Monday Rant: Pumpkin and Brown Sugar

Keep your minds out of the gutter. As far as I know, the sweet-tasting yet sticky feeling brown sugar along the glass rim of your pumpkin beer (should your bar choose to do it) is a sweet and sugary sensation that can easily amplify your pumpkin beer. The type of thing is referred to as a "rim-job" as in the rim of your glass.

I've only gone out to partake in this phenomenon just twice this season, but have the same feeling as I have for the past three years when snagging a pumpkin ale at the local pub. It adds an extra kick to the beer, but I constantly find myself complaining half-way through my beers when I get one of these.

I hate to actually sound like some form of a snob on this subject because I rarely end up coming off that way. I know it's ironic given the name of this blog. I just find the dripping of the moistened brown sugar and the stickiness of the fingers that follows to be a constant annoyance. It's almost like a melting ice cream cone, which I find almost even more distracting because I don't enjoy ice cream cones. I'm a spoon and a bowl person. I don't enjoy the fact that I'm re-licking my own spit.

The brown sugar can amplify the taste of said pumpkin beer in terms of sweetness, but as for the aforementioned stickiness. Holy hell. After years of receiving this (and I know you can easily ask for no brown sugar) on the glasses of the pumpkin beers I've ordered I'm not so sure how I feel about it anymore. Nonetheless, I still love pumpkin beer.

Monday Rant: How Much Glassware Is Enough?

About a year ago, I stopped collecting empty beer bottles. The stop in which I held my collection was the back of my dresser, which is somewhat old-fashioned hence its length (I don't really know for sure if there's a technical name for this type of dresser, but I'm far from a furniture aficionado). I had a decent amount of room to display the bottles that I had saved over time.

It got to the point that as I tried more and more beers and procured bottles I wanted to keep that room to store said bottles became less and less. I eventually ended up throwing them away to save myself from appearing on a certain show on TLC.

Different glasses help in creating images like this one!

I've came into my next phase of super collecting and that's the phase of being obsessed with different types of beer glassware. I keep finding new ones and lack the actual room to harbor more. I just find it fascinating to have different glasses from different breweries (sometimes regardless if it's a shaker pint or not) along with different styles of glassware. It just makes for a slightly different experience with different beers.

I mean I really love having a few of the glasses that I do. I enjoy finally having found my Hoegaarden hexagonal glass. My Samuel Adams "Perfect Pint" glass is pretty darn close to being perfect for any beer. I have a Belgian Tulip from a Libbey glassware set that I use for pretty much any type of beer. It's always fun. There are also a few more out there I have my eye on like a Hofbrauhaus stein. Now, where to put all of these.