Over the holiday weekend, I had a bunch of Festina Pêche.  I believe I’ve written about that before.  So to keep it short (and me somewhat dry), I’ll just say that it was a perfect BBQ beer.  It’s refreshing, easy drinking, and well worth a try, even if you’re not into beer because it doesn’t taste like any beer you’ve ever had (unless you’re like me and are really into beer).

Last night I decided to crack open my bottle of Rock Art Jasmine Pale Ale.  It sounded like a nice light beer, perfect for a hot day.  I was right.  It’s basically an amber ale brewed with jasmine.  It’s got a nice light flavor with a little floweriness (if that’s even a word) and a nice herbal quality.  It’s light, it’s not too sweet, but it hit the spot.  I give it two thumbs up.  Later on, I decided to try Dark and Stormy Night from Picaroons, the 5th beer from my trip to New Brunswick.  The label calls it a dark wheat ale and describes it as a German dunkel crossed with an English ale, and that’s exactly what it was.  It’s got a nice roasted quality with a nice wheaty/yeasty breadiness.  There’s a hint of caramel as well.  I was going to add it to Beer Advocate because it wasn’t there last I checked, but someone beat me to it.  I reviewed it anyway.  It was added as a dunkelweizen, though I was going to add it as an English brown ale because, to me, that’s what it tasted like (though the wheat and yeast obviously were what threw me off).

Tonight I started with Aprihop, which I have talked about here, but is one of my favorite summer beers (even though Dogfish Head releases it in the spring for some reason).  It’s a nice fruity IPA with the apricots balancing off the hops bitterness.  It’s very refreshing, even though it’s 7% ABV.  With dinner, I had 1809 from Weihenstephaner, a Berliner Weissbier.  It was absolutely awesome, though the first pour was a bit foamy.  It pours a nice pale grassy yellow with a lot of effervescent bubbles.  If I didn’t smell it, I would’ve called it a pilsener.  However, I did smell it and it has a lot of sour notes to it.  Basically, it’s a sour wheat beer, though quite refreshing and not quite as sour as a lambic.  It’s very light and very drinkable, and absolutely perfect for a night like tonight with temps in the upper 80’s.

I need to get out of this room, it’s really hot in here (I should invest in another air conditioner for my home office).

Now, why is $4 (and rising) gas a good thing?  Because it forces people and the government (federal, state, and local) to rethink things.  Public transit ridership has increased greatly across the country.  People are moving closer to work.  More people are telecommuting when possible.  All this adds up to less pollution, less congestion on the roads, and less suburban sprawl.

With all of this, there is good reason for people to petition their local and state governments to increase public transportation options and increase the money they spend on public transportation.  Local governments should enforce good urban design and help create walkable neighborhoods.  There is no reason that the United States should not have a quality extensive, inexpensive railway network across the country connecting all the major cities.  People in Europe travel almost exclusively by train, public transportation, walking, or bicycles.  It all depends on how far they’re going.  There is no reason people in the United State shouldn’t be doing just that.  However, we do not have an extensive railway network.  We do not have the extensive public transportation options of Europe.  Aside from our major cities and some smaller village centers, we do not have walkable neighborhoods.  The 50’s and 60’s and the new “American Dream” of white pickett fences, expansive lawns, and large houses in the suburbs killed all of that.  We have taken cheap gas, something Europe has never seen, for granted.  We are now paying the price of the suburban dream.

Time has a great article called “10 Things You Can Like About $4 Gas”.  It’s worth a read.  Maybe I’ll attempt to ride the bus to work sometime this summer.  If it’s not as bad as I expect it to be, perhaps I’ll do it all the time.  In the meantime, I’ll continue to drive.  I have stopped coming home for lunch to save some gas.

Anyway, last night I had 3.  The first was Rock Art Whitetail Golden Ale.  It’s a nice light, crisp, and refreshing ale.  It has a nice sweet malty flavor with just enough hops for balance.  It’s crisp and dry and makes for a great summertime beer.  There’s a little fruitiness to it as well.  It’s a very easy drinking, yet nicely flavorful beer.

The second was Harpoon’s Weizenbock from their 100 Barrel series.  Susan and I split it with dinner.  It had a lot of banana flavor to it and was very bready.  It wasn’t my favorite weizenbock, that’s for sure.  I almost dumped part of mine, but I finished it.  I did not, however, help Susan finish her half of the bottle.  I just didn’t like it that much.

