Minnesota Craft Brewer's Guild - Minnesota State Fair

120825 MN Craft Brewer's Guild @MinnStateFair (my new fave thing at the Fair!), a photo by heideland on Flickr.

In my years of attending the Minnesota State Fair I've never found myself yearning for a beer but seeing this tasty looking four pack of craft beers from the Minnesota Craft Brewer's Guild has me thinking about beer.

The Minnesota State Fair and its bountiful selection of beer ends its run on Labor Day.

How much do you pee in a year?

I have a ton of random thoughts in the course of a day and I know I could easily Google the answer for this question but reading as I break down the variables which lead to an answer is much, much more fun.

I figure I pee about 7 times each day. On weekends it's less, maybe 6. Chalk that up to not being within walking distance of a cold water dispenser. Sure, if I'm home I'm probably closer to my drinking water spigot but I like water from my Brita water pitcher and that requires filling it so I probably end up a bit under-hydrated on the weekends. The total number of times I estimate that I pee in the course of a week is 47. That's a lot of flushes.

But the quantity of pee from those 47 trips to ye olde piss trough is still missing. If I had to guess I'd estimate that I piss out about 1.5 ounces each trip (1 1/2 tablespoons). If you extrapolate that out over 52 weeks the end result is a whopping 229.125 GALLONS of pee in the course of a year.

The number I had in my head before I set out to write this was approximately 50 gallons. To give you a visual of what approximately 50 gallons is, envision a steel barrel. Those are commonly referred to (by my dad) as 55 gallon drums. He uses them to store used motor oil and burn trash in. But can you imagine, if you're freaky enough, saving your pee in those very same barrels and having 4 completely full barrels full of urine. To say that's alot of piss is an understatement.

And I haven't even figured in the occasional beer bash, St. Patrick's Day, Cinco De Mayo, Fourth of July, $3 dollar pitcher night and tailgating during football season. Factor the multitude of times each year that you drink in excess and seem to have to pee every 45 minutes and you are only increasing that yearly urine volume. It's disgusting but I have a feeling that my figures are eerily accurate.

Finally feeling like an adult again

As I have virtually no time to much of anything except work lately, I have made time for the important things. Such as Saturday night as we sat huddled around our back yard fire pit finally feeling like adults. I made my way through a decent sized portion of my Brau Brothers sampler pack. The brothers, three of them, hail from the small southwestern Minnesota hamlet of Lucan with a population of 220. The beers are all vastly different and like anything, they are hit and miss with my taste buds but the Strawberry Wheat (delicious!) comes highly recommended from yours truly as does the Scotch Ale.

I found my sampler pack at an area Winestyles store but what beer have you discovered this year that made you drool? What am I missing?

And why are you avoiding MinnPics? It's the best selection of the best photos from all around Minnesota so check it out now.

Things guys have done

I'm always up for a good read I find online via a couple clicked links. I'm even more up for that good read if it involves something I can, like, totally relate to. It gets even better if it's soemthing funny. Factor in a points system and it's fucking gold.

All of the above happened as I read Things Guys Have Done. Sadly (or happily) I can fess up to about 95% of the items listed including melting ice at a urinal, belching sentences and eating so much at a buffet that I pooped and came back for more because it was probably the best meal I was going to have in quite some time.

Those items take me back to a time when I could get away with not doing the dishes for a week. Not because I didn't want to do them (I really didn't want to do them) but because why in the hell would I need to wash 2 plates, a bowl and three glasses? There's a whole cupboard of those very items left and they're clean. But if I open the fridge and it's looking empty it's off to the liquor store because it's better to be safe than sorry - especially when it's 10:05 PM on a Saturday night and your only options are to drive to Iowa way too early on Sunday morning or head to an off-sale shop and pick up some overpriced 3.2 beer that would make most people consider brewing their own bathtub gin.

Those are the decisions that plague the modern male.

Even more decisions await about busying your weekend. A few ideas, in photo form, live at MinnPics.

A real-life Minnesota leprechaun

The only story I clicked on the local bankrupt newspaper website happened to be about the husband of a woman I used to work with. I had never met her husband but she often told tales of his job as a grave digger. She had some hippie-esque qualities and I knew that her husband was Irish. Upon seeing his photo and quickly reading through the story of the southern Minnesota Leprechaun-looking guy whose job is making the final resting place for dozens of rural Minnesotans in my old neck of the woods each year I felt a connection.

Tom Donnelly digs graves in the countryside between Austin and Albert Lea in and near towns like Clarks Grove, Blooming Prairie and Hayward. I could go on with listing the small towns where he digs graves in the blazing sun or numbing cold. This is the sort of personal storytelling that newspapers need. It's not a happy-clappy type of story but it focuses on a rather unique job and connects that job to a unique person and it's timely based on today being St. Patrick's Day.

