Nathan

Mark Wahlberg continues to put the “Boston” in “I’M MARK WAHLBERG. I’M FROM BOSTON,” selling A&E his fourth straight reality show about the city of Boston, where Mark Wahlberg is from. Titled The Big Brew Theory, after that sitcom full of nerds that Mark Wahlberg could take, the series aims to follow four “quirky and highly intelligent MIT grad students” who apply that collective brainpower—and their life savings—toward creating their own microbrewery. These graduates of one of the nation’s most advanced academic institutions will try to succeed with the help of “a beautiful MIT undergrad,” as well as the endorsement of Mark Wahlberg, an actor who just last year achieved his high school diploma in between earning millions of dollars and pitching reality shows to A&E where something happens in Boston, maybe this time with burgers or beer. 

Frederick, MD – To commemorate the 75^th anniversary of OLD BAY®, Flying Dog partnered with the iconic Maryland seasoning on Dead Rise OLD BAY Summer Ale. Dead Rise is premiering on tap at the brewery Friday and available throughout the mid-Atlantic through Labor Day.  

The brewers at Flying Dog worked closely with the flavor experts at OLD BAY for over six months to develop the recipe for Dead Rise. The beer begins with OLD BAY and citrus notes on the nose, which develop into citrus hop flavors and end with a crisp, tart finish. At 5.6% ABV, it will quickly take its place alongside tins of OLD BAY on tables piled high with steaming crabs this summer.

“We wanted to create something that highlights the bold character of OLD BAY through bright and refreshing citrus hop character,” Flying Dog Brewmaster Matt Brophy said. “And something that’s easy-drinking with a lower alcohol content is essential for the hot and humid summers we have here in the mid-Atlantic.”

As with all of Flying Dog beers, the legendary Gonzo artist Ralph Steadman created original art for Dead Rise, depicting a Maryland Blue Crab in his signature style of calculated chaos.

Dead Rise gets its name from boats specifically designed to navigate the unique waterways of the Chesapeake. The term describes the lines of the fishing vessel, which is still preferred by today’s watermen.

“The characteristics of a deadrise allow watermen to work in some of the Bay’s worst conditions,” Jerry Pruit, a boat builder from Tangier Island, Virginia. “The bow is V-shaped to cut through choppy water and it flattens out closer to the stern, making it navigable in shallow water.”

Flying Dog and OLD BAY will donate a portion of the proceeds from Dead Rise to True Blue, a program that advocates on behalf of the Chesapeake Bay’s 5,500 watermen and promotes sustainably harvested Maryland Blue Crab.

“OLD BAY is proud to partner with Flying Dog to offer this distinctive ale in celebration of our 75^th. We can’t think of a better way to honor and help preserve the history and traditions of the Chesapeake watermen,” Jessica Schatz, brand manager for OLD BAY, said. “We’re especially excited to join together with someone that has the same love for this community.”

Now in its third year, the True Blue program created a $7 million increase in business for local crabbers in its first year alone through a restaurant certification and consumer awareness program.

“Since 2004, the number of commercial crabbers working the Bay has decreased by nearly 50 percent,” Steve Vilnit, director of fisheries marketing for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and head of the True Blue program said. “There is a tremendous amount of pride in the Maryland Blue Crab and it’s the True Blue program’s goal to encourage restaurants and consumers to buy local to make sure that number doesn’t drop any lower.”

True Blue empowers the public to buy local through its interactive map of restaurants that serve at least 75 percent of Maryland crabmeat at marylandseafood.org.

The Chesapeake region’s crab pride comes from more than just nostalgia. Vilnit explained that in blind taste tests, Maryland Blue Crab is continuously preferred over other types of crab by chefs and consumers alike.

“Blue crabs withstand colder waters than their imported counterparts,” Vilnit said. “So, they develop more fat, which serves as insulation, but also gives the meat its identifiably rich, buttery flavor.”

To complement what is arguably the best beer to drink while picking crabs, Flying Dog teamed up with the region’s most notorious and cutting-edge chefs – including Mike Isabella, Spike Gjerde, and Bryan Voltaggio – to create The Dead Rise Cookbook.

Each of the 17 celebrity chefs were asked to get their inspiration from the Chesapeake and incorporate OLD BAY into their recipes, which include falafels with crab yogurt, grilled oysters with peaches, crab macaroni and cheese, catfish tacos, and OLD BAY peanut brittle ice cream.

Proceeds from The Dead Rise Cookbook will also benefit True Blue. The cookbook will be available mid-May through Flying Dog’s website and in the brewery gift shop.