The third was Rock Art’s flagship beer, Ridge Runner.  It’s classified as an English Barleywine.  I thought it was just okay, but it definitely got better upon warming.  There were 3 in the mixed 12 pack I bought.  I left one in the fridge and I put the other one down to age for a bit and see what happens.  I imagine it will get a little better with age.

I started with Picaroons Man’s Best Friend.  It’s a porter, I imagine an American Porter considering the body and bigger flavor.  It’s got a nice roasted malt flavor with just enough smoke to give it another dimension, but not enough to call it a smoked porter.   The beer is hopped for perfect balance, but it’s all about the malts.  It’s probably one of the best porters I’ve had.

The second beer of the night was less impressive.  I had Rock Art American Red Ale.  It looks as though it’d be a great red ale, but it’s a bit light in flavor.  Everything else is spot on.  However, as it warmed, the flavor picked up quite a bit.  It’s very drinkable, but nothing special.  I have 2 more in the fridge, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy drinking them.

The next course was a champagne-poached pear, preserved lemon, and baby arugula salad with celery root chips and a green tea vinagarette.  It was served with Black & Blue.  The salad was really good, though, obviously, the lemons were super sour.  The root chips were awesome, as were the pears.  I’m not normally a Black & Blue fan, but the beer paired perfectly with the salad.

The third course was cucumber stuffed curried sticky rice balls golden beet carpaccio, and curled jicima.  This was paired with Chateau Jiahu, another beer I’m not overly crazy about, but was perfect with the appetizer.  The rice balls were awesome.  It’s a purple sticky rice, which I have only previously seen at Julian’s.  The only thing I wish is that the curry was a bit more predominant as I couldn’t taste it at all.

There was a palate cleansing intermezzo course.  For this, they gave us a ginger ice cream float made with 3 year old Pangaea with a ginger lace cookie.  It was really good, but we all wanted to actually try the aged Pangaea on its own, so they gave everyone a small glass of it.  I was impressed.  I wasn’t overly crazy about this beer fresh when I tried it at Nikki’s the night before, but it was awesome aged.

The entree came next.  We had a choice of brown sugar and soy marinated flank steak or seitan (a vegan steak) with pomegranate smashed carrots, herb dressed watercress, and meyer lemon coulis served with Immort Ale or pink peppercorn rubbed escolar with bruleed summer vegetables, butter braised frisee, and rhubarb Raison d’Etre reduction served with Palo Santo Marron.  I chose the steak and Susan got the escolar (which we later found out can cause some not so fun digestive issues).  They were both absolutely awesome and the pairings were spot on.

Finally, we had dessert.  There was also a choice for this course.  I had the vegan peach cheesecake with peanut butter drizzled over the top and raspberries served with World Wide Stout.  Susan got the quince, which sounded better and was served with Raison d’Extra.  My whole dessert was actually better, and while the pairing didn’t sound like it would work, it was perfect.

Brian, the bar manager at Julian’s, told us that they’ll be doing a beer dinner the last Sunday of every month.  July’s will be a Belgian beer dinner.  I haven’t made a reservation yet, but hopefully they’ll announce a menu soon and then I’ll make my reservation.  It should be good.

As I posted previously, I picked up a bunch of beer from Rock Art in Vermont.  I have since tried their Midnight Madness Smoked Porter and their IPA.  The Midnight Madness was awesome.  It was nicely smoked and a great all around porter.  The IPA, however, was pretty bland.  It was light in color, flavor, and body.  It didn’t have the hops flavors I’ve come to love in my IPA’s, but it wasn’t really an English-style IPA either.  I probably wouldn’t bother with this one again.

One beer I picked up in Vermont that I thought was really solid was Peak Organic’s Maple Oat Ale.  This one has a nice hint of maple and the smoothness of the oats.  It’s a really great amber ale that I will likely buy again and again (perhaps they’ll find their way down to RI soon).

I rarely give a beer a drain pour.  However, I tried the bomber of McNeill’s Summer IPA.  It was easily the worst IPA I have ever tried (and being an IPA fan, I’ve had a lot).  I drank a full glass, but poured the rest.  It was just an unbalanced mess of hops and malt that didn’t make for a drinkable beer.

Another recommendation from BeerRiot was Clipper City’s Loose Cannon from the Heavy Seas lineup.  It was good, but nothing special.  I’d consider it just an average IPA.

Another disappointment was Founders Devil Dancer.  I use the term “disappointment” lightly as the beer was good.  It just wasn’t what I expected.  They call it a “Triple IPA”.  That’s not a true style (not yet at least), but the beer tasted like a slightly hoppy barleywine.  It was good and definitely worth trying (and maybe I’ll buy it again), but I wanted a DIPA at the time.

I tried a different Victory beer (and I think I’m just about through with their whole lineup aside from the bigger bottles, like V-12 and V-Saison).  I had the Moonglow Weizenbock.  It had a nice banana and spice flavor to it, but it wasn’t overly complex.  I’ve had better weizenbocks, but this one is still a great weizenbock from a great American brewery.

Finally, the beers I brought back from Canada… I had Picaroons Blonde Ale and Picaroons Yippee IPA.  The Blonde Ale was simply fantastic.  It was a nice light ale.  It was very refreshing, but still had a lot of flavor.  The IPA wasn’t quite as good, but it was still a good English IPA.  It had this other flavor to it that I couldn’t figure out.  The only thing I can liken it to is a slight whisky flavor (perhaps it was aged in barrels).  Other than that other flavor, which did make it good, it was a very solid beer.  The label made it sound like they were playing around with the recipe with each new batch.  I’ll have to look over their Brewer’s Log to see if I can find it.  Picaroons is turning out to be a totally awesome brewery.  I can’t wait to try the others I bought.  I had to add the Blonde and the IPA to BeerAdvocate because they weren’t listed (new styles, perhaps?).

That ends my catching up.  I’ll post about the Dogfish Head dinner in a little bit.  Right now, I think I need some Mr. Lemon.

If you don’t have reservations and still want a great dining and beer experience, you must get over to Julian’s.  They currently have some great beers on tap, including Left Hand Imperial Stout, Ommegang Hennepin, and Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale (which is not part of the beer dinner).

The next day I skipped the first session to try to catch up on sleep.  The late nights coupled with a bed that made prison cots look enticing were getting to me.  The thing about New Brunswick is that it’s in the Atlantic timezone, which is an hour later than Eastern Time, but Fredericton is north of the Eastern timezone.  This made for long days (sunrise around 5:30 and sunset around 10), which also aided in the sleep deprivation (the curtains in the room were not very helpful).  The good news about skipping was that I didn’t miss anything I was interested in (which was decided before I decided to sleep in) and I got to sleep an extra hour.  The last session I attended was about Facebook.  I was going to go to another session on hiring/training/managing students, but I figured I’ve gone to enough of those.  So I tried something different.  It was worth it.  I learned a bit about what students think of Facebook versus “real world” communication (it seems that real world communication is still more important).

Following the session, there was a Program Committee BoF, which I attended and volunteered to help out next year.  I like where ResNet is going and want to do whatever I can to help it continue and sustain itself.  Following that I had lunch and an Information Resources Committee meeting, during which we discussed where things are going with the ResNet websites and communication tools.  Following that, I went to the vendor fair, got some information and picked up some documentation from the doc fair.  After that was a break and then the closing reception and raffles and then we headed downtown for our lobster dinner and kitchen party, which was followed by more time at the Rogue (I tried Picaroons Dooryard Ale and Pump House Fire Chief Red Ale, which was good, though I thought it tasted more like a Brown Ale, and Innis and Gunn, an oak aged English Pale Ale) and a long walk up the hill to pack, sleep, and head home the next day.

The trip home was smooth (had a Creemore Springs Premium Lager in Toronto), except that my checked suitcase was left in Canada because the plane was too heavy.  Next time I fly to Canada, it will be out of Boston because I don’t want to deal with the crappity 18 seat plane and the possibility of my bag not coming with me.  I just got word that my bag has arrived in RI and should be delivered to me sometime after 2:00.

I have pictures of it on my gallery or at Flickr.

2) Retire or reduce the appearance of many “old” songs - The great irony of this suggestion is that the old songs are what made Phish, but the reality is that at the time, the old songs is part of the reason the band felt stale. YEM, for all Trey’s longing, has been played at 39% of Phish shows for a total of 472 times. That’s not surprising but it’s also a reason to remove it a bit from the rotation, even an entire tour. Doing so would free up plenty of room for the aforementioned new album, as well as underplayed songs including those from Undermind which never got a chance to grow in the live setting, if they were even played at all.

