Just right

Thanks to my swim buddy Doug, I no longer drink just "lawnmower beers," golden and light, gulped like replenishing water.

Doug's swim persona is a cover: He's really a mad brewer bent on taking over the world. Short of that, he'll settle for bending Northern California taste buds to his will, and teaching a few philistines like me.

I now prefer porters and stouts, which long ago I described as tasting like motor oil. I'll drink IPAs, his favorite, but the piney flavor still stops me. Which, it turns out, is a big problem, because the piney flavor is from hops, the flower of the beer gods.

I'm trying. Doug's trying. It's a work in progress.

I know I've made progress when, for beers after a swim, I ordered Guinness and could not believe how weak it really was compared to the dark beers to which I've built a tasty tolerance.

Could I parse the components of a beer, and tell you the individual flavors that uphold its harmony?  Could I tell you whether this or that beer is, as they say in the business, "hoppy?" No, I could not. Like I said, work to be done.

This art (guoache and transparent watercolor on line-art-photocopied bristol board) for a story on mad brewers juggling multiple varieties within constraints of time, space and budget, reminds me of Doug.

Who, by the way, says "lawnmower beers" have their place. Such as, after mowing lawns.

Cheers!

Morning breath

(Or, my continuing love affair with Prismacolor™© pencils …)

Just a little early-week morsel, an illustration for a magazine story warning home brewers how to avoid making bad beers.

I yanked out my inner child on this one, remembering the textbook illustrations of our tongues and how each section specializes in tasting sweet or salty or savory or Cheetos™®.

I let the uvula way back there be the arbiter of taste.

'Tis another project which I drew with Prismacolor®© and brush and ink, photocopied onto stiff art paper and watercolored, the liquid color resisting the black toner.

The little call-outs were drawn and painted separately, reduced and copied on art paper, and painted, cut out and pasted on. Old school —ish.

Enjoy.

Getting yin yangy with it

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

— George Santayana

Sometimes both are said over beers.

— Shawn C Turner

All hopped up

Any day I get to     
turn a bud of brewing hops     
into a sentient being …

… boldly if resignedly     
infusing a new     
beer batch …

… sacrificing its     
essential oils for queen     
and country and     
quaffing connoisseur …

… that, let me tell you,   
is an excellent day.   

My Medici, Part IV: Is this the end?

Little-known fact: The tail of an evolving pink dog will eventually curl downward as it reaches the zenith
of evolutionary development. A wrap-around for a promotional coffee

Over several happy years, Greg Archer posed many promotional problems for me to help solve when he owned The Rest Stop, a Sacramento bicycle accessories store.

He still poses fun problems as owner of Archer Bicycle Repair.

In addition to  promotional postcards, a bicycling cap and racing jerseys, Archer dreamed up a bunch of ads and promotional possibilities. Here are some of the rest.

"Nothing compares with the simple pleasure of a bike ride," said John F. Kennedy, in the barely legible type along
the crest of the hill. Why did he say it? I don't know. It's not world peace or nuclear winter, but it works here.
For a mug that didn't get made.

"I've got an idea," Greg would say over the phone, and a new adventure would commence, usually starring the pink dog.

Greg was building the identity of the store he inherited when he bought it, and establish it as the go-to source for, as he said it, everything for bicyclists but the bike. It was serious business run unseriously; customers could count on staffers' time for answers or just some tangentially bike-related conversation.

The list of ideas exceeded Greg's ability to produce it. Coffee mugs and a water bottle hit the shelves next to the jerseys and cap.

Ads frequented the neighborhood publications.

A new fiery pink sign even hung above the store door.

But the official flags never flew. And the beers remain unbrewed. Pity.

Rest Stop Bohemian is my favorite … this is a spec sheet for Greg Archer, with internal notes.

Made into an embossing stamp (below), it validated The Rest Stop gift buck.
In what I'm sure is the worst Latin translation possible, it says, "My dog ate it."