IndianaBeer: March 2015

Headline: 3 Floyds Brewing cuts off packaged sales on Dark Lord Day. The sold out 3 Floyds Dark Lord Day will not sell packaged beer according to this article. The ABC won’t let them. Hmmm. But you’ll still be able to take home four 22-oz bottles for $20 each. I’m confused. By the way, don’t buy tickets via Ebay, RateBeer, Craigslist, etc. They have the buyer’s name and are worthless without the buyer’s ID.

Eric Strader blogs Indiana craft breweries raise support with what they know best: a collaborative beer. (thanks Neal)

Every one is getting in the act. Noble Order (Richmond) will be canning next month. 4-packs. Furst Blood Orange Wheat. Then Katapult Kolsch and Tobias Apricot IPA.

Thomas Hardy’s will be back. Nope, not by Eldridge Pope which is gone. By Interbrau of Italy. Go figure.

Need a cool wood whiskey style chart? Click to biggify.

Or beer-scented candles?

Every Country's Most Popular Beer.

Beer experts: Suds tastes better at higher temperature.

Ground Control Space Beer: Way Better than Protein Pills.

The following gets long so no silly pictures this time. I promise to put Oktoberfest girls on these hallowed pages real soon now.

OpEd time (excuse me for purloining your gig, Roger) (and excuse me for this – I don’t do editorials often):

Surely readers of this blog are mostly in favor of progress and aren’t rednecks (they’re not drinking Bud). But this current “anti-gay” law is local and it’s really making all of us look like Fools. Even Mad Magazine and SNL are making fun of us. But the law is evil on so many levels. Will Michigan or Ohio or Chicago breweries not come to Indiana beer festivals? That’s my excuse for this OpEd. Here comes the Op.

You can tell your Governor knows he’s on the wrong side of the road when he repeatedly refuses to answer a yes/no question that he knew would be asked before he got face time on national TV. He really does look stoopid.

But I don’t think this law is about gay issues. It’s about charter schools. Witness that the Department of Education has been testing at charter schools but doesn’t put any teeth into their job even when close to half the students fail. The $powers$-that be paid good money to get 76 charter schools authorized with tuition paid for by the state. These aren’t educationally-oriented 1-room schools; they are franchises of national corporations.

Now some of these charter schools are starting to close. They just can’t make money on the $1,500 per student ($200 million) Pence says he wants to give them. Or the $91 million the state gave them outright in 2013. Plus they are looking at the spectre of increased unionization regardless of the Right To Work Law.

If they could just fill those classroom seats they’d maintain their bottom line.

That’s where the RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) comes in. It isn’t about keeping gays out of restaurants and florists. It isn’t about protecting WASPs. It’s about keeping Muslims out of charter schools. That will give these for-profit schools the ability to refuse service to minority children. This will make them more in demand by racist white parents. A “safe” school” will attract parents on Indy’s trendy north side, Carmel, and in Lake/Porter county.

If that doesn’t work (and I morally hope it doesn’t) they’ll move on to anyone who looks Muslim – Hindus, and there’s plenty of Black Muslims in African countries. After all wasn’t Mohammed Ali Islamic? And isn’t Obama’s middle name somehow Islamic?

Bought, Paid for, Results delivered. But the crew in the statehouse need to watch themselves. They must have known there’d be backlash but they’ve angered other sources of under-the-table cash. Already, vocally, Angie’s List, the NCAA and the NFL (that puts the money Indianapolis has given Irsay into the act – and Irsay’s worth $1.6 ~~million~~ whoops, billion – the fourth richest person in the state.) DUI-proof Jim won’t like it if he doesn’t get to host another Super Bowl.

Another argument I make is that the law involves these corporations getting government money: “Granting government funding, benefits, or exemptions, to the extent permissible under the Establishment Clause, does not constitute a violation of this chapter.” This expressly allows the state to pay companies that provide services even if they do discriminate. Joint-stock companies are specifically included in the definition of “person”. Oh and Section 9 says Indiana will get involved in person v. person lawsuits – even those brought at the federal level.

In the end they may not be able to deliver this law long-term for Lighthouse and the other charter schools bribing them unless Tim Berry’s crony crew really does own the State Supreme Court. Or if the Republicans really do end up passing a law to alter a law that won’t even go into effect for 3 months – then we’ll just be laughingstocks but the state will save a bunch of money even if the politicians don’t get to keep their bribes. Yeah, right, that’ll happen.

The charter school industry, being the capitalists they are, are mandated by stock prices to bribe right up to the edge of the extra profits available from the government by buying a law. That money is partially dependent on the schools’ sign-ups by June so maybe the industry just needs to keep this law in some form in effect until then. That’s capitalism. Tick tock, tick tock.

In what should be a 2nd Op: Indiana’s congresscritters just passed a moratorium on new nursing homes to protect and raise the profits of the big chain facilities already in place. Republicans telling business what it can and can’t do? Horrors.

Comments always welcome at IndianaBeer. Click “0 comments” below.

