10// December 29, 2011
The Beer Review V-Twelve Victory Brewing Company Downingtown, Pennsylvania Three, two, one … Happy Brew Year! I gotta say, 2011 was a particularly great year for drinking beer. American brewers elevated ales, lagers and hybrids to bold new heights, and I was particularly impressed by the ingenuity of our Midwestern brethren. I really feel local breweries burst out of the shadows in 2011 and served up some quintessentially West Coast swagger – big, bold beers that challenged the palette and belied our reputation for simple brews. That was on ready display at my personal beer highlight of year, the 25th anniversary of Madison’s Great Taste of the Midwest. Of course, the past year wasn’t all hoppy rainbows. The sale
The Top 11 of 2011
So here’s my crappy end-of-year list. I don’t think I liked enough albums, books, or other entertainments to warrant separate best-of lists for each medium, so I’m just smashing everything together. Deal with it. 11. Medium: Literature. Stimulus: George R. R. Martin – A Dance with Dragons Finally, George R. R. Martin continues his Song of Fire and Ice series with a gigantic book that nonetheless picks up the pace and is much more exciting than its predecessor. 10. Medium: Film. Stimulus: Red State The guy who directed Clerks and Mallrats makes a serious movie about Fred Phelps-grade religious fanaticism and David Koresh-grade domestic terrorism. On paper, you’d think it wouldn’t work, but it works pretty goddamn hard. 9. Medium: Game. Stimulus: The Nintendo 3DS Most video game systems suck and have a crappy library of games in their first year. The Nintendo 3DS bypassed this by cutting the crap and releasing upgraded versions of the company’s best games 15 years ago, Ocarina of Time and Starfox 64. It worked. Add a highly serviceable port of Street Fighter IV, a Mario game that is the 2011 version of 1990’s Super Mario Bros. 3, and the requisite round of Mario Kart, and the opening salvo of the 3DS hasn’t been too bad at all. 8. Medium: Album. Stimulus: Aus trian Death Machine – Jingle All the Way If you haven’t listened to the Arnold Schwarzenegger-themed metal genius that is Austrian Death Machine, do it. Do it now! Their latest release is a two-song EP based on Arnold’s epic Christmas movie, Jingle All the Way. “I’m Not a Pervert,” based on Arnold’s failed attempt at gaining a bouncy ball from a stupid kid at the Mall of America, is the feel-good Christmas song of the
DIVERSIONS of Goose Island to Anheuser-Busch and the Wisconsin Legislature’s coercion of the beer market in Motion 414 had ominous implications for the industry, but the unexpected groundswell of activism strengthened my hope for the craft beer world. Looking to 2012, I expect even more big things from beer. Locally, I hear Pearl Street Brewery plans to make moves with new brands in new bottles. I expect continued refinement from 2011 all-stars New Glarus, Rush River and Ale Asylum, and I hope this will finally be the year La Crosse gets a taste of South Shore and Surly. All that being said, this week I decided to toast the new year with an eastern stalwart whose name evokes the new calendar: Victory’s V-Twelve, an ambitious, bottle-conditioned take on a Belgian powerhouse. Purchase: One 25-ounce bottle of VTwelve from Woodman’s, $7.99
year. 7. Medium: Literature. Stimulus: Albert Brooks – 2030. A believable, grounded account of American decline without the usual futuristic vibe. Usually, books about the future are pretty devoid of compassion and pretty bonered out on robo-fascism, but Brooks plays it calm and presents a future with real people — and, equally important, real language. This examination of overpopulation and boomer entitlement reaching old age is less fiction than it is frightening inevitability. 6. Medium: Album. Stimulus: William Shatner – Seeking Major Tom Shatner Shatners it up and sings cover songs about space. How could this possibly go wrong? The answer: It won’t. 5. Medium: Album. Stimulus: Peter Gabriel – New Blood I think that instead of the usual gathering of singles into the usual stale Greatest Hits collection, all musicians who reach such a reflective point in their careers should do orchestral renditions of their best songs. Especially the B-52s. Consider Peter Gabriel and this beautiful retrospective to be my prime argument for this. 4. Medium: Literature. Stimulus: Andy Schoepp – Time Ninja Once more, the great Andy Schoepp delivers over-the-top martial arts action in book form, yet this time he outdoes himself. Time traveling ninjas, giant robots and hot assassin babes make for an epic tale. I’ve said it before: If Andy Schoepp’s work doesn’t kick your ass, then you don’t have an ass. 3. Medium: Album. Stimulus: Flor ence and the Machine – Ceremonials This is what pop music should always sound like: well-crafted yet forceful, ambitious yet immediate, intellectual yet emotional. Ceremonials is titanic sonic literature. 2. Medium: Film. Stimulus: Hobo with a Shotgun This ridiculous, ultraviolent, punheavy bit of low-rent cinema made me grateful to be alive. Seeing an old grizzled hobo dispense buckshot justice to an awesome family of gleefully murderous gangsters was