Check out MinnPics and see what local St. Patrick's Day festivities looked like through the lens.

A quest for a better beer

I've never been a beer connoiseur. I've always just drank whatever domestic piss was put in front of me. I'm not fancy nor choosy. I let my tastebuds and my wallet fight it out and decide who will win this battle.

In recent years, though, my tastebuds have been more adventurous. Sure, I still favor domestic brews but I've gotten away from the mass produced dreck that is heavily advertised during football games and NASCAR races. That stuff is fine if you plan on getting shitfaced in your garage while you tune up the lawnmower but a more sophisticated beer swilling lush demands a more sophisticated brew.

Last summer marked my full-on foray into beer experimentation. After our February trip to Hawaii and sampling more beer than I though one island could produce at the Kona Brewing Company, I knew that the discovery of beer was my destiny.

I already had a strong foothold in the Minnesota beer category with the Schell's brewery in New Ulm after a tour and sampling there the previous year so I began buying the brews that sounded best. I snapped up random six-packs of Schell's and Leinenkugel's through the summer months and quickly realized that having enough time each day to relax with merely one bottle of beer was tough. This experiment fizzled out by early September.

Now, though, I am reinvigorated and bored to death with winter. Sure, I am running on less sleep, doing more and have even less free time but that makes the desire for one bottle of beer each day consumed on my patio even more important. I've studied up on the local brews reviewed over the past year and my first sample which I will strategically start around my birthday in late April will be Lakemaid beer. It's described (basically) as light and refreshing and I'm all about supporting all things local - especially when it comes to beer.

The big question is where to find good Minnesota/local brews in the suburbs. What are some faves I should try?

Noon is NOT 5 o'clock in the Twin Cities

So what. It's of no concern to you why I was visiting a liquor store today at the precise time of 12:04 PM. I will say that the crowd at that time on a Wednesday at the local MGM Liquor Warehouse is rather thin but the selection is the same. I say that if you, too, are all about avoiding the crowds when buying your supply of hooch, then Wednesday at noon is the only right time.

If you're wondering what I purchased, it was a Miller High Life Light 24 pack of bottles. Yes, I am that cheap.

I've never been that drunk

"I don't drink alcohol anymore after the time I pooped myself."

You just can't make up something as priceless as that quote. It's just something that comes out during an all-out Irish bash in a Minnesota town that seems to create reasons to party. What else is there to say?

Oh, sure, there were plenty of people drinking far more than they should have and there were plenty of folks wearing green who were "Irish for a day" (fakers) and there was the one girl who was leaning over the bar whose jeans needed a belt because who really shows off their thong anymore? I'm assuming that she may have heard us after we witnessed numerous futile attempts by "ill-fitting clothes girl" to stretch her shirt lower to make up for the coverage that her jeans lacked. Ladies, if your ass don't fit, don't stretch your shit...

What did you, fair readers, do to celebrate the observed St. Patrick's Day? Did you drink too much beer? Did you puke in a friend's shoes? Did you get permission first?

Sometimes a Minnesota weekend needs a simple explanation and what's simpler than a pie chart that looks like it was drawn by a five year-old with a bad case of Parkinson's? Yes, my weekend was about simple things, simple pleasures even and even though I'm about 36 hours late in posting this in a timely fashion, I have my reasons. And yes, I am well aware that the numbers add up to a bit more than an even 100% but that's how busy my weekend was. Of course I could have scaled back the amount of time I spent laying on the couch but it's rather proportionate to the amount of time spent in an alcoholic haze.

Anyway, what did everyone else's weekend consist of? And being that it's Super Tuesday, will you be voting in a primary or caucusing should you be in a location offering such today?

A SECOND October gripe

One way or another, a discussion about 3.2 beer and Minnesota's ridiculous law regarding its sale popped up in the office today.

I find it ridiculous that (after some research) this piss-water is sold at public events, grocery stores and convenience stores. This is an insult to the palettes of Minnesotans from International Falls to Lyle. It is so insulting that many-a-Minnesotan have been known to drive to the neighboring state on a Sunday (because we can only buy this piss-water on Sundays) to bring back some real beer (even if it is domestic 4% piss-water).

Sure, you could hop on over to the local sports bar and pay inflated prices but there's something special about hunkering down in the garage with some friends on a warm autumn Sunday afternoon and catching a nice beer buzz. However, if that beer buzz was brought on by old fashioned Minnesota 3.2 beer, your head will feel like the SuFuDu drumline is marching through it for about three days.

Are Minnesotans the only ones to be subjected to such an antiquated law? Is it for our own protection? Would we drink ourselves stupid and run each other up flagpoles and drown (in greater numbers than we already do) in area rivers or is it just bollocks?