Month: November 2021

Similar to the whisk(e)y and wine worlds, the beer world can seem overwhelming for beginners. From New England IPAs, goses, barrel-aged stouts, lambics, milkshake IPAs, imperial porters, it can be a daunting task to even get started. This is why so many drinkers opt to stick with their tried and true local (or national) domestic lager. We’re talking about the likes of Genesee, Old Style, Narragansett, Utica Club, Miller, and of course Budweiser.

While I’d never tell you what to drink (if you enjoy drinking nothing but Genny Cream Ale that’s great), I would like to help broaden your beer-drinking horizons by at least a little bit. I’m also not going to say that only lager fans should get into the craft versions of this style. The classic, crisp, refreshing lager is the perfect respite from a robust stout or overly hoppy IPA. In fact, it just might be the best example of what a beer should actually taste like. You know, a beer that tastes like beer.

To help you find a new craft lager to imbibe, I decided to once again turn to the blind taste test. I picked eight well-known (and some lesser-known) craft lagers and nosed and tasted them.

Our lineup today includes:

• Jack’s Abby House Lager
• Captain Lawrence Classic Lager
• Night Shift Nite Heavy
• Smuttynose Lager
• Victory Classic
• Creature Comforts Classic City
• Brooklyn Lager
• DuClaw Regular Beer

Time to get our lager on!

Part 1: The Taste

Taste #1

Tasting Notes:

This beer has a ton going on in the aroma department. It smells like a lager should with notes of cereal grains, rice-like sweetness, subtle fruity flavor, bready malts, and just a hint of spicy hop presence at the end. The palate is loaded with more cereal sweetness, caramel malts, slight citrus zest, and a final crescendo of spicy, piney hops that ties everything together nicely.

Taste #2

Tasting Notes:

Complex aromas of ripe fall apples, cereal grains, bready malts, and slight spices are prevalent on the nose. On the palate, I found notable hints of clover honey, sticky toffee, caramel apples, and gentle, spicy, resinous hops that balance everything out nicely.

Taste #3

Tasting Notes:

This beer smells like the way I imagine beer to smell. There are obvious sweet cereal scents, lemon zest, and caramel malts upfront. Sipping it brought more lemon, herbal flavors along with caramel malts, sweet honey, and sweet corn. It’s classic and totally thirst-quenching.

Taste #4

Tasting Notes:

This is a classic lager nose. There are memorable aromas of sweet caramel, bready malts, dry hay, and clover honey. The palate follows suit with flavors like sticky toffee, herbal hops, cereal grains, and more honey. The finish is sweet, slightly spicy, and very dry.

Taste #5

Tasting Notes:

A lot is going on with this beer’s nose. There are notes of manuka honey, ripe tropical fruits, wet grass, dry hay, bready malts, and just a touch of herbal hops. Sipping it, I noticed more ripe fruit, lemon zest, more honey, caramel, and a pleasing, spicy, hoppy finish.

Taste #6

Tasting Notes:

On the nose, I found hints of lemon cake, light corn, and wet grass. But not much else though. The flavor is slightly lemony with more caramel malts and subtle hops. The flavors are fairly muted and unexcited, but overall, fairly straightforward and refreshing.

Taste #7

Tasting Notes:

This beer smells like the lager your parents or even grandparents drank and that’s not such a bad thing. There are hints of cereal, cracker-like malts, corn, and slight citrus on the nose. The palate is highlighted by flavors like sweet corn, toffee, lemon zest, and a finish of floral, spicy, piney hops.

Taste #8

Tasting Notes:

This beer’s nose is fairly unique. While the caramel malt aromas are right up front. There are also floral, piney hops present. The palate is just like the nose with bready malts, caramelized sugar, and spicy, resinous hops at the finish. The hops are a little more prevalent than I’d hope in a classic lager.

Part 2: The Ranking

This is the part of the story everyone has been eagerly awaiting. It’s time for the rankings. You’ve already read (and hopefully enjoyed) my tasting notes. You’ve seen what I smelled on the nose and tasted on the palate. Now it’s time to rank them. Keep scrolling below to see how everything panned out.

8) Smuttynose Lager (Taste #6)

ABV: 4.7%

Average Price: $15 for a twelve-pack

The Beer:

Smuttynose is well-known for its brown ale. But the New Hampshire brewery also makes a classic lager. Brewed with Pilsner, Vienna, and Copper Carapils malts as well as Hersbrucker hops and Weihenstephan Lager yeast, it’s known for its sessionable, refreshing flavor.

