FuzzyBrew

This weekend I celebrated my 35th birthday and received an awesome gift from Sara, a Beatles painting by Lamar Sorrento. Sorrento is a Memphis folk artist whose affordable rock ‘n’ roll paintings have been collected by regular joes and celebrities like Keith Richards and Neil Young.

Sorrento, it turns out, also likes good beer, and is said to sometimes even trade his paintings for beer and cigarettes.

“theres nothing wrong with beer, as long as it good quality,” he writes in his stream of consciousness ‘about’ section on his website. “it brings out the best in me…the worst drunk people always drink the worst beer.,..i think…like Bud or Corona or swill like that..”

And then there’s Natural Light, “the new beer for the recession.” It inspired this funny video log from 2009, which ponders the lifelong question: Why is there a Natural Light, but no Natural? Lamar wants to know.

Cheap beer has been getting some Tennesseans in trouble recently, from petty thieves to police officers.

Let’s start with 45-year-old David Bogan, of Memphis.

Bogan is accused of stealing a commercial cooler full of Bud Light from a neighborhood grocery store. He was apparently pushing the cooler down the street in plain view of cops.

As you can see by the bandage on his nose, Bogan attempted to flee and officers subdued Bogan by “assisting him to the ground,” according to the court document. The whole thing resulted in charges that included assaulting an officer, resisting official detention, evading arrest and theft.

All for some Bud Light…

Meanwhile, over in Kingsport, Tenn., a sergeant for the Kingsport Police Department resigned and two officers have been recommended for termination after a brew-haha over some confiscated beer.

Several Kingsport officers responded to a party where there was underage drinking and confiscated three full cases of Natural Lite beer and part of a fourth case.

Instead of dumping the beer, like they wrote in the paperwork, the beer was given to a sergeant for his personal consumption.

The real story got out and has caused quite the stir in this East Tennessee town.

All for some Natty Lite…

Natural Light: Is there anything worse?

Remember Natural Light? It tasted like watered-down piss, yet we swilled it with fervor in our college days.

We were just learning to like beer. And we were poor.

So naturally we bought the cheapest, lightest beers in the largest quantities we could find: Natty Light, Natty Ice or any of campussqueeze.com’s 12 Beers You Should Only Drink in College. (I do take exception with PBR’s appearance on this list. It’s a good beer when it’s really cold.)

And when we were really living large, it was Icehouse beer, which I just discovered is still actually brewed. I did not know this.

Anyway, it was encouraging to find out that as more and more people take up the hobby of homebrewing, more college students are getting into it, too, according to The Daily Princetonian.

The evidence in the story is all anecdotal, but the number of college-age homebrewers is reportedly on the rise.

I think it’s part of the do-it-yourself trend, like how people are butchering their own meat or making their own cheese,” student Joe Jung told the newspaper.

Our lawyer has advised us to tell you that we at FuzzyBrew do not endorse underage drinking. (But, pssst, with an extract kit, it’s really easy to brew your own!)