But evidently Indiana isn’t yet the mental armpit of the nation. Alabama has a pi=3 bill (the one in Indiana never became law, no matter what urban legend says). From the article: Many experts are warning that this is just the beginning of a national battle over pi between traditional values supporters and the technical elite. Solomon Society member Lawson agrees. "We just want to return pi to its traditional value," he said, "which, according to the Bible, is three." I guess they’ll arrest mathematicians who use 3.14….. and confiscate their slide rules.

From the Indiana Bicentennial book coming out later this year:

Edward J. Goodwin – Solitude - 1824-1902

One tale oft-retold (wrongly) about Hoosiers is the law making pi equal to 3. Most tales just say Indiana had that law at one time but it is not so. Here's the actual story.

Edward Goodwin was a doctor in the town of Solitude. He had a hobby of learning and dabbling in mathematics, the “pure” science with stated rules which anyone could learn. One mathematical problem had long been the “squaring of the circle” or more accurately finding mathematically a square with the same perimeter as that of a given circle.

He had formulated a faulty solution of a method of calculating the length of sides of the square and got it printed in the American Mathematical Monthly in 1894. No, he didn't patent the equation although he did put a copyright notice on his 2-page paper.

His proof was ignored by the scholarly world but he then got a friendly Indiana Congressman, Taylor Record, also of Posey County, to introduce a bill in 1897 stating “The ratio of the diameter and circumference is as five-fourths to four” which would make pi equal to 3.2.

The text of the House bill read:
Section 1 - Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana: It has been found that a circular area is to the square on a line equal to the quadrant of the circumference, as the area of an equilateral rectangle is to the square on one side. The diameter employed as the linear unit according to the present rule in computing the circle's area is entirely wrong, as it represents the circle's area one and one-fifth times the area of a square whose perimeter is equal to the circumference of the circle. This is because one fifth of the diameter fails to be represented four times in the circle's circumference. For example: if we multiply the perimeter of a square by one-fourth of any line one-fifth greater than one side, we can in like manner make the square's area to appear one-fifth greater than the fact, as is done by taking the diameter for the linear unit instead of the quadrant of the circle's circumference.

An incentive to the bill was that Goodwin would let the state of Indiana use his faulty proof for free while he charged every other mathematician. This bill passed the House unanimously but the press made fun of it. Purdue Professor C.A. Waldo explained the pseudo-math to the Senate and that was the end of the bill. (Bennett, Lee F. (ed). Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science, 1916. pages. 445-446.)

Of course the Christian Bible, KJV, Second Chronicles, chapter 4 says "Then he made [a big tub] of cast bronze, ten cubits from one brim to the other; it was completely round. Its height was five cubits and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference." 1 Kings 7:23 says “And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and its height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.” Both of these give pi a value of three so Goodwin's folly is in good company (and that explains Alabama’s even-stranger-than-Indiana’s reasoning.)

Diego (Johnnie Walker, Guinness and Smirnoff) will start adding nutritional labels article

Largest Craft Breweries Per State

Since the 50-50 Brewing Co. is moving past Truckee and into California their B.A.R.T. (Barrel Aged Really Tasty) is objectional to the Bay Area Rapid Transport. article

There’s a class action lawsuit against arsenic-infused wines. Including Two-Buck Chuck. Oh, and Franzia and Beringer. article

The Manual has tasting notes from “the rarest beer in the world”. It isn’t that but it is hard to get. Westvleteren 12.

We sai in 2005: In De Vrede - West Vleteren - Actually 4 miles outside of West Vleteren Down 1-lane (paved) tractor paths following obscure signage. In De Vrede means "In the Shadow" which is appropriate since it's immediately across the street from the St. Sixtus Abbey brewery and sells only their products. Starkly modern cavernous place with most of the charm of an airport waiting room. Complete with gift shop and carryout counter. Despite the size and large staff, only soup and sandwiches are available for food. Oh, and a plate of cheeses made at the Abbey. Eat outside.

Westvleteren 12 - Served warmish from the bottle at In De Verde. Very malty but my gawd it's very bitter. Leviathan strong of both.

The Abbey brewery at St. Sixtus does not allow visitors but they have a carry-out shop. Since their Westvleteren 12 was named "the best beer in the world" it's been tough to get. In fact, when we were there, the Twelve, Eight, and Blond were all unavailable at the brewery. The In De Vrode across the street did have supplies.

The beer menu at the brewery is not just up front. Its outside.

Headline: Canadian brewery worried you can’t tell the difference between Moosehead and Moose Wizz root beer article

Meanwhile, in ~~Czechoslovakia~~ the Czech Republic, small brewers seem to be having a revival. article

OK, pretend it’s St. Paddys day again. You’re an 18-year old in South Bend. You’re taking it in your pickup to a party. Than your tailgate flops open and the keg rolls out. The police must have been nearby because they got there before you could muscle the keg back up into the truck. They give you a ticket for “illegally transporting an alcoholic beverage”. This is your really really lucky day. Then on March 9th. the local Fox TV station puts up a blog post about the incident and puts your name in it. That’s your really really unlucky day. article