22 August 2022

Experiencing Asheville's Breweries

barrel-aged beers at Burial Beer
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went away to Asheville to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. Fortunately, she allowed me to visit some breweries in the afternoons/evenings of our few days there.

While you are welcome to read on about my beer experiences, I will share with you that the two breweries that really stood out to me were Burial Beer and DSSOLVR. Three other breweries that were outstanding were Bhramari Brewing, Wicked Weed, and Hi-Wire.

If you're interested, here is further information about my experiences visiting brewery taprooms in Asheville:

Day One: As we arrived to Asheville, I figured it would be easier to visit some breweries not in walking distance to our hotel first. As such, our first beer stop was New Belgium’s Asheville location. While New Belgium’s primary facility is in Colorado, this is their eastern US facility. It has a nice space with an outdoor area, overlooking a river. I ordered a flight of sour beers:

  • Le Terroir Grand Reserve (dry-hopped green Walnut lambic sour) = tasty and intriguingly earthy (like asiago cheese)
  • Dominga (mimosa sour) = clean, refreshing, palate cleanser
  • La Folie (sour brown ale) = fine
  • Adding Corners Three Chambers Rye (sour ale with abruzzi rye and licorice root) = very tasty with chocolatey/coffee notes and some dryness, as well as some earthiness
    sour flight at New Belgium

We then moved on to Cellarest, where they offer neither tastes nor flights. Nice little tap room with open air patio and also indoors with open garage doors with fresh air filtering in. I enjoyed their Enkindle (ruby saison) with notes of cherrywood and smoked black tea - tasty!

After settling into our hotel, we went out to DSSOLVR, where I ordered two IPAs:

  • Eternal Mourning: Citra, which is a funky foeder-aged IPA with simcoe, amarillo, crystal, and citra hops that had Brettanomyces in it - it was pleasantly funky. 
  • Ghosted in the Juicy, a double dry-hopped IPA with huell melon, azzacca, citra cryo, mosaic lupomax and phantasm cryo blend hops - this was really, really tasty with a thick mouthfeel - this was really good.

Day Two: Having enjoyed my visit to the San Diego location of White Labs seven years ago, I was intrigued to kick off my brewery visits for day two at the Asheville location of White Labs, where I got a flight:

  • Tropical IPA with WLP001 California Ale Yeast - Supplied tasting notes: dragon fruit, dank. My favorite of the flight - I like the fruitiness and the dankness.
  • Tropical IPA with WLP077 Tropicale Yeast Blend - Supplied tasting notes: passion fruit, peach, vanilla - Easy-drinking. 
  • Triple Hop Hazy IPA with WLP007 Dry English Ale Yeast - Supplied tasting notes: pineapple, mango, orange blossom - Definitely dry with hop resin.
  • Triple Hop Hazy IPA with WLP090 San Diego Super Ale Yeast - Supplied tasting notes: dried apricot, strawberry, mint - Eh okay.

Hoppy IPA Day flight at Wicked Weed

I knew I needed to visit Wicked Weed, since people rave about them (yes, I know they’re an ABI brewery, but had to visit); I got the Hoppy IPA Day flight, where they don’t allow you to make your own flights; only set flights:

  • Pernicious IPA: Tropical mango hop aroma, dry finish
  • Coastal Love hazy IPA: Pineapple citrus and tropical fruit notes, semi-dry finish. Relaxing and dank
  • Perni-Haze hazy IPA: Citra and Simcoe. Citra-y pleasingly lately dank - my favorite of the IPAs in this flight
  • Freak of Nature DIPA: Big pine grapefruit peel and dank hop aromas. Clearly, my favorite overall of this flight

Following the flight, I also ordered a half-pint of Valkyrie DIPA - fermented with kveik yeast and dry hopped with Citra, El Dorado, and Idaho 7 - citrussy, hazy, sharp (my wife says that it tastes like cleaning supplies).

