My blog n'at

Earlier this summer when Ginny asked me if I would introduce her to craft beer I thought maybe she was setting me up for one of those prank shows. Since the day we met its been like a brother and sister bickering when it came to the best fermented beverage. She loves Zima and me… well you know. A conversation wouldn’t last more than a few minutes before she’d get me fired up over her love for the now extinct clear malt beverage (well here in the states at least. you can still buy it overseas). Even if she never said it I know she would shoot me looks saying “Hey Doug, this beer has lime and salt in it. YUM!”

We finally found time in our crazy parental schedules to meet up at Bocktown and let the lessons begin. How’d it go? Well you can either read “PittGirl Discovers Craft Beertopia” online or pick up the August issue of Pittsburgh Magazine which is now available on newsstands.

I don’t think what I did was anything more than what most craft beer fans would do. I absolutely love talking about craft beer and seeing the look in someone’s face when they have that “ah ha” moment. As advocates for craft beer it is up to us to sit down and talk to people less familiar with our favorite beverages and talk them through the beer. What do you smell? taste? breathe in when you drink and see if that changes the flavor.

There is a serious problem right now with, as sickpuppy and I like to call them, “Beer Snob Bitches”. This isn’t the beer geek that has a cellar full of homebrewing gear and aging bottles. I’m talking about the jerks whom belittle you because you’re not “at their level”. They’re all over the place and quite frankly give the rest of us a bad name. So what if you can pick out the yeast strain or all 7 of the hops used? No one cares but you. The elitism in a lot of circles is getting out of hand and it needs to end.

Craft beer is for celebration. Its for the appreciation of hard work, passion and craftsmanship. Craft beer is meant for YOU to enjoy and not for others to tell you what you should or shouldn’t like. There is a handful of new breweries opening in the Pittsburgh region this year and next. This area is a hotbed for incredible homebrewers and now they’re taking the jump from passion into career.

On the flip side I see a lot of reverse asshattery from the macro drinkers. Those who are hardcore Bud/Miller/Coors drinkers who put down craft beer fans because we like a higher quality beverage. They’re usually the ones saying you’re drinking a chick beer or “oohhh you’re all fancy” because they don’t understand craft beer and use the high school thug attitude of what they don’t know must be stupid.

Craft beer is genderless. There are plenty of great craft brewers who are women and in fact when this country was founded who do you think it was making the beer? Take a look at “Put the ‘ale’ back in female.” and read about a view of brewing you may not have considered before.

Will Ginny become a homebrewer? Eh could happen but for now chalk one up for the birth of a new fan. We’re not going to win over the entire beer drinking population but we can chip away at it one at a time.

cheers!

I’ve been kinda spaced the last few days. I found out Sunday that one of my classmates from Prep had passed away at 35. Thirty-freaking-five! All I know is from the obit is that it was unexpected and this would now make the 2nd friend of mine, at the age of 35, that has passed away since 2011 started (Mark was the first).

Jesus Christ, 35.

John and I weren’t best friends in high school, in fact we’d bicker most of the time but we’d also have our good times joking around. In a class of 135 you won’t get along with everyone but all of us were brothers (Prep is an all-male private school). We can fight within but you mess with one of us and everyone else comes to your side. I think that’s why his passing is hitting me in a different way. Its not just the shock that its someone my age, that happens; this was one of us and its really freaking me out.

My class doesn’t do reunions. Why? Not really sure. Last time most of us were together was our 5yr in 1999 and since then your best chance to see someone you lost touch with is on Facebook. It was through my involvement with craft beer and Beer on the Bay that John and I reconnected a couple summers ago. A guy that I once got into arguments with on a regular basis was now someone I would look forward to having a beer with when I came to town for an event. Unfortunately I won’t have that chance to buy the next round.

I look at my life and think how fortunate I am. I can’t imagine losing that especially with so much more to look forward to and here is a friend where its over already.

I read the obit online and the stories people have left. John was a class act and these stories prove it. He touched a lot of lives and will live on forever through his friends.

Kos, its been a fun ride. Wish it could have been longer buddy.