Style: Quadrupel Strength: 12 percent ABV Packaging: This cork-topped bomber has a rather abstractly designed three-toned label with very specific drinking instructions: Serve at 45 degrees, pour vigorously, cellar no more than five years, etc. That’s all good advice, and it has a “bottled on” stamp, too. Appearance: After a vigorous pour, the V-Twelve glows an orangish brown color with a giant foamy white head, racing carbonation and about as many yeast particles as I’ve ever seen in a beer. Aroma: The aroma is initially extremely fruity with strawberries and orange sherbet dominating, but as it warms a rich malt backbone fills the nose and the booze kick is barely perceptible. Taste: Upon first sip, I immediately wished I had cellared the V-Twelve for a few
The Majak Mixtape By Jonathan Majak jonathan.majak@secondsupper.com Oh 2011, you’ve come and gone faster than an attempt at a “Green Lantern” movie franchise, haven’t you? You’re the year that blessed us with things such as Tiger Blood, a Schwarzenegger love child, the viral media sensation that was Rebecca Black, a slew of celebrity break-ups and more protests than you could shake a clipboard at. And we were there for it all, so let us reflect back at theyear-that-was in an end-of-the-year mixtape we’re dubbing “Auld Lang Mixtape.” It’s been a bad year if you were a brutal leader as this year saw the deaths of Kim Jong Il, Moammar Gadhafi and Osama Bin Laden, leading us to our first song, “Cruel,” from one of our favorite albums of 2011, St. Vincent’s “Strange Mercy.” With Jong Il, Gadhafi and Bin Laden no longer living, we’re not sure if the world is a safer place or not; we do know they are just one notorious figure away from having a very interesting game of euchre in hell. Speaking of death, let us bow our heads in memoriam to some of the people we lost this year, including Amy Winehouse, Heavy D, Elizabeth Taylor, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and Lindsay Lohan. Wait? Lindsay
a joy. Remember: when life gives you razor blades, you make a bat covered in razor blades! 1. Medium: Life. Stimulus: Protests! It’s breathtaking to see people giving a shit and fighting corrupt systems of power worldwide. In America this seems even more amazing, because we’re currently the
January 2012 | Second Supper more years. Despite the carbonation, it was flat, one-dimensional and decidedly immature. There are more strawberries and red grape skin flavors at the front of the tongue and a boozy burn at the back of the cheeks. As it warms it becomes slightly more complex, hitting notes like melted caramel and banana bread, which makes me believe those “45 degrees” instructions were widely off the mark. Mouthfeel: Shockingly thin for 12 percent beer. Drinkability: It’s drinkable enough to split with a friend, but there’s no need to hurry. Ratings: BeerAdvocate grades this a 90, while RateBeer readers score it a 98. Personally, I expected more, but I guess I had the same difficulties with V-Twelve as I have expectations for 2012: I just can’t wait!
-- Adam Bissen
Lohan is still alive? That seems like some sort of oversight. but kudos, Lohan, for not only being alive but also showing us your goodies in “Playboy” this year. Speaking of baring all, it was also a bad year if you were a famous person who ever decided to take a picture of yourself naked, as everybody from actress Blake Lively to former U.S. Congressman Anthony Wiener found themselves overexposed. This leads us to our next song, “Losing My Mind,” from Summer Camp’s debut album “Welcome to Condale.” That’s the only way we can explain why, in this day and age, any celebrity ranking from A down to Z expects us not to see what God (or a plastic surgeon) has gifted them. This was a good year for a lot of people: the ladies of “Bridesmaids,” Mel Gibson’s ex-wife’s divorce attorney, the Green Bay Packers. But who had the best year? Well, us. Clearly. With a year chockfull of things like the debt ceiling fight, Chris Brown spazzing out at “Good Morning America,” the Justin Bieber paternity lawsuit, Penn State, and pretty much anything Charlie Sheen said for the first half of the year, the mixtapes have pretty much written themselves. This leads us to our last song, “Celebrate,” from Common’s new album “The Dreamer/The Believer” because that’s what we intend to do. As you ring in 2012, we wish you love, peace and mixtapes. Buy: Pearl and the Beard “Killing the Darlings” YouTube: The Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl Read: Tom and Lorenzo www.tomandlorenzo.com
spoiled children of the planet. Divide that down to the Midwest, where the secondary holy mantra that follows “go [insert local NFL team]” is “don’t rock the boat,” and consider my mind blown. My expectations for humanity this year were completely shattered, and that feels wonderful.
– Brett Emerson