We then moved on to Burial Beer Brewery; they do not do flights, but I got a couple of half-pints:

  • A Collection of Idiocy From A Top Notch Moron (DIPA double dry-hopped with Strata, Motueka, Simcoe, and El Dorado, finished with lots of Cryo) - Juicy and dank๐Ÿบ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
  • Not A Thing Left To Say (TIPA triple saturated with Citra incognito, Cryo and pellets. Double dry-hopped with Citra, Cashmere and Riwaka) - Really delicious and juicy; nectarines and Dank ๐Ÿบ๐Ÿ˜ƒ

We moved on to Wicked Weed's Funkatorium Brewery, where I ordered their limited release flight:

  • Marina - Peaches and apricots: Nicely tart
  • Mirtelo Morte - Barrel aged golden sour with blueberries
  • La Mure Morte - Barrel aged sour fermented with blackberries: Solid
  • Cerise Morte - Barrel aged American sour fermented with cherries: Refreshingly cherry-licious

Orville and Wilbur's Awesome Adventure Flight at Bhramari Brewing
Day Three: We kicked-off day three at Bhramari Brewing Company, where the only flights one can order are one of three - a sour flight, an IPA flight and a miscellaneous flight. I went with the miscellaneous flight, entitled Orville and Wilbur's Awesome Adventure:

  • Haunted Graffiti - DDH Multi-Grain Farmhouse - Grains: Barley, Rye, Oats, Spelt, Millet, Wheat, Corn, Sunflower, Sorghum, and Buckwheat; Hops: cryo Citra, cryo mosaic, cryo eukanot: Very bright up front with citrusy juiciness early on in the palate and then goes dry towards the finish
  • Cubism Dream  - BBA German pilsner: This is a really fun beer as the barrel provided some fun to this beverage, maybe some vanilla maybe some butterscotch. Definitely my first-ever bourbon barrel-aged pilsner!
  • Phantom Syren - Leichtbier: It's basically a light lager - okay
  • Perfectly Imperfect - Rauchbier urbock: A very clean and easy-drinking rauchbier 

This was certainly an interesting array of flavors!

We then stopped at Twin Leaf Brewery, where I had a half-pour of Fleurs de Soleil, a farmhouse ale with black tea and honey - it was decent. We then went to Eurisko Beer, where they also don't serve flights, so I got two half-pours: 

  • Under the Sycamore Trees, which is a saison with lemongrass and cucumber. It is a collaboration with Petty Thieves Brewing Company. Nice and clean.
  • He left Us, a hazy IPA with Galaxy, Sabro, and Chinook hops, which is pleasant and enjoyable - solid for the style.

We then returned to Burial Brewing, where I ordered a couple of barrel-aged beers:

  • The Garden of Earthly Delights (5% ABV) - Barrel-aged golden sour aged on rhubarb, ginger, orange zest, rose hip, dark fig, and chamomile: This was quite herbal! Pretty clean
  • Please Rescue Me From My Own Ignorant Barrage of Non-sequitur - Imperial Stout with decaffeinated coffee, macadamia nuts, vanilla, cinnamon, and maple syrup (14% ABV): incredibly tasty and strikingly smooth! I love the smooth coffee flavors! This was my favorite beer of the trip!

We walked over to

Surprisingly good flight at Hi-Wire Brewing
Thirsty Monk Brewery, where I ordered a tripel, which was okay, but an incredibly forgettable tripel…. 

Then we went over to one of the locations of Hi-Wire, where I ordered a flight:

  • Super Haze - hazy IPA: Pleasant, light hazy IPA - appropriate for warmer weather
  • Simple Brett: Simple, bretty, and light - easy-drinking for the summer. I actually think this is an incredibly appropriate use of brett
  • 9th Anniversary Bulleit BBA amber lager: Intriguing: I have never had an amber lager aged in bourbon barrels before - it has a lot of sweetness
  • Puncheon-aged Brett: Intensely tart for a brett beer 

Admittedly, I had low expectations for Hi-Wire, but it was really quite good!

Delicious beers at DSSOLVR
We then returned to DSSOLVR for the 7th and final brewery of the day. Even though I had visited two nights prior, I knew that I wanted to return because the beers were so incredibly delicious. This time I ordered heavier beers:

  • Psycho Sigmund's Viennawine (11.5% ABV) - a Vienna malt-based barleywine style ale: Very sweet - almost like a bubble gum quality of the sweetness. Of course, there's also incredible dark fruits such as dates or raisins. While I would prefer this to be aged in bourbon barrels, as it has some youthfulness to it, it is still tasty.
  • Absolutely Aliens 30-month barrel aged Mexican imperial Stout (12% ABV) aged 30 months in Bourbon barrels with poblano pepper, cinnamon, vanilla, and cocoa nibs: Very delicious chocolate and vanilla notes. Cannot really taste the peppers. Wonderful smoothness to the mouthfeel.

