Pic(k) of the Week: Outlier No. 19 Helms Deep Bierschnaps

Tippling a dram

From a barrel of collaboration. 

Warming a winter's night.

In the tasting room at Independent Distilling Company: Decatur, Georgia, USA. 16 December 2023.

Our Outlier No. 19 Helms Deep Bierschnaps is a collaboration with our friends at Three Taverns Brewery (Decatur, Georgia). We distilled their famous Helms Deep Imperial Stout, then aged it in a used Hellbender Bourbon barrel for four years. Enjoy rich aromas of heavily roasted malts on the nose that translate, on the palate, into rich cocoa, lush dark fruits, hints of cereal, vanilla, and coffee, and dense oak. One in our limited Outlier Series: only 95 bottles produced. 42.5% alcohol-by-volume.

This series of weekly photos (which began in 2009) begins anew next week for a new year. As the final Pic(k) of the Week for 2023, I thought it appropriate to post an image of a good fermentable. To all my readers, I wish you a safe, healthy, prosperous, and tasty 2024.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Stille Nacht

Happy Christmas to all,
and to all a good night.

Decatur Presbyterian Church
downtown Decatur, Georgia, USA.
22 December 2023.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Beneath Stone Mountain

Trees, deciduous and evergreen, stand on a northern bank of Venable Lake, 825 feet (251 meters) beneath the granitic summit of Stone Mountain. As seen from the Cherokee Trail, a five-mile walking trail that circumnavigates the base of the mountain, in DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 14 November 2023.

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About

1. Stone Mountain is a quartz-granite monadnock:

   an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain, typically by surviving erosion. The word 'monadnock' is a Native American term.

   — Wikipedia.




2. The transmission tower of WGTV can be seen at the summit.

   WGTV is a PBS (Public Broadcasting System) member television station licensed to Athens, Georgia, United States, a legacy of the station's early years as a service of the University of Georgia. Owned by the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission (technically under the Georgia Board of Regents, along with the University System of Georgia), it is the flagship station of the statewide Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) television network, serving the Atlanta metropolitan area from a transmitter atop Stone Mountain just east of Atlanta.

   — Wikipedia.



3. There are only a few natural lakes in the state of Georgia. Venable Lake, at Stone Mountain Park, is not one of them. Created by submerging a former quarry, it is named for the past owner of the quarry, a segregationist leader of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century. In fact, the summit at Stone Mountain was the site of the re-founding of the Ku Klux Klan,'commemorated' with a cross-burning, on Thanksgiving eve, 1915.

Notwithstanding its historical connection to human atrocities, the physical beauty of Stone Mountain —rising abruptly over exurban-Atlanta and home to sui generis flora— can be quite dramatic. As witnessed, above, on a crisp autumn morning.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Fallen

Fallen, 

The tree in gloom. 

Forsaken,
Its erstwhile matins.

Dense morning fog in a woodland.
Legacy Park: Decatur, Georgia, USA. 2 December 2023.

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Happy Samichlaus Day!

This image and post were originally uploaded to Flickr, in 2014.

Samichlaus —aka Santa Claus or, more 'properly, Saint Nicholas— is the Roman Catholic patron saint of brewers. His 'feast day' —St. Nicholas Day— is celebrated annually on 6 December.

Samichlaus is also the name of a potent doppelbock (dark lager) of 14% alcohol! Brauerei Schloss Eggenberg —a family-owned brewery founded in Austria in 1681— brews the beer once a year on St. Nicholas Day, ages it for nearly a year, and then releases it for sale.

Eggenberg also produces a special version of Samichlaus —Samichlaus Barrique, pictured above— which, in addition to a year's maturation, is aged five weeks in oak wine barrels. Those barrels come from the Anton Bauer Winery, also in Austria.

A happier St. Nicholas Day!

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Pic(k) of the Week: October(fest) beer discussions

Because a blog called "Yours for Good Fermentables" should contain images of such!

Beer discussions (Marvel vs. Munich?) at the S.U.D.S. Beer Festival, in Decatur, Georgia, USA. 28 October 2023.

S.U.D.S. (i.e, Simply Us Doing our Share): "an afternoon of curated craft beer tasting, live music, local food options, and more in beautiful Legacy Park, minutes away from downtown Decatur. 25+ curated craft breweries, hand-selected by the founders of Brick Store Pub; quality local eats; live music from local artists; plus a collectors S.U.D.S. souvenir tasting glass. S.U.D.S. will help support ten non-profits at Legacy Park; we are a locally supportive, community involved, full-service festival.

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