First "Winter" Seasonal

I received an email update last week from Blue & Gray Brewing that announced the availability of their seasonal Spiced Winter Ale. To make it even more tempting, they were serving a special of St Louis Style ribs with black bean salad and cole slaw. I succumbed to the email temptation and made a date with Colleen for dinner Friday evening.

The Spiced Winter Ale pours an opaque reddish-brown color with a thin beige head. The Blue & Gray seasonal is one of the most heavily spiced beers I've had, and it even shows in the appearance; the beer actually looks thick with spices. The spice aroma is strong and I could pick it up across the table as Colleen took our requisite social media and blog photo.

The flavor was equally strong in "winter spice," as expected. Orange zest, cardamon, allspice, cinnamon all come into play. It's almost overwhelming, but definitely invoking of the traditional holiday scents and flavors. There are some bitter citrus notes under all that spice as well. A drying, bitter finish wraps up the flavor profile.

Soon, my ribs arrived and my glass of Spiced Winter Ale was empty. To accompany the meal I opted for a glass of Stonewall Stout. The stout and ribs combo was doubly appropriate as Friday was also International Stout Day, whatever that means. The mild, dry stout, with its dark espresso and bitter chocolate notes seemed a perfect choice with the meaty half rack of smoky ribs. Extra sauce and extra napkins rounded out the meal.

I'm no fan of the cold, dark, dreary days of Winter, but I do look forward sights, smells and tastes of the beers of the season. The wintery meal at Blue & Gray was a first inkling of the flavors to come with the approach of cold weather.

Buy A Blogger A Coffee

Starbucks has joined forces with Twitter to make it possible to send a friend the gift of coffee. Link up your Twitter and Starbucks accounts and you can send the gift of Starbucks to a deserving friend. Or even a blogger. :-)

I know many folks in the gun community don't like Starbucks for their recent exhibition of spinelessness, but I'll make a deal with Musings readers. If anyone sends a Starbucks card to me at VADavid, I promise I will exercise my 2nd Amendment rights when I redeem your gift. Ironic isn't it?

More info on tweet-a-coffee here.

Five O'Clock Friday: Lunch Break

Err, make that Noon O'Clock. *

Have a great weekend!


*To the humor impaired, relax. It's a joke. I won't get drunk until after dinner. **


**That's a joke too.

Dot Torture Drill: 49/50

Drats! So close!

It was good to get out to the range for some practice this week. Most of my shooting the past couple of months have been at matches. Colleen has been hinting at wanting to do Dot Torture, since it's been over a year since we last did the drill. I accidentally (honest) left them on the printer when we got ready to head to the range, but my dear wife reminded me to go back upstairs and get them.

I had decided I wanted to shoot my carry weapon the next time I got to the range, instead of the gun I typically shoot for fun. I expected the smaller gun would make the shots on the 2 inch circles all the more challenging. I needn't have worried.

We set up at the recommended 3 yards, took a deep breath and started the drill. I dropped my first shot on Dot 2, but grouped the next four very nicely. To have that miss so early in the drill was frustrating, but I had to shake it off. The rest of the drill went well, with a few shots near the edges but still scoring. I probably could have slowed down just a bit for tighter groups, but I find it hard to do slow, carefully aimed fire, even in a non-timed drill. I even made it through the strong and weak hand-only sections without any misses. At the end my score was a gratifying 49/50.

To some extent, getting that close to a perfect score is frustrating. But it's gratifying to shoot well with a gun I don't shoot as often as I should. I was also reminded how much fun the little SIG P239 is to shoot. This was a good practice session and the drill fit well with the range's new prohibition on "rapid" shooting.

I wonder how it would go over if I put the target on my office door...

The Physics of a Beer Prank

A pair of beer drinking physicists have set their minds to explain some of the science behind beer bubbles.

The act is colloquially referred to as “beer tapping”: Someone hits a beer bottle on the head, often with the bottom of their own bottle, and within seconds the victim of the prank is left with a small amount of flat beer and a bottle dripping with foamy bubbles of carbon dioxide.

Javier Rodríguez-Rodríguez, assistant professor at the Fluid Mechanics Group of Carlos III University of Madrid and lead author of an abstract about the research, and his colleagues were at a bar discussing the process behind this phenomenon when they realized they did not fully understand it. And according to their unsuccessful search for a solution online and through scientific databases, neither did anyone else.

Honestly, I've never had this happen to me. But I guess if you're going to do research, you might as well do beer research. Hopefully, they wasted factory beer, not beer that would have been better put to use by consuming it. 

Today's Checklist

I'm done.

Are you?

Fall Freedom Fest - Celebrating the 2nd Amendment

The Fall Freedom Festival in Fredericksburg this weekend was a timely celebration of the 2nd Amendment. Freedom, and especially the right to bear arms, are under attack in Virginia. New York mayor Bloomberg is diverting some of his fortune, and his lies, towards our state in an attempt to buy tomorrow's gubernatorial election for Democrat Terry McAuliffe. The issue was a common theme with folks I spoke to at the event.

The event was sponsored by a local gun shop, SSG Tactical. and brought together a variety of vendors and advocacy groups. I spent some time talking with Emily Miller, author of Emily Gets Her Gun: ...But Obama Wants to Take Yours. Her book is an excellent accounting of her struggle to exercise her natural and Constitutional rights in the District of Columbia. If you haven't read it, do so. Even if you aren't a gun owner, her report of government attacks on the Constitutional are mind-boggling. (And yes, I did ask Emily to sign my book.)

One of my favorite displays was the table of guns set out by the SIG Sauer representative. I almost walked by the table at first, as he had no sign out, but my "SIG-sense" caused me to stop in my tracks. I was able to fondle the new P227 and bunch of other pistols from my favorite gun manufacturer. I went back to the table several times! I even managed to score a SIG Sauer hat and a deck of playing cards featuring the gun maker's products — although it was actually the local radio station that was passing out the SIG schwag!

At the NRA booth the focus was on the Virginia elections. I grabbed a stack of paper targets and the person there also gave me a handout on Ken Cuccinelli's 2nd Amendment platform. I turned it over and saw a photograph of Terry McAuliffe as well as an exposé on his plans against freedom. In my best non-PC voice, I exclaimed, "Oh boy, more targets!"

Also in attendance was Top Shot contestant, William Bethards. We rooted for him on the show since he's a Fredericksburg resident, but I admit he wasn't my pick as my favorite to win in both seasons in which he appeared. I did get to spend some time chatting with William, and in juxtaposition to his on-air personality, he's a friendly and quiet guy. He shared the "trials" of juggling being a professional shooter and an FBI agent. It seems sometimes there's more shooting to do than he has time for. Such problems we all should have.

I did purchase a few raffle tickets for the Friends of NRA "Wall of Guns" raffle. Alas, my phone hasn't rung, so I guess there are no new guns in my immediate future. The leading Virginia guns rights organization, Virginia Citizens Defense League, also had a strong presence. The orange "Guns Save Lives" stickers were everywhere. Although at the festival they were preaching to the choir, hopefully folks kept the stickers on display as they travelled home from the event.

Again and again, the conversation during the afternoon turned to the threat to freedom in Virginia from Terry McCauliffe and out of state intruder Michael Bloomberg. While the focus of Bloomberg's money in Virginia had been on taking away self-defense right from law-abiding citizens, any intelligent person knows he won't stop there. Do you like your salt, your large soft drinks, your health insurance? They are in jeopardy when Bloomberg calls in the favors he's owed by McAuliffe should the democrat be the next Virginia Governor.

The election is Tuesday, so if you haven't already done so, quickly, do some research on Ken Cuccinelli. You don't have to dig very deep to expose the lies being spread by McAuliffe, Bloomberg, as well as the liar-in-chief, who has been seen in Virginia campaigning on the anti-freedom side. This race will undoubtably be close, so if you are a Virginian, be sure to vote to protect your rights so that we may celebrate a second Fall Freedom Festival next year.

Five O'Clock Friday: Beer Time

I can hardly wait...