Author Archives: Bill

Pumpkin Ale Reviews for 2016

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Bill| Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2016 I am starting to run out of things to review, but the total is now _48_ varieties, wow!  The new stuff was pretty good this year for the most part.

 

Saint Louis Brewery Schlafly Pumpkin Ale


Brought this back from last year because it was a winner. Not as great as I remember it from last year, but still acceptable.

 

 

 

 

 

Nebraska Brewing Company Wick for Brains

 

Spicy with a citrus kick to it. Don’t let the can throw you off, this is good.

 

 

 

 

 

Flying Dog The Gourd Standard

 

Pumpkin IPA. I was a little skeptical picking this off the shelf, but if it to date is untried then it shall be tested. It is so-so, definitely a PINO. It smells like an IPA, and there’s no real hint that it is a “pumpkin” ale other than the label.

 

 

 

 

Kentucky Pumpkin Barrel Ale

Not as sweet as others but good. Nice fragrance, but taste as a pumpkin ale is a little lacking. But good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Samuel Adams 20 Pounds of Pumpkin

Musky ale, not bad but it is a PINO unfortunately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ballast Point Pumpkin Down

Scottish ale with pumpkin spices. Good spice ale, nice light and smooth brew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flying Dog The Fear Imperial Pumpkin Ale

 

Some spice scent but taste is of typical bitter ale. If I really try I can detect a cinnamon taste? Borderline PINO.

 

 

 

 

 

Heavy Seas Barrel-Aged The Great’er Pumpkin

Good spices, this is one of the few that “gets it” in this year’s batch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uinta Brewing Punk’n Pumpkin Ale

 

Nice tasting pumpkin ale, good spices and very flavorful.

 

 

 

 

 

South Street Twisted Gourd Imperial Chocolate Chai Pumpkin Ale

Thick brew with great pumpkin spices. I’m not sure I detect much “chocolate” or “chai”, just a dark ale version of a non-PINO.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tumwater Brewing/Fish Brewing Hard Cider Pumpkin Pie

 

This was a late entry, I spotted this in Aldi. Ciders can be hit or miss, some are PINOs, others seem like they are apple ciders with some nutmeg added. This one is kind of like the latter but is quite good, especially given the price of less than $1.25 a bottle.

 

 

 

 

 

Full 2013-2016 Pumpkin Ales Review Rankings, 48 Varieties Ordered by Bill’s Preference

