Chancellor Charming

Immediately after we get through the door and into the building we are greeted with a beer of our choice. Having tasted most of their beer, I opted to go with there darker and less popular brew, a Breckles Brown, and followed that with an Old Foghorn. Fucking Delicious.

After having a few beers and being reminded how manly we all were, the tour commenced.

They start us off with the hops room, where we are shown the various hops that are used for the various beer

After wishing they were giant bales of weed instead of hops, we moved past the fermenting station and into the depths of the Anchor facility

We continued sipping our drinks as we walk into a labyrinth of boxed beer stacked quite literally to the roof. A few minutes of cruising past what must be thousands of 24 packs we come to the distillery. Luckily for us we had a distiller on hand to walk us through the process. 

After a brief instruction on the way in which they produce Old Protrero, and Junipero Gin as well as a few others we were escorted to the "penthouse" where we were able to sample almost 20 different spirits that Anchor either produced or distributed. 

All in all it was an awesome tour and a fantastic way to spend the day. Tour score 8.5/10. Would recommend 

Obviously a mere summary of Absinthe isn't enough to quench your thirst, so I'm going to walk you through a drink which uses Absinthe in hopes you will make it for yourself. 

The drink is a Sazerac, let us begin.

For this particular Sazerac you will need these items

Items

1 small measuring cup or jigger

a muddler

1 sugar cube or equivalent 

1/4oz. Absinthe

1oz. Rye

1oz. Cognac

1/2oz. beauchant

2-3 dashes Peychaud's bitters

1 orange/peel

1 rocks glass

Got your items? Good. Onward then

Take 1/4oz. of Absinthe and pour into rocks glass like so

 Swirl it around until you have a nice coating over the inside of the glass, then dump the excess wherever. Perfect.

Now place the sugar cube inside the glass and hit it with a few dashes of Peychauds bitters. It should look like this.

now use your muddler and it should look like this.

Perfect.

Now, in a separate glass pour 1 oz. rye, 1oz. cognac, 1/2oz. bauchant over ice and stir until frosty. Done?

Looking good. Now pour that stuff into your glass of muddled sugar, Absinthe, and Peychauds keeping or discarding the ice as you see fit.

You're almost home free. Now because we used an orange based cognac liqueur in bauchant, we are going to rub the rim of the glass with our orange slice and use it to garnish our finished product. 

If you followed the steps correctly it should look like this

Absinthe is an anise flavored Spirit made with the help of botanicals such as green anise, fennel, and Artemisia Absinthium aka Wormwood. These herbs help give Absinthe the distinct flavor that has been favored by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh and countless others. 

Most people mistakenly associate Absinthe as a psychoactive drug and claim that ingesting larger quantities of Absinthe will cause you to hallucinate. This is in fact untrue as the chemical which many claim to cause this hallucination(thujone) is found in quantities far to small to have such an effect. Instead this view of Absinthe and the banning of absinthe from America and other countries is due in large part to a temperance movement started by the Winemakers Association in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

As Absinthe grew in popularity it began to vastly outsell wine and quickly became the drink of choice in most of Europe. Obviously the winemakers association and the associated wine merchants stood to lose quite a bit over this. Essentially what occurred was a smear campaign accusing absinthe of causing dangerous hallucinations while turning people into degenerate criminals and worthless layabouts. Belgium banned absinthe in 1906, the netherlands in 1909, switzerland in 1910, The US in 1912 and the dominoes continued to fall.

Absinthe has since been scientifically proven to have no more negative effect than any other alcohol. As such, it has seen a steady revival as the bans have lifted. Just across the bay in Alameda, St. george distillery has been distilling it's very own since 2007. The first American distillery to make Absinthe in America. You can see the bottle above. I assure you it is delicious 

Looking back at this blog, I'm fairly surprised I stopped updating so suddenly. I was never doing it for up-votes, reblogs, or popularity. I was doing it as an exercise that would keep me productive. A way too stay occupied and at least mildly creative in the present, while establishing a digital scrapbook to look back on in the future. All, of course, while describing things of the past. 

It was going quite well for a minute there too....until it wasn't. 

Maybe it was a new job, new responsibilities, or trying to stay in shape. Maybe It was because I felt unproductive when I was blogging about nothing to nobody. Hard to tell when I'm this far removed and Irrelevant anyhow. A lot has gone on in the time that I've been gone, and more than I want to push those things on the poor innocent folk of the interent, I want to have something to work on. However small, however pointless, I need a project to get me to my next project. Something to pull my head out of the gutters of the interwebz like Reddit and Facebook. I can't stand you foul time sucking creatures and yet I can't seem to get away from you. It's time to get sober. Time to build something instead of watching others do what I only marvel at.

As David the robot said in that shitty Alien not-prequel 

"Big things have small beginnings"

It was Monday February 6th 2012 when I began this particular excursion. I assessed the state of my room in all its chaotic glory. Dirty shirts draped over unused TV’s, money carelessly littered about the floor. My laundry basket an overflowing mess forgotten in the corner of my room. Books, bills and checks stacked haphazardly aside my computer. At this point, many people would explain how much they enjoy coming home to a clean house. I, on the other hand don’t really give a shit, so I ignored the mayhem and began packing the necessaries for my journey abroad. Despite having to dig through my dirty hamper the preparation went smoothly, like most men I know this process took no more than 5 minutes.  

Thoroughly bundled for my quest and with pack in hand, I surveyed the room one last time so that I might not miss that last crucial item and behold! Persistence pays off, as my IPod still remained in its cradle. That beautiful device of non-interaction that forces us out of the real world, and into our own. A profound gadget, with the ironic ability to make you ignore the profound as you traipse along blithely to music nobody else can hear. Naturally I snatched it from the mantle and inserted the ear-buds. My trip was underway.

Upon opening my door I was greeted by a cold blast of winter air and a genial young vagrant wearing ankle braces, shorts and roughly 4 scarves of varying color. He smelled like pinecones, cardboard and a lifetime of bad luck. I’m pretty sure he asked for some change, but luckily I had my trustee IPod plugged in and was safely able to pretend I had no idea what he was talking about. Ahh, music in the big city.  

Eventually I crossed the street and came across a group of eccentric Bocce Ball players. It was a hipster gathering of the most intense kind. Complete with suspenders, corduroys, and out of date mustaches. All the while they smoked hand rolled cigarettes, drank microbrews and played a leisure sport with virtually no American following outside of the senior community. It was breathtaking in its obscurity. For a moment I lingered and lamented on their unique tastes and flair for the niche. Eventually though, I was startled out of my reverie as I noticed myself inching dangerously close to this event. I floundered under the Hipsters absurd spell for a moment, before finally wrenching myself free of their ungodly hold. I bolted past their fixies and started up the block. 

I soon found myself up to my neck in business suits. The financial district in all its glorious self-indulgence was emptying for the day. As I navigated through this labyrinth of designer clothing and leather briefcases I was struck by a strong smell. A smelly smell. It was the unmistakably awesome smell of pizza. I lurched heavily and grabbed onto a nearby railing as my legs threatened to give out. A month of diet and exercise had rendered this smell a forgotten memory until this untimely junction. You see, I was headed to the gym and an obstacle like this might ruin everything. Thankfully I was only one building away from working out. I plugged my nose and scurried along the railing until I crashed through the doors and into the salvation of the gym.

Now, I’ve heard the devil takes many shapes. I just never thought he would sink so low as to make pizza one of them. You see the smell, that smelly smell. That arresting aroma of artisan anarchy was coming from the very gym I sought refuge in. 15 boxes of piping hot pizza sitting in a neat little row. “Why would someone do this?” I screamed in my head. What sick bastard would fill a gym with pizza and the smell that goes with it? The desk clerk looked at me with a smile “Care for some Pizza?”