It’s time for slightly embarrassing admissions here at Gear Diary: I can personally vouch that when I was in college (hmmpty-hmmph) years ago, I learned that it is possible to smuggle an entire eight-pack of 8 oz. Little Kings Cream Ales into a movie theater stashed within the various pockets of a denim jacket. I mean, have you seen the price of concessions at the movies lately?! Unfortunately, I can…
Hello again! Kevin here with another Beer Diary taste. Last night I was drinking Balashi, Aruba’s national beer but before we left on vacation I picked out and drank a popular and widely available (including our regular grocery in San Angelo, TX) brew from Oskar Blues Brewery in Colorado to share. Did I mention The Great American Brew Festival that took place in Denver last October? We were there and it was…
125 members of the media along with a score of craft-brewers and homebrewing elite met at noon Friday, inside Denver’s Grand Hyatt Pinnacle Club Peak Ballroom on the 38th floor for a Great American Beer Festival working media luncheon consisting of a five-course pairing luncheon and briefing. The theme was “homebrewing and its connection to the craft brewing community”, and the idea was to “highlight a few commercial beers that were…
The other day I received a KeyShark from the folks at Cranky Monkee for a review here at Gear Diary. The timing was perfect, as it arrived just before for my annual U of I football tailgate. So, what is a KeyShark you ask? And what does it have to do with football tailgating? Well, I’m glad you asked. A KeyShark is a lightweight, but strong, bottle opener that is designed…
Hi. My name is Kevin, and I like beer…a lot! Other things I like: Judie (well, actually, I love her), my kids (I love them too), Otis (my dawg), fresh air, wide open spaces, rain and… did I mention? Beer! I developed a taste for the stuff (beer that is) during college. At the time, it probably wasn’t as much a taste thing as it was a social thing, if…
I love beer. Personally, my go-to choices are anything Sam Adams and Guinness. But really, if it’s not Budweiser or Coors, I will happily drink it. And while I have had many political conversations OVER beer, I have never politicized beer…but leave it to analysts to put together a graphic overlaying democrats/republicans/voting involvement and beer choice. Of course, this isn’t 100% accurate. After all, as I said above, I love…
If you have a love for hops and tasty craft-brewed adult beverages, then no doubt you’ve heard of The Great American Beer Festival, an event put on by the Brewer’s Association which has become the largest and best known of its kind. The Great American Beer Festival is the premier U.S. beer festival and competition. Each year, GABF represents the largest collection of U.S. beer ever served, in the format…
I am extremely excited for the upcoming Summer Olympics. Winter Olympics are ok, but summer is the best. Track and field, beach volleyball, swimming, beach volleyball, gymnastics, and did I mention beach volleyball? Now, I am not so excited as to celebrate with a themed party (full disclosure: we did that in college for the winter Olympics, and let’s just say it was sort of like “The Hangover” but with…
This Marshall Fridge is pretty amazing. It looks like an Marshall amp, but it hides something tastier than great tunes. Yeah, it holds a few six packs or anything else that you might need to keep cold — although beer is much more fun than milk. As the description on Werd notes, You’re never going to play guitar like Stevie Ray Vaughn or Slash but if you shred 6-packs like…
Right before we left for CES we received a review sample of the Happy Hour Bottoms Up Timepiece. The Bottoms Up is a nice-quality watch with a large, impressive face, a wide, comfortable band and… a bit of a surprise. Here’s a look with a video that will make clear what is special about this watch.
If you drink a lot of mass-produced cold beverages that come in bottles with twist caps, then you probably don’t often need a bottle opener. Similarly, if you drink a lot of beverages that come in aluminum cans, then you might have a bottle opener … located somewhere in your junk drawer. But if you like to drink bottled-beverages that don’t easily twist open, or if you regularly run into twist-caps that don’t seem…
Imagine a fruit that could change the way food taste for the better but whose effects were only temporary. Imagine if Lemons and limes tasted sweet, pickles tasted like slightly salty cucumbers and more. That’s what Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) does. The plant is native to West Africa and available in a number of forms. It is: an evergreen plant that produces small red berries which are produced for many months…
How would you like to open your beer and soda bottles without having to worry about where those pointy bottle caps land? The ‘Click n Drink’ bottle opener allows you to do just that. Boasting the ability to hold up to 100 bottle caps with its strong magnets, the ‘Click n Drink’ magnetically mounts to metal surfaces or it can be drilled into others. I’m wondering if it would void…
screenshot from of the Eldorado Success 03/31/11 digital edition One of the joys of living in a small town is that the local paper publishes the police blotter every week; it’s always good for an unintentional chuckle, because some of the things people call 911 for are things you would never see in a larger city. Whether it be a black bull loose on the side of the road at…
Tracking Apple products in shows is somewhat of a hobby for many folks, and we even did a number of ‘Apple on TV’ posts here at Gear Diary. Of course, Apple is just one of many companies that spend heavily to get their products featured prominently in TV shows and movies, and keeping in the spirit of awards season the folks at BrandChannel have compiled their annual ‘Product Placement Awards’…
I am not a wine connoisseur at all. However, back in the day I was into drinking good beers. I remember one trip where I visited a Rock Bottom Brewery restaurant where I had some of the best beer I have ever tasted. They had beer that I could have taken home in bottles, but because I flew into Denver and was flying out the next day, I could not take any…
A company called GrinOn Industries has created one of the coolest beverage accessories I’ve ever seen. They’ve designed and fabricated what they call the “Bottoms Up Draft Beer Dispensing System.” The proprietary Bottoms Up Dispensing System is the fastest dispensing system in the world and fills at a rate of up to nine times that of traditional beer taps. The system isn’t only a marvel to watch but it’s pretty…
I like beer. This is a fact that I didn’t realize until about two and a half years ago, when I began dating a man who was a home-brewer and all-around beer connoisseur. I’d never really been much of a beer drinker before, so I never had much need for a bottle opener; that has since changed. There are so many fantastic brews available — none of which come with…
I drink a lot of microbrews. One of the challenges anyone who does often faces is the dilemma, “is it a twist-off or not”. The last thing you want to do on a hot summer afternoon is struggle to get the top off your ice cold beer. With the BottleMate there isn’t even a need to guess. The BottleMate is touted as the world’s best bottle opener. It claims to…
Being from suburban Boston, I was surprised when I went to school in upstate NY and befriended some kids from outside of Pittsburgh PA and found that not everyone wanted a ‘soda’ … some wanted a ‘pop’. Later on, when traveling to the deep south for my first job I was asked if I wanted a ‘coke’ (or sweet tea, of course), to which I asked if they had Diet…
It is March Madness, the game is coming to a close and yet another of your bracket picks is about to fall. You do not want to miss the last second shot from the latest 14th seed Cinderella story. If you are like me, there will now be three or four bracket pools that will need to be paid up soon. As a tear goes into your beer, you notice…
