Pic(k) of the Week: Dune fence down.

Dune fence down: desolation at/on St. Augustine Beach, Florida, USA.

Photo taken on 30 June 2021.

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Pic(k) of the Week: OCA x2

Old Coast Ales is a production brewery (with taproom) that opened in 2017. It's located in St. Augustine ^*, Florida, USA, a few blocks southeast of the Bridge of Lions, a 100-year-old drawbridge that connects Anastasia Island to downtown St. Augustine.

We visited on 1 July 2021. Here are two draught beers we ordered (and enjoyed) in the brewery's taproom.

Left to right:

• Oh-8-Oh
  5.7% ABV (alcohol-by-volume)
  "Mildly bitter and balanced between malt and hop flavors, this pale ale features Sultana and Sabro Cryo hops."
  ---> Me: Yep. More like a classic pale ale's bitter and earthy than a latter day's fruity or cat-stinky. Had two.


• Empirical
  American IPA
  6.6 % ABV
  "Old skool American IPA with a solid malt backbone and a heavy hop of Amarillo, Simcoe, and Centennial hops."
  ---> Me: Yep. Bonus points for beauty.

Old Coast Ales is a production brewery: meaning that it does not have a kitchen as would a brewpub. But, 'not to worry.' Innately connected to the brewery is a taco eatery that was busy when we visited. After purchasing some fare (which we ate while pairing drinking our beers in the brewery), we understood why.

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Hop geeky

Hops —the female (and non-seed bearing) flowers of herb bines— are used by brewsters in beer:

• for their herbal/spicy/fruity flavors and aromas
• to add drying bitterness as a counterbalance to malt sweetness
• to lesser extents as beer-foam enhancers, beer shelf-life stabilizers, and anti-microbial agents.

There are many varieties of hops grown (such as Amarillo and Sultana, above), propagated for their flavor, aroma, bittering potential, farming yield, and resistance to agricultural disease.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Beer-Mobile? Ale, yeah!

Is it on the wrong side or the right side of the tracks? Either way, it's a beer-mobile, so...ale, yeah!

As seen in Decatur (Oakhurst), Georgia, USA.


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Independent Beer Run Day

Today, the [U.S.] Brewers Association encourages you to buy local beer. That's something I do regularly, but with these privisos, in this order:

• 1) Good beer first (beer whose flavor I like and which I respect, that is, well-made and/or created with human-first principles).
• 2) If the above is satisified, then from a brewery that is local to me (community, 50-mile radius, state, region, nation, in that order).
• 3) From a small and/or independent brewery...again, with human-first principles.
• 4) From a local and small and/or independent purveyor.
• 5) Bonus points for cool vibe and/or lack of pretension.
• 6) Cask-ale prepared well and served well, and created without extraneous cocoa-puffs and dingleberries. This is last on my list because if it were first, I'd go thirsty. In the U.S., non-polluted cask ale is in the red zone for extinction.

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Pic(k) of the Week: It is so ordered.

On this day (26 June) in 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that the U.S. Constitution grants same-sex couples the right to marry and that, under the Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law, no state or jurisdiction can abridge that right.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (now retired) wrote the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges.

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.

— Supreme Court.gov (pdf)

Image: Pride flag proudly flying over a pub, in Decatur (Beacon Hill), Georgia, USA, on 26 June 2021.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Condor extinct

Commerce bereft, 

 Laved in vernal set, 

The Condor extinct.

I've driven by this former automotive repair shop many times; on this day, the sunset light was fantastic. So, I tried my hand at capturing some urban decay or, if you will, some shuttered small-business Americana...with a bit of doggerel tossed in.

Decatur (Oakhurst), Georgia, USA. 14 June 2021.

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