Mckenzie’s Pumpkin Jack Hard Cider

Heavy Seas Barrel-Aged The Great’er Pumpkin

Cortland Beer Company Pumpkin Ale

Harpoon Unfiltered Pumpkin Ale

Shipyard Pumpkinhead

Tumwater Brewing/Fish Brewing Hard Cider Pumpkin Pie

Uinta Brewing Punk’n Pumpkin Ale

Alewerks Pumpkin Ale

South Street Twisted Gourd Imperial Chocolate Chai Pumpkin Ale

Saint Louis Brewery Schlafly Pumpkin Ale

Ballast Point Pumpkin Down

Nebraska Brewing Company Wick for Brains

Southampton Publick House Pumpkin Ale

Fordham Spiced Harvest Ale

RJ Rockers Gruntled Pumpkin Ale

Leinenliugels Harvest Patch Shandy

Kentucky Pumpkin Barrel Ale

Evolution Craft Jacques All Lantern

Ichabod Crandall

Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat

Sam Adams Harvest Pumpkin

Saranac Pumpkin Ale

Blue Moon Harvest Moon Pumpkin

Ithaca Beer Company Country Pumpkin

Traveler Beer Company Jacko Traveler Seasonal Shandy

Wolaver’s Pumpkin Ale

Starr Hill Boxcar Pumpkin Porter

New Holland Ichabod Ale

Red Hook Pumpkin Porter

Blue Point Pumpkin Ale

Ace Pumpkin Cider

Long Trail Pumpkin Ale

Devil’s Backbone Brewing Company Pumpkin Hunter

Sam Adams 20 Pounds of Pumpkin

Flying Dog Brewery The Fear Imperial Pumpkin Ale

Flying Dog Brewery Imperial Pumpkin Ale

Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale

Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale

Flying Dog Brewery The Gourd Standard

New Belgium Pumpkick

Anderson Valley Fall Hornin’ Pumpkin Ale

Buffalo Bill’s Brewery America’s Original Pumpkin Ale

Wood Chuck Hard Cider Pumpkin

Dogfish Head Punkin Ale

Southern Tier Imperial Pumpking Ale

Post Road Pumpkin Ale

Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin

Samuel Adams Pumpkin Batch

 

 

Posted in Food

Pumpkin Ale Reviews for 2015

Posted on September 25, 2015 by Bill| Leave a comment

2015 Pumpkin Ales

 

It is Fall again, and I have selected seven pumpkin ales for this year’s showdown. Either I started the season too early, or I am really biting into the varieties available as I bought up all everything I haven’t reviewed yet and only found seven. Why do I do this?  So you won’t end up with a full pack of what might be a dreaded PINO, the Pumpkin In Name Only!

As with last year I’ll re-review a past winner, and because the varieties were fewer I’ll also review a past so-so bottle to see if anything changed.  Most are good on their own, the ranking is how good of a pumpkin ale they are.  “Great” to me means grandma’s pumpkin pie was thrown into a blender and converted magically into a cold bottled product.

Here they are, ranked least favorite to favorite.  More will be added as the Fall progresses.  At the bottom of the review is a list of all 38 varieties reviewed to date, in order of preference.

 

Samuel Adams Pumpkin Batch

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I had high hopes for this one because their other pumpkin offering Harvest Pumpkin was good, but they must have brewed this from pumpkin rind discards.  I got it all down only because I paid for it, maybe there was something wrong with what ended up in the sample bottle but it was hard to finish.

 

 

 

 

Southern Tier Imperial Pumpking Ale

southerntierPumpking Ale tastes kind of like something with a “Black Forest” label, something in the aroma says “pumpkin” but the taste does not.  This is one that comes in big bottles in Costco.

 

 

 

 

 

Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale

weyerbacherSome spice aroma but too bitter for my taste.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Holland Ichabod Ale
ichabodpumpkinAt first I thought this was a slim notch above a PINO, but if you leave it in the glass a little while the spices come out a little bit.  Still not as spicy as others.

 

 

 

 

 

Ace Pumpkin Cider
aceTasty, but if you poured this out of an apple cider-branded bottle you probably wouldn’t know the difference.  A little pumpkin flavoring is there, and it is a bit tart.  Overall it is a good drink but it doesn’t stand out as a pumpkin one.

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale
BlueMoon-HarvestPumpkinAleThis year I decided to introduce a re-trial of a past non-winner.  This is the brand that in draft form at a baseball park introduced me to pumpkin ales.  The bottled variety didn’t impress me in a past review, but this year it was a little bit better.

 

 

 

 

 

Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale
shipyard-pumpkinhead-bottleI like to level-set my new year with a past winner, this one was Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale. A little slanted to caramel-ly this year, very good but not the top marks of 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

Leinenliugels Harvest Patch Shandy
shandySpicy and tasty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mckenzie’s Pumpkin Jack Hard Cider
mckenziesOne of the ciders we’re trying this year.  Exceptional and is looking to be the winner of 2015.  If you are already familiar with apple-based ciders, this is kind of like a cider with a tablespoon of nutmeg mixed in but in a good way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full 2013-2015 Pumpkin Ales Review Rankings, 36 Varieties Ordered by Bill’s Preference

