Mini Sea Monster

In May my family and I traveled to Hollywood, Florida for a long weekend getaway. The stay was about what we had expected; the wife and I drank lime stuffed Coronas on the beach and our son collected pretty much whatever the tide washed up.

On one afternoon the cool breeze carried an unmistakable scent to my nose: the rotten smell of death. I was obviously not the only one to notice; the portly showgirls to our right began to complain and make disgusted faces. I wrote it off as rotting food from the near by trashcans.

I was wrong. As I walked to the surf to cool off the stench become more apparent. I followed the foul odor and notice something odd jutting from the sand. Upon uncovering it completely I immediately noticed it's very odd, and equally ugly set of teeth.

This creatures had washed up on the shore and had either been partially devoured by seabirds or had simply rotted away. Nothing besides it's strange grill, save for the remnant of a fin, remained intact.

I'm certainly no marine biologist but the teeth of this fish was certainly unlike anything I had seen before. They were similar in angle and structure to the 'beak' of a parrot fish with the exception that there were many individual teeth rather than a solid top and bottom. There seemed to be too many teeth in the mouth for this creature to even properly flex it's jaws enough to eat. Was it a creature from the deep?

                  Smiling Pretty: The 2 rows of 2 large,  center teeth look especially ominous, huh?

I'm off to Google odd long-tail keywords like "fish with weird teeth" to try to figure out what species this is. If I find any likely candidates I'll update this blog.


UPDATE: This didn't take long thanks to Google and another blog: http://www.irelandblog.net/index.php/category/travel/. Apparently these things live on both sides of the Atlantic. He also described it as 'strange'. Here's the pic I pulled from his blog showing the exact same teeth on a more complete fish:

I'm going to do a bit more research and see if I can can come up with the name of this fish. Suggestions appreciated.

Getting My Gueuze On

MillerCoors calls it’s High Life brand the “Champagne of Beers” but I ain’t buying it; that title belongs to a Belgian style of beer called Gueuze.

Gueuze (also spelled “geuze”) is crafted by combining young lambic with aged lambic. The resulting mixture is then bottled, and because the younger lambic is not fully fermented, a second fermentation occurs in the bottle. There is a comparison I could make here about cougars and younger men, but for the sake of common decency I will resist.
But let’s back up a second and talk about what makes lambics unique in the first place. The fermentation of most other beer, that is ales and lagers, is controlled by brewmasters through the artful addition of specific and carefully crafted brewer’s yeasts. Lambics, by contrast are allowed to ferment spontaneously by being exposed to wild strains of yeast and bacteria. As an artist I love the idea of spontaneous fermentation, it’s kinda like the brewer’s version of abstract expressionism.
Now history has forgotten the name of the first brave soul who offered himself up for the first tasting of the first lambic, but his work sacrifice was not in vain; lambics and their kin have brewed in Belgium for the last half millennia.
In the spirit of this same sacrifice I decided to volunteer to taste several gueuze and opine on the experiences. The Keg Liquors carries the largest selection of Belgian ale in the region, so I stopped by and picked up 6 different gueuze to “research”.
I’m starting out with a well-known brand to get this party started:

Lindeman’s Cuvee Rene

A firm believer in proper glassware, I opt for a long, tulip shaped glass. The beer is effervesent and as I pour the last of the residue rich remains, a beautiful milky-white head appears. This gueuze is dense and cloudy and honey-colored. I give it a nose and get an odd, almost unappealing phenolic / wet animal scent. This quickly gives way upon tasting to a very tart and acidic apple and lemon flavors, tempered with back-notes of freshly cut grass and something reminiscent of black tea. The viscosity is moderate and has a good corporeal feel. I found it very easy to drink and to prove it, I let my wife taste it. She liked it, which confirms my assessment. I recommend it anyway.

All in all a pretty enjoyable representation of the gueuze style, and one I plan on having again.

Check back again next week and I’ll drop some science on the next one: Mead the Gueuze by Hanssens Artisinaal.