DRAFT Magazine

Photo by Peter DiAntoni

Hands down, my favorite new beer of 2010 so far is Lakefront Brewery’s Fixed Gear American Red Ale.

The Milwaukee beer also gets the nod of approval from urban bike magazine COG, for its inspiration from the messenger community. The single-speed fixed gear bike is the type of model favored by many city cyclists.

This beer comes just in time to toast Google map’s new travel-by-bike feature, which has been very happily received by the cyclist community.

According to the beer label, Fixed Gear Ale was “inspired by the energy and audacity of the fearless fixed gear courier.” It came about when “Lakefront ran smack into this arresting creation - it’s red, it’s bold, and it tastes damn good… This one’s got an attitude.”

The 6.5% AVB is now being sold around Milwaukee, but going fast.

Beermosa as energy drink

While training for his first marathon, J.L. Zoeckler discovered the perfect pre-run elixir: A beermosa of Beck’s Oktoberfest and orange juice.

“This stuff must be like jet fuel,” he describes in his training vlog. “By mile three I couldn’t even think straight I was running so comfortably and so fast.” He also called it his “most amazing run yet.”

He’s not the only runner who has benefited from this concoction, either. Another runner commented on J.L.’s workout on DailyMile saying, “I tried it too, out of suspicion and to help calm my pre-run anxiety. I was surprised at how good it tasted and how great I felt.”

J.L. — who describes himself as “your average runner” — finished five miles but said he felt like he wanted to run another 10 miles after completing the beermosa-charged run.

Of course, he says, further testing is required. That would be the responsible thing to do.

You can follow J.L.’s training for the May 16 Green Bay Cellcom Marathon on Twitter and Dailymile.

That’s a scene from my bachelor party three years ago. I’m the one getting clocked on the head by my brother.

Of course, someone else’s paddle in your face the least of your worries on West Virginia’s Gauley River. As you can see from this video, rafting is intense.

Outside Magazine even published a rafting-specific workout, because you’re going to feel it in the chest and back afterward. And occasionally in the face, depending on your raft-mate’s aim.

So for the third anniversary of my bachelor party, I’m raising a Central Waters Whitewater Weizen to my bachelor party friends. Cheers, guys.

Central Waters is becoming one of my favorite Wisconsin breweries. As a major bonus to their beers, they recently installed a new solar panel green-powered brewery. Not bad for something that began in an old Model-A Ford dealership.

Their seasonal Whitewater Weizen is one of their best offerings yet. The unfiltered German-style wheat beer is made with Bavarian yeast for spiciness that, as they describe it, is “as exhilarating as a run through the rapids.”

They’ve even come up with the perfect workout to prepare for some rafting: The Keg Toss.

Bicycling Magazine recently listed the top 11 beers that are “tied to cycling in name, label, or by support from the brewery.”

I’ll save the suspense and let you know that, yes, New Belgium’s Fat Tire made the list, as well as Flying Dog’s Tire Bite Golden Ale.

The article also unearthed a good variety of more obscure beers, such as the Pike Tandem Double Ale (described as “like a hybrid of the dark Belgian style with an American IPA”) and Arbor Brewing Company’s Tree Fort Beer (”likely the only beer brewed in collaboration with a bike shop”).

Check out the full list here.

Oh, and by the way, this is the 100th Beer Runner blog post. Here’s how it all started. Thanks for reading, everyone.

Via Beer Activist and Bicycling Magazine

Flickr photo by Rich115

I never quite understood the concept of the triple jump.

Why not the double jump? Or quintuple jump? Why three jumps? It seems such an arbitrary number to measure multi-jumping prowess.

However, I am willing to overlook the peculiar characteristics of the triple jump on behalf of the Eugene City Brewery Track Town Triple Jump Pale Ale.

Rogue (which owns the Eugene City Brewery) introduced this beer for last year’s Olympic trials in Eugene, but I just discovered it yesterday at my neighborhood grocery store.

I would hop, skip and jump any sand pit to get my hands on this beer. It has old-school racing spikes on the label, hits you with plenty of hops and has a nice malty aftertaste. That’s a triple win.

And for any triple jumpers out there, I apologize. I’m sure you think that running an oval track over and over again is weird. Let me assure you, it is.

I am in no position nor am I qualified to say that Eel River Brewery’s Acai Berry Wheat Beer is the healthiest beer on the planet. But it kind of sounds like it might be.

Introduced in October, the Fortuna, California-based beer is made with certified organic Brazilian acai berries, which contain boatloads of antioxidants. At 4% ABV you can knock back quite a few in the name of getting your daily antioxidants.

Acai is one of those weird trucker hat-like trends. As soon as you heard about it, there was already a backlash.

One minute it was an obscure berry sold in health food stores. Next minute it’s endorsed as a “superfood” by Oprah and being associated with an online scam. But none of that is the fault of the acai berry, of course.

As a beer it tastes like a less sweet version of Leinenkugel’s Beery Weiss. If you like fruity beers, you might want to consider adding this to your list.

I had three of them last night and I feel very antioxidized today. I’m sure Oprah would approve.

Flickr photo by Stuck in Commons

As I write this, I’m sipping my second Big Sky Brewing Summer Honey and flashing back to Montana and the summer of 2004.

I had just graduated Marquette University with a journalism degree. I was burned out on the journalism field — insomuch as a 22-year-old can be burned out — and didn’t know what to do next. So I did the most logical thing, in my mind.

I moved to Montana and started working as a bellboy in Glacier National Park.

I highly recommend it.

During the workweek I carried bags around a historic lodge in East Glacier, Montana. After work and on the weekends my new friends Kyle, Matt, Joe and I would find a new hiking trails and explore the most beautiful national park I’ve ever seen.

I hiked more than 300 miles that summer. I remember literally outrunning a storm by passing the continental divide, a semi-close encounter with a Grizzly and countless breathtaking waterfalls, mountain views and endless great conversations on the trail.

Not even a little mishap that resulted in me getting airlifted off the High Line Trail to the hospital could put a damper on the summer. The most memorable summer of my life.

After hiking we’d hit up the local watering hole, Blondie’s, and drink with the natives. I can’t remember if it was there we had Big Sky beers, but at some point we were exposed to the Missoula-based beer and Moose Drool, Trout Slayer and Scape Goat IPA.

For me, those beers will always be associated with a 10 or 20 mile hike and beers afterward.

So as I finish my beer I’m dreaming of getting the gang back together, heading back to Montana, hitting the trails and afteward tipping back a few Big Skies.

Kayzar (right): "Make it better."

Jason Kayzar has devised one of the more brilliant multitasking business ideas I’ve heard in awhile:

Cycle networking.

“Cycling comes first, and we rarely talk business,” he says. “But by eliminating the bogus social niceties, we get to know each other pretty quickly.”

Jason launched MC² in 2000, and after eight years building his business and family he found he was “sort of neglecting myself.”

So he started more training, running, and combining business time with riding in once-a-month Midwest Cycling Network rides — which always end with a pint or two.

What are you goals for this summer?

1. I’ll be racing my single speed mountain bike for Team Wheaton Franciscan. My goal is to race and have a great time. I don’t have the time or drive to try to win right now.

2. I’m more Beer than Runner, but I have been running quite a bit in the last year. I’d like to get a ½ marathon in the books and then (maybe next year) a marathon. Depends on how the racing goes. If I bomb, I guess I’ll have more time to run.

3. Trying to find out if I actually have abs. I’d like to see them once before I die.

What’s the last great beer that you drank?

Golden Monkey

My current favorites are Shiner Bock and Guinness Draught. If I’m going to drink a Golden Monkey beer, I like it to taste like beer, so I’m not big on Miller Lite-type beers. I also like a beer called Kalik, which I’ve only had in the Bahamas - haven’t found it in the U.S. yet. I was also turned on to Golden Monkey at Roots in Milwaukee. It’s like poor man’s Chimay (although it’s not cheap).

How about the last hard workout that you did?

In winter I’ve been doing 3 days of cardio and 2 strength training during the week, and either taking the weekend off or doing something fun w/the whole family. I teach SPIN on Wednesday mornings, but I’d have to say the hardest in recent memory was a quick ½ hour going up and down a steep hill as fast as I could on my single speed mountain bike. I just finished a fixed gear single speed road bike that I KNOW will kick my butt all summer.

So why did you decide to start the Midwest Cycling Network?

Selfish reasons, really. I wanted to meet more people like me, who would keep me motivated. And I really like the business networking angle. Everyone in the group is a professional, so it’s a huge resource for referrals and connections.

How have you seen the rides and/or riders evolve since you started?

I never wanted it to be a balls-out training ride, and we’ve stayed true to that. It is however serious enthusiasts, so the people who show up are generally good riders.  This year, I expect the group to grow quite a bit. The inaugural ride last year had three people - the email list now has over 230 people on it. The times and routes will stay similar, but we’ll split into a faster and a slower group this year to accommodate everyone.

What are some of the favorite places you’ve stopped for a pint or two after your networking rides?

We ended the first batch of rides at the Red Rooster last year, then we moved the start/finish location so now we end at Seester’s on Pewaukee Lake.  Anywhere that has a good selection of beers is OK by me.

Any other words of wisdom to give to the Beer Runner audience?

“They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom.” Oh wait, that was Mel Gibson’s quote.  “Make it better,” that’s mine.  Don’t take what you have for granted.  Don’t wish for what you’ll never have.  I spent the first half of my life wanting to be someone else, and the second half embracing who I am.  I turn 40 this year and I’m in a really good place, plus I have the best wife and kids a person could wish for. Now I just want to make it even better.

Photo by KDCN Morales

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

People who work in the beer industry are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

I didn’t need more confirmation, but I just got it.

It started when I tried to ship my friend Kyle in Los Angles a case of Hinterland, craft beer from Green Bay. You can ship 12-packs from their site.

This story has nothing to do with running, so I’m inserting that now.

For years Kyle and I have talked about running next week’s Catalina Marathon.

“We’ve all talked a little bit, and in hushed tones, about the Catalina Marathon. It looks stunning,” Kyle wrote in an email last October. “Catalina Island is beautiful-looking, as I’ve never been, and traversing it on foot seems like a surefire way to make 26.2 miles disappear.”

“We would most likely camp out on the island the night before, which is pretty BA,” he added.

Maybe next year. Damn. Since I couldn’t visit, I sent Kyle beer.

A major snafu with delivery, however, prevented him from actually getting his case. As Kyle reported:

“I am cursing UPS, who apparently tried to deliver three times yet I never saw a note, and yesterday i got a postcard saying they were mailing it back to the sender, so I called and sure enough they had sent it back.”

I contacted Hinterland about the problem. The situation wasn’t their fault. They helped out anyway. They mailed it back out - on their dime.

“Sorry for all of the problems on this one,” the owner, Bill Tressler, emailed me. “Thanks for your patience.”

So a few weeks after it arrived in Los Angeles, returned to Wisconsin, and then went back to Los Angeles, Kyle finally got his beer. Thank you, Hinterland.

“You should write something about how beer tastes better,” Kyle told me, “when its been delayed for over a month.”

In high school, our wrestlers constantly talked about making weight before a match.

This often entailed running the halls and/or jumping rope in full sweatsuits and stocking caps, as well as frequent spitting.

Much more pleasant than making weight is Makeweight, an absolutely superb beer from Wisconsin brewery Furthermore. It’s easily in my Top 3 beers for 2009 thus far.

As former featured Beer Runner Kevin Revolinski describes it in terms a runner could understand:

“Furthermore Beer is a relatively young company out of Spring Green but with their creative twists on brews they have really hit the ground running. Their latest concoction will help you too hit the ground, though probably not running.

Amen. At a healthy 8.5% ABV, this is a major reward for a long run. It’s also a rare combo of body, flavor and smoothness. How did they do it? According to the source:

Our triple pale is a bastardization of three regionally distinctive recipes that were stacked in unequal measure in order to make a beefy beer which highlights each recipe’s finer points: Esters from a dominant Flanders yeast are reigned-in by cleaner American and London strains; Kent Golding hops provide mild bitterness, giving English and Belgian specialty malts room to breath; Oregonian hops offer a fragrant nose; Belgian candy sugar boosts the strength of this mash-up to 8.5% ABV.

And if you’re looking to make weight the old fashioned way, the Mad City 100K near Furthermore’s home of Spring Green is coming up quick.