Mckenzie’s Pumpkin Jack Hard Cider

Cortland Beer Company Pumpkin Ale

Harpoon Unfiltered Pumpkin Ale

Shipyard Pumpkinhead

Alewerks Pumpkin Ale

Saint Louis Brewery Schlafly Pumpkin Ale

Southampton Publick House Pumpkin Ale

Fordham Spiced Harvest Ale

RJ Rockers Gruntled Pumpkin Ale

Leinenliugels Harvest Patch Shandy

Evolution Craft Jacques All Lantern

Ichabod Crandall

Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat

Sam Adams Harvest Pumpkin

Saranac Pumpkin Ale

Blue Moon Harvest Moon Pumpkin

Ithaca Beer Company Country Pumpkin

Traveler Beer Company Jacko Traveler Seasonal Shandy

Wolaver’s Pumpkin Ale

Starr Hill Boxcar Pumpkin Porter

New Holland Ichabod Ale

Red Hook Pumpkin Porter

Blue Point Pumpkin Ale

Ace Pumpkin Cider

Long Trail Pumpkin Ale

Devil’s Backbone Brewing Company Pumpkin Hunter

Flying Dog Brewery Imperial Pumpkin Ale

Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale

Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale

New Belgium Pumpkick

Anderson Valley Fall Hornin’ Pumpkin Ale

Buffalo Bill’s Brewery America’s Original Pumpkin Ale

Wood Chuck Hard Cider Pumpkin

Dogfish Head Punkin Ale

Southern Tier Imperial Pumpking Ale

Post Road Pumpkin Ale

Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin

Samuel Adams Pumpkin Batch

 

 

Posted in Food

Are Proposed 401(k) Contribution Limits Based on Account Balance Amounts Reasonable? (or, How Did Mitt Romney Get All That IRA Money?)

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Bill| Leave a comment

I read this Reuters article concerning talk of capping the point where you can contribute pre-tax dollars to an IRA or 401(k) if the account value hits certain balances, which also re-raised the 2012 election issue of how Mitt Romney could possibly accumulate as much as $101 million in his Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA) account.

I remember reading about Mitt’s IRA and the questions of how an account can grow that much with an annual IRA contribution limit capped at $5,000 a year or so.  Individuals who have some financial education know that 401(k) accounts have much higher contribution limits (at least triple that), and a 401(k) rollover to an IRA can easily result in an IRA with a balance many times that of a simple $5k-per-year calculation.  If you are self-employed and manage a SEP-IRA you could have contributed $52,000 last year.  The “$5k per year” number is only one (and the lowest) of the various annual contributions you may be able to make depending on your employment circumstance.

But $100 million did seem a little high.  At the time I reasoned that with some simple math, say $20,000 per year total contribution for a 65-year-old guy like Mitt who has been contributing for 45 years, he could have $900,000 of investment principal.  At 10% gain per year reinvested, over time that’s around $14 million.  A 15% per year reinvested that’s about $72 million, 20% gets $365 million.  Ah, compounding.  So Mitt’s balance, by above-average returns, is possible.

After President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address, business news was abuzz concerning proposals to cap contributions to IRA and 401(k) accounts when a retiree’s balance hits a certain dollar amount.  The caps may seem high to someone who isn’t a heavy retirement investor ($2.5 million to $3.5 million, depending on interest rates), but to a super-saver this may seem a bit low.

The first linked Reuters article above states “The argument here is that IRAs were never meant for such large accumulations”.  That may have been true when the IRS formalized 401(k) rules in 1981, but the retirement picture is much different today.  Retirement pensions were common in 1981, so millions of dollars of tax-advantaged growth, on top of a pension that paid a reasonable percentage of your pre-retirement salary, may have been more than the average American needed.  But what about in 2015?  Pensions for most younger public- and private-sector employees are a historical curiosity, so workers need to accumulate large amounts of money to last many years.  $3.5 million may sound like a lot, but if you are making $100k at retirement and want to fund a 20-year sunset, it will take at least that much when you factor in inflation over those twenty years plus the health costs of keeping you alive and healthy during that time.  And instead of market returns you’ll probably get more conservative after your cushion of earned income during rough market years goes away.  Plus you still owe income taxes as you withdraw that money.

The GAO reported that high-balance IRAs got that way “likely by investing in assets unavailable to most investors – initially valued very low and offering disproportionately high potential investment returns if successful.”  We know the range where the cap is being discussed, and we know that general market index funds are hardly limited to most investors.  In my view it just didn’t seem crazy for serious retirement savers to end up with what the GAO calls “mega IRAs” after 35-45 years using common investment vehicles.

So I wanted to settle the question for myself… if you took a 23-year-old worker that socked away the maximum pre-tax amount they could legally contribute at the birth of 401(k) accounts in 1981, maintained legal maximums through 2014, applied various company matching scenarios, and assumed every dollar contributed was put in an S&P 500 index fund with reinvestment, what would the now-56-year-old’s 401(k) account look like?  It turns out it looks like this:

 

401k

 

In my employment experience, a 3% annual salary match contribution from your employer to your 401(k) account (assuming you contribute at least 6% of your salary) is typical.  “IRS Max” in my chart above is the IRS maximum for how much per year can go in from all sources to a defined contribution plan.  That line assumed you contributed the max to a SEP-IRA (or had a real generous employer), an unlikely scenario for a 23-year-old but I wanted to see the range of possibilities.

We see that a normal (non-Mitt) worker that contributed the maximum pre-tax amount, with a 3% employer match, would have $2.4 million for retirement today (probably $80,000 a year or so after taxes in retirement to make it last).  Workers getting a generous 10% employer match would have $3.3 million today.  This range falls in line with 401(k) and IRA balance account contribution caps being discussed, so perhaps some policymaker ran the same back-tested scenarios that I did.  But then again the above shows the results for a now-56-year-old worker.  Getting that worker to 65 at normal market returns would probably double the above numbers come 2024.

Now how could Mitt Romney have possibly gotten to $100 million?  My above scenarios assume a 100%-passive investor, not buying and selling various things over time but just buying with plain dollar-cost-averaging into a market index fund.  If you had (or were) an investment manager with a crystal ball telling you to go to cash in 2007 you wouldn’t have taken the 2008 37% S&P 500 hit, or perhaps the 2002 22% hit.  And maybe you bought back in near the bottoms of those markets.  And perhaps  you beat the S&P a little bit the rest of those years.  Just zeroing out the 2008 and 2002 losses would have the above “IRS Max” line at $18 million, but that is still a far cry from $100 million.  So the answer would be, assuming all is legal, “a lot of risk, and even more luck”.

Mitt’s IRA balance is high, but the cap ranges seem low with normal expected performance for a 65-year-old saver.  I’d like to see those discussed caps tripled to encourage retirement investing.  The caps are supposedly driven by “current interest rates”, but 401(k)’s should be evaluated by something more like S&P 500 performance, where much of that money is typically invested, and not interest rates (2.6% to 3.0% on 10-year Treasury yields in 2014, vs 13.69% S&P 500 performance).  Indexing to inflation or interest rates don’t necessarily relate to the conditions those accounts are actually tied to.  Workers have to pay taxes upon withdrawal anyway, unless these were Roth variants where the worker contributed after-tax money.

I don’t like putting forth good advice to encourage saving but then tell workers they have to stop if they realize the benefits of what they are told is the right thing to do over a multi-decade time span.  The currently-proposed cap levels don’t even discourage outsized risk in one’s retirement portfolio if a vanilla market index fund will get you there.  It could have the opposite effect, encouraging short-sighted portfolio conservatism in order to preserve some tax exemptions, forcing workers to work longer than they may want to or force lifestyle changes if health or other reasons present challenges to working as long as they need to.

 

References:

Reuters “Only Small Victories for Retirement in Obama’s Speech”

Reuters “How Did Romney’s IRA Grow So Big?”