This idea, in my opinion is the best.  I have been to only 9 shows, randomly picked, between 1997 and 2004.  During those 9 shows, I head a couple of songs played multiple times, most specifically “Tweezer” and “Tweezer Reprise” at 5 times each.  While YEM might be their most overplayed, I actually never heard it.  The one song off Undermind I wish they played was the title track, “Undermind.”  Trey did play it with one of his solo bands, but never as Phish.  They should play the new songs a lot, but also play the lesser played older songs.  Make YEM the next “Destiny Unbound” or “Fluffhead.”

4) Shorter Tours - Nobody wants to put anyone’s health in jeopardy and if three lengthy tours a year does that, then cut it out. Done and done. There’s no reason the group cannot jump out on the road for less than a month, play a bunch of shows, and then go home for a few months before heading back out again. The days of 100 shows a year are long, long gone and the band should plan accordingly. There is no reason to believe they can’t work back up to longer tours. Hell, bands with members way, way older go on longer tours and play more dates than Phish. But at the outset, take your time and feel things out. Get comfortable, and if it’s working, hit the road for three or six months.

5) Multi-night runs - I can only imagine what a toll it takes on ones psyche to be constantly on the move. Musician after musician has cited the constant touring and associated lifestyle as being the main culprit for depression, drug use or whatever. … Ignoring the obvious environment benefits of this strategy, it would go a long way to reducing the strain on both band and crew.

These next two should be put together in my opinion.  Shorter tours concentrating on a certain section of the country to avoid long travel and the wear and tear of travel and multi-night runs at certain locations on each of those tours.  To go along with this, they should be playing venues they never played or thought of playing before.  How many times have they skipped Providence because they went to Hartford, Worcester, or Boston instead (though I would do Boston and Providence, but I’d skip Hartford and Worcester to play Providence)?  They could do a short fall tour in the Northeast with 12 dates, a spring tour out west for another 12 dates, and maybe a longer summer tour.  They should skip their own festivals because those are quite draining, but perhaps play two or three of the other multi-band festivals without headlining them to keep sets shorter.  That will allow them the ability to join other bands on stage.  One of the things they do best is collaborate.

6) Play a few acoustic shows - People have been knocking Phish for years for their “poor” lyrics and songs but the truth is that at any show you go to, the crowd is singing every word. No one is accusing Tom Marshall of being Bob Dylan, but everyone knows every word to “Sample in a Jar.” … If nothing else, it would be interesting and exciting and even if it doesn’t work, it’s something new.

I like this idea, but I think rather than an acoustic show, do an acoustic set at each show.  I don’t think an entire show all acoustic would work for them, but a single set would be easily feasible.  It brings something new to the table.

7) Play one set and have an opening act - Perhaps a controversial idea, at least to those who want the most Phish they can get on any single night, playing one set is still something to consider, at least for a little while. To begin with, the list of bands that would want to open for Phish would obviously be quite long and having a hungry band perform right before you, out to prove to all the Phish fans that they are the real deal, would have to light a fire under Phish. With respect to playing one set, now you send Phish out there with 90 minutes to play, straight through, and you could get a very intense set of music that would cut down on the fat (”Albuquerque” anyone?) and focus in on the songs you really want to hear.

I’m on the fence with this one.  On one hand, it would be good for the band and allow them to concentrate only on certain songs and not have to worry about filling two sets.  On the other hand, I like two sets of music.  It makes each show a musical journey.  The biggest benefit of this idea is what it will do for the opening bands.  Phish has always been all about bringing music to the forefront and helping out smaller bands.  This will do just that.  While I would be willing to bet that the majority of each shows attendees skip the opener to drink/smoke/whatever in the lots, a good number will check it out and possibly discover a new band to follow.  The Phish set also doesn’t have to be limited to 90 minutes.  It could be a two hour set (I’ve seen this done), or at least work up to a two hour set.  This will also allow for some collaboration between Phish and their opener.  Dave Matthews has always had an opening act for as long as I’ve known.  Some were good, others were bad, but it works for them (don’t flame me for bringing Dave into an article about Phish).

Anyway, the article is worth a read.  They’re all ideas the band should consider.  They actually have done some of them, such as shorter tours and recording an album of new songs before going on tour (see Round Room or Undermind, recorded before the return from hiatus and before the final tour, respectively).

I do have one idea to add… ignore the side projects until Phish has been refined enough to sustain itself again.

Regardless of what happens, I do not want a Phish reunion to be a let down.  It’s not worth coming back if they’re not going to make a real effort.

Update: George posted a great link in the comments.  Page put a letter up on Phish.com.  It’s definitely worth a read.  The end of it has the best suggestion for the fans… don’t read too much into rumors.