It looks like Mayor Bloomberg and my grandmother have something in common after all!

The Angel’s Share.

Have you ever heard of this?  It refers to the portion of a barrel aged spirit that evaporates during the aging process.  In reality it is one of those cutesy phrases that somewhere down the line a self righteous do-gooder created to make light of a situation that really sucks.  Basically, it’s the worst kind of euphemism!

The reason I bring this up is because of a birthday gift my sister gave me last year.  Around this time in 2010, my sister sent a package while I was living out in Portland, Oregon.  In addition to the awesome little barrel pictured above, that box also contained two liters of white dog whiskey—an unaged version of the liquor. 

My goal was to age this sharp tasting booze in my neat little barrel for a year.  After this time, I’d crack open the spigot and enjoy the immensely tasting spirit that I so lovingly nurtured and cared for over 365-days. 

I carefully created the ideal environment for my whiskey.

I meticulously tasted it every month to monitor its progress.

I drove the damn thing across the country when I moved back to New York!

Well, my birthday just passed and guess what happened to me when the time came to pour myself a glass of my mind blowing home aged whiskey? 

The god damn angels took it all!!!!!

This is a pretty accurate description of what happens while I’m at work.

Now that I learned about Bierwelt, I have to come up with a scheme to undercut their ideas. 

Instead of actually building a beer tower and animatronic gnomes, why not just do the sampling portion of the tour first, then just show patrons around to a few darkened with strategically placed garden gnomes, lots of It’s A Small World-esque music and, of course, a lot more sampling.

I’ve been seeing videos about this “Bottoms Up” beer filling station, but until now I haven’t seen anything about how it actually works.

The technology is pretty cool but how many breweries are going to be able to afford it in the near future.  Yeah, it’ll be great for the InBevs of the world at the local arena or stadium but I hope that restaurant groups and big catering firms don’t over look smaller, local breweries in favor of macros who can afford to outfit hundreds of concession stands with the new equipment. 

Either way, I look forward to checking one out in person.  Interesting technology.