Investment Company Institute “401(k) Plans: A 25-Year Retrospective”

AllFinancialMatters “The ‘Luck Factor’ in Investing”

Jim’s Finance and Investments Blog “Historical Annual Returns for the S&P 500 Index – Updated Through 2014”

Compound Interest Calculator http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm

Posted in Investing

Pumpkin Ale Reviews for 2014

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Bill| Leave a comment

PumpkinAles 2014

PumpkinAles2014bx600

It is that time of year again, and I have selected nine eighteen pumpkin ales for this year’s showdown.  As with last year, the seasonal pumpkin brews are plentiful.  Following my own advice from last year, I mostly utilized Total Wine and More to buy individual bottles so there is no need to commit to a full pack of what might be a dreaded PINO, the Pumpkin In Name Only brew.

I will pit these eighteen against each other, alongside one of my top two from last year (which I did commit to a pack of this year), Harpoon Unfiltered Pumpkin Ale.  All of them were good in their own right, as with last year the ranking is how good of a pumpkin ale they are.

Here they are, ranked least favorite to favorite.  More will be added as the Fall progresses (first nine are below, next nine will be integrated into the list soon).  At the bottom of the review is a list of all 31 varieties reviewed to date, ordered best on down.

 

Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin

Given how good last year’s Shipyard product was, I was looking forward to this new variety from them.  But it wasn’t pumpkin-y, and frankly the taste wasn’t for me at all.

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Dogfish Head Punkin Ale

I got punked by the PINO.

images

 

 

 

 

Wood Chuck Hard Cider Pumpkin

They say there is pure pumpkin in it, free of all spices to get pure taste.  But it is made with red apple cider, and I just can’t detect anything other than typical cider taste.  PINO.

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Buffalo Bill’s Brewery America’s Original Pumpkin Ale

No pumpkin flavor or spices detectable.  A decent ale, but a PINO.

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Anderson Valley Fall Hornin’ Pumpkin Ale

Tastes a bit like drinking melted dark chocolate, okay for a thick ale but not really a pumpkin ale.

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Flying Dog Brewery The Fear Imperial Pumpkin Ale

Real dark, real bold, real tasty.  Not real pumpkin-y.

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Devil’s Backbone Brewing Company Pumpkin Hunter

Did they catch the pumpkin?  Maybe they got a piece of it, but not enough got into the bottle to make it a great pumpkin ale.  I can kind of taste the piece but it is barely in the non-PINO range.

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Blue Point Pumpkin Ale

Some aromatic and aftertaste spice hints, not a lot though.  Gets a passing grade but almost a PINO.

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Starr Hill Boxcarr Pumpkin Porter

Oops, accidentally bought a repeat from last year. Same result as last year as well.  This year they have appeared to add an addition “r” to “Boxcar” if you check out my photo of the bottle above.

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Traveler Beer Company Jacko Traveler Seasonal Shandy

Jacko Traveler is a wheat ale brewed with lemon peel, then some pumpkin added.  It tasted a bit like mixing ale with hard cider.  Interesting taste but it is a bit too cider-y (or maybe just lemon-y) for a pumpkin ale.

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Ithaca Beer Company Country Pumpkin

Nice aroma, mild pumpkin hints.

label_thumb_14143001000443_front

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evolution Craft Jacques All Lantern

Unique taste, unique enough that I’m not sure if it is pumpkin-and-spices based or not. So I’ll rate it a decent non-PINO.

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RJ Rockers Gruntled Pumpkin Ale

Fruitier than others but a nice taste, seems to focus on that more than the pumpkin pie spices.  Pretty good.

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Fordham Spiced Harvest Ale

Brewed with every spice you could want so I was looking forward to this one.  It doesn’t all come out of the bottle but it is a pretty good brew.

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Southampton Publick House Pumpkin Ale

Good spices and very likable.

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Saint Louis Brewery Schlafly Pumpkin Ale

The lady at the Total Wine register said her fiance called this one “nectar of the gods” in very dramatic fashion.  I was skeptical and saved it for near the end, but it was indeed good.  Spices throughout, good aroma and taste.

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Alewerks Pumpkin Ale

Good aroma, hits with every tip of the glass.  Taste is spicy too, good flavor.