About Flying Dog Brewery

As one of the fastest-growing regional craft breweries in the mid-Atlantic, Flying Dog has been brewing world-class beer that pushes the confines of traditional styles for almost 25 years. Flying Dog attracts everyone from craft beer connoisseurs to those just catching the wave with up to 20 styles available at any given time and its Gonzo ties to writer Hunter S. Thompson and artist Ralph Steadman. Named the Mid-Size Craft Brewery of the Year at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival (the highest honor for its size in the United States), recent accolades for Flying Dog include its Pale Ale ranked as the #1 American Pale Ale in the U.S. by The New York Times. For more information, please visit www.flyingdogbrewery.com. 

ST. LOUIS – Just in time for National Pretzel Day on April 26, Shock Top has united the classic taste of a crisp, cold beer and warm, bakery-fresh pretzels in its newest brew, Shock Top Twisted Pretzel Wheat. The brewer today announced the limited-edition beer, a Belgian-style unfiltered wheat ale that delivers the delicious taste and aroma of fresh pretzels, will be served up at beer festivals nationwide—and available on draught at select locations.

“As a brewmaster, having the freedom to experiment with quality ingredients means that I can create beers that are as unique as the fans that enjoy them,” said Jill Vaughn, Shock Top brewmaster. “Pretzels are everyone’s favorite beer snack, so we thought Shock Top Twisted Pretzel Wheat would be a fun and approachable twist on unfiltered wheat beer for festival goers to enjoy … and just in time for National Pretzel Day.”

Brewed with wheat, caramel malt, orange peels and a rich pretzel flavor, Shock Top Twisted Pretzel Wheat has a dark caramel color and 5.2 percent ABV. It will be available on draught at more than 150 beer festivals nationwide, Shock Top special events and select retail locations for a limited time. At select events, beer drinkers can even enjoy Shock Top Twisted Pretzel Wheat in limited-edition pretzel cups.

While Shock Top Twisted Pretzel Wheat is only available for a limited time, beer drinkers can enjoy Shock Top Belgian White, Shock Top Honey Bourbon Cask Wheat, Shock Top Honeycrisp Apple Wheat and Shock Top Raspberry Wheat throughout the year. Shock Top’s seasonal Lemon Shandy is also now available.

For more information on Shock Top Twisted Pretzel Wheat, or to find its nearest location throughout the season, visit (facebook.com/ShockTop) and click on the “Beerfest Tour 2014” tab.

About Shock Top Brewing Co.:

Founded in 2006 with the release of its signature Belgian White ale, the Shock Top Brewing Co. creates unfiltered Belgian-Style wheat ales for beer drinkers who live life unfiltered. Quality ingredients and creativity drive the Shock Top Brewing team to craft unique twists on beer styles. The Shock Top family includes Shock Top Belgian White, Shock Top Honey Bourbon Cask Wheat, Shock Top Honeycrisp Apple Wheat and Shock Top Raspberry Wheat. Shock Top Lemon Shandy, Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat and Shock Top Chocolate Wheat are offered seasonally. For more information, please visit www.ShockTopBeer.com.

Well, these are pretty awesome.

To anyone who enjoys LiarTownUSA, here’s a rare and very emphatic recommendation for one of my favorite Twitter accounts, “Unfinished Scripts,” run by a great fellow named Gavin Speiller. If you’re on Twitter (or even if not), I wouldn’t steer you wrong. It’s magical.

Click here for more wonderful samples.

Do it now… this is a temporary post!

Waco, TX – Home brewers can now brew beer like any craft brewery using small whiskey soaked wooden barrels. HomeBrewing.com announced today that they have exclusively partnered with Balcones Distilling to resell their recently dumped 5 gallon whiskey soaked barrels. The barrels have been aged for a minimum of 6 months with Balcones’ award winning whiskey.

Wooden barrels have long been used in beer making. Wood adds additional aromas and flavor components such as vanillin, tannins, spice and toast that brewers can use to their advantage. Balcones’ barrels ship ready to fill with homebrewed beer and are ideal for beer makers looking to age barley wine, porter, stouts or sour projects. The barrels are made of American white oak, and have been charred on the inside which imparts vanilla, oak and smoke flavors.

Founder Chip Tate said about the new partnership, “Especially as long-time home brewer, we’re excited to be able to provide premium barrels to other homebrewers. I know from personal experience that these barrels are ideal for barrel aging beer without over-wooding the beer.” Balcones Distilling recently was awarded the title of World’s Best American Whiskey in the 2014 World Whiskey Awards.

“HomeBrewing.com has a large audience of home brewers looking to us to bring them something new,” said Christian Lavender, founder of the company.  “We take that task very serious, just like our beer making.”

He went on to state, “The partnership with Balcones allows us to bring something special to our home brewers who are looking for new ways to impart big flavors in their beer. We’re honored Balcones chose us to help spread their barrels across the land.”

About HomeBrewing.com

An Austin, Texas-based company, HomeBrewing.com provides free services to help beer and wine makers find the best prices on home beer and wine equipment available.

About Balcones Distilling

Within the US craft whisky industry, Balcones Distilling has become synonymous with expertise, innovation and precision, having produced some of the most highly-acclaimed artisanal whiskies in the world over the last five years since its founding in 2008. Chip and his crew built Balcones from scratch. From metal sheeting and copper, to old stainless steel vessels bought on eBay, the team built the Texan distillery from the bottom up. Since then, Balcones has gone on to the first distillery to be twice awarded Whisky Magazine’s Icons of Whisky – Craft Whisky Distillery of the Year as well as Wizards of Whisky’s Global Distillery of the Year and US Craft Distillery of the Year awards in 2012.

From the “Two-week-old news we missed because it was being communicated via digital substation of a local affiliate” file: Reruns of Mystery Science Theater 3000 are coming to Retro TV this summer, ending the show’s decade-long absence from the airwaves. According to Satellite News, Retro TV has acquired the rights to 26 episodes of the movie-riffing cult classic, largely public domain titles like Manos: The Hands Of Fate, The Giant Gila Monster, and The Girl In Gold Boots. It’s a familiar scenario to fans who hung on through the program’s final days on Comedy Central and Syfy, when movie rights regularly lapsed and the lumpen mug of Coleman Francis became a familiar sight to night owls and early-rising weekenders. But hey: Both eras of the show’s cable run will finally air side by side, with a lineup that includes the one-two season-eight punch of Space Mutiny ...

…when all you need is a kniiiiife.

From this interview:

"Oh, yes. I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all. . ."

Before Don Draper was inventing love to sell nylons, Jon Hamm was just a dreamy waiter looking to bone. As unearthed by BuzzFeed, in 1996 a 25-year-old Hamm and lusciously middle-parted locks appeared on The Big Date, a poorly formatted dating show hosted by a guy named Mark Walberg (not that one). When prompted to describe the perfect date for female contestant Mary—who casually revealed a “foot fetish” within the first five minutes—Hamm replied it would “start off with some fabulous food, a little fabulous conversation, and then a fabulous foot massage for an evening of total fabulosity.” Hamm’s was somehow the least creepy response, as the two other men (two blondes named Marc and Marcus) basically just told Mary they would have sex with her. And while he may have lost, he was the only guy who didn’t get paired off for a round of ...

This should be the creepiest thing you read all day:

A new father-daughter chastity phenomenon is leeching across the United States.

“Purity balls” are similar to weddings, except the father marries his twelve-year-old daughter. The goal is to maintain the girl’s virginity until marriage.

During the ceremony, the fathers present their daughters with purity rings, and the duo become boyfriend and girlfriend, the Daily Mail reported.

“You keep this on your finger and as of this point you are married to the Lord and your father is your boyfriend,” the father says as he hands his daughter the ring.

The girls then “silently commit to live pure lives before God through the symbol of laying down a white rose at the cross, before engaging in a wedding-type dance with their father.”

Having sex with, kissing or touching a man (other than their fathers) before marriage is strictly prohibited.

King, the studio that makes Candy Crush Saga, ran into unexpected costs after it started playing the stock market game yesterday. After getting King addicted to the bright flashing numbers and dopamine-generating rewards of capitalism, the market pounced by taking away more than 15 percent of the company’s initial value—a steep price that King will nonetheless have to pay if it wishes to keep playing right now. The 15.6-percent drop was the worst first day ever among U.S. initial public offerings that raised at least $500 million (and King’s IPO raised just about that much). As Forbes notes, this lackluster market debut has “robbed” the King chairman and CEO of “billionaire status,” but they can always nag their friends to help them reach that level.

It was a struggle identifying which of the plentiful bounty of misnomered “salads” from the 1979 Marysville United Methodist Women’s Cookbook I should make first, but the No. 1 Coke Salad from Texas (submitted by Betty Rayner) kept calling to me.

No. 1 Coke Salad from Texas close-up

It made sense to make this one first, because it’s relatively simple, and yet still horrifying — never have two words been less interested in sitting next to each other at the dinner table as “Coke” and “Salad.” And yet, here we are.

No. 1 Coke Salad from Texas

This is the "froth"

Making the “salad” (pictures here) required a bit of interpretation: are the “2 Cokes” 12 oz. cans, or the 10 oz. bottles that were possibly still kicking around in 1979? Is the “1 pkg” of Jello the small or large package? Or were the package sizes totally different in 1979? The recipe says that the 2 Cokes won’t quite make a “full 2 cups of liquid,” which tells me that we’re working with the small pack of Jello, but a cup is only 8 oz., and I can’t imagine a Coke so small that 2 of them won’t make 2 cups. I finally settled on the small pack of Jello (after all, I don’t think the demand for my “salad” will be high), and used one and a half cans of Coke.

The next sticky spot was the instruction to add the Jello to “hot Cokes” — I like to think that in Texas, this is just what they do when they accidentally leave their Cokes out in the sun… “Betty, darlin’, Bobbie-Jo left these Cokes out and now they’re hotter’n a whore in Hades — guess we’re having salad with dinner tonight!” I just microwaved mine.

I got to use my ring mold!

Now, your ordinary batch of Jello already has a crapload of sugar in it, but Betty thinks it needs more, so water won’t do, it’s gotta be Coke. And what else does this need? How about some syrupy, not-at-all-cherry-like Maraschino cherries? Plus, some pecans, which actually turn out to be a critical part of the recipe. I considered leaving them out, but trust me — they are a welcome respite from the sugar, sugar and sugar provided by the other ingredients.

The final result is actually rather lovely, I must say. And it tastes about like you’d expect: like one great big, sugary cherry Coke. By now you may have noticed that I skipped one suggestion in the recipe… I did not opt to serve this with a dish of mayonnaise in the center. Perhaps I’m betraying my rookie status at this “salad”-making business, but I just was not able to wrap my head around that one.

If you haven’t already, you simply must take a look at the other recipes in the 1979 Marysville United Methodist Women’s Cookbook. So far I have a request to make Watergate Salad, and a request to stay away from the Spinach Salad, but there’s still plenty of room for discussion.

Another week, another craft brewed trademark dispute.

It was reported last week that Left Hand Brewing had filed a trademark application on the term “Nitro” – shorthand for the process of carbonating beer with nitrogen – in order to protect the Nitro series brand name that the brewery has built over the years.

“Our main push — and I don’t want to get into it any more than this — is that we have a bottle that is pretty unique,” Left Hand president Eric Wallace told the Denver Post. “That is why we are pursuing it.”

The word “Nitro” prominently adorns the bottles on three of Left Hand’s nitrogenated brews.

Once word got out that Left Hand was attempting to trademark the phrase, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Boston Beer Company filed motions with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in an attempt to block Left Hand’s trademark effort.

But Left Hand isn’t the only craft brewery trying to trademark the phrase. Nearby Oskar Blues also unveiled its own plans to release a nitrogenated version of Old Chub, appropriately named ‘Old Chub Nitro.’ Oskar Blues has insisted that it received Left Hand’s blessings in pushing forward with the release.

Even though Oskar Blues received support from its neighbors to rollout Old Chub Nitro, it hasn’t stopped the brewery from getting creative with its nitro branding efforts. The company also filed a claim for the term “G’Knightro” on March 18.

While Left Hand and Oskar Blues were busy answering trademark questions, Colorado’s governor was hard at work installing a draft beer system in the governor’s mansion. Gov. John Hickenlooper, the original co-founder of Denver’s Wynkoop Brewing, can now pour beer from his state’s revered beer makers.

“If you’d have told me we’d one day have 235 breweries, I’d have laughed,” Hickenlooper told Denver’s Fox affiliate of the growing industry in the state. “I think it’s a symbol of Colorado; I think it stands for freedom, having a lot of choices.

If nothing else, this should play well with the “I just want to vote for someone I could have a beer with” constituency going into an election year.

But Hickenlooper might be right. There is something liberating about having a lot of choices. U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, home of Major League Baseball’s Chicago White Sox, is embracing that same ethos this year by adding a dozen craft brews to its taps for Sox fans to enjoy at the park.

According to ESPN, Revolution Brewing’s Anti-Hero IPA will be available on draft and in cans at the park. Additionally, Lagunitas — the area’s newest craft brewer — will pour its flagship IPA on draft. Offerings from Half Acre Brewing Co., New Holland Brewing, Bell’s Brewery Inc., Boston Beer Co., Two Brothers Brewing Co., Great Lakes Brewing, Veteran Beer Co., Lakefront Brewery, Goose Island Brewery and a number of ciders will also be available.

Further east, the New York Times published an in depth feature today about two breweries a world apart operated by feuding identical twin brothers.

Mikkeller, which is based in Denmark, is run by Mikkel Borg Bjergso, while the appropriately named Evil Twin Brewing, in Brooklyn, N.Y., is run by his brother, Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergso. The story, which is really a bit sad, tells of two brothers who have ultimately lost touch due in part to their hyper competitiveness in the craft beer industry.

Presumably in response to the Times article, Evil Twin recently tweeted: “I made up my mind, I will never again participate in any interview that talks about any other family member of mine.”

Maybe it’ll be enough to bring two brothers who haven’t spoken in over a year back together for a beer.

Some of you may remember the "Google Flu" effort, where the company was going to try to track outbreaks of influenza in the US by mining Google queries. There was never much clarification about what terms, exactly, they were going to flag as being indicative of someone coming down with the flu, but the hype (or hope) at the time was pretty strong:

Because the relative frequency of certain queries is highly correlated with the percentage of physician visits in which a patient presents with influenza-like symptoms, we can accurately estimate the current level of weekly influenza activity in each region of the United States, with a reporting lag of about one day. . .

So how'd that work out? Not so well. Despite a 2011 paper that seemed to suggest things were going well, the 2013 epidemic wrong-footed the Google Flu Trends (GFT) algorithms pretty thoroughly.

This article in Science finds that the real-world predictive power has been pretty unimpressive. And the reasons behind this failure are not hard to understand, nor were they hard to predict. Anyone who's ever worked with clinical trial data will see this one coming:

The initial version of GFT was a particularly problematic marriage of big and small data. Essentially, the methodology was to find the best matches among 50 million search terms to fit 1152 data points. The odds of finding search terms that match the propensity of the flu but are structurally unrelated, and so do not predict the future, were quite high. GFT developers, in fact, report weeding out seasonal search terms unrelated to the flu but strongly correlated to the CDC data, such as those regarding high school basketball. This should have been a warning that the big data were overfitting the small number of cases—a standard concern in data analysis. This ad hoc method of throwing out peculiar search terms failed when GFT completely missed the nonseasonal 2009 influenza A–H1N1 pandemic.

The Science authors have a larger point to make as well:

“Big data hubris” is the often implicit assumption that big data are a substitute for, rather than a supplement to, traditional data collection and analysis. Elsewhere, we have asserted that there are enormous scientific possibilities in big data. However, quantity of data does not mean that one can ignore foundational issues of measurement and construct validity and reliability and dependencies among data. The core challenge is that most big data that have received popular attention are not the output of instruments designed to produce valid and reliable data amenable for scientific analysis.

The quality of the data matters very, very, much, and quantity is no substitute. You can make a very large and complex structure out of toothpicks and scraps of wood, because those units are well-defined and solid. You cannot do the same with a pile of cotton balls and dryer lint, not even if you have an entire warehouse full of the stuff. If the individual data points are squishy, adding more of them will not fix your analysis problem; it will make it worse.

Since 2011, GFT has missed (almost invariably on the high side) for 108 out of 111 weeks. As the authors show, even low-tech extrapolation from three-week-lagging CDC data would have done a better job. But then, the CDC data are a lot closer to being real numbers. Something to think about next time someone's trying to sell you on a BIg Data project. Only trust the big data when the little data are trustworthy in turn.

Update: a glass-half-full response in the comments.

Umm, what?

Because there’s room in this nation for more than one questionable milkshake combination, the Red Robin burger chain has unleashed a wine-and-fruit milkshake upon its spring menus: According to a press release, the Mango Moscato Wine Shake combines Moscato, SKYY Infusions Moscato vodka, mango puree, and vanilla soft-serve ice cream, in what the restaurant is calling a foray into “unique mixology.” The accompanying photo also reveals the recipe calls for a dollop of whipped cream and drizzled syrup, signaling that cocktail aficionados probably won’t be lining up for the drink: USA Todayhilariously describes the Moscato milkshake’s target demographic as “35- to 49-year-old moms in need of a break.”

About Karbach Brewing Co.

We like beer.  A lot. Our background is in the beer biz.  Everything from distribution and importing to German training and brewery operations.  A few years ago we had an opportunity that would allow us to open up our own brewery.  We jumped on it. We’re extremely excited about this brewery, and we think it shows in everything we do.  This is just plain fun for us.  The day it starts to feel like a job is the day when lightning shall strike us dead.  Cause, hey, at the end of the day we’re making beer.  And beer is fun.