Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer

How do you introduce Nashville? It isn’t easy folks. The capital of three states pretending to be one, known far and wide as the Music City, Nashville is the delicate tendon connecting Deep Southern west Tennessee to Appalachian east Tennessee, an urban asterisk punctuating and dominating the agricultural middlelands. Nashville is the birthplace of the Goo-Goo Cluster, the nesting place of the world’s oldest radio show The Grand Ole’ Opry, and one of the great centers of the American Civil...

Thailand is a country dominated by macrobrews – strict beer and brewing laws mean that craft and home brewing are nearly absent from the nation (at least legally). Not only that, it remains a nation in which locally brewed beers remain the dominant type. Today’s beer is the flagship of one of the two breweries that utterly dominate the small, southeast Asian nation, a beer that assiduously (and purposefully) follows the German purity laws, a beer that since the late 1980s has become a global...

What happens when a tiny Scandinavian nation ends a 68 year long prohibition on beers over 2.25% alcohol by volume? Hold up. What happens when some American brewers, only a few years later, fall in love with that same nation’s legendarily delicious fresh water? Well, let’s be honest. This isn’t much of a riddle. So today we’re talking about a quaff that links the brewing traditions of the United States and Iceland, a product that is the largest beer export of Iceland, and a beer that – and...

What happens when a tiny Scandinavian nation ends a 68 year long prohibition on beers over 2.25% alcohol by volume? Hold up. What happens when some American brewers, only a few years later, fall in love with that same nation’s legendarily delicious fresh water? Well, let’s be honest. This isn’t much of a riddle. So today we’re talking about a quaff that links the brewing traditions of the United States and Iceland, a product that is the largest beer export of Iceland, and a beer that –...

From its independence in 1844 until the year 1916, well, the Dominican Republic had a rough go of it. More than 50 presidents came and went, as well as 19 different constitutions. Instability was the name of the game, and was only to grow worse as the world itself became generally more unhinged in the looming shadows of the First World War. The internal chaos led government to grind to a meager pace in the Republic, including in terms of its ability to collect and redistribute income. This...

Close your eyes. Unless your driving, of course. C’mon. I don’t even know why I have to say that. Sheesh. But otherwise close your eyes. Imagine the coolers, foggy and pleasant, of your favorite grocery or gas station. You want a beer, but what to buy? You’re not sure, but you’re sure to notice the stubby green bottles in the shape of a grenade, lightly gilt, alit with a golden hornet. What you’re seeing, there, gleaming like a malty emerald in your mind’s eye, is Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor –...

Today’s beers come from the oldest independently owned brewery in Texas, the fourth largest craft brewer in the United States, a brewery founded by Czech and German immigrants in 1909 who simply missed the quaffs of their motherland. With careful planning, a willingness to ignore the misguided precepts of the Prohibition, wonderful marketing, nearly universally respected craftsmanship, and of course the help thirsty hippies from nearby Austin, the products of the Spoetzl Brewery are no...

Alois Hingerl was the hardest working porter in the Munich railway station. He worked with great fervor and passion, so much so that he worked himself to death, having only two vices – a love of snuff and beer. He lived such a noble life that Saint Peter made him an angel and sent him on a mission of mercy, to provide wise and sage advice to the leaders of his mother city. Alas, Himmel has neither tobacco nor beer, and Alois, now dubbed Aloisius by the divine powers, found himself craving a...

In 1829 London, England established the first modern professional police force, Andrew Jackson was sworn in as the President of the United States, and Greek War of Independence ends with the signing of the London Protocol. That same year saw the birth of clothier Levi Strauss, Apache leader Geronimo, and American President Chester A. Arthur. John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States, died in 1829, as would James Smithson, the British scientist whose vast fortune would lay the...