July
We did that moving thing which pretty much consumed our entire month and turned in our keys to the skid row of Cranberry. The sky was more blue that day and birds chirp was sweeter. SIDT was featured as a “What’s Hot” on iTunes. I think the summer heat made people delusional

August
I had my first tour of the Pens new home, Consol Energy Center. This was big for me because, well hockey is life.

September
Its official, baby 2 is on the way. We had known for a few months but finally made it public. Steel City Big Pour 4 was a huge event for SIDT. Our second booth allowed us to play more with the live podcast plan. Well recorded live but it was still cool to have beer runners and brewers coming up asking to talk to us. All of this was made possible from our live debut at the Big Tap In back in April which we’ll be doing again in 2011. I did my first solo session at Podcamp Pittsburgh. It was a blast because for once I wasn’t talking about SIDT but social media in higher ed. I love social media. I love to talk about it and I love help people understand it. I should probably be charging for it but honestly with my schedule its more of a hassle to figure out a rate structure. Though, that was 2010 thinking, we’ll see about 2011. Daddy has some diapers to pay for

October
Fun thing about being a dad, taking the kid to the pumpkin farm. Pens open their new barn and while I loved the place there was a lot to work on. I found my first grey hair. *UGH* 5 year wedding anniversary proved that we just lost track of time making babies. I found something in my basement while cleaning that was totally badass. A rather preggers Lushie chased kids down the street for smashing our pumpkin and made one wet his pants.

November
Lushie and Jackson went away for one last weekend so I lived it up and had some of the best Pho in the area after a night at the BEV Lounge. Teaspoon microwaved his sneakers and I haven’t stopped laughing since. Lushie was told to take it easy so I cooked the entire Thanksgiving meal. Everyone survived. SIDT was named a finalist in the Podcast Awards for the 3rd time.

December
Lushie and I took an afternoon to ourselves and visited the Vatican Splendors. Most people don’t think of me as the religious type but hey, you learn something new about me. We took our former landlord to court and won our security deposit back. Funny that we had to “win” back our own money rightfully owed to us. It also taught me about how dishonest and shady people can be even when they swear they’re honest. This Christmas holiday I also got the greatest gift of all, my son Owen. With that I published a log of everything I was thinking from conception to birth. Final cap of the year was getting tickets to the Winter Classic Alumni Game and Winter Classic.

2010 was an incredibly busy year. More than we ever anticipated and I’ve never been so overwhelmed in my life. Its because of everything I have learned this past year that in 2011 I’m going to shift gears and focus more on my family, the house and my career. I graduate in June so that will be one burden off my shoulders. School, work, buying a house, moving, trying to get it organized, having a baby, trying to get SIDT to the next level and getting a side writing job off the ground was intense and I realized I need more balance.

We’ll see what 2011 has in store.

I never thought about it until a few people asked me if I was going to do a recap of 2010 as I did 2009. What the hell why not! Lord knows it was a batshit crazy year!  I’ll break this up into 2 parts so you don’t fall asleep.

January 2010
Still early into my new job and fighting the first of 2 major blizzards I saw RMU pull off one of the biggest upsets in college hockey for last year as they defeated #1 Miami. Even with the storm we had a bigger crowd than previous and I handled the pr/socialmedia for the event. Pho-down, Tweet-up was one of the great times in early 2010. I’m a Pho addict (I get cravings like crack addicts) and this night I went for the kingpin of dishes at my favorite Pho place where I finally had tripe and it was amazingly good. We also started the search for our first house knowing that the incompetence of our landlord was detrimental to our family.

February
Thanks to an article in the Post Gazette I made a $400 craft beer road trip to Boardman to the “#1 Beer Store in the World” Vintage Estate. A trip that would turn into a friendship with owner Phill, the most kickass man in Boardman It is my beer heaven when I need to get away. Snowmageddon brought us Betty White’s Vagina and a certain little Teaspoon turned 1.

March
Holy publicity! First there was the write up in Pittsburgh Magazine and also an interview with the Wench. The highlight though came from an interview I got to do with craft beer icon Lew Bryson about the beer raids in Philly.

April
I ate the Burger King Bacon Cheese Whopper and KFC Double Down without dying, saw the last regular season game at Mellon Arena and had a run-in with some freak ass potential neighbor we called The Sarge.

May
SIDT turned 4, got approved for a house and we had a walk for Teaspoon. Since his bro is a preemie now also the 2011 walk  should be a big one.

June
Highlight of podcasting to date was VIP interview and hanging out backstage with Zane Lamprey. His people came to us Finally became a homeowner when I closed on my first house. Teaspoon whizzed on the floor in a fitting display of how our landlord treated us. Started writing for examiner.com as the Pittsburgh Craft Beer Examiner which couldn’t have came at a more hectic time of my life. I’m not happy with the amount of content that has been posted but that will change in 2011. There is a lot planned for it and I hope yinz check it out.

Tomorrow – July thru December

Lindsay at iheartpgh sent this over to me and I think you need to check it out!

When: Sunday, December 5, 2010 6-10pm
6pm – Tailgate Party Starts
8:20 – Kick Off Steelers Vs. Ravens

Where: Double Wide Grill, Carson St and 24th, Southside

Hosts: Chevrolet Pennsylvania, IheartPGH, Only In PGH

We are happy to combine this Steeler Watching event with a good cause – we will be collecting gift cards for the CHS Holiday Gift Card drive – all will be used to provide holiday gifts for Pittsburgh families.

Sunday, December 5 Chevrolet Pennsylvania Steeler Watch Party at Double Wide Grill
There will be Chevy vehicles on site for test drive

Half Time Raffle for great Steelers Gift Baskets and Double Wide Gift Cards
Earn an addition raffle ticket for every $5 in gift cards donates to CHS

Allow me to translate this for you. You go to Double Wide (which is one of my favorite places to eat on the Southside and have a good craft beer menu). First you test drive cars. fast ones. Chevy’s. yeah baby! Then while you’re insides are still shaking from all that power you calm them down with some grub. Ahhh yes the burgers are working now!  Just when you’re all relaxed the Steelers game starts and you can eat and drink more!

Everyone bring some gift cards to donate to CHS!

See, the perfect Sunday!  For more details go to iheartpgh.com or check out the Facebook event.

(click here to see the entire gallery on Flickr)

What an incredible evening! Tuesday night a lot of the work I’ve done on SIDT paid off when I was invited backstage to hang out with Zane Lamprey (and a few beverages) before his Drinking Made Easy show started at Mr. Smalls Theater. I was contacted a couple weeks ago by Zane’s PR people asking if we would be interested in talking with Zane. They knew of the podcast and thought we would be a great fit. Were we ever!

As we walked up to the door we were greeted at the door by Steve McKenna who was already downing some beers. Incredibly nice guy but that may have had to do with the fact I was carrying a box of  presents.

• 1 growler of East End Monkey Girl
• 1 growler of Erie Derailed
• 1/2 gallon of Rebel Yell whiskey
• 750ml Brookside whiskey
• bag of misc. swag from Bocktown whom also provided the growlers
• 1 Gray Kangaroo personal alcohol filter
• 6 pack of SIDT hangover preventer – a.k.a. Pedialyte

The “green room” I think it’s the old sacristy which is where we chatted up Marc Ryan. That’s right, Mr. Smalls is in an old church. Pittsburgh likes to convert old churches into venues for mass consumption of alcohol.

The interview with Zane turned out amazing and will be posted shortly. He was very welcoming and we really appreciate that he took time to hang with us 10 minutes before he went on stage. The man was in the zone. If his name sounds familiar, Zane was the host of a show called Three Sheets which aired on MOJO, FLN and, as he announced at the concert, Travel Channel will be airing all episodes. Zane said he’d be in touch again to give us an update on everything.

This was my first time seeing a comedy act on stage since I won my Comedy Central private party with Lewis Black so I forgot what it was like until that front row was blasted by the acts. LOVED it! People, when are you going to learn not to heckle the talent. You’re gonna get burned.

The tour is called Drinking Made Easy which is also the name of his show on HDNet this fall. In fact as he tours around America he is recording episodes. Unfortunately Pittsburgh got snubbed but we do hope he returns soon.

Zane gives you an education on the basics of alcohol which you may not know. From a craft beer angle I have to say he covered us rather well and showed what goes into beer and how its made. Afterwards we hung out with some SIDT fans which I do have video of and will get on You Tube shortly. It goes along with the EP we recorded for so you’ll need to sit tight for this week.

I’m not a fan of books and in fact I hate reading but after picking up Zane’s book “Three Sheets: Drinking Made Easy! 6 Continents, 15 Countries, 190 Drinks, And 1 Mean Hangover!“ I finally found something I can get into and not get bored outta my skull. Once I finish the book I’ll write a review.

Its been almost a week and I’m still geeking over it. It’s good to be the SIDT.

Thanks for all of the support in the walk this year! The 3 mile walk started at North Shore park by Heinz Field, passed through PNC Park, to and across the 16th St Bridge, through downtown, across the Clemente Bridge and finishing at PNC Park.

4 years ago today sickpuppy and I launched SIDT. We figured that it would last 10 shows and maybe a couple hundred downloads from friends. This evening we’re releasing EP63 and are pushing 700,000 downloads.

I thought about doing a “state of SIDT” address for today but realized that required a lot of work and I have beer to drink. I know we say this every year but we’ve kept our promise, wait till you see what we’re gonna do next. 2010-11 has already shaped up to be unreal and we will be doing more with our social media sites getting you guys even more involved.  iphone/droid apps are in the works, more with the DD hotline and goodies I havent even told sickpup about.

I will say this, our 5th anniversary is going to be a freaking bash

Thanks everyone for the support and don’t forget to call…

cheers!

Since the Pittsburgh Magazine article came out I’ve had quite a few notifications of new followers. Most times I’ll follow back because I’m always up for a good conversation and try to keep up with everything going on through the day but lets be honest, you can’t follow all the time (just like it can’t rain all the time).

This morning I tweeted that I was psyched to see Anthony Bourdain was coming to Pittsburgh to talk. This is a must for me so I told Lushie we need to make plans for it. Shortly afterwards I had a reply from TwinmamaTeb saying “@douglasderda clearly you missed all my tweets about the presale and gettting 8th row seats. heh.”. That’s when I thought, how many conversations am I missing?  Granted most tweets are people spewing random nonsense (I’m guilty myself) but what else have I missed out on? I decided it was time to checked my stats.

As of right now I have 1,250 followers, I’m following 987 back and I’m on 112 lists. Those 112 lists can be summed up in the following categories: beer, hockey, Pittsburgh.  If I were to die right now that is how I could be summed up in 3 words. I love craft beer, I love hockey and I love Pittsburgh.

The most popular question I get from people obsessed with Facebook is “Why do you tweet?”  I gave it some though and here’s the deal on how/why I use Twitter. I’m connected to every user. Because of tags such as “craftbeer” I have been introduced to a community of people that I may have never had the chance to meet besides the degrees of separation on FB. I use Twitter because it’s about the conversation. Over the past day I finally started watching the #craftbeer tag on Twitter with TweetDeck and have met some incredible bloggers, fans from all over the world and a few brewers.  I’m able to buy and sell hockey tickets and chat with other Pens fans during games. I have been invited to events I may not have known about before and helped plan a few of my own. All in under 140 characters. I can ask questions and people, while sometimes smartasses, answer. I can get traffic updates from not just the networks but from people out on the roads.

From the 1250 I’m not following 263. Odds have it you’re selling me a service I don’t want, you’re a spammer or I really have no clue what your deal is. Now there is the margin of error since Twitter is notorious from un-following people without warning and if you’re one of those let me know.

So now I’m reaching out to you. If you’re in the rest of the 987 and read this blog (which hopefully you do because you follow me on twitter and obviously wanna get to know me ) leave me a comment. I can say that I know MAYBE 2/5 of you personally from beer events or social media but if we’ve never met before I want you to say hi. If you wanna keep it personal then shoot me a message on my contact form.  Spoon wants know who you are! If you’re in the Pittsburgh area and want to meet others check out Pittsburgh tweetup!

I should probably tweet this…

15 years ago was my first formal dance in college and what would turn out to be the last at this venue. It was on this night that UPT will be slapped with a lifetime banishment from any future events and can only be describes as “Semi-formal 1995 – We Destroyed the Holiday inn Oil City”.

I can’t recall much from this night besides a few details that I get to relive in photographs so if any of you have pics from that night let me know. There wasn’t much to Oil City and quite frankly the Holiday Inn was about as nice as we were going to get.

I went with my friend Stacy from Erie and had a corner room double bed. Why? Her boyfriend was bringing my girlfriend Michele down from Eire. Make sense? Yeah I dont really remember why either. The dance and dinner wasn’t bad but no one cared since the 4 of us spent most of the night in the room playing drinking games along with Drew whom joined us with a bottle of Citron.

At some point the state police showed up and stood guard outside our room with guns drawn. They were searching rooms (apparently someone tried jumping into the pool from the 3rd floor) and when they arrived at ours everyone hid in the bathroom except for me and Chele (we acted like we were sleeping). Being the clean freak that Drew was our place was spotless so that helped in our alibi.

I did post these on Facebook along with a few others and stories are starting to trickle in. Like the reason why our room was suspect would be due to the 2 cases of empties the guys next door planted.

Now I was hoping to share all of these great pics with you but a few parties involved are now professionals so out of respect I wont put them on here but I will share this one.  I give you me and Stacy on that fateful night.

In case you’re scratching your head, grain alcohol was still available then and was indeed involved that night. We may have been a prime example why it was banned in PA. Probably a good thing, kids today wouldn’t be able to handle it.

If you can finish that lyric of who I’m mocking you are one bad mofo and we should have drinks.

Last night was the crazy insanely hugely successful Tweet-up organized by Uncle Crappy at Vietnam’s Pho. In attendance (christ I hope I get all these right from what I remember on where people sat) – @Techburgh and his lady, @Beth910 and The Boy, @psylum, @douglasderda, @Bobtv and his girlfriend, @colindean, @illyrias, @ilikesleep, @pgha, @jamilbroom, @mrscrappy, @unclecrappy, @andreadisaster, @shanlin1022, and  @shadow.

The Dinner – Don’t even ask me what everyone had cuz that’s not happening. However I do recall @shadow taking a bath in the chili sauce. You know he was shooting fireballs about later, he just wont admit to it. You know you have a friend like that. No matter what they eat its not hot enough? That’s @shadow.  One of these days I’ll make him cry from heat. Lushie may need to break out her home made wing sauce that cleared a high rise with tears.

The Pho - I dined on an appetizer of Goi Cuon (Spring Roll w/shrimp, pork, vermicelli and fresh veggies rolled in rice paper with a peanut dipping sauce) and finally caved for the Pho Dac Biet (Beef Round Eye, Flank, Tendon, Tripe, Brisket, Beef Balls and noodles). You read that correctly, tendon and tripe. The tough band of fibrous connective tissue that usually connects muscle to bone and the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach. Thankfully the Beef Balls were these and not these as I feared.

The tendon was a mess as always so I just picked most of it out but the tripe was mind blowing. You have to get past the mental fact that you’re eating part of a cow’s stomach and dig in. It takes on the flavor of what its in so it consumed the beefy goodness of the broth. The Beef Balls were an odd texture but tasted decent. Kinda chewy and what i would expect heart to be like. Everyone else around me seemed to have been won over on their dishes which secretly really made me happy. I think more people need to open their minds and give this a try as you can order a simple dish of broth, meat and noodles to enjoy. Work your way up to the big boy stuff !  Our final bill, $170.  that’s right, 20 people ate full meals and drinks for $170. You can figure the math

Highlight was also finding out that it is BYOB and with a few growlers of East End beverages in hand I think a Pho-king-beer tasting will be coming up shortly.

Dare I say the Pho was spiritual? On the drive home I thought I saw God and he was eating a bowl of Pho also and drinking a beer.

Here are a few other pics

cheers!