Beer review! Shorts Pandemonium Pale Ale

Woohoo! Get to review one of the delectable creations from that crazy brewery up north, Shorts! This is a brew I've been looking forward to trying and is probably one of their more "normal" brews.

Pours a beautiful orange/copper color. Not too much foam, which is fine with me and it looks like just the right carbonation. So far so good! But how does it taste!?!?! Really good! First taste, this is a very hoppy pale ale. Much more than I am used to in a pale ale. I am usually not into most hoppy/bitter beers. This has a very nice balance to it, but I probably wouldn't want anything more bitter. Good citrus and floral notes to this yummy beer and it finishes very clean. Compared to other Shorts brews, it definitely has that unique shorts taste to it.

Overall, this brew is a really nice blend of smoothness, bitter and sweet to make it a wonderful, easy drinking brew I could drink with almost anything. I would buy again and again. Cheers!

5K Run at Binder Park Zoo

For some reason or another I decided to do a 5K run at Binder Park Zoo, here in Battle Creek. Do I like running? No, not particularly. But it's good for me and as a member of the Air Force, I really should be in shape. We do love the zoo, so this seemed like a good way to motivate me to get and stay in shape. Did I train much beforehand? Again, no. I did run some, but I never ran more than a couple miles. Should be fun!!!

So, it looked like it was going to be really rainy and maybe even thunder a bit, so I wasn't even sure I'd run today. But we got there and it seemed to settle down a little bit and no thunder.

There were a LOT of people. I thought there would be a few, but not this many people. It was packed! It made it kind of fun though, being such a big event. People all over the place. And a lot of fat out of shape guys and gals like me, so I didn't feel too out of place.

So anyways, the race starts and we get to run all over the zoo, all the way to Wild Africa and back and as much as I am not a fan of running (it's boring), I loved doing this 5K. It was a blast running with every one else through the zoo, seeing all the animals and running through the trails. My goal was simply to run the whole thing withOUT stopping. I wasn't too concerned with time, I just wanted to make it. It was a little tough but I made it! There was a beast of a hill about halfway through that destroyed me, but I managed to gut it out. Luckily there were a few people around me who I kept up with and that helped a lot. There was a lady I was running near that I really wanted to beat, but she crushed me with a sprint at the end. Mean lady.

I loved this run and would do it again in a second. Plus, I got a cool shirt, magnet and bag to take home! Next year I am going to actually try for a good time.

Beer Review! Founders Cerise

Looking forward to drinking this after some of the other fantastic Founders offerings I have tried lately. Since I am a big fan of cherries and Northern Michigan cherries in particular, I am hoping this is a home run.

At first glance it pours an amber with a reddish hue. Nice carbonation. Little head. Smells great, you can smell the ale and the sweetness, but not a whole lot of cherry smell, though it is certainly there.

Taste is pretty smooth and very sweet and then it definitely hits you with a nice tartness in the aftertaste. The cherry is definitely the predominant flavor here with the ale being the sideshow.

Overall, obviously a sweet dessert beer. This is not a beer you can just quaff with anything. Certainly would be very good with a fruit desert and maybe even some nice chocolate deserts, but not the dark and bitter ones.

This is a good beer in that it captures the tart and sweetness of Michigan cherries very well. If you seek this beer out with that in mind, you will like it just fine. If you want a really good beer up front with the added dimension and complexity of fruit mixed in, then this is definitely not for you. I will certainly enjoy my 4 pack, but probably will not buy this again. There are just better offerings out there, especially for the price.

My New Blog

This is about my 8th attempt to start a blog, but I've got a good feeling about this one! I'm going to use this blog to write about my "Adventures" in Michigan. Despite all its many, many, many flaws, I happen to really like Michigan. I would like to use this to post my travels around Michigan and all the cool places and things. I'll also use it to review and talk about many of my favorite things (including Michigan beer).