It was a tasty trip that was accompanied by warm weather that had some rain mixed in, but not too hot of a weather. It turned out to be a lovely time to go, especially as the town was not particularly crowded. Furthermore, one thing that is nice about Asheville is that it is fairly walkable. When we needed, we could get our car and drive outside of the downtown, but there is a lot that one can do

 

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10 January 2022

Fascinating Audio Content by Rabbi Irwin Kula

In recent months, I have noticed that I have been referencing some of Rabbi Irwin Kula’s ideas to other rabbis. Specifically, audio recordings of Rabbi Kula, whether on podcasts or elsewhere. As such, since it is becoming so frequent, I have decided to collect a handful of these and share them, as I have found them to be very valuable and I hope others find tremendous value in them, as well.

I will note that Rabbi Kula can talk a bit saltily, so I just wanted to put that warning out there. Nevertheless, the richness and freshness of his ideas are very rewarding, even if (or perhaps, because of) being so against the grain that one may typically encounter in regular organized Jewish life.

The first of these talks was his “Texts Without Borders”, which was delivered on November 8, 2011 at the first session of the third cohort of the Rabbis Without Borders Fellowship, which had been recorded by Clal and posted on their website. While I cannot seem to find the recording on their website now, the recording is what I had downloaded from their website and am sharing with you. While I had been in the room for this recording as I was part of this cohort of the fellowship (and you can hear my laugh at certain points), I have returned to listen to this talk on multiple occasions, as it is lively, invigorating, and fresh content, especially for rabbis.

I recently chanced upon a couple of episodes of Judaism Unbound, the first of which is good, while the second one is great:

And here are two further podcast episodes that feature him:

I hope you enjoy this audio content and if you have any further audio or video content of Rabbi Kula you would like to recommend, please feel free to share with me๐Ÿ™‚

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03 January 2022

Launching "What's New with Drew?" Series

Since I get asked frequently, "What's new?", I realize I don't share enough about my life and what's going on with me online. Therefore, I have been inspired to share what's been going on for me, both personally, as well as professionally. (Not only will it help others gain a sense of what I am doing, but it also helps me consider what is going on in my life.) While I do not know if this will be a weekly share, or if it will be multiple times a week, I imagine I will be experimenting with this format. While this will be available on this website, I will also be sharing it on my Substack (for instance, this post is also available here).

Personal:


Professional:

Senior Living Facility:

Jewish Drinking:


Other Links of Interest:

 

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30 December 2021

2021: My Biggest Year of Podcasting

2021 was my biggest year of podcasting yet. This was likely due to the pandemic.

Granted, 2020 was a big year for podcasting, in general, and for me also, especially since 2020 marked the first full year of running my own podcast, which I had begun in the fall of 2019. What I think marks 2021 differently than 2020 is also appearing on more podcasts others published. The most numerous of these are my appearance on a podcast about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), although I appeared on others, as well.

Of the 48 podcast appearances on which I appeared in 2021, 31 of these were for my own podcast, The Jewish Drinking Show. While this was fewer than the 44 episodes I published in 2020, if one combines all of my appearances on podcasts, it still felt like more than 2020. 

In 2021, I appeared ten times on an MCU podcast

Having mentioned my ten appearances on an MCU podcast, it was largely driven by all of the new Marvel shows that are that have been coming out in Disney Plus, which has been really exciting and has really driven my fandom this year, vastly far surpassing my interest in Star Wars. My interest in Star Wars in recent years has been waning, in general, and certainly in comparison to the MCU. Although I did appear on a few Star Wars podcasts, it wasn't at the same level. 

I appeared a couple of times on Let There be Light

In the Jewish realm, I appeared on the American Israelite's podcast a couple of times in-studio as a sort of rabbi-in-residence for the podcast, Let There be Light. I also appeared on a couple of other podcasts, primarily to promote The Jewish Drinking Show. 

One other thing that also upped my podcasting game this year was getting a proper microphone for such endeavors. I was able to get this after someone had gifted me an Amazon gift card for a video-editing project that I did and I very much appreciated that token of their appreciation, which was just enough to get a Blue yeti microphone, which definitely elevated my audio quality for podcasting, whether appearing as a guest or for hosting.