Bottom Line:

This beer finishes dry and crisp and is exactly what you hope it would be. It’s just not all that complex and memorable.

7) Brooklyn Lager (Taste #8)

ABV: 5.2%

Average Price: $10 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Brooklyn Brewery’s Garret Oliver is one of the most well-known, respected brewers in America. He’s known for his innovative, exciting beers. While the brewery has many unique and delicious brews, one of its best is also one of its most simple. This award-winning amber lager is known for its combination of malt sweetness and slightly hoppy flavor.

Bottom Line:

This is a great example of a unique take on a lager. The only problem is that it might not be for everyone. It is a great beer to bridge the gap between IPAs and lagers but didn’t quite play as well today against the rest of the beers on this list.

6) Night Shift Nite Heavy (Taste #3)

ABV: 5%

Average Price: $8 for a four-pack

The Beer:

Night Shift set out to make a classic “American lager” and they did so with their Nite Heavy. This golden-hued lager was crafted for people to take a break from their usual macro brews and enjoy a refreshing, crisp, crushable craft lager.

Bottom Line:

This beer proves that you can make a simple beer that can still be crisp, sweet, and highly drinkable. Definitely a well-crafted brew.

5) Captain Lawrence Classic Lager (Taste #7)

ABV: 4.2%

Average Price: $8 for a four-pack

The Beer:

Captain Lawrence is known for its award-winning, envelope-pushing beers. But fans of American lagers don’t need to try any of those because the New York-based brewery makes a “Classic Lager”. It’s known for its light body and clean, refreshing flavor.

Bottom Line:

This beer is light, highly drinkable, and has a great combination of sweet malts and slightly spicy hops. All in all a fairly well-rounded, classic lager.

4) Jack’s Abby House Lager (Taste #2)

ABV: 5.2%

Average Price: $10 for a six-pack of 16-ounce cans

The Beer:

Massachusetts’ Jack’s Abby is a brewery built on its lagers and they’re all great. But if you want to imbibe a classic, Helles-style, crisp lager, look no further than its House Lager. It’s known for its old-world, German lager flavor.

Bottom Line:

This beer is extremely well-balanced and crushable. There’s a nice combination of malts and slightly spicy hops that make it extremely memorable.

3) Creature Comforts Classic City (Taste #5)

ABV: 4.2%

Average Price: $9 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Creature Comforts is known for beers like Tropicalia and Tritonia, but you shouldn’t sleep on Classic City, the brewery’s take on the traditional American lager. This 4.2 percent light, sessionable lager is made with the “choicest malted barley & hops.”

Bottom Line:

This is a complex, exciting beer. It’s the kind of beer that requires multiple tastings to find all the myriad flavors present. But once it hits, it really hits and might become a regular in your beer fridge.

2) Victory Classic (Taste #4)

ABV: 4.8%

Average Price: $18 for a twelve-pack

The Beer:

Pennsylvania’s Victory is a big name in the craft beer world. While it gets attention for its Prima Pils, Dirt Wolf, and Hop Devil, their Classic Lager might actually be their best beer. Brewed with Pilsner malt and Hallertau hops, it’s known for its clean and light crushable flavor.

Bottom Line:

This is a great, dry, refreshing, slightly sweet, subtly hoppy beer that is just as well-suited for warm weather drinking or as a respite from the winter doldrums.

1) DuClaw Regular Beer (Taste #1)

ABV: 4.9%

Average Price: $12 for a six-pack

The Beer:

This beer couldn’t be more aptly named. It’s literally called “Regular Beer” and the tagline is “beer that tastes like beer.” Brewed with a symphony of Pilsner, Carapils, and Vienna malts as well as flaked rice and Chinook and Hallertau hops, this is truly a unique, fresh beer.

Bottom Line:

This is a great example of what a craft lager should taste like. It’s simple, elegant, highly crushable, and refreshing. This is the kind of beer I’d crack open again and again.

Directly on the heels of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier finale (we’re talking mere hours later), Marvel announced that Anthony Mackie‘s Sam Wilson will return in a fourth Captain America movie as the new Star-Spangled Man with the Plan. That announcement was made back in the Spring, and there’s been little mention of it since then, although Marvel has returned to theaters with gangbuster results. But with the MCU movie machine back in working order, producer Nate Moore took a moment away from promoting the Eternals to talk about Captain America 4 and how Sam will be put through the paces, not unlike a certain cinematic boxer. Via Comic Book:

“Because to me, this new Cap is Rocky. He’s going to be the underdog in any situation. He’s not a super soldier. He’s not a hundred years old. He doesn’t have the Avengers. What happens with this guy who announces publicly kind of, without the support, ‘I’m new Captain America.’ What happens next? I think is fascinating because he’s a guy. He’s a guy with wings and a shield, but he is a guy. So, we’re going to put him through the wringer and make him earn it, and see what happens when he is outweighed, outclassed, out-everything.”

