clearer. Light passes through easily. When poured into a glass a thin off-white head forms. It fades quickly to a film on the top of the beer. There is some lacing.

Roasted malts give the scent a slight biscuity hint. There is an indiscernible fruit scent. The scent is pretty week and makes identifying the individual components that bring the nose together. The taste starts off with caramel malt and a hint of bread flavor. There is a good level of citrus hops that compliment the rest of the flavors. Due to the nature of the beer, there is also a slight yeastiness to it.

This is a medium bodied beer with a nice level of carbonation. Very easy to drink.

I found this to be a pleasant beer to drink. It’s supposed to be a Scottish Style ale, but it doesn’t have a lot of the characteristics associated with one. I enjoyed it, but it isn’t something I’d go out of my way to get. Then again I could see this being a good anytime beer. I give it 5.5 out of 10.

Posted by Contagion at 08:58 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 02, 2010

2009 just sucked.

2010, I don’t know what I’m expecting out of this year, but I’m really truly hoping that it’s a hell of a lot better than 2009. Only a handful of people know the majority of the crap that I’ve gone through in 2009, and it’s really a spider web of shite that is hard to explain. To finally put 2009 to rest, I’m going to map out, vaguely, a lot of the problems that I experienced. I’m not doing this chronologically, because honestly, it’s so intermixed that it would be hard to do so. If I went into a lot of detail I’d have a post that could rival War and Peace in length.

Health Issues: Both Ktreva and I had some serious health issues. She had cancer and I had all my gastro/stomach issues. Part of which we are both still dealing with. Stress did not help my health issues at all, and usually aggravated it to a point that it caused complications. Because of these it had a negative impact and caused problems with: Finances, Work, Family and Friends.

Work Issues: There were a lot of issues that came around from work. At the beginning of 2009 I was still dealing with the backlash of Okla-farooking-homa. In fact I was still dealing with those issues in December. I had a real fear of going to jail over some practices my office was doing that had my name on it as “in charge” when really I had no say in the matter. It got so bad I was actually talking to the State’s Attorney and had a crap load of documentation backing up my innocence and ready to turn over for immunity, nothing ever happened with this because of my actions everything was corrected. We also had lay offs, inventory problems, Government intervention mandate issues, and other people’s mistakes I have to clean up. All of this over and beyond my normal workload. It had a negative impact and caused issues with: Family, Friends and Health Issues.

Family: Between struggles with Boopie and his grades. Clone and his behavior, dealing with the health issues, stress from work, arguing over finances, trying to help friends and some very extensive marital issues that are still unresolved, there was no comfort in family for me this last year. Especially the last half of the year. Due to a lot of this some friends were dragged into situations that they shouldn’t have been and put them in a tough spot. This impacted work, friends, health issues and finances.

Finances: With as many health issues we had, we both missed a lot of work over the last year, much of it unpaid. Most of the time I was off was unpaid, same for Ktreva. Throw on top the cost of medical bills, even with insurance; there were months we had issues making ends meet. This impacted Family

Friends: We missed multiple re-enactments and friend outings due to health issues, family, finances and work. With a lot of the issues going on, some of my friends felt they were being alienated by me. It really wasn’t the case as much as I didn’t want to discuss my personal problems with them and that, even though they are some of my best friends, it’s still none of their business. Some people like to air all of their dirty laundry; I’m not one of those types. If I need to talk I will, but I’m not going to spread my business around just because. Most of them when I explained to them that it was a private issue and I just didn’t want to involve them in it, they let it go and all was well. There was also a nasty rumor that was being spread about me that was completely untrue. Someone thought they new something with out any facts and started telling people their opinion but stating it as fact and the last I heard is still spreading it, even after being confronted. This impacted Health Issues, Family and work.

As I write this, I think about all the unresolved issues from 2009 that are at least going to bleed into 2010. I’m just hoping that I will be able to get everything worked out. At the beginning of 2009 I had made a prediction that I thought it was going to be a really good year. How wrong was I?

Posted by Contagion at 01:26 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack