If you don't drink Miller Lite then you're a loser!

If your like me then you try to tune out during radio and TV commercials.  I can't stand marketing jingles, slogans, and pitches.  I won't listen.  I would like to think i have everything I need and if i did need to go get something i would research it first.  Not all purchases mind you, but at least the big ones.  That's why i was shocked wen the other day i saw a Miller Lite commercial on TV.  I knew from my childhood that beer commercials were almost always hilarious but for the last 5 years or so I've cut way down on TV watching and never pay attention to mass advertisements.  That being said you should take a look at some of the commercials below.

 

 So if you don't drink Miller Lite then you carry a purse like a girl?  Hmmmm that's odd.  But that's not all!  The commercial implies that if you DO care about taste then obviously you would be drinking Miller Lite.  How have i never made the connection between taste and Miller Lite.  I feel so dumb i might burn my kegerator and start drinking Merlot.  For those who really know beer there is a bit at the end that really makes me laugh.  "Triple hopped" is what they used to describe the beer.  They did this knowing that most beer drinkers know nothing about beer.  Most beers are triple hopped.  In fact almost all beers are above the whopping 11 IBUs that you'll find in Miller Lite.  I'm thinking "Triple Hopped" actually means "We added 3 hops."  But you know what i'll let you all decide.  Take this "Triple hopped" Miller Lite and taste it against.....oh i don't know......Stone Ruination!!!  Now tell me which is "Triple Hopped."  Fight the man!

Miller plays on male insecurities in order to get people to drink their beer.  The people who don't drink Miller Lite in every commercial are either less manly, goofy, geeky,..etc...etc.


For those who haven't seen it.  "Beer Wars" is a documentary about the beer industry.  If your passionate about beer you need to see this movie.  It shows the read "David vs. Goliath" nature of the beer industry.  They do a taste test with normal bar hoppers who have their preferred lite beer brand.  Every person in the movie picked the wrong beer.  The big 3 (Bud/Miller/Coors) all taste identical.  The only reason people are loyal to one instead of the other is marketing.  Do what everyone else is doing.  Drink Miller Lite.  If you don't drink Miller Lite you'll be.........AHHHHHHHHH......different!!!  Stand your ground.  Be you.  Drink good beer!


http://beerwarsmovie.com/

Night of the Living Dead (Original) and Anchor Steam

This week I decided to make a special pairing.  Since I started this blog I knew I would have to review the original 1968 version of Night of the Living Dead.  I was pretty nervous about trying to review a film that been reviewed so much by people much more experienced and better trained than myself.  This is the type of film that gets reviewed in classic cinema courses.  On the other hand to have a zombie blog and not review this movie would be an insult to the very genre.  So I spent the last two weeks trying to figure out what beer should be paired with the grandfather of all zombie movies.  I thought Yuengling would be the most appropriate since it is the oldest brewery in the US.  But, Night of the Living Dead isn’t the oldest zombie movie.  White Zombie, starring horror icon Bela Lugosi, came out in 1943 and there were several others after that.  Night wasn’t the first, but it was the one that changed everything.  I read a review a while back that said “it was the film that changed horror from family friendly to disturbing and nihilistic”.  I still haven’t seen a lot of pre 1970 horror so I’m not sure about how true that is but I’m willing to bet it’s true enough.  This information, while interesting, still didn’t get me any closer to finding a beer to pare with the movie….then it dawned on me!  Anchor Brewing Company’s Steam beer.  It’s not the oldest but it was the unique product of American innovation in craft beer.  A beer that changed beer.

Steam beer was originally a product of inadequate refrigeration equipment in breweries in of West.  Without refrigeration in the California heat the brewing process was increasingly difficult.  The result was a beer fermented with lager yeast but at warmer ale like temperatures.  Steam beer also known as California Common was originally considered cheap low quality beer.  During the 80’s anchor revived the style making it even better and more unique.  Still only a handful of these beers are brewed around the country.  While the style itself didn’t take over the way Pilsner did it still stood for something special.  It was creation of something never tasted.  The 80’s felt the rise of creative brews and a revival of old styles not tasted in years.  Leading the way in the west was Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing Company.

So I start the movie and the familiar cemetery scene flashes before me.  There’s something comforting and classy about a black and white film for me.  My parents were just born in the 60’s so I’m a bit detached to be making statements about 60’s culture.  But that doesn’t stop me from having this flowery vision of post Leave It To Beaver America.  That flowery vision is soon crushed by the reality of this film.  Barbra is paying her respects as her brother Johnny teases her about ghouls (zombies) in the quickest foreshadowing I’ve ever seen.  Within minutes Johnny meets his demise from the first Zombie of the movie.  Zombies are one for one at this point.  Go zombies.  Barbara gets to the car but without the keys she is only able to coast down the road a bit.  She ends up at a small farm house where she meets Ben.  Ben is a (gasp) African American man who’s taking charge boarding up windows and dispatching the undead in the area.

Now to the beer.  It’s a perfectly clear light amber.  Somewhere between a deep yellow and copper color.  It’s just over moderately carbonated with a nice mousy head.  The aroma is unmistakably lager like.  Big notes of sulfur take are apparent with each sniff.  This is lager yeast or so help me!  I hate to say this but the first smell reminds me of Heineken.  Now I haven’t had this beer in a long time and the reacquaintance leaves me feeling the fuzzy nostalgia normally associated with pleasant boyhood memories.  But instead of ball games or picnics I’m dreaming of the clean lager flavor backed by layers of rich malt.  With a big first gulp I’m back there.  The flavor splashes across my tongue with a softness that I usually don’t find in the beers I drink.  It’s malt driven with large bubbles of carbon dioxide that gently irritate my tongue.  Hoppiness is very low with the smooth grainy flavor of the malt leading the way.  The fruitiness in the Ale portion of this beer really comes out in the second pint.

After a few run ins with the shambling dead five people emerge from the basement.  Now things start getting good!  There’s Harry Cooper your prototypical irrational and bossy white male with tag along subservient wife (typical of the times I hear) and “seen and not heard” daughter Karen.  The daughter has actually been bitten and is horribly sick in the basement.  Things don’t look good for Karen.  Tom’s uncle owns the farmhouse that they’re all hiding out in.  He wouldn’t think of going spending the end of the world without his girlfriend Judy.  So he invited her own over for the festivities.  Here’s where the really juicy conflict arises.  It’s selfish survivalist on the surface with this underlying tone of….yep, you guessed it.  Good old fashioned racism.  Being the bleeding heart liberal I am I spend the next hour or so waiting for Harry Coopers violent demise.  And no I don’t wish that all people that don’t hold my personal beliefs be eaten alive by hordes of undead corpses.  But I don’t mind cheering when they take a nibble out of them in a horror film.

There is some really racy stuff in this movie!  I.E. A black man slapping around a hysterical white woman in 1968!  Pennsylvania is a swing state but I still wouldn’t feel safe.  After an hour of Harry Cooper being uncooperative and combative Ben finally solves the problem with a bullet to the gut.  Shocking.  As frustrated as I was with Harry Cooper’s attitude I was much more upset with something else.  Barbara.  The useless hysterical woman runs, screams, and has mini mental breakdown from the first zombie to her demise at the end.  Never before I have I seen a main character be so useless.  The Denzel Washington from The Bone Collector would be able to do more than this girl did, and he was a quadriplegic in that movie.

The movie was excellent.  I never feel like watching a black and white movie when I have the option to watch a movie with today’s budget and production standards.  This movie is different.  This movie is filled with groundbreaking concepts and well shot action scenes.  The gore and the zombies, while subpar by today’s standards, still hit a chord deep down on some level.  This movie is a special experience that everyone should be a part of at some point.  Not just zombie fans or horror fans, but any movie fan would enjoy this movie.  A couple of beers make it even better.

While this beer is really good it’s not a style that I drink a lot of.  That being said it’s better than any cheep fizzy lager you could find.  For anybody out there that drinks Bud or Miller try this beer.  It would make a good summer beer for those days when you need something light but still flavorful.  It’s only a low 4.9% and so in my opinion that makes it a session beer.

The Beer:

Aroma – 6/10

Appearance – 4/5

Taste – 7/10

Palate – 4/5

   Overall – 15/20

Total = 36/50

The Movie:

Production – 4/5

Plot – 5/5

Gore – 3/5

Zombies – 5/5

  Overall – 4/5

Tasting Beer

As I explored the depths to which I wanted to take this blog I realized that I had left out some key elements for readers.  For those who pick up this blog for the zombie movies and are a bit lost in the beer talk I’ve decided to back brief with some links.  If you walk into a beer store and see the isles filled with hundreds of types of beer you can get overwhelmed.  It’s good to get your bearing before you set off wandering the beer world.  The first link is for the Beer Judge Certification Guidelines Official Style Guidelines.  This is the official publication for all beer classes and specifications.  If you want to know how dark a Dunkelweizen is supposed to be or the IBUs in a Scottish Export just look in the good book.  It also gives a list of example beers so that you can drink the very flavors they are talking about.  At times it can be a little dry.  I mean, you are reading 51 pages of beer science.  It’s a good idea to review the guidelines and descriptions of the beer your sampling before you taste it.  This way you know what you’re looking for with each sip.

http://www.bjcp.org/docs/2008_Guidelines.pdf

Now while that link will give you all the data you need and what to expect you should also check out the book Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher.  Tasting Beer is a beast of a book with flavor charts and descriptions of each type of malt and variety of hop.  It describes the difference between Cascade and Fuggle hops, Crystal and Munich malt, Belgian and English yeasts.  It was the single best resource I’ve come across for tasting beer.  For those who think that tasting beer is geeky and unnecessary I have a few words for you.  You can’t fully appreciate beer without knowing what you’re drinking.  When most people first start drinking beer they could sit in front of a full flight of 8 samples and not be able to tell much of a difference between most of them.  Sure someone would know a stout and an IPA but they would miss the finer things.  The more you know and the more experienced of a taster you are the more things you will be able to pick out of a beer.  Soon an English Pale Ale and American Pale Ale will seem as different and unique as steak and chicken.

I want to warn those that are reading my blog that I don’t normally drink smaller beers.  I’m addicted to flavor.  I drink Barleywines, Imperial Stouts, Double IPA’s, and such.  If you’re not really into beer it’s going to be really hard to jump right in.  These beers are definitely an acquired taste.  In my first year drinking beer hoppy beers were too bitter and turned my stomach.  Even the most mild IPA would make me green (pun intended).  Almost everybody has a gateway beer.  For me Sierra Nevada opened my world up to what awesome American hop goodness can do.  The key is not to give up.  Don’t tell yourself that you don’t like Hoppy beer.  You might and you just don’t realize it.

Undead and Victory IPA

Tonight’s zombie movie is a non conventional one.  There are several zombie movies that I like despite the fact they don’t adhere to the Zombie Rules.  I give these movies a pass on their little indiscretions because not every movie can be perfect and I appreciate the writer’s creativity.  This movie starts in a small town in New Zealand.  The main character, Rene, just won some sort of local beauty pageant over a 9 month pregnant girl (really?).  She’s on her way out of the town when…..boom, METEORS.  Not just your run of the mill Chicken Little meteors.  No these bad boys cause, you guessed it, ZOMBIES!!!!

Seven minutes fifty three seconds into the movie and heads are being knocked off of bodies and blood is spraying everywhere.  The zombies are pretty cool too.  It’s not just the normal grey face paint with black eyes and a couple drips of fake blood.  These zombies are well done with sunken eyes and realistic gore.  Some of the zombies have this shake that they do presumably because of the infection, it’s pretty awesome.

The particular beer I picked wasn’t the well thought out and calculated choice it normally is.  This time it was what I had left in my fridge, a six pack of Avery IPA.  I’ve had some Avery beers before.  They are another notch in the Colorado “Beer Belt” as I call it.  I love the different series that they do, The Holy Trinity of Ales, The Dictators Series, and Demons of Ale.  With limited distribution in Alaska I make sure to try every one that surfaces.  This means I’ve had The Czar, The Reverend, Hog Heaven, and Hog Heaven Dry Hopped.  All were amazing beers with the exception of the Reverend which I found flat and cloyingly sweet.  The label claimed to be the beer for “Hop Freaks” so I knew it was for me.