According to Moore, Sam will prove to the MCU and audiences that you don’t need super-soldier serum to be Captain America. As for Mackie, he’s clearly ready to tackle the role and has already tried to drop his new Cap into the Black Panther sequel Wakanda Forever.

“I have a passport and a Wakanda visa and I’m vaccinated, so I can go to Wakanda,” Mackie joked to Entertainment Tonight back in May.

(Via Comic Book)

The weather has officially shifted from warm to cold. Leaves are piled high. Rain and maybe even snow is falling regularly. It’s time, folks. It’s Hot Toddy season.

The hot toddy goes back to the days when the medicine cabinet and the liquor cabinet were the same things. The hot toddy is made by taking a little whiskey and adding some citrus and spice for flavor and a little sweetener to make the medicine go down a little easier. Add boiling water and you have the ultimate winter warmer cocktail.

The thing is, within those four base ingredients, you can go in a million directions. Want to use floral tea instead of spice? Sure. In Canada, you’re more likely to see maple syrup than honey. The original recipes call for brandy or rum instead of whiskey. Even which citrus you use is negotiable at the end of the day. All of that aside, the recipe below is a modern-classic version with Tennessee whiskey, honey, lemon, bitters, orange, and clove. This is a basic recipe that you can make your own.

Let’s get mixing!

Hot Toddy

Ingredients:

• 1.5-oz. whiskey
• 1-oz. fresh lemon juice
• 0.5-oz. honey
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters
• Orange wedge
• Cloves
• Hot water

I’m using Nelson’s Green Brier Tennessee Whiskey because it’s a great mixing whiskey and carries flavors that feel very late fall/wintry. Naturally, you can use pretty much any whisk(e)y you want. Though, I’d stay away from peat monsters from the Highlands, Islands, or Islay regions of Scotland. Mildly peated scotches like Dalwhinnie or Talisker can work though. So don’t be afraid to play around.

Beyond that, I’m using a simple honey, some freshly squeezed lemon juice (that’s sieved to remove pulp), and a couple of dashes of Angostura Bitters. That last component helps to add depth and spiciness to the mix.

Oh, and don’t forget the water. You need boiling water that you’d make tea with.

What You’ll Need:

• Clear mug
• Paring knife
• Barspoon
• Hand juicer
• Fine sieve
• Jigger

Method:

• Boil some water and fill your mug and let rest while you slice an orange wedge and pierce the flesh with a few cloves to make the garnish.
• Pour the water out of the mug.
• Add the honey, bitters, whiskey, and lemon juice to the hot mug and stir with the barspoon to combine.
• Top with boiling water and stir again until the honey mix is completely dissolved.
• Drop in the orange wedge and serve immediately.

Bottom Line:

Even though I was alone when I made this, I said out loud to no one, “Oh, yeah. That’s the stuff!” This was just right for right now.

The depth of the whiskey was not lost with a slight nuttiness and deep caramel and vanilla. The lemon and honey added a great sweet/sour balance. The bitters and cloves created a woody spiciness with a smooth warmth.

This was pure comfort in a mug. I can’t wait to spend the winter months drinking this every time I feel a chill.

Life comes at you fast. One day, you’re reportedly President Trump’s McDonald’s-fetching manservant, and the next, you’re taking shots at each other in public. Granted, this transformation did not happen overnight for Chris Christie, but it’s worth a quick recap. Back during the 2016 Republican Primary season, Trump insulted the heck out of Christie during debates, but when Trump emerged as the frontrunner, that led Christie to assimilate like the Borg. Soon enough, his infamous “hostage face” stood behind Trump for Super Tuesday; and Christie remained loyal to Trump despite being walked all over, until they came to blows on COVID-19.

Since then, it’s been feud city, with Trump reportedly blaming his COVID positivity on Christie after the former New Jersey governor assisted him during debate speech prep, and let’s just say that the dust has not settled. Recently, Christie gave a Las Vegas speech, in which he expressed that Trump should “move on” from losing the 2020 election, and this week, the Twitter-banned ex-president issued one of his “statements,” in which he declared, “Everybody remembers that Chris left New Jersey with a less than 9% approval rating–a record low, and they didn’t want to hear this from him!”

Well, Christie responded during an Axios interview (above), in which host Mike Allen asked Christie what he thought of that quote, and then this happened. “I’m not gonna get into a back-and-forth with Donald Trump, but what I will say is this,” Christie declared. “When I ran for reelection in 2013, I got 60% of the vote. When he ran for reelection, he lost to Joe Biden.”

Trump hasn’t issued a response statement, but never say never. Christie, who apparently has a book, Republican Rescue, coming out, will appear on a CNN “series” (?) called Being Chris Christie, starting next week. CNN’s given this thing a plug.

One very popular response to this announcement has surfaced. Conservative talk show radio host Joe Walsh calls this a “bullsh*t” move from CNN. “There are plenty of conservatives/Republicans who lost everything by publicly opposing Trump,” Walsh tweeted. “Chris Christie did nothing, risked nothing, and stood by Trump every step of the way. He’s no Trump critic. He’s no hero.” Fair enough.

It’s always fun to learn that a celebrity has a fake social media account they use — so they can browse the internet free from the gaze of the public eye — and wonder what they use it for. Well, we can add another household name to the list of celebrities browsing the internet anonymously, as Adele has revealed she has both a fake Instagram account (aka a “Finsta”) and a fake Twitter profile.

In a new Rolling Stone feature, Adele claims that she’s quite the online sleuth, saying, “I know how to trace something online, like no one’s business, back to the original source or leak, more than anyone on my team.” The piece goes on to note, “She has a ‘finsta’ — fake Instagram — she uses to check out cat and interior-design content, and a fake Twitter for checking on what’s come out about her. She’s been keeping tabs on information leaking about the real 30, free from any duets outside of a deluxe-edition version of ‘Easy On Me’ featuring Chris Stapleton.”

The feature also describes Adele showing off her favorite tweet about album announcement rumors:

“Adele pulls out her phone to find her favorite Tweet from the fervor over the fake album announcement. She searches the user @keyon, whose display name is ‘HOOD VOGUE is tired of poverty.’ He called bullsh*t on the information quickly, noting that Adele famously does not do features. ‘He is so funny. I was like, ‘See, that’s a fan,” she says, scrolling through her phone. ‘If anything’s blowing up on Twitter, I always go straight to that account because I know he’ll either be like, ‘Oh, this could be real,’ or he’s like, ‘This is fake.”

A couple of hours after we part ways, she’ll forward another tweet to me, with her name in bold from the search she pulled up on Twitter. ‘Can someone wake Adele up and tell her she’s coming Friday I don’t think she knows,’ it reads, a sly reference to the fact that maybe, just maybe, the internet sleuths have it wrong and 30 is not, in fact, coming out that week.”

Check out the full feature here.

Ryan Reynolds was scheduled to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, while Will Ferrell was the announced guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. But the two actors pulled the ol’ switcheroo, so Ferrell went on Kimmel and Reynolds talked to Fallon — and refused to answer any questions about his sex life with Blake Lively.

“How’s Blake? How are the kids?” Fallon asked Reynolds. “You know, they’re all good. Blake’s… no personal questions, by the way. But Blake is great. The sex is totally normal,” he answered. A flustered Fallon said that wasn’t what he was asking, to which the Red Notice star replied, “Hey, hey, hey! Pump the sex brakes, Jimmy. I asked no personal questions, and you’re going right in on it, all right? Barbara Walters, easy.”

Meanwhile, over on Kimmel’s show, Ferrell was asked, “How’s your beautiful wife, Blake Lively?” The Shrink Next Door actor (who was wearing some stylish Star Wars pants) answered, “My wife, Blake, is wonderful. Thank you for asking. She’s doing great. It’s a really busy household. She’s a great cook.” Her specialities: “Oatmeal and killer nachos.”

Reynolds and Ferrell will both appear in Spirited, a modern musical re-telling of A Christmas Carol for Apple TV+. There’s no release date yet, but you can watch Reynolds on The Tonight Show above and Ferrell on Jimmy Kimmel Live! below.

In the days since the Astroworld Festival tragedy, Travis Scott has shared two statements about it on his social media pages. Now, his lawyer is stepping forward to speak about it and he’s calling out the Houston police department. In a statement released on Wednesday, according to Billboard, Edwin F. McPherson said, “There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements.” McPherson then criticized Houston Police Chief Troy Finner for comments he made in a recent interview with The New York Times.

During the interview, McPherson cites Finner’s claim that Astroworld was not shut down for fear that fans would riot. However, McPherson said, “a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis.”

“It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis’s crew,” McPherson said. “This also runs afoul of HPD’s own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019.”

He concluded, “Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again.”

The 2021-22 New Orleans Pelicans season has not gone well to say the least, with Zion Williamson having yet to play a game and Brandon Ingram has missed six in a row with a hip issue. That, understandably, has put pressure on Pelicans executive vice president David Griffin.

That pressure may be now growing and wearing on Griffin. Per a new report from Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer, Griffin recently left a Pelicans road trip following a “heated exchange” with ex-Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry in Sacramento where he is now the Kings’ lead assistant.

Griffin reportedly approached Gentry, who considered the efforts “inauthentic.” The two then exchanged choice words that led to them having to be physically separated after Griffin told Gentry, “You must not have given Stan [Van Gundy] the answers to the test, either.” That was in reference to a Nola.com report that Griffin said he had given Gentry the answers to the test when he was the Pelicans coach for the season after Griffin was hired in 2019. Gentry was then fired after a 30-42 season, leading to Van Gundy’s hire who was fired after his lone season in New Orleans, going 31-41.

What comes next here figures to be fascinating. This feels like an incident that could, potentially, cost Griffin his job as he’s already on an ever-warming hot seat with the Pelicans spiraling to 1-11, most recently losing to the Thunder in rather embarrassing fashion at home. Barring Williamson and Ingram returning soon and saving the team, it’s not really clear what could change for Griffin in New Orleans at this point. And with Gentry’s reported animosity towards him, it’s clear that he’s not making a lot of allies along the way.

Earlier this month, Gang Of Youths shared their single “The Man Himself,” which saw lead vocalist Dave Le’aupepe explore the connection he had with his late father. The band will continue this journey on their upcoming third album, Angel In Realtime, which Le’aupepe announced on Wednesday along with the release of a new song, “Tend The Garden.” In a press release, he described the song as “the most poetic interpretation of his affinity for gardening that I could think of” in honor of his father, who he called a “gifted and passionate gardener.”

Gang Of Youths will release Angel In Realtime on February 25, 2022, giving their fans a little over three months to prepare for its arrival. The band explained that the upcoming project “is about the life and legacy of Dave Le’aupepe’s father, indigenous identity, death, grief and God. And also the Angel, Islington.” Le’aupepe added, “I hope the record stands as a monument to the man my father was and remains long after I’m gone myself. He deserved it.”

The band will also embark on a world tour starting in March in Dublin, and will continue the shows through the spring and summer before bringing things to an end on September 27 in Sacramento.

Scroll up to listen to “Tend The Garden” and to check out the full tour dates for their 2022 world tour. The tracklist for Angel In Realtime can be found below.

1. “You In Everything”
2. “In The Wake Of Your Leave”
3. “The Angel Of 8th Ave.”
4. “Returner”
5. “Unison”
6. “Tend The Garden”
7. “The Kingdom Is Within You”
8. “Spirit Boy”
9. “Brothers”
10. “Forbearance”
11. “The Man Himself”
12. “Hand Of God”
13. “Goal Of The Century”

Angel In Realtime is out 2/25/22 via Warner Records. Pre-order it here.

Gang Of Youths is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The top two picks in the 2021 NBA Draft met in an actual regular season game for the first time on Wednesday night in a primetime slot on ESPN. Cade Cunningham and Jalen Green each had solid outings in the national spotlight, with the Pistons getting the win as Cunningham had 20 points, four rebounds, three assists, and two steals.

On the other side, Green had 23 points, five rebounds, and two assists for the Rockets, including a few highlight reel buckets as he was clearly fired up for the showdown. Green wasn’t shy after the draft in saying he felt he should’ve been the top pick and wanted to prove the Pistons got it wrong whenever Houston played Detroit going forward, and after getting past Cunningham for an emphatic dunk, he let the No. 1 pick know all about it.

Cunningham was his typical stoic self through the interaction, but after the game he offered a little spice in return when asked about the trash talk from Green and the Rockets, saying it was all for show and had nothing of substance.

Getting the win certainly afforded Cade the high ground here to cast some shade on his fellow rookie and do so in a very collected, on-brand way. Hopefully these two can continue to grow and improve into the stars they certainly have the potential to be, because this kind of rivalry between two stars who clearly aren’t particularly buddy-buddy would be great for the league. Their last meeting this season is in a month, on December 18 in Detroit, where they’ll get to continue the conversation.