Beer Tasting: Früh Kölsch

A few weeks ago I saw a new beer at Costco: Früh Kölsch. Costco isn't a great place to go looking for new beers as they stock a narrow selection dominated by big brands. Narrow selection is part of their business model. Occasionally, though, they have something off the wall that probably they got a good price on. For example, last summer I found Erdinger Weißbier at Costco. Costco had it at a good price so I gave it a try; I liked it! I did the same recently with Früh Kölsch.



I've never heard of Früh before this. A glance at the fine print on the label gives me a hint why.... Früh has been brewing in Germany since 1904. 1904... 119 years... that's a new brewery by German standards! 😅 But you can tell it's German because there's an umlaut in the name— two umlauts, in fact! 😂

Kölsch isn't one of my favorite types of beer overall. I mean, it's okay. But many Kölsch beers lean too heavily into fruity flavors. I was pleasantly surprised to find Früh Kölsch has a crisp, clean taste. I genuinely like it.


Another interesting thing about this beer vs. others of the type is that it stands up well to food. Früh Kölsch, like most of the type, has a light enough body that it drinks well on its own. But it also has just enough structure to remain enjoyable as an accompaniment to rich food.

I love that this beer is so flexible. It's great on it's own, it's fine with food; I could make it a regular beer in my pantry. Alas, when I shopped at Costco again today, 3 weeks after my last visit, it's completely gone. There isn't even a spot on the shelf where it used to be. That's part of Costco's business model, too. I don't know if I'll ever see it again at a cheap price.

Life after Death

For thousands of years humans have wondered about life after death. Most have pondered the wrong question— "What happens to me after I die?" That's kind of selfish, anyway. The real question, the one that matters, is "What happens to my loved ones after I die?" It's the survivors who bear the burden of death.

In that vein we went today to visit our friend D and help him one of the many chores stemming from the death of his husband, Del. It's now almost 4 weeks ago that Del died, and 3 weeks since his memorial service. D is still in the 30 day period of mourning called shloshim that's part of the Jewish traditions following the death of a close family member.

I was glad to see that D is doing better now. He's not "all hunky-dory" yet but he's pulled together better now than he was in the first week after Del's death... or the last few weeks before it.

D is back to work now. He took 1.5 weeks off after his husband's death. That interval is an indication of how torn up he was. Since then returning to work has been part of his healing process. He's been able to focus 100% when he's at work, and he's producing results that his superiors appreciate. That in turn gives him a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that has helped him move on. For quite some time before Del's death D was between jobs. Now he views having this job as the one positive thing to happen to him in the past several months.

The religious observance of shloshim will be over in a few more days. D isn't a very religious person; I figure his ongoing grieving as natural, not religious. Which means it's not going to be like a switch flips on Wednesday and he's like, "Hey, guys, let's party!" That said, we encouraged him today to think about how we can do something fun together, even if for small values of fun like hanging out at the pool with us for a day, in another few weeks.

Dead Men Play No Games

I mentioned in my previous blog Hawk and I visited our friend, D, today. D is recovering from the loss of his husband a few weeks ago. He's at the point now where he's having to deal with a number of logistical tasks stemming from the loss. We visited not just to support him emotionally as friends but also because he asked us to help on two of those tasks, deciding what to do with Del's collections of comics and board games.

At the outset of the work I asked D about his priorities. Did he want to maximize value by selling things, or did he want to get them out of the house asap? D said he didn't have much patience for advertising and selling, that he'd rather just get rid of it, but that he'd like to know a few things are valuable and could be sold in bulk to a dealer. We agreed that was a good approach.

What surprised us even partway through a few hours of work was how much value was sitting in Del's hoard left behind.

It turns out Del had 32 short boxes of comics. As we were pulling them out of the closet for triage it was more than D realized had been lodged in there for several years. A short box holds about 100 comics, bagged and boarded (2x without), so his collection was about 2,500 issues since the boxes weren't all full.

The comics turned out to be mostly worthless. Hawk triaged through several boxes and found only a few issues that have any resale value. D then recalled that Del admitted he sold off all his high-value comics ~10 years ago when he needed the money. So the thousands of issues left are worth maybe $300 to a wholesaler.

I wouldn't call Del a hoarder but he had a related weakness, buying too much stuff. His comics were things he accumulated years ago. Games are what he'd been going on a buying spree in the past few years on. He has about 100 boxed games, many of them still shrink-wrapped.

I recommended to D that we create an inventory spreadsheet for the games. It was a simple thing, at least for people who know Excel (like all three of us do). Three columns: name, condition, estimated value. Condition we judged with standard grades like "New in Box" and "Like New". Value we figured by finding comparable sales on BoardGameGeek, eBay, and Amazon. We knew this would help in negotiating with dealers for a bulk sale.

As we got even partway through inventorying the games we realized Del's game hoard was a treasure hoard. The games are almost all boxed sets, more than half of them in totally new condition (original shrinkwrap intact). Many of the remainder are in like-new condition, with the box open but the cards and pieces inside still in their wrappers. Only a few games, out of ~100, are in what I affectionately call... "well loved"... condition. And most of these are pricey, high-quality games. Several are rare or special editions. A few games are worth hundreds of dollars each in new condition. Many of the rest are worth around $50 each. We didn't finish inventorying everything today but it's obvious that by the time we do, Del's game hoard will be worth well over $5,000.

D was impressed with the collection's value. Even selling them to a dealer at half price would net him over $2,500 cash, waaay more than he was expecting it to be worth. He thought he'd be donating it all to charity and taking a tax writeoff of a few hundred dollars.

I found the size of Del's collection a sad thing. It's sad because it was left behind, so much of it unused. I related that through a story about my grandma, "Bea".

Grandma Bea loved writing letters long-hand. She'd write to her brother, her kids, her nephews, and her grandkids regularly. She wrote to pen-pals around the US and overseas for 60 years.

Because family and friends knew how much she liked to write they bought her fine stationary and pens as gifts. Bea tucked those away in a cabinet down in the basement, wanting to save them for a suitably special use. She saved them for years.

When Bea's kids had to sell her house (she was in a bad accident at age 88 and needed to move in with someone to take care of her daily) they found her stash of beautiful stationary and pens. It looked like it had been untouched for decades. No special-enough special occasion had come around to use them. All those thoughtful gifts, those things Bea could have enjoyed using for years, went into the trash, unused

The unopened boxes in Del's collection make me sad in the same way as Grandma Bea's unused stationary. He bought them but never experienced their joy. Dead men play no games.