This bad boy is 6.5% abv and 69 IBUs.  Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) Guidelines put Avery IPA as a good example of the style.  They state that an American IPA should be between 5.5-7.5% abv and 40-70 IBUs.  This beer teeters on the edge in IBUs and that’s a good thing.  I pop the cap with a rampant anticipation.  Even though I’m feeling slightly under the weather I still couldn’t help myself from pouring just one of these beauties.  I poured into my Sam Adams’ glass (the jury is still out on whether or not these make a big difference in beer taste) and held it to the light.  It’s a hazy light yellow color with lots of carbonation bubbles charging up to the head.  There isn’t a huge head, I’ll seldom admit this, but it might have been the fault of the pourer.  Without being to hard in myself I to the textbook swirl and sniff.  I even cup my hand over my nose to ensure that I capture every volatile aroma.  BOOM!  It’s slap you in the face hoppy.  It’s the big citrus and not so much the orange and tangerine of some IPAs but more of a grapefruit and pineapple aroma.

The Portsmouth Brewery (AMAZING) in Portsmouth, NH makes a similar IPA called the 5 C’s IPA.  The C’s being Chinook, Centennial, Cascade, Columbus, and Crystal.  That piece of trivia won me a free beer at the brewery.  Avery’s IPA uses all those hops except the Crystal which I haven’t seen used much as of late.  American Hops are inspiring.  They are high octane, super high alpha acid hops that are big in the fruity citrus flavors, rather than the more spicy (German/English), or flowery (Czech).  Avery uses a ton of them in their IPA.  Sip after sip this beer amazes me.  It has a big mouth feel, tons of hops and just enough malt to let you know it’s there.  It drips sticky hop resins with every taste.  The bitterness kicks at my tongue and lingers for minutes.  Where most beers tastes lessens with each sip this bastard keeps coming.  It’s the Michel Myers of beers (not the comedian).

A friend of mine told me that most zombie movies aren’t that good but they all have a couple of good scenes.  This being said the movie is a series of really awesome scenes.  A zombie punching through an old woman’s head, a guy with a triple shotgun blows a zombie in half, zombie heads fly as a woman attacks them with a broom with a saw blade attached, a van spatters zombies and sprays blood all over the windshield.  The list goes on.  My favorite scene was when Rene splits a zombie in half when she smashes it with The Club.  It’s not the first movie where The Club is used to kill a zombie (Dead Meat) and hopefully it’s not the last.  I didn’t want to ruin it with reality but…what woman can split a person in half with The Club?  Even if it was a sharper heavier object, like an ax or a sword, it would still take considerable strength to split a person in half.  And she did it vertically!  Don’t get me wrong, it was awesome.

Marion is the former owner of Marion’s World of Weapons.  He’s a calm and creepy loner who survived an attack by zombie fish.  His weapon of choice is three shotguns that are strung together using a couple of rods.  It’s original and fresh in a way that few zombies are.  He uses spurs to flip into the ceiling and while upside down shoot zombies. 

T
he whole movie was shot with this grayish X-Files like feel to it.  It’s a real movie done using real equipment.  While this seems like it should be standard I would say in 7/8 of the zombie movies I own it’s NOT!  This movie isn’t all roses and cream pie though.  What shows up to help curb the zombie problem….Aliens.  This is where I swear at my TV for ruining what would have been easily a top movie in my collection.  No instead it slipped a dozen spots at least to more realistic zombie movies.  Yes I said it “More Realistic”.  Aliens are almost as ridicules as Vampires, which are so stupid.  Anybody who dresses up with fake teeth and watches Twilight hoping that they can be recruited by some high school vampire gang should probably take a chance to reassess their lives.  Go for a hike and think about unplugging your X-box for a bit.

This combination of movie and beer was great.  The beer is very drinkable for an IPA and I could (and did) put down several of these while watching this movie.  And the movie was very respectable.  Put aside your differences and give the movie a break and I think you’ll really enjoy this one.

The Beer:

Aroma – 9/10

Appearance – 4/5

Taste – 9/10

Palate – 4/5

   Overall – 18/20

Total = 44/50

The Movie:

Production – 4/5

Plot – 4/5

Gore – 5/5

Zombies – 4/5

 Overall – 4/5

Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Stone Ruination IPA

I was forced to make a difficult decision this week.  I knew I wanted to review Dawn of the Dead but I wasn’t sure if it would be ok to so without reviewing Night of the Living Dead first.  I mean, who watches Return of the King without watching The Fellowship of the Ring, and the Two Towers first!  I’ll tell you who…..this guy!  I’m the guy who can’t wait till Christmas to open presents, the one that cuts himself a piece of Lemon Morang pie just before Thanksgiving dinner, and I’m also the guy who reviews Dawn of the Dead before he reviews Night!

That decision being made I still needed a beer.  What beer to you pick for this movie.  You can’t just pull any bottle out of the cooler.  That would be insulting.  Then it hit me!  Ruination.  It makes perfect sense.  Read the back of the bottle.  It’s hilarious!  The beer claims it has a ruinous effect on the pallet and will make everything you eat and drink afterwards seem bland and dull.  What a pair for the zombie movie that sets the bar for which all other zombie movies are measured.  I have spent the last few years watching zombie movies and ending with the same pit of my stomach feeling.  The “well that was okay but it wasn’t as good as Dawn of the Dead” feeling.  Ruination will leave you feeling the same way about every IPA you have after it.

Rotten Tomatoes rates Dawn of the Dead at 94%.  For it’s time the movie was absolutely groundbreaking.  Even today’s movies with their enormous budgets and over the top CGI can’t hold a candle to the original.  The movie begins where Night left off.  The world is a few weeks into the zombie phenomenon and still searching for answers.  The movie opens up with one of my favorite scenes.  It’s the set of a talk show where an interview is being conducted.  Chaos is taking over already as people abandon their jobs and run.  The social satire is evident right from the start.  The opening scene addresses moral vs. logical decisions in dealing with the undead as well as issue of corporations placing money above the lives of people.  All this before I can even open my beer.

I flip the cap off the 22 oz bomber and high pour a third of the bottle into my big snifter.  I have a beautiful gold colored ale cloudy with hop and yeast sediment, bubbling under two fingers of foamy white head.  I raise the glass and bury my nose deep into it.  AMAZING!  This is the reason god gave us noses.  Big citrus swirls of orange, tangerine, and pine waft up to my nose.  Honestly as excited and amazed as I am every time I take my first sniff of this beef I’m equally filled with sadness and disappointment.  Sad because I know that that sniff, only seconds long, will be the most sensitive and fullest smell I will get.  My sense of smell will become desensitized and each sniff will sense less and less of the piney perfume.  I have an inability to just sit and enjoy that smell for all that it is since I know it will eventually go away.  The same is true to a lesser degree with my sense of taste.

Knowing that much of taste is directly related to my sense of smell I rush into my first sip.  It’s slightly syrupy with a perfect full mouth feel.  The mixture of my two favorite hops (Cascade and Centennial) explode like a resiny citrus bomb.  The IBU’s for this beer are well over 100.  The bitterness slams at my tongue with grapefruit and pine.  The bottle described it as I never can a “Liquid poem to the glory of the hop!"  The beer is fresh tasting and green with hops but enough malt background pushes through  with a grainy huskiness that lets you know it’s beer and not hop tea.  It’s bite but not astringent.  It’s hot but not overwhelming.  It’s amazing.

Now onto the swat scene.  Again the social aspect of this film pulses right off the screen.  A whole swat team (mostly white) descends upon a apartment project in order to secure the area and eliminate the dead that were there.  Of course there’s that one racist guy that just goes wild with bloodlust.  Within the first 15 minutes of the movie we see a zombie’s head explode with a shotgun blast.  It’s awesome.  Tom Savini’s special effects work shines in this film.  The exploding head being my favorite zombie kill.  Ken Foree “Peter” ends up killing our racist Swat team friend and thus ending his head exploding rampage.  I can’t help but think that this movie has everything.  Zombies, exploding heads, and one legged Spanish priests.

The movie progresses as two of the swat team members, a news traffic reporter, and his girlfriend all climb into the news station helicopter and end up at…..the mall.  Here they secure the mall and take out all the zombies inside.  It’s pretty creative the way they hotwire the big trucks to block off the doors of the mall.  Roger (the not black swat team guy) gets bitten twice trying to hotwire the trucks.  I’m glazing over this part of the movie a bit.  And by a bit I mean a lot.  But if you were reading this hoping for a play by play then you’re dumb.  You need to watch this movie.  During the time in the mall the four of them fall right back into the mystifying effects of being a consumer.  They spend their days shopping and furnishing their room in the mall to look like an apartment.

This movie is heavy in the character development which makes it much richer than other zombie movies.  There are less main characters than a lot of other movies but when something happens to one of them you feel it much more.  The one thing that drives me a little crazy is the woman character.  Gaylen Ross’s character is a self proclaimed pre Sigourney Weaver strong woman character.  Which I guess means that instead of screaming and running you just stand there and look stupid with a shaky gaping mouth gasp.  I mean come on!  Even towards the end when she was supposed to have turned into a strong and more calloused woman she seems weak and kind of useless.  Maybe that’s the problem with trying to watch a movie made in 1978 in 2011.  It seems out of place.  I have no idea what women in the 70’s were like but if the Resident Evil series has taught me anything it’s that woman can be tough too.  It’s not so much a zombie movie as much as it’s a movie about the strength of women and the promotion of equal rights.  Break through that glass ceiling with karate not terrified gasps and slapping

Now let me move to the ending.  In the zombie apocalypse who is the real enemy?  Who are the most evil people on earth in the 1970’s.  I’ll tell you who….Bikers.   They see the helicopter on the roof of the mall and decide they want in.  So they blow some stuff up, move the trucks, and get into the mall.  In the process they let in every zombie in a five mile radius.  Things don’t go well for anybody.  Most of the bikers get eaten trying to steal stuff.  One gets killed trying to play a game that involves checking your blood pressure.  This is not a good reason to die!  Not even in the 70’s.  In the end it was greed that brought everything down.  Consumerism was painted as the ultimate evil.  But I did like that they exact cause of the zombies was never disclosed.  There were a few theories thrown around.  From those theories the most famous line from any zombie movie, or possibly any movie ever, was born.  “When there’s no more room in hell the dead will walk the Earth.”  Beautiful isn’t it.  Well I think that’s all I have for now on this movie.  This movie was like a mosaic.  It wasn’t one picture but rather dozens of small scenes all amazing in their own way that make this picture a work of art.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

The Beer:

Aroma – 10/10

Appearance – 4/5

Taste – 10/10

Palate – 5/5

   Overall – 19/20

Total = 48/50

The Movie:

Production – 5/5

Plot – 5/5

Gore – 5/5

Zombies – 5/5

 Overall – 5/5

Diary of the Dead and Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter

Tonight is going to be a double movie night as I need to stay up as late as I can to adjust to going on a night watch starting tomorrow.  The first movie of my marathon is going to be Diary of the Dead.  I know that the zombie aficionados out there might scoff at the way I skip right to one of the worst of the Romero movies.  For the unschooled zombie viewers "Romero" is George A. Romero the director the original, groundbreaking film Night of the Living Dead.  He then went on to create the iconic Dawn of the Dead and the lesser Day of the Dead.  More recently with the revival of the genre in 2005 he directed Land of the Dead (swing and a miss) and then Diary of the Dead.  Last year he released Survival of the Dead…not even worth mentioning.  Despite what many would consider a slew of terrible movies George still holds his head high as the father of the Zombie movie.  He is the inspiration for every zombie movie in the last 50 years so give him some credit.  Diary of the Dead came in the wake of the Blare Witch 1^st person craze.  The story follows a group of film students around as the zombie apocalypse begins.

I chose Flying Dog’s Gonzo Imperial Porter as the beer to pair with this movie.  It’s a powerhouse of a beer that is always in my fridge.  Strangely enough it’s the only really stand out beer that I’ve tried by Flying Dog.  Don’t get me wrong I give them a lot of credit for producing the wide range of styles that they do.  I just don’t think any of them are as knock me down awesome as Gonzo.  It’s worth buying a sampler to say you tried them but none will be the life changing beer that Gonzo is.  I’m serious!  This 9.2% abv with 82 IBU monster changed the way I drink beer.  I never really drank dark beer until I took my first sip of Gonzo.  It's the Fight Club of beers.

The first scene of Diary of the Dead was brilliant.  It was the raw footage of a news clip where some of the first dead people turn into zombies.  It's the perfect grey setting with very real zombies sprinkled with just a dash of racism.  An man kills his wife and teenage son before eventually killing himself.  As the reporter is telling the story the camera man notices one of the bodies starts moving.  The next thing you know paramedics are doing karate, lots of gunfire, and one face getting ripped off..  Well done George.  Now when I heard this was going to be a first person style movie my stomach turned.  Not another headache causing shaky screen mess!  Another movie where instead of an adequate budget and trained actors they will just shake the camara and run arround in the dark.  YES!!!!!  Luckily it was not.  Because the people shooting the film were film students they had professional cameras.  A breath of fresh air.  This movie was the first zombie film to be shot in this way and for that I tip my hat.  Now I only wish that the acting didn’t seem like it was done by disseased monkeys.  There were a lot of scenes that seemed forced an overacted.  I'm sorry the scene where the girl from Texas is chased through the woods is terrible.  The guy keeps filming instead of helping even though he's the only one there.  Then he yells "CUT!" to distract the zombie (cheap cheap cheap).  When the girl  clubs the zombie and knocks it out she turns to the camera fixes her hair and says "Don't mess with Texas."  Really?  Did we forget we're filming a real movie.  A movie that is going to be shown in movie theaters.  This scene made me so angry I thought about cashing in my Roth so i could buy a plane ticket, fly to California, meet this acress, and thrown salt in her eyes.   But alas i'm lazy.