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Harpoon Unfiltered Pumpkin Ale

In a re-test of last year’s tie for top winner, still good but not the ka-pow I remember from last year so it’s going down a notch.

images

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cortland Beer Company Pumpkin Ale

Fanstastic, ranks up there with last year’s UFO and Shipyard Pumpkinhead.  All the spices and flavors are there and up front.  You’ll have to look more local to NY for this one.

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Full 2013-2014 Pumpkin Ales Review Rankings, 31 Varieties Ordered by Bill’s Preference

Cortland Beer Company Pumpkin Ale

Harpoon Unfiltered Pumpkin Ale

Shipyard Pumpkinhead

Alewerks Pumpkin Ale

Saint Louis Brewery Schlafly Pumpkin Ale

Southampton Publick House Pumpkin Ale

Fordham Spiced Harvest Ale

RJ Rockers Gruntled Pumpkin Ale

Evolution Craft Jacques All Lantern

Ichabod Crandall

Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat

Sam Adams Harvest Pumpkin

Saranac Pumpkin Ale

Ithaca Beer Company Country Pumpkin

Traveler Beer Company Jacko Traveler Seasonal Shandy

Wolaver’s Pumpkin Ale

Blue Moon Harvest Moon Pumpkin

Starr Hill Boxcar Pumpkin Porter

Red Hook Pumpkin Porter

Blue Point Pumpkin Ale

Long Trail Pumpkin Ale

Devil’s Backbone Brewing Company Pumpkin Hunter

Flying Dog Brewery Imperial Pumpkin Ale

Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale

New Belgium Pumpkick

Anderson Valley Fall Hornin’ Pumpkin Ale

Buffalo Bill’s Brewery America’s Original Pumpkin Ale

Wood Chuck Hard Cider Pumpkin

Dogfish Head Punkin Ale

Post Road Pumpkin Ale

Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin

 

 

Posted in Food

Rush : Vapor Trails Remix – Phenomenal, well worth it and toss the old disc

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Bill| Leave a comment

Thanks to Amazon.com’s AutoRip I can listen to this before the actual disc arrives.

The new Vapor Trails remix sounds really good, it feels like I’m listening to all-new music. It’s like a power washer was applied, forcing out all the static and noise dirt. They must have included pieces or takes that were previously on the cutting room floor, there is now stuff in the songs I hadn’t heard/noticed before. Example is a little guitar solo after the bass solo part in Ceiling Unlimited.

Vocal tracks are totally different in some cases, like in Peaceable Kingdom. They had to have re-recorded some of this.

After listening to the “good” one I’ll have to listen to the old one to see if I can pick out some of this that was hidden by the noise, but there is definitely more stuff that wasn’t in the old mix. Feels like it is 20% different, as if the original release was the demo for the real thing.

Posted in Book and Other Media Reviews

Pumpkin Ale Reviews for 2013

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Bill| Leave a comment

Fall is here, and this year it seems there are more seasonal pumpkin brews than ever to choose from.  With so many choices, places like Total Wine and More come in handy because you can build packs of individual bottles instead of committing to the high price of a seasonal six-pack for a trial.  I’m not usually an ale consumer, but in the fall I make an exception for the pumpkin ales because they can be so different.  As with the above Simpsons snap, sometimes you wonder.

Here are fourteen varieties I tried, ranked least favorite to favorite.

 

Post Road Pumpkin Ale

Maybe I got a bad bottle, but there isn’t a single hint in the taste this is a pumpkin ale.  Pumpkin in Name Only (PINO)

 

New Belgium Pumpkick

Not a bad ale, just weak in terms of a pumpkin ale.  Not much pumpkin or spice taste.

 

Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale

Okay… I didn’t really taste pumpkin or spices until the second sip.

 

Long Trail Pumpkin Ale

An ale that tastes pretty good, just not strong as a pumpkin ale.  

 

Red Hook Pumpkin Porter

I don’t think porter plus pumpkin is a combo that works.  A wiff of nutmeg emits from the full glass, but hardly anything pumpkin-y comes through on taste.

 

Starr Hill Boxcar Pumpkin Porter

Another porter that has good taste, but not a lot of pumpkin taste.  Here and there hints, but no direct approach.

 

Blue Moon Harvest Moon Pumpkin

Not very spicy.  It didn’t taste as good as I remember it when it was my very first pumpkin ale, at Nationals Park last season.

 

Wolaver’s Pumpkin Ale

You can smell the spices when you pour it, but you can’t taste very much of them.

 

Saranac Pumpkin Ale

There is something there I like… caramel?  Not great, but interesting.

 

Sam Adams Harvest Pumpkin

Pretty good, decent pumpkin and spices taste.  Seems more potent.

 

Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat

Shock Top rarely disappoints, and this is pretty good.  This tastes like they wanted to be a pumpkin ale.  Not the best, but good.

 

Ichabod Crandall  

Very nice taste, good seasonal spices, totally acceptable.

crandall

 

Shipyard Pumpkinhead

This one was a late review, I picked it up in mid-November when almost all the pumpkin brews were off the shelf.  Got one in a mix pack and had to go back to get the remaining mix pack stragglers.  The only regret I have is I didn’t run into this one earlier.  Very, very good and ties Harpoon.

 

Harpoon Unfiltered Pumpkin Ale

Very good, this is what I was looking for.  High flavor and spices.  Tied for winner!

 

Posted in Food

Review of Head First HTML5 Programming by Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Bill| Leave a comment

Head First HTML5 is a good book on HTML5, and by the end you will have a good familiarity with HTML5’s core components.

The example projects worked through in the book are good and relevant.  For example Chapter Five introduces location awareness and uses Google’s geolocation tools to show the location of your device and later even maps it using Google Maps.

One area I expected more was CSS.  Chapter One describes the major components of HTML5 as markup, Javascript, and CSS.  The book does a great job of teaching basic JavaScript, but does not give any intro at all to CSS, nor do the source code listings for the exercises include the CSS listings.

As with other Head First books I have read, I didn’t have any problem reading this book cover-to-cover easily.  I can recommend this book for learning many aspects of HTML5, but you’ll have to get your CSS introduction/refresher elsewhere.

Posted in Book and Other Media Reviews

New from Syntap Software: Minecraft Sign Plotter

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Bill| 3 Comments

June 2015 edit: I have updated the included substrate dll in the beta download.  Substrate does not appear to properly load a Minecraft 1.8 file, but opens world files through Minecraft version 1.7.10.  I will keep an eye on Substrate and update the utility if/when Substrate supports 1.8.n worlds.

Over my Christmas vacation I decided to join in the fun with my kids and begin playing Minecraft. I had actually set up virtual Minecraft servers for them here at home so they could host worlds for their friends.  I had bought licenses for my kids and a couple as gifts, but had never actually played the game.  I bought my own license and began learning the game.

While playing I ran into the problem of not being able to find things I had built, after having wandered off my spawn area and gotten killed. I didn’t know about making beds at the time, and it wasn’t until one of my sons showed me the “F3” command that I knew how to find anything at all using direction or coordinates… I had mainly gone by sunrise/sunset direction and terrain familiarity.

So armed with F3 I began adding X/Y/Z coordinate info to signs in front of hideouts and tunnels.

04-sign

I jotted down the coordinates on a piece of paper so I could find them later if I wanted to. As my Minecraft world got bigger, I nerded-out and began plotting a map of my signs on a Visio document. But updating that took time and I began to look for a tool that would look into my Minecraft world and show me where all the signs were. There are some spectacular world utilities out there, but I couldn’t find one that would give me a simple graphic of my signs I could use as a deskside tool while playing the game.

So… off to build my own. I ran across Substrate, a .NET library written by Justin Aquadro for accessing and manipulating Minecraft worlds. Using Substrate, I was able to build a utility to open my Minecraft world and generate a 2D graphic of the X/Z coordinates of my signs. The utility can also print a list of all the signs, what they say on them, and their X/Y/Z coordinates.

