The Daily Parker

Welcome to stop #62 on the Brews and Choos project.

Note: A massive fire destroyed the brewery on 21 February 2022.

Brewery: Twisted Hippo, 2925 W. Montrose Ave., Chicago
Train line: CTA Brown Line, Francisco
Time from Chicago: 38 minutes
Distance from station: 700 m

I will say this: Twisted Hippo has awesome beer names, and I respect the way they portray Africa's deadliest animal as kind of cute. And inebriated.

I was less impressed by their brewpub than I had hoped, though. It seemed more like a suburban pizza joint than a brewery, despite the large brewing vessels and aforementioned beers.

I mean, that's just loud, visually at least. They kept the music to a comfortable level, else I'd have gotten totally overstimulated.

They use Toast for ordering, so you don't actually interact with a human being before choosing food and beer unless you sit at the bar. I tried the Midnight Revere Milk Stout (5.3%), a solid example of the style, with chocolate and coffee galore and a smooth-as-silk finish. It paired well with my pulled pork "sando."

I finished with the C-HOP 137 IPA (7.2%), which had more hops than a rabbit warren, and underwhelming malt notes. I like hops, and I like IPAs, but this one was too much for me.

They don't have a patio (sorry, doggies) but they do have an enormous back room with pinball machines and live music from time to time.

Also, I should note that East Albany Park and Ravenswood Gardens, the two neighborhoods north and east of the brewpub, are freakin' gorgeous. They were developed in the late 1910s and early 1920s as suburban retreats from the hustle and bustle of the city, so they're chock full of cute "affordable" bungalows that would have set you back about $1,600 when built and go for about $700,000 today. (There's also that godawful modernist piece of crap at 2907 W. Wilson that you have to see to believe.)

Beer garden? No
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? Yes, but they only advertise beers
Serves food? Full pub menu
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Maybe
Would go back? Maybe

I've spent today alternately upgrading my code base for my real job to .NET 6.0, and preparing for the Apollo Chorus performances of Händel's Messiah on December 11th and 12th.

Cassie, for her part, enjoys when I work from home, even if we haven't spent a lot of time outside today because (a) I've had a lot to do and (b) it rained from 11am to just about now.

So, as I wait for the .NET 6 update to build and deploy on our dev/test CI/CD instance (I think I set the new environments on our app services correctly), I have a few things to read:

• David Corn reports on how the previous administration's incompetence, if not outright malice, is responsible for 400,000 preventable Covid-19 deaths.
• James Fallows digs into the questions we should ask about China.
• Chicago's City Council looks likely to approve a narrower definition of "restaurant" that would let more bars allow dogs.
• Russian artist Lena Ruseva will make you some MAGA art for just a few thousand bucks. No scam there.

OK, the build has...well, crap. I didn't set the environment correctly after all.

Update: Fixed the build bit. And the rain stopped. But the test platform is the wrong version. FFS.

Update: Well, I have to pick something up from a store before 6, so I'll come back to this task later.

Update: Even though I've had 4 tiny commits of minor things that broke with the .NET 6 upgrade, this hasn't gone poorly. Kudos to Microsoft for providing a straightforward upgrade path.

 Lunch yesterday, at the Iron Duke in Hampshire:

The place is so named because it's on the Duke of Wellington's estate. The current Duke lives just a few kilometers away in a somewhat modest house (at least according to Queen Victoria) whose driveway is 5 km long.

Walking to and from lunch looked like this:

I ended the day at the Southampton Arms as I typically do at least once when visiting the UK. Shortly after arriving and opening a packet of crisps, Marty here came over to investigate:

His attitude toward me shifted a bit when I wouldn't give him any:

I'm flying home this afternoon to my own dog and my own bed, two things I really miss.

My lunch spot, the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich:

Lincoln's Inn Fields, by the Sir John Soane Museum:

Lincoln's Inn Fields gazebo:

Today: Hampshire and Gospel Oak.

Welcome to stop #61 on the Brews and Choos project.

Distillery: Chicago Distilling Co., 2359 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago
Train line: CTA Blue Line, California
Time from Chicago: 14 minutes
Distance from station: 300 m

It's dangerous to have such a great distillery two doors down from a great brewpub. It's also convenient, when you're out with friends and want to have a cocktail after having a pile of pub food.

Chicago Distilling makes really good spirits, full stop. And they've recently launched a line of ready-to-drink cocktails, making all the spirits and mixers in-house.

After visiting Revolution on Friday evening, my friends and I ended the evening with three varieties of Old Fashioneds for them and a 60 mL sample of their single-malt Rauch whiskey for me. It tasted as smooth and malty as a solid Speyside Scotch, with just enough smokiness to suggest a blend with a good Islay. I'll try to find some in stores; it's worth another taste.

Outside space? No
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? None
Serves food? No; BYOF
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Welcome to stop #60 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Revolution Brewpub., 2323 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago
Train line: CTA Blue Line, California
Time from Chicago: 14 minutes
Distance from station: 200 m

I've enjoyed Revolution beers for such a long time I can't really review them like I do the ones I've just met. When I met some friends for dinner at their brewpub (cf. the Revolution Taproom on Kedzie), I did try a new (to me) beer, the Hazy Pitch New England IPA (5.0%).

Like the rest of their lineup, it has excellent flavor and balance, and I'm glad I got to try the limited-edition brew.

I also had a very tasty hamburger, and cheese curds with homemade Buffalo sauce.

Beer garden? No
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? Two, avoidable
Serves food? Full pub menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

The software release yesterday that I thought might be exciting turned out to be fairly boring, which was a relief. Today I'm looking through an ancient data set of emails sent to and from some white-collar criminals, which is annoying only because there are millions and I have to write some parsing tools for them.

So while I'm decompressing the data set, I'll amuse myself with these articles, from least to most frightening:

• The Chicago Tribune lists six breweries they think you should take out-of-town guests to. All of them are on the Brews and Choos list, too.
• James Fallows recommends trying Neeva as a replacement for Google Search.
• ProPublica explains which super-rich politicians avoid paying taxes, and how.
• Dana Milbank tells the Democratic Party to wake up. So does Michael Tomasky. So does Julia Ioffe. Jennifer Rubin explains how.
• A longtime Talking Points Memo reader from rural Virginia describes his neighbors and correctly calls their attitude fascist. Can't wait for 2022!

Whee! WinZip has finished decompressing all 517,000 files. Now to write a parser...

The Tribune yesterday reported that local breweries have started producing more lagers as people get tired of IPAs:

Lager accounts for most of the beer sold in the world — including the 16 biggest-selling brands in the United States — but it has rarely been a recipe for success for craft breweries, which often default to ratcheting up experimentation, flavor and intensity. Lager, by contrast, tends to be approachable and predictable. Think Miller Lite. Michelob Ultra. Modelo Especial.

While tropically fruity India pale ales and boozy stouts remain engines for the nation’s small breweries, the industry has increasingly embraced lager in recent years. And consumers are rewarding them with surprising demand.

Around Chicago, the shift can be seen in the growing number of lager-centric breweries, including Goldfinger, Kinslahger in Oak Park, and Metropolitan and Dovetail on the city’s North Side.

Established breweries, including Hopewell, Revolution and Maplewood, are increasingly incorporating lagers into their portfolios while newer breweries, such as Art History in Geneva, have opened with an embrace of lager that would have required a leap of faith a few short years ago.

For Art History, it is already paying off; open just 18 months, the brewery is planning a new, larger production facility, due in large part to its lagers, which account for three of its four top sellers.

I typically evaluate a brewery by its mainline IPA, but in some cases (notably Dovetail), I'll go with their flagship lager. And I have yet to visit most of the breweries the article mentions, so I'll take their advice.

While swatting away my 4th "your car's extended warranty is about to expire" call today (including one in Spanish), I consoled myself reading about new ideas on how to reduce the environmental impact of brewing beer:

From start to finish, making alcoholic beverages asks a lot from the environment. It takes about 20 gallons of water to produce a single eight-ounce serving of beer and 30 gallons per five-ounce serving of wine. Then there’s the glass and aluminum production for alcohol containers, the plastic and cardboard for packaging, and energy consumption for home and retail refrigeration. Many types of alcohol are only made in one or a few places—tequila in Mexico, scotch in Scotland, bourbon in Kentucky—requiring long-distance transportation to reach consumers.

The most common ingredients in alcohol production—grapes, wheat, barley, hops, sugar—are some of the most water- and energy-intensive crops on the planet. Brewing and fermenting also require huge amounts of energy.

Global transportation accounts for an estimated 20 percent of beer’s carbon footprint. Beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages are generally shipped in climate-controlled vehicles to prevent spoiling. “There's a lot of stainless steel, water, and air being shipped around the country and around the world by virtue of the technology that's being used today,” [Sustainable Beverage Technologies CEO Gary] Tickle says.

Other ideas include yeast that produces hoppy flavinoids, heat sinks, using waste products to generate heat, and carbon offsets.

With the exception of the yeast-made hop flavors, that all sounds good to me.

No, not the Harold Ramis character; the working cat at Empirical Brewery in Chicago, letting Cassie know who runs the joint: