Laugh so hard beer comes out your nose

We’re yukking it up in beer world today. (Except for these guys.)

– First, Bill at It’s Pub Night put an empty bottle of Deschutes The Abyss up for auction on eBay.

You know the drill from Tomme Arthur’s article, “The value of the item is in the collectible container, blah, blah, blah.”

Somebody bid on the bottle. Conversations broke out at Beer Advocate and at Rate Beer.

Go read it.

Laugh.

Me, I’ve got to go dig out my bottle of The Abyss. When I wrote about Lost Abbey The Angel’s Share for The Session somebody asked me if I was going to put the empty bottle on eBay. I laughed. I recycled. What a dunce.

– Moving along. Stephen Beaumont figures out what to do with a press kit that showed up on a variety of doorsteps last week. Including mine. This came in a nifty wood box, black wood on top and light on the bottom (it promotes a “Black & Tan”). Looks to me like a prize for the New Mexico State Fair beer competition.

The kit introduces us to the concept of a “brolly.” What? Google sent me to Wikipedia.

Being a bolder journalist, Beaumont sets out to use the instructions that came with the kit to pour a Black & Tan. Reading his description makes me think it would be a video on YouTube.

1) Pouring Bass or almost any beer, directly down the center of the glass, as the instructions suggest, is an idiotic move. I wound up with about a quarter of a glass of beer and three-quarters of foam, forget having room for stout or even the “Brolly.”

2) After I poured the Bass in correctly – ie: down the side of an angled glass, allowing for one to two fingers of foam to form – I put the “Brolly” in place and immediately overflowed its sides, causing the predictable mixing of the beers. “Slowly” is obviously a key part of the instructions.

It made me laugh.

And wonder what an empty bottle of Bass would bring on eBay.