Brendan: “Do you want a beer?” Eric: “No, I’d like something special.” Brendan: “How about a Bull?” Eric: “A Bull?” Brendan: “Schlitz Malt Liquor, for when you want something a little more special than a beer.” Bill: [A giant bull crashes into Toilet-Kitchen Studio, killing everyone.] Everyone: Fin. Eric: Hey guys, today on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer we’re talking about Schlitz Malt Liquor. http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

Today’s beer is regarded as the oldest in New England, once the unrivaled master of that region, holding a 65% share of the market in the 1950s. This was not to last, however. Mismanagement by a series of new owners led to a steady decline in quality and customer loyalty and eventually, in 1981, exile. In 2005 the brewery making today’s quaff had a net revenue of nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Hell, they made only $50,000 in sales total nationwide. On the edge of extinction, it was rescued by...

The Alutiiq nation names him as neginla eh while the Bella Coola call him boqs. The Chinook people refer to him as skookum while the Cree call him wetiko. The Inuit know him as urayuli, the Lummi nation tell stories about the ts'emekwes, and the Tlingit? Why they thrill their children with whispers of the kushtaka. Most of us, however, know him by the name given to him by the nations that speak the Halkomelem language, native Americans of British Columbia and northern Washington state. The...

Last week we started something we were not prepared to finish. Our eyes were bigger than our mouths. This week, well, we finish our meal. Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold Beer, we're talking about Printshop Beer Company's Something More Than Night Smoked Porter and Alliance Brewing's Mandarina Blonde. http://www.pickledeggsandcoldbeer.com

In 1982 something happened in Knoxville, Tennessee that shocked the world – dare I say it, it probably shocked Knoxville itself. Knoxville became home to the World’s Fair. By all accounts the event was a great success – today artifactual vestiges are scattered throughout the leafy hills of old East Tennessee – beer steins, pennants, shot glasses, and t-shirts abound at antique stores, the roads are dotted with signs that show distance in kilometers as well as miles, and of course the...

Today is a little different than usual. We are combining a tele-review sent in from England via the mysterious INTERNETS from the elegant Nathan Fortner of a beer we look forward to trying ourselves, Budweiser Budvar, with a totally unplanned special review of the WORST BEER WE HAVE EVER HAD, Simpler Times Lager - this generic, Trader Joe's horror that will give us far more nightmares than vampires or zombies. Hold onto your butts kids, this is a weird one. Today, on Pickled Eggs & Cold...

Chef, writer, and food librarian Sara Bir wrote something beautiful about today’s beer, and I’d like to start things off with a quote from it: Hamm’s tastes like freedom. Freedom to get a good buzz after work on a Tuesday evening when daylight lasted until 9-ish. Freedom to be constantly broke-all but still buy decent brie. Freedom to squander time on hopeless crushes and aimless solo hikes. I may not scale mountains or go to rock shows that conclude at 2 a.m., but I can still dig on an...

William and Ralph were Irish-American brothers who immigrated from New York to Melbourne, Australia in 1886. Three years later they were producing their first beers for local consumption, and three years after that their brew became the first Australian beer export, sent to South Africa to bolster the spirits of the young men fighting in the Boer Wars. Shortly thereafter their brewery consolidated with Carlton & United Breweries who continued producing the brothers’ beer exclusively for sale...

Earlier this week the United States and her sister to the north, Canada, managed to avoid a cataclysmic trade war when the two nations grudgingly came to an agreement on revisions to the all-important NAFTA treaty. In celebration of this news we’re talking about a beer that, while making up only about 4% of the Canadian domestic market, is still favored by Willie Nelson and Michael J. Fox, the beer used to toast the successful testing of the renowned Canada arm that adorned Space Shuttle for...

In 1810 Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildberg – the occasion was marked with a folk festival centered around horseraces, games, music, and tremendous quantities of beer and food. Apparently everyone really enjoyed themselves so the folks of Munich decided to make it an annual event and with each year the festival grew and grew, outlasting the reign of Ludwig, forced off the throne during the German revolution, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the...

First brewed in 1849 by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, today’s beer, remained with Schlitz until 1982 when it was acquired by Stroh Brewing of Detroit, who in turn managed it until 2000 when it was acquired by that little giant of breweries, Pabst. Today representing itself with World War II-style pin-up girls on their cans, this beer is perhaps best known for being shilled by the fiction, but hormone-provoking, Swedish bikini team. This is a beer that Will Ferrell loves so much he...