WARNING SHE IS NOT A REAL ACTRESS.  SHE WILL RUIN THE MOVIE.

My favorite scene in this movie is when the students run into the zombie fighting mute Amish guy.  This bad ass carries around a little chalk board to communicate and throws cartoon style dynamite at the zombies.  How can you have a zombie movie in the country part of Pennsylvania without the Amish?  Personally I think that would be an idea for an entire movie.  Then again the Amish aren’t known for their knowledge of weapons or ability to defend themselves.

I poured the beer into my 12 oz snifter glass.  It’s shaped perfectly for angling the aroma to your nose.  And what an aroma it has.  If you ever find yourself sitting around wondering what Cascade hops smell like go ahead and open a bottle of Gonzo.  The aroma is incredibly hoppy.  More than most IPA’s I’ve had.  I'm suprised this beer isn't green.  But don’t think this is going to be a super bitter hop bomb.  It’s got malt packed on top of malt.  Thick beautiful black malt.  Clean bready malt.  You can almost chew this beer it’s so malty (the word malt was just used 4 times in 4 sentences to stress the maltieness) .  This beer is light on the bittering hops but high in flavor and aroma giving it a very unique taste.  As the beer warms in the glass it becomes more and more complex.  Each sip releases notes of chocolate and coffee with heavy roasted flavors.  When tasting the beer it’s important to swirl every few sips in order to oxygenate the beer and release those hop aromas.  The beer is perfectly balanced yet forceful and unique.  This beer is to Budweiser what Nirvana was to 80’s hair metal.

If the art on the bottle seems familiar to you....it should.  It's an illustration by Ralph Steadman!  He's the one that made Hunter S. Thompson's novels into wild and often offensive pictures.  The two were a pair that covered many stories together.  The owned of Flying Dog Brewery used to be a neighbor and was a good friend of Hunter S. Thompson.  This beer is a tribute to Hunter and in many ways is a piece of him.  It's wild, bold, and unique.  If i were to die and have a beer brewed in my tribute it would be this one.  Damn you Hunter.

This movie isn’t terrifying, it’s not overly gory, and it’s not insightful or groundbreaking.  It just IS?  It’s entertaining enough.  There's supposed to be this threat of social satire that focuses on the human rubberneckers.  It’s interesting.  People filming the horror instead of acting or living.  People now go to concerts and watch the entire thing through their cell phone screen.  We’re living behind lenses.  Slow down to check out car accidents and youtube horrific events and then forward them to our friends.  We need to record things and when it comes to violence or horror we need to see it.  At the same time there’s a limit.  There’s a point at which I have to believe people would spring into action during a crisis, or at least they would be so enthralled by the horror that they would be forced to live in it and not just watch it behind a camera.  That’s where this movie went too far.  I understand that if in every scene that a zombie attacked everyone put down their cameras the movie would be really short and wouldn't contain any zombie scenes.  But it still just makes things feel cheap.

I don’t want to end on the negative though.  The movie overall was enjoyable and the beer is fantastic.  I learned a lot from this movie.  When the zombie apocalypse happens (and it is inevitable) I won’t go to a hospital (Day of the Dead (remake), Planet Terror, Diary of the Dead) and I won’t go to Amish country (the Amish arn't fighters).  And most of all I won’t spend the entire time filming the end of days with a cam corder.

The Beer:

Aroma – 10/10

Appearance – 5/5

Taste – 9/10

Palate – 5/5

 Overall – 19/20

Total = 48/50

The Movie:

Production – 4/5

Plot – 4/5

Gore – 3/5

Zombies – 4/5

 Overall – 4/5