Minecraft Sign Plotter’s first public release can be downloaded here. No installation program, just unzip the files in the archive to a single folder and run it.

Some notes on functionality and the options you’ll see:

01-mainscreen

1) Hit the ellipses button to load your LEVEL.DAT file in the Minecraft save area for your world.  That gets the utility pointed to the right place.

2) If your plotted results get too cluttered due to proximity, you can use an ID instead, which is just a sequential number corresponding to a found sign on the list you can print.

3) You can optionally include the display of coordinates on the plot.

4) I found sometimes I like to use signs for small local notes that I don’t need cluttering up the plot.  For those, you can make the first character in the sign text something you specify.  I have it as a pound sign (#) as the default, so in Minecraft I can start a sign’s text with a pound sign to optionally exclude it from the plots.

5) Top world dimension can be set higher if your world gets huge.  The default is 1800, which means that signs within X and Z -900 to 900 should appear

Once your options are set, hit the Create Plots button and wait for the operation to finish.

Once done, you have buttons to:

02-maploaded1) Print list : send the table of signs, their Minecraft Sign Plotter-generated IDs for that run, and their X-Y-Z coordinates to a printer

2) Print Plot : send the plot graphic to a printer.  Note that the sign plots rotate through a list of eight or nine colors in order to be able to tell them apart easier on a printout.   You can get a print preview by clicking on the “Plot Preview” graphic.

3) Save Plot: saves the plot to your Minecraft world folder (where you loaded LEVEL.DAT)

 

 

 

I have only tested this on my worlds so this is a work in progress for now.  It helps me keep track of what I am doing and where to go, I hope others will find it useful!  Thanks to Justin Aquadro for creating Substrate which makes all this doable in a short period of time.  I plan to include the source code for the sign plotter with the final 1.0 release. Happy mining!

Posted in Software

Honda CRV Rear Wiper Blade Replacement

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Bill| 1 Comment

I saw questions on this elsewhere while researching the best way to change the rear wiper blade on a 1997 Honda CRV. I didn’t need to go to the dealer for the nonstandard wiper arm hookup, I bought a replacement Anco rear wiper blade AR-12E (300mm) at Wal Mart. It comes with the whole blade, so I removed the inserts from each, and slid the new insert into the existing wiper blade.

The old insert didn’t come out easily, I used a bolt cutter to get it out. But the new insert was easy to put in.

I probably could have found a replacement insert (sans blade) for a little less but I didn’t know things were different until I got the blade home.

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Zune 30 Upgraded to 100GB

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Bill| Leave a comment

My Microsoft Zune 30 has been running out of room lately and I have resorted to deleting songs from it in order to keep space open for podcast updates for my long commute.

I investigated a few options… buying a new iPod with new car accessories, or streaming Google Music to my car stereo using a Bluetooth receiver that would shoot the signal to FM (no aux-in jack on my commuter vehicle).

I like the Zune because I’m used to its big buttons for fast-forwarding or rewinding in a podcast without looking at it, which avoids taking  attention away from driving.  Plus at home I have a dock and remote control, and prefer to upgrade rather than buy a new platform and accessories as Zunes are going bye-bye.

I began looking into upgrading the hard drive in the Zune 30 and found a few choices, ranging from 40GB to 120GB.

I bought a used 100GB drive via eBay. The part number I bought was MK1011GAH.

I used the following links to show me how to do it:

Video of taking the unit apart here

More info here

Because the 100GB drive I bought is 8mm thick instead of the stock drive’s 5mm, I left the Zune’s drive cage out and removed the outer shell protection from the drive itself (it is a peel-off thin plate covering, don’t go for the screws to remove anything).

After putting the Zune back together, it booted fine and displayed a message to connect to the PC for firmware loading, which went smoothly.

After the Zune rebooted itself a number of times while installing firmware, I synchronized my Zune library’s 28GB of music and podcasts (took a while, over an hour). I now have 65GB free, more than twice as much as the original capacity and well worth the fun project.

Posted in Mobile Devices