Here is a listing of my podcast appearances in 2021:

Star Wars Podcasting:

MCU Podcasting:

Jewish Podcasting:

The Jewish Drinking Show (in reverse chronological order):

 

 


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22 December 2021

Attending the 2021 AJS Conference

Masks were required at AJS 2021
Having attended the 2021 Association for Jewish Studies conference these past few days, it was quite an experience. While it was my fifth time attending this conference,* it was the first conference I have attended since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

It was also different than previous Association for Jewish Studies (hereafter, AJS) conferences in that masking was required. (In fact, they updated the guidelines on Friday requiring even the speakers to remain masked when speaking.) It was also different in that many would-be attendees decided not to attend. As described in Rachel Kohn's JTA article on the conference, the conference was half the size that it usually had been, compared to in pre-pandemic years. Unfortunately, many of those who decided in the days leading up to the conference to not attend were people who had papers to read at the conference, which led to not only many papers being read by people other than their authors, it also led to many panels having to be either canceled in full or shifted around amongst their remnants. As such, the printed program booklet was not reliable, as it did not reflect the panels taking place. Fortunately, the website and the conference app were updated to reflect which panels were actually going to be happening and with which panelists, so that was helpful.

As with previous conferences, I found it intellectually engaging and very intellectually stimulating, not to mention I also learned a lot, as well as learning some aspects of contemporary scholarship, both within rabbinic literature and beyond. I definitely appreciated and enjoyed the sessions on Rabbinic literature, as I have in the past.  However, a few other panels that were beyond Rabbinic literature were certainly chock full of terminology and references to scholars with whom I was not familiar at all and it was an interesting to try to understand what I could amongst those.

Having started my podcast (The Jewish Drinking Show) in the fall of 2019, most of the guests I've had on the show have been recorded through either Skype or Zoom. As such, I have not met most of the guests on my show in-person and it was a delight to meet several of them there in-person. It was, of course, also great to reconnect in-person with a bunch of people and meet new ones, as well. Speaking of meeting people, since the conference was half as attended as it had been in pre-pandemic years, it also had a more intimate feel to it, which was great for chatting with people and for conversations, so it made the experience all that much more special.

I am very fortunate that my work paid for my conference attendance and I'm also very excited to bring back many of the learnings I experienced at the conference and share it with the residents of the senior living facility where I work as the Director of Pastoral Care. While it is out of the box thinking to bring back such content for this demographic, I think there will certainly be residents that will greatly enjoy this content being shared with them. In addition to bringing back insightful tidbits of knowledge and information from this conference to the residents of the senior living facility where I work, it was also a helpful for me for thinking about other such content I can provide to them, and possibly even guest speakers.

I greatly enjoyed the panel discussion on Deborah Romm

While I certainly enjoyed the panel discussions on Rabbinic Literature, perhaps the panel I enjoyed the most was "The Romm Printing and Publishing House in Vilna: Between Scholarly, Environmental and Gender Innovation", which featured Ada Gebel speaking on "'Shas Vilna' as a Maskilic Project in the Spirit of 'Mekitze Nirdamim'" and Mordechai Zalkin speaking on  "Deborah Romm: Innovative Publisher, Visionary Businesswoman and Cultural Agent" - these were so fascinating and enlightening, not only into Deborah Romm, who was largely responsible not only for the growth of the Romm printing house in the late 19th century, but particularly for the famous "Vilna Shas". What emerged from that session was that Deborah Romm was quite the impressive business lady and orchestrated the printing of the Vilna edition of the Babylonian Talmud, which is the printing of the Talmud that remains with us to this day.

My favorite paper was none other than the brilliantly sharp Christine Hayes (who delivered the absolute best response to papers I have ever heard (and about whom I also previously wrote here)), whose paper “'If all the seas were ink…': The Pre-modern Migrations of a Trope” was a fascinating textual exploration of the intellectual history of a phrase found not only in Rabbinic literature and the Qur'an, but also eastern literature.  Rounding out my top five are Jonathan Milgram's "The Mishnah and Ancient Near Eastern Law", Yael Wilfand's "Reconsidering Portrayals of Rabban Gamliel’s Travels in Light of the Journeys of Roman Emperors and Governors", Shira Shmidman's "Rami bar Hama: Historical Figure or Literary Construction of the Talmud’s Redactors?", and Orit Malka's and Ayelet Hoffman Libson's "The Concept of the ื—ื‘ื•ืจื” in Early Rabbinic Literature".

If you were interested in checking-out my tweeting of these sessions, including my notes, you are welcome to do so here:

Sunday Sessions Monday Sessions Tuesday Sessions

 *Listing of previous posts on AJS Conferences:

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