7% ABV from a bomber

“So first of all, I picked her up without saying even a single word…”

I was launching into another epic tale, my friend Wes’s very favorite tale of mine, one he insisted I write up for the Vice Blog.  We sat around his luxury highrise apartment playing NHL 2008 on XBox, surely the best sports video game ever, and I say that as a guy who hasn’t watched a single hockey game since Chris Chelios was still in the league.  Huh?  He’s still in the league NOW?!

We drank a semi-rare score, a bottle of Pangaea, from one of my favorite breweries in the country, Dogfish Head.  I’m excited to try all new Dogfish Head offerings but especially this one as the beer is made with ingredients from all seven continents including most prominently crystallized ginger from Australia, moscavado sugar from Africa, basmati rice from Asia, and a bit of a “cheat” in using water from the McMurdo Science Station in Antarctica.  An interesting idea no doubt and a splendid name and label, yes, but ultimately, I found this beer to be a bit of a gimmick, it essentially just tasting like liquid ginger.

And, again, as I’ve been saying with a lot of DFH’s “weirder” offerings lately, I was glad to try it, but really don’t want to ever try it again.  I don’t know why DFH puts their oddball beers in bombers.  Even splitting it with a friend it becomes a bit of a chore to drink and you just end up resenting the beer even though it’s not actually half bad.  Perhaps they need to sell it in larger, more expensive quantities in order to give them the ability to actually make the inventive beers, something I completely understand.  I will admit that by bomber’s end I actually started warming up to the beer, thinking it might be most interesting with a meal of spicy Asian food.

“So first of all, I picked her up without saying a single word…”

This was back three years ago, I was a single man visiting the folks in Oklahoma City.  That city is burgeoning I suppose, but there’s still not tons for a young single man to do.  Even going out to drink can be a major pain in the ass, trying to find drivers to escort you and locations that actually have people in them.  Having said that, though, when a New Yorker like me finds a “happening” or even “kinda happening” or even “35% full” bar in Oklahoma City, it can make for a great time for reasons twofold:

A.  Shit is so fucking cheap.  I don’t know how many times I’ve been running a tab for an entire group of friends in Oklahoma City and after a full night of drinking–though remember, bars close at 2:00, at 1:00 the house lights go up, and at 1:30 hick bouncers start yelling at you, the patron who has spending good money for the past several hours, to “Get the FUCK outta my bar!!!!”–went to tab out and seen the bill and begun laugh.  Laughing like I’d heard the funniest joke of all time.  Countless beers, top-shelf cocktails, shots, greasy sampler platters for a party of five?  Let’s say $45.  “How much I owe you?” a friend says.  “On me!” I say!  Which is an expression any one will tell you the Vice Blogger has never said once in New York City.  But in Oklahoma City, a visiting New York instantly becomes a millionaire.

B.  And this is true for all American cities that aren’t Los Angeles and maybe Miami…women irrationally love a guy from New York City.  You don’t have to be handsome, rich, thin, interesting, straight, or even showered, you simply have to live in one of the five boroughs of the city of New York.  Not that a girl from Oklahoma City even knows what a borough is.

I found myself at some hell-hole of a bar in my former hometown.  It was packed, indeed, but that doesn’t matter as most people in OKC are still smoking and it’s actually legal to still puff indoors there.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m adamantly against nanny stateism and for debauchery and think humans should be allowed to smoke inside bars–if that is what the owner wishes–but I still can bitch about the stink.  Also, people in Oklahoma City don’t like to inter-group mingle, just finding their own booths or tables to smoke and chit-chat and I guess play quarters or something.

So I suppose I was a little grumpy at not finding any ugly local girls to talk to but I was nevertheless excited that I was drinking bourbon neats for $3.25.  You know you’re in a non-major metropolis if drinks cost something “…and a quarter.” It was Christmas day and surprisingly the bar was packed.  I hadn’t showered or tried to style my hair in any way because I don’t really care what I look like when I’m outside of New York.  I wore a dirty white Hanes undershirt with simply a pea coat over top of it.  I looked miserable.  I was talking to only my sister.  We were probably mocking former classmates of ours.

My friend Matthew–now a proud father and in a semi-common-law marriage–had been working a girl hard all night.  Like all night.  I wasn’t sure if he was making ground or not and I didn’t really care.  All I knew was that it was 1:30, the lights had just gone on, and I wanted to drink for the next one, two, seven hours.

“Hey Matthew, any fucking place we go get a drink now?”

Matthew turned to me for the first time in an hour or so.  The girl he was flirting with turned toward me as well.  A gentleman, he introduced us.

“Allison, this is my friend, Aaron.”

She stuck out her hand aloofly.

“He’s from New York.”

Her eyes bulged out of her head, if she had a dick she would have got a boner, and “NEW.  YORK.  CITY?” she exclaimed and pulled me in for a hug.  “It is so great to meet you.”

She all but pushed Matt out of the way to get to me.  I still hadn’t said a word to her.  Do I feel bad that when I–or any of the other 4.1 million-ish New York men–go to other measly cities we get treated like George Clooney simply because we pay ungodly amounts of rent and know how to read a subway map?  Well…yeah, actually I kinda do.  But, in the same way I feel a bit embarrassed if I have to use a bridge to hit a shot in billiards.  I’m still gonna take credit for the sunk ball and I’ll still hook up with the girl.

Matthew’s a smart guy and he already had seen the folly of his ways.  The folly of telling “his” girl I was from New York.

“So, do you know any place to drink, Aaron?” said “my” girl.

Actually, I had just thought of one.  Before leaving the house that night I’d been searching through my parents’ home for a snack and come across the motherload.  My parents are essentially teetotalers nowadays yet I guess they continued receiving bottles of liquor as gifts over the years and kept them in one out-of-the-way cabinet.  Earlier that night I’d found that stock, and there was plenty, ranging from the normal (Grey Goose, Johnnie Walker Black, Crown Royal) to the “What-asshole-gave-you-that-as-a-gift?” (Hennessey, Malibu Rum, something that looked like moonshine and had tropical fruits floating in bottle.)

“Actually I do…everyone to my parents’ house.”

My sister stared at me like, “Really?”  I was wasted off $3.25 bourbons so I nodded back, “Yes, really.”

A group of about ten of us headed to my parents’ home, my annexed girl giving me a ride.  I had the foresight to make everyone park one street over.  I was 26 years old, but my parents, especially my mom, is not one for reckless debauchery.  I made everyone, save my sister and Matthew, stand around the corner of the front door as I unlocked it.  My mom has ears like a hawk and always awakens when I get home from boozing.  She came out of her room.

“Hey mom, I invited Matthew over to hang out for a little bit.”

My mom loved Matthew who was maybe my oldest friend, one I had met when we were both three-year-old wunderkinds in the four-year-old preschool class at the Jewish daycare Matthew’s Christian family had inexplicably enrolled him in.

“Oh that’s fine.  Hi, Matthew.  Good night.”

My mom went back into her room and then me and my sister and friends old, new, and just met got wasted, polishing off literally every drop of booze in the house, though I wouldn’t learn this til later.

Noon.

I awaken.

A pulsating headache.

I hear my loud family awake and romping around.  My dad cooking a late brunch in the kitchen.  My mom roughhousing with the dogs in the living room.

Beside me, in my twenty-five-year-old twin bed that still has NFL sheets on it, the naked girl from last night.  How many words have I said to her in my life?  I don’t even know her name.  All I know is that she is fucking naked and my parents are nearby.

Now my parents are the kind of people that have no respect for boundaries.  The kind of people that have no problem just opening a door and marching into your bedroom.  In fact, every previous morning of this little Christmas vacation my mom and/or father had, without knocking, entered into my room with the wild dogs to wake me up at whatever point they deemed fit.  I was certain we were mere seconds from that happening again.  My childhood bedroom didn’t have a lock.

I started shaking the girl, trying to wake her ass up.  She wouldn’t bulge.  It was like she was dead.  I stared at the Magic Johnson poster on my wall, what had become of my life?  Could I get an assist, Earvin?  I shook her some more, which jarred something loose and caused her to begin to loudly snore.  I was kinda freaking out, and I wasn’t sure why.  I was a fucking grown man, I could do whatever I want.  Right?

Even moreso being that both my sisters, both younger than me, each in a bedroom on either side of mine, had their boyfriends in town for the holidays and were sleeping with them every single night, something my conservative parents surprisingly never had a problem with.

I thought, fuck it, I’ll just wake this girl up, march her through the house toward the front door and proudly proclaim,

“Good morning mother and father, this is the one-night stand I had last night.”

And that would be that.

Naw, I couldn’t do that.  I didn’t need my parents to know I was the kind of person that got wasted and had promiscuous liaisons with girls I picked up through the most frivolous of reasons.  Actually, I laughed to myself, the real reason I didn’t want my parents to see my one-night stand was because she was ugly.  Well, not ugly, but kinda just mediocre.  A six out of ten.  Yeah, which made her a nine out of ten in Oklahoma, but I digress.  I would have proudly marched a beauty out of my room, let my parents know that their son had some serious long-ball power, but I couldn’t disappoint them with my previous night’s middling lay.

I went to the bathroom to wash my face and game plan.  I ran into my sister in the hall way.  She snickered.  “So whatever happened to that girl last night after I went to bed?”  She really didn’t know.

“She’s still in my room.”

“BULLSHIT!”

“Shhhhhhhhh…”

I shrugged.  You doubt me, sibling?  I opened the door to my room a crack.  My sister peaked her head in.  The girl’s bare ass was hanging outside the comforter.  My sister started cracking up.  I saw nothing funny about it.

I went back into my room and shook the girl as hard as possible.  She finally awoke.  Now I don’t know about you, but if I woke up–as a mid-twenties adult–in the childhood bedroom of a stranger I had just had a one-night stand with, I would be a little disturbed and perturbed with myself.  Not this one.  Uh uh.  She casually smiled.  “Mornin.’”

I would have been like, “Where the hell am I?  What the fuck happened?  Are those your parents I hear????  Is that Walter Payton on this pillow?”  Again, not this one.  She just yawned, noted she was hungry for an omelet.

I walked over to my bedroom window, the sill covered with all my childhood sports trophies.  I began to clear them away.

“What are you doing, Aaron?”

“I really apologize for this, but you have to jump out my window.  I don’t want you to deal with my parents.  It’s better for both of us.”

“OK.”

I liked this girl, nice, supplicating, and malleable.

She began to casually get dressed, staying naked far longer than a normal person would, slowly, slowly, slowly, putting on each sock and then…

A knock on my door.   SHIT!

I nodded at her to get under the covers and hide.  The end game was near and my parents weren’t going to be humiliated by their son’s pathetic pick-up.  She did as she was told.

I opened the door a crack.  It was my sister.  She had just remembered–just remembered!–that her bedroom had a rarely-used side door that we could allow Elvis to leave the building through.  Perfect.

The girl got dressed, we quickly ushered her through the hallway, into my sister’s bedroom, and then out the door.

Once the girl was outside my sister and I started madly cackling.  We ran to the front of the house and its windows, spying on the girl as she walk-of-shamed across several lawns and to her car parked on the next block.  Mission accomplished.

We headed to the kitchen for breakfast where my sister continued to make countless thinly-veiled references to my miserable hook-up, my parents somehow never catching on.  They were just mad me, my sister, and Matthew had somehow drank fifteen bottles of their booze in one night.  “Your father and I were gonna drink that one day!”

B-

9% ABV from a bomber

Tradition can be great if it involves eating delicious foods, getting presents for eight straight nights, or singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch.  Likewise, it can suck if it involves sitting at a Seder table with relatives you hate, getting your foreskin chopped off by a drunken moyel, or asking a father “permission” to marry his daughter.  The most fun, though, is starting traditions of your own.  Which brings us to the 2nd Annual Apartment 17C Thanksgiving Beer Pong Tournament.

Last year, I found myself alone on Thanksgiving day because I wasn’t allowed to accompany my girlfriend home for the holidays being that her parents are antisemites.  No, not really.  They just viscerally hated me for nebulous reasons and wouldn’t allow me in their home.*  Thus, I found myself dining with my good friends from Apartment 17C, a married couple K and J, along with J’s visiting brother and his girlfriend, and two other rollin’ stones AJ and Andy.

Thanksgiving day 2007 had started off “normal” enough.  In a traditional manner.  Gorging on turkey, stuffing, and all sort of other tasty things sopped in gravy.  Drinking fine wine in a refined manner.  Watching the Detroit Lions lose.  But after a few hours we were bored.  In Manhattan, no one has the space for a dining room table and most people are forced to eat their meals off of coffee tables.  But for this feast, J had been clever enough to rent a table which she placed in the middle of her living room.  After the meal, once the plates had been cleared, and the plastic tablecloth balled and stuffed into the garbage, one of us noticed that the shape, size, and length of the Thanksgiving table sure resembled something else:  a beer pong table.  And, thus, an impromptu tournament was quickly put together.

As AJ and Andy rushed out of the house to find any place that was still selling macro crap on a Thanksgiving night, J and her brother went searching for ping pong balls and Solo cups, while I stuck behind to craft the double-elimination tournament bracket.  Drawing up a bracket is a tougher skill than most realize, and I’m quite good at it, my masterpiece being a fifty some-odd person triple-elimination ping pong bracket I once made for a freshman year all-dorm ping pong tournament.

After the reconnoitering we all reconvened with our findings.  AJ and Andy had scored a bulk of Miller Lite cans, while J and her brother had struggled in their endeavors.  To get ping pong balls they had snuck into the highrise’s game room, feigned playing table tennis for a bit, and swiped the orbs, but had found less success in Solo cup scoring.  Ultimately, they were forced to beg a deli guy to give them a stack of tall cardboard coffee cups.  It wasn’t perfect but the tournament went off swimmingly, leaving us all shit-faced by the end of the evening, a night we would never forget.  Especially me, because I was the inaugural winner.

This year we were much more prepared, acquiring the balls and cups earlier in the week.  The one rub this time was that only five of us were dining, returnees J and K, AJ and I, plus a new addition in my sister.  With only five we would have to make the Second Annual tournament a round robin format:  everyone would play everyone else once, and the two leaders in the final standings would square off for a one-game championship.

It’s funny when the Thanksgiving meal acts as a mere prelude to the day’s real events.  The meal is usually the centerpiece of Thanksgiving day, but not in our case when they are bigger fish to fry.  Speaking of fried, we had a Cajun fried turkey which was scrumptious, one of the best birds I can ever remember having.  Nicely spiced and incredibly succulent.  Before the tournament we drank classy, the highlight being when I finally cracked a precious bottle of Theobroma which my friend Derek had generously nabbed for me.

I’d been aching to try this brew ever since I first saw the press release about its release, but I found myself somewhat disappointed.  Yet another archaeological recreation beer from the good folks at Dogfish Head to sit beside their earlier Midas Touch.  The company’s literature notes:

Theobroma, or “food of the gods,” is brewed with Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs from Askinosie Chocolate, honey, ancho chilies, and annatto. The recipe is based on chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras, which scientists claim is the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink.

I expected a dark, rich beer and was stunned when it poured a thin orange-yellow color.  I didn’t smell or taste chocolate at all, either.  In fact, the flavor I most got out of this beer was that of cheese queso from a Mexican restaurant.  I just couldn’t avoid it.  Every fucking sip I felt like my tongue was a nacho chip and I was dipping into some liquid queso.  That isn’t quite as damning as it sounds, but I really was not floored by this beer and my drinking partner and I struggled to finish the entire bomber.  Dogfish Head is always interesting and I’m glad I got to try this, but probably never would again.  It’s not even as good as the likewise oddball Midas Touch.  Having said that, here I sit typing this some six days later and I can still mentally taste the beer in my mouth, it has truly left its mark.

Once the meal was done, you’ve never seen a group of people, especially men, so anxious to clear a table and clean up after their feasting.  Everyone had to play everyone once, so for scheduling purposes we just randomly drew names out of a hat.  As mentioned countless times before, I am a classic overcompetitor in all aspects of gaming.  I’m just like the father in Pat Conroy’s masterpiece “The Great Santini” who refuses to relent when playing his milquetoast teenage son in driveway basketball, browbeating him the one time he finally loses.  Luckily for me and my prodigious ego, I rarely lose things.

I drew host J in the first match-up and she absolutely took me to the wood-shed.  Destroying me by four cups as all her shots went down while mine harmlessly bounced off the edges of the iconic red cups.  Finally, in a fit of frustration, I lashed out at the cups.  I was not playing poorly, I was making fine shots, it was the fucking cups!  I went so far as to claim that they were not even Solo cups.  And you know what?!  They weren’t!  AJ, perhaps to save ten cents, perhaps to screw me over, had purchased America’s Choice knock-off Solos!  Call me a bad sport, but I knew we were playing with inferior equipment, it was surely the only reason I had been upset in the first game.

Refocused, and now forced to adopt a new throwing method to deal with the cheap cups, I dug myself out of a massive 0-1 hole to make it to the top of the round robin standings and eventually cruise to my second straight title.  How ’bout them apples?

B-

*Because I’m Jewish.

9% ABV bottled

Here’s to the idiots that order stupid drinks.

To the drunk buffoon in Murray Hill who approached the bartender and nonchalantly asked for a round of Starry Night shots.  “And what the fuck are those?” eye-rolled the bartender, humiliating the fellow enough that he amended his order to straight tequila.  After the guy went back to his group of undesirables, the bartender and I snickered at the order, before realizing, hey, that shot probably looks pretty cool when executed correctly.  For the record, the recipe is Goldschlager floated on a Jaegermeister shot.

To the just-out-of-college girl I played the game of seduction with on the Lower East Side.  I thought I was successfully hitting on her, especially when she suggested we leave her group of friends and head to the bar to toast our near-future fornication with some Redheaded Slut shots, her treat.  I didn’t really enjoy them but we had several.  The girl was a Brunettehead and by the end of the night I learned that either my game was not that tight…or she just wasn’t a slut.

To the thirtysomething chap at a recent wedding who claimed “his” drink was a White Russian.  Seriously guy?  That’s no one’s drink.   Except The Dude’s.  And we all know you’re just trying to copy him to be cool.  But that’s not cool, because everyone’s seen “The Big Lebowski” and everyone–the Vice Blogger included–tried to make and/or order him or herself a White Russian in the days after first seeing the legendary picture.  And that was like a decade ago.  Now true, it’s a solid enough cocktail, no question, but it’s no one’s “drink.”  No one could possibly spend all evening drinking cocktails full of heavy cream, Kahlua, and vodka.  Get real.

To the girl I saw just last week at The Ginger Man order a vodka martini with “alotta olives, please.”  When she got handed her cocktail, the bottom of the glass was so full of olives, at least a dozen of them, that I was forced to sardonically remark:  “Jeez, ya’ trying to steal a free meal to go along with your drink?”  She coquettishly laughed, thinking I was flirting, staying near my side for a few seconds longer, expecting me to continue conversing with her, to further slay her with my alluring repartee.  I, however, turned back to my drink without a follow-up, leaving her to walk away confused.  “That girl liked you, why didn’t you keep hitting on her?,” asked my equally confused, and desperate, drinking buddy.  He didn’t understand either, that line, delivered as I delivered it, would have indeed been flirtateous in nature were it hurled toward an attractive woman.  But it was nothing but pure scorn when said to the kind of disgusting fat bitch that eats an entire glass of bar olives marinating in a splash of Stoli.

And, finally…

To the girl I was on a recent drinking date with, our first time out together.  We entered the pub and sat at a table in the far back.  The place lacked waitress service so, in a rare bout of chivalry, I offered to go up to the bar and get our first round.  I told my 24-year-old companion that I was in the mood for bourbon, and what would she like?  “A slippery nipple,” she shot back.  I pinky-cleaned some excess shower water from my ear canals before asking, just to be sure, “HUH?!”  “A slippery nipple, with ice,” she replied.  I smiled wide at her without saying anything further, turned to head to the bar, then bypassed the bartender, walked out of the establishment, and sprinted up the street to the Russian Vodka Room.  I’m getting too old to spend my time with idiots, I thought to myself as I turned off my cell and ordered two shots of infused vodka.

Come on people, you’re adults.  Ordering these drinks at watering holes is akin to going into a fine steakhouse and asking for a cardboard stick of hot pink cotton candy as your entree.  Grow the fuck up.

But the funny thing is, the irony is, that I constantly see these buffoons drinking beverages more childish than Ecto Cooler, yet I’m the one that gets stared at, that gets questioned, when I order the most normal of libations.

“Hey man, what’s that WEIRD drink ya just ordered?” is a refrain I constantly hear from needling strangers.

Well, in this case, the hoi polloi would be correct, Midas Touch is one fucking weird drink.  I nearly called it one fucking weird beer, but I’m not quite sure that’s a fully accurate label.

It pours orange/red like a strong apple cider you’d get at a farmers’ market.  It smells like a sour/wild ale, very interesting.  And, wow, what an odd taste.  There’s a clear reason why.   A handcrafted ancient ale brewed with a recipe of barley, honey, white muscat grapes, and saffron among other things, this brew is Dogfish Head’s attempt to recreate an elixir found to have been drank by THE King Midas countless centuries earlier.

Overall, it tastes at times like a mead (a beverage I’ve had only once or twice in my life), a white wine chardonnay, a barley wine, and a wild ale mix.  Very bready, and carbonated like a weak champagne.  It took me nearly two hours to polish off a twelve-ounce bottle.  The beer is so potent–in complexity, not necessarily alcohol, though that too–that I could only handle eye drop size sips each time my mouth went to glass.

I’m damn glad I had the Midas Touch, but I’m not sure I’d ever want to have another!  It’s just not a complete success.  Having said that, I insist that any beer lover give this one a whirl.  It is something that demands to be experienced.

B

7% ABV bottled

We all have the shameful things we do when we get wasted.  I have one buddy who gets sensual massages.  Another can’t help but prank call an ex-girlfriend.  As for me, I always end up stopping at an all-night Indian takeout place next to my apartment and gorging myself.  And, believe me, the repercussions from my drunken act of shame is far worse than my aforementioned friends, even if their acts cost them $80 and a loss of dignity.

I live in Hell’s Kitchen but on 10th Avenue which isn’t quite as gentrified as 9th Avenue.  It’s no “Gangs of New York” or anything, but it’s still a bit rough-and-tumble, and thus there aren’t as many places for late-night grubbing.  Unfortunately no late-night pizzeria near my pad, a seeming impossibility in New York.  Thus, I have to stop at this Indian place and gets some absolutely disgusting mystery-meat-with-rice styrofoam carton combo.  I can’t help myself.  I know the food sucks, I know, but I guess I’m just an optimist, positive at 3 AM, that’s this is the time, yes!, when the food will finally be good and hit the spot.  But nope, it never is.  Last night, I had no cash, and with a $4.99 combo price and only a card on me, I was forced to tell the guy behind the counter to fill a sack with samosas until I had cleared the minimum.  That brown bag of fried meat pastries was so damn greasy that the bottom had nearly split before I’d even left the place.  And the so-called chicken tikka masala was even worse.  An oozing splatter of meat and sauce on some overcooked rice pellets.

You think being hungover is bad, well being hungover and still nauseous from this Indian food is about as bad as it get.  Even worse, before I went out I pre-barred with a little Dogfish Head Punkin.  Each burp today is an ejaculation of spicy chicken and Jameson, with a hint of pumpkin.  That’s the real kicker.  And it’s almost made me never want to have a pumpkin beer again, which is a damn shame as Punkin is a pretty good one.

Not the most potent smelling of pumpkin ales, just a slight spice odor.  A great first taste.  A full-bodied brown ale with a good pumpkin taste and the typical spices.  However, one flavor came through that I don’t believe most pumpkin beers have — brown sugar.  And that was a great addition.

Punkin is very drinkable for a 7% brew, but I would have preferred it to be a little more flavorful.  Kinda mild as far as pumpkin beers go.  A really great mouthfelel and a nice warming finish.  A solid beer.

B+

8% on draught

Friday I went to Dinosaur BBQ Harlem to have my death row meal, their Jumbo Roaster Bar-B-Que chicken wings, spice rubbed, pit smoked, then finished on the grill. Were I about to be put to rest, for my final feast I would simply have the prison officials pry open my gullet and dump several hundred of these wings down my throat (with a gallon of Maytag blue as lubrication) in the same way they feed a foie gras duck or goose. But this would not be gavage, it would be pure ecstasy. I wouldn’t even need to go to the electric chair or get a lethal injection, I would eat these wings until my liver exploded and I perished. The foie gras I created no doubt sold off to rampant Vice Blog fanatics in some charity auction at the next VBCon.

While sitting at Dinosaur’s better-than-you-would expect bar waiting for my dining companions to arrive, I marveled at the terrible drink selections everyone was making. Dinosaur has a quite respectable craft beer menu yet everyone was getting shit. Blue Moons and Stellas aplenty. I thought of the reaction of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” character Jimmy when Vincent and Jules are so impressed that he actually has some good coffee to serve them.

Jimmy: I don’t need you to tell me how fucking good my coffee is, okay? I’m the one who buys it, I know how good it is. When Bonnie goes shopping, she buys shit. Me, I buy the gourmet expensive stuff because when I drink it, I want to taste it.

Well just like Jimmy, I drink the gourmet expensive stuff while everyone else seems to drink shit. Why is that? I suspect it’s because most people don’t truly like the taste of beer like I do. That’s cause all they’ve ever had are crummy macros. But they like to get drunk–without the liver-scorching potency that hard liquor brings or the effete stigma that delicious fruity cocktail concoctions bring–and thus are forced to drink beer. And so the number one thing I suspect these people look at when ordering a beer is what is the cheapest shit in the place. Thus, they order macros.

Now this always amused me. True a macro is almost certainly going to be the cheapest beer in the joint when ounce-age is the only factor considered. But is that what should be measured? I propose these folks should look at PPAP (price per alcoholic percentile). As in, where I live in New York, Bud Light is usually $5 a pint. At a 4.2% ABV that’s $1.19 cents per alcoholic percentile. Meanwhile, at Dinosaur the ubiquitous Blue Moon was $5. At 5.4% that’s 92 cents per alcoholic percentile. But what I got was Dogfish Head’s Raison D’Etre. True, at $6 the most expensive pint on the menu, but at 8% ABV it was also the most alcoholic beer on the menu giving me an PPAP of 75 cents! By far the best value in the place gettin’-drunk-wise.

You would think these people that are only concerned about alcohol as a vessel for drunkenness would use their basic math skills and figure out that in the long run it would be much more thrifty to drink “expensive” craft beer all night than “dirt cheap” piss water macros. And, then, they might realize–shit!–these microbrews are so vastly superior in flavor than the swill I’ve been drinking my whole life.

Back to Raison D’Etre. Dogfish Head is one of my favorite breweries but I’d avoided this beer for years for reasons twofold. Firstly, it’s so easy to find that I never saw any urgency in picking it up, and secondly, it gets pretty mediocre reviews online. I really don’t understand that at all. From the first sniffs and sips, I really liked this one. Pun-ish raisins (not raisons), chocolate, and maybe a little coffee immediately nail you. Tastes like some unique stout/strong ale hybrid. A sweet finish and a sour aftertaste.

I must admit I liked this beer less and less the more I drank it, but that’s just cause it’s so overwhelming. The first 8 ounces or so were flirting with greatness indeed and I would definitely have this one again. Just not so much of it again. And I would also tell amateurs to totally avoid my earlier PPAP treatise because there is no fucking way you macro-drinking lifers could handle this one.

B-

7% ABV bottled

Sometimes, a beer connoisseur becomes obsessed with locating and trying a beer not because it’s highly regarded, not because you suspect it’s good, but simply because you can’t get your grubby hands on it. This is what happened to me with Aprihop. I saw it in stores in early March or so, and since I adore Dogfish Head and (cough) fruit beers, I knew I had to try it. Unfortunately, and for whatever reason, I didn’t quickly hop to and purchase some and seemingly just a week later it was out of circulation. I had squandered my chance. It hurt even more when friends would tell me they had tried it and really liked it.

Over the last few months, I would get tips that certain bars, restaurants, or stores had it in stock. I’d travel to check them out, but all the tips ended up being false. I’d occasionally even be at bars and see Aprihop listed but the bartender would quickly snatch the beer menu from my hands realizing he’d given me an old one.

I had thus given up hope of ever having the Aprihop and had just resolved myself to try it in spring ‘09. And then last week I found myself at a fairly innocuous Tribeca bar which had “Aprihop” chalked on their wall menu. I didn’t believe it.  (I also fucking hate colored chalk wall menus.  So goddamn hard to read in the dark!)

“You don’t really have Aprihop do you? You’ve been too lazy to change the menu since March, huh?”

The bartender curiously checked the fridge–they did have Aprihop!

Only one problem, the refrigeration unit had just blown out and all the bottles were warm. Seeing my face drop in sorrow–was I thwarted yet again?!–the bartender quickly improvised.

“Order something else first and I’ll throw an Aprihop on ice for ya’ honey.”

Nice. Twenty minutes later, I was finally drinking the hard-to-find beer. It’s not exactly spectacular, it certainly wasn’t worth the wait, but it’s still good, and it’s incredibly interesting. Nice smell like very fresh apricots. The taste is incredibly sour. Not as bad as Dogfish Head’s Festina Peche, but tart nonetheless.

Very complex. I thought it tasted like the Sixty Minute with hints of apricot and, sure enough, I soon noticed on the bottle that they themselves consider this beer to be an IPA. You rarely see fruit beers this complex and bold. Most are either super-fruity overcarbonated wheat beers that taste like soda pop, or lambics ala Lindemans that don’t taste like beer at all. Not to sound misogynistic, but this ain’t a fruit beer meant for chicks. OK, I guess that did sound misogynistic. But I didn’t mean it. I’m a nice, sensitive guy! I mean, I drink fruit beer for Chrissakes!!

B+

4.5% ABV on draught

I fellated Dogfish Head’s flagship brew so heartily in my previous review because I knew what I had to do next: absolutely trash their Festina Peche offering. I needed to make it abundantly clear that I adore DFH—it’s close to my favorite brewery—before laying into one of their brews. You know how when your favorite filmmaker makes the rare dud of a movie and all the critics and your friends bash it, but you refuse to believe your beloved idol made such a stinker—despite what you saw with your very own eyes—so you lie to yourself and insist to your friends that it’s actually a great flick and they just don’t get it and maybe the filmmaker isn’t even making movies for (idiot) people like them any more. Eventually, you fess up and admit to your friends that they were right all along, your idol had indeed made a shitty picture.

Well, I refused to believe that Dogfish Head had made such a bad beer in their Festina Peche. I was absolutely stoked when I first saw it on the shelves last spring—beer, peaches, I love them both!—and absolutely stocked up on it despite never having had a sip of it. You ever rush home with like 30 bottles of the same kind of beer, sure you’ll love it, and then after popping the top of the first one to taste it you realize almost immediately that you hate it? There’s nothing sadder than staring at those remaining 29 bottles of beer realizing that it is going to literally be work to plow through them, like a punished G.I. staring at a pile of potatoes yet to be peeled.

I guess I forgot about that experience, or continued refusing to believe it because I found myself at a bar on Friday night where a brand new keg of Peche had just been put on tap, a new offering for the spring. My sister was getting the round and when I ordered the $7 brew she said, “Mmmm, sounds good…”—same exact thing I thought a year ago—”…how is it?”

“I absolutely hate it,” I responded.

My sister: “Let me get this straight, I’m going up to the bar to buy you an expensive beer you hate?”

“Yes. But I’m hoping that I’ll like it this time. That maybe they brewed it differently this year.”

Suffice to say, she wasn’t pleased when after a single sip of my pint I realized I hated it just as much as last year’s offering. I don’t know what I expect. Maybe something super-peachy and rich like a Lindeman’s Pecheresse? Perhaps, that is a tasty son of a bitch, but, alas, a completely different style of beer.

The Festina Peche does smell great but it just is really, really, really sour and tart. It’s as clear as a cheap macro-cider that girls that “don’t like beer” drink. I just really don’t like it at all. It’s the only Dogfish Head offering I haven’t loved, not liked, loved. I don’t know what went wrong with it. I really think—hope!—that one day I’ll taste the Festina Peche and go, “Aha! Now I get it!” and realize that it is a great beer, like some kid that finally understands the glory of “2001: A Space Odyssey” after several viewings. But I have a feeling that will never happen with this one. I almost wish this beer was taken off the market cause I know I’ll continue buying it every single May to give it another hopeful whirl.

C-

6% ABV on draught

Simply put: I love Dogfish Head 60 Minute. If I am at a bar with it on tap, it is all I can do to not simply sit and drink pint after pint after pint of it all night long, to the detriment of my further explorations of beers I haven’t had before. Were I a beer nerd, I would say this is my absolute favorite “session” beer. Not a lot of macro-swilling folks know that term. It’s fancified jargon snobs use to denote a beer they drink one after another after another all through the night, or after like 2 or 3 pints, the amount that will usually get them so intoxicated they start yelling at their “help.” I am not a snob, however, nor do I like my friends to think me a pompous ass, so I rarely use the term “session” when it comes to drinking heavily. I would simply say that I love to drink DFH 60 as often and as frequently as possible, it is so damn good. Beer Advocate has a pretty swell definition of session beer:

session beer
n.

Any beer that contains no higher than 5 percent ABV, featuring a balance between malt and hop characters (ingredients) and, typically, a clean finish - a combination of which creates a beer with high drinkability. The purpose of a session beer is to allow a beer drinker to have multiple beers, within a reasonable time period or session, without overwhelming the senses or reaching inappropriate levels of intoxication.

I agree with their definition but I like to be wasted (ie. reach inappropriate levels of intoxication) by the end of my night if I’m “sessioning” and thus that extra 1% ABV that DFH 60 has above Beer Advocate’s recommended maximum of 5% is perfect. DFH 60 makes getting drunk accomplished in the most pleasant way possible. As I become more of a connoisseur, I find that I “session” less and less, preferring to simply have a bomber or two or three of different high-ABV brews over the course of an evening. But at least once a week, a man needs to tie one on. For you, average Joe, your session beer could be pitchers of Bud, buckets of Coors, or tallboy can after can of that noted Pabst offering that won a first prize ribbon so recently. My usual session beers are Brooklyn Lager, Sam Adams, or Yuengling—all decent enough brews—but DFH 60 trumps them all.

I’ve always felt that the quality of their IPA is THE true measure of how good a brewery is. Good IPA = good brewery. It’s typically the style of beer I first sample (along with a barley wine if the brewery has one) when investigating a new brewery. Well, 60 Minute is so flavorful with a seemingly perfect level of hops and malts that you know you are dealing with a masterly beermaker. It’s not too sweet, not too bitter, and my god is it drinkable. And, I always wake up the next afternoon after a happy-hour-to-last-call session with DFH 60 wondering “Wha’ happened?” Now that’s a great beer.

A

7.2% ABV from a bottle

I pretty much like every beer from Dogfish Head and this one is no exception. I’m a big fan of brown ales and this probably surpasses my previous favorite, Brooklyn Brown. This beer pours dark and frothy like a can of Welch’s grape soda. It’s very alcoholic for a brown, though doesn’t exactly taste so. Quite frankly, it almost tastes like a stout, or maybe a porter (although now that I think about it, I’m not really sure I know the difference. (Shame on me self-proclaimed-beer-connoisseur*)). I could drink these all night—I think—though I would assume the ABV would eventually catch up with me and I’d wake up with my head in a pizza box wondering, “Wha’ happened?” Very nice beer.

A-

(Apropos of nothing…I really like Dogfish Head’s labels. Very sharp)

*Wikipediaing reveals stouts and porters to be virtually identical.