A weekly look at the draft selection in beer-friendly bars across the country.

Turning beer-fueled trips through Belgium and Amsterdam into the inspiration behind owning a bar may sound like a lot of guys' dreams. But for Aaron Porter and Chuck Stilphen, the dream came true in December of 2007 when they opened the Trappist in Oakland, Calif., attempting to bring that Belgian feel and Belgian brews to the Bay Area.

"We went to Belgium and Amsterdam for beer festivals," says co-owner Chuck Stilphen, recalling those trips he took with Porter. Upon their return, they would lament that there was "no good place to drink beer around here where we lived."

The Trappist combats that problem. The idea was "modeled around beers we like," so it's no surprise that their primary focus is on Belgian beers. But realizing that California is no small player in the world of making great beer either, they also stock plenty of brews from their home state as well.

Origins aside, one thing is always consistent: "Small brewers stuff," Stilphen says. "No InBev or even giant Belgian brewers."

See the Trappist's draft selection as of Tuesday after the jump. ...

Did this really have to happen? The two Belgian inventors of this drinking game say it did, and on top of that only Belgians could have come up with it. I'm pretty sure they're right.

The object of the new game is to knock out space aliens...with your pee in a urinal. Called "The Place to Pee", the urinal has sensors on the sides to keep score and it's designed for two players. Also, women are not excluded from this game: there's a cone designed just for the female player. So after a bit of drinking, you and a buddy can go (pun intended) and play. The more you drink, the more you can play.

I don't really know the particulars, and I don't really want to. Would you play if your favorite bar installed "The Place to Pee"?

[Via Real Beer, via Reuters]

Have you heard about that science experiment where you drop a Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke? The soda is supposed to explode into a fountain of cola.

This experiment was taken to greater heights this week in Leuvan, Belgium. 1,500 students simultaneously created the fountains in an attempt to break the previous record for the event. I have no idea what the previous record was, but I hope these kids broke it. With the mess they made, they deserve it.

I was going to say, "a hot dog made out of horse meat? Gah!" But then I thought, who the hell knows what's in the hot dogs that we eat now? Snouts, intestines, whatever. Maybe horse meat isn't too weird after all.

Esquire's Greg Lindsay gives us the scoop - from the horse's mouth, you could say - on the frikandel, a hot dog native to The Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of Germany. It's deep-fried sausage made out of beef, chicken, pork, and Mr. Ed.

His description (bland, soft, with pink gloop squirting out) doesn't make me want to get on a flight and try it anytime soon, but I'm not a big hot dog guy anyway.

With all the coverage we here at Slashfood have been giving gingerbread men and gingerbread houses I thought it might be fun to search the web for Guinness World Records involving the favorite holiday flavor.

Without doubt, the most impressive gingerbread record this year is Roger Pelcher's gingerbread house. The house - which was built at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. - stands just shy of 64 feet. Pelcher beat his previous record of 57 feet.

It took him and his team nine days to build the 1,496-square-foot ginger-scented, candy-laden mansion. Given its size and the fact that it includes a gingerbread factory complete with animated elves, I think it's fair to call it a mansion. The gargantuan confection contains 14,250 pounds of gingerbread, 4,750 pounds of icing and more than a ton of candy decorations. Hansel and Gretel eat your heart out.

I'm not sure why people like to make gingerbread creations of outlandish proportions in Minnessota, but they do. From Rochester comes the world's largest gingerbread man. The big guy weighs in at 466 pounds and was baked by the Gingerbread House Bakery. The bakery plans to bring it to the Mall of America to join Pelcher's gingerbread palace.

A Belgian man, Philippe Meert , used to have difficulty getting all his cereal in the bowl in the mornings. Like many people, he would simply open the box and rip open a portion of the cereal bag within, causing it to spill out the sides of the box and onto the table as he poured. It's hard to say whether residual sleepiness or sloppy box-opening was the main problem, but Meert wanted something that would make pouring easy (and accurate) for even the laziest breakfaster.

In 2004, Meert came out with a product called the Cerealtop, a plastic pouring spout that is designed to clamp onto a cereal box top and make pours easy-to-control. It adjusts to fit any box size and simply snaps onto the open box. Cerealtop is available online from Europe for about $6, but will be hitting the US market this fall for $3.95. 

A McCain potato-processing factory in England had to be evacuated when workers discovered a grenade amongst the potatoes as they were washing the spuds. The factory, which is the largest in Europe, imports many of its potatoes from other countries. It is not uncommon for debris from the first and second world wars to turn up amongst the spuds from Belgium and France, but in the past week the workers not only discovered the grenade, but a shell tip, as well. Following both discoveries, workers vacated the plant while the bomb squad came in and detonated the devices.

Worker safety is of paramount importance, and a company spokesman said that they would have to speak with their suppliers about checking the shipments more thoroughly, as "it is obviously not an efficient use of [the] staff's time if we have to keep evacuating the premises."

We have some facts and figures about general drinking trends, but what about just beer? Here are a few fun bits of beer trivia, from Here's to Beer and other randomly collected factoids, to quiz your buddies when you're all relaxing over a brew and a game after work:

• According to the Canadian Ace Brewing Co., there are 6,998 drops in a 12-ounce bottle of beer.
• St. Arnold is recognized by the Catholic Church as the patron saint of brewing beer.
• A 12-ounce beer has fewer calories than two slices of standard, sliced bread.
• In Fairbanks, Alaska, it is illegal to give beer to a moose.
• The country with the most brands of beer - 400 - is Belgium.
• In Germany, you can buy beer popsicles.
• Cenosillicaphobia is the fear of an empty [beer] glass

For more refreshing beer info, check out Slashfood's beer archives!

MSN has posted a list of the top 10 cities for foodies, as determined by a travel site. The cities chosen are all over the globe, picked for a combination of unique dishes, celebrity chefs and all-around good cuisine. Barcelona, Brussels, Lyon and Rome were lauded for their long standing traditions, while Las Vegas and New York were included for having just about everything. While San Francisco did get a nod for its non-Asian cuisine, it seems to have been selected mainly on the availability of good Chinese food. Asian flavors are what put Tokyo, Vancouver and Hanoi on the list, too.

It appears that the definition of a foodie as someone who is willing (and possibly desperate) to eat anything has been put into play with this list, as along with Asian flair, Hanoi was picked for "unusual delicacies like dog or snake," including "fried snake skin, snake spring rolls, snake soup, and minced snake dumpling." Weird meats are all well and good, but to plan a whole trip around them seems a bit extreme.

Nevertheless, their list includes: