5% ABV corked-and-caged yo

In Stanley Kubrick’s seminal “2001: A Space Odyssey,”, arguably the greatest picture of all time, the progression of a being is shown to evolve from that of a lower form of ape to an upper tool-using form to a bland earthling to one capable of traversing the galaxy to, finally, one able to break through the gates and become…the starchild.  The highest being possible.  The odyssey of the beer connoisseur would seemingly reach the starchild level–that place that other mere mortals simply don’t understand, much less are they able to attain themselves–when he or she becomes addicted to funky sours beers.  Those American wild ales, Flanders Reds, Lambics, and the granddaddy of them all, Guezes.  Others might not understand why we like them, in fact they may even be repulsed when we let them try a sip of our glass, and, shit, we might not quite understand why we all of the sudden dig these mouth-puckerin’ tartbombs either, but alas, one day we all do.

It’s especially easy to dig these beers when you get to try world-class examples.  Such as a few weeks ago when I tippled the currently 59th ranked beer on this planet, the unfiltered version of Girardin’s gueuze courtesy of Greg at Rustico in Alexandria, Virginia.  I popped the cork to the moon, Alice, unleashing a smoking aroma of citric and funky tartness.  The taste is milder though with a crisp and tingly lemon zing.  This isn’t one of those sour beers that is so sharp you retract and wince with every eye-dropper-sized sip you take.  Nor is it one that feels like acid ingestion in the reverse.  Eminently drinkable with its low ABV, this is one of those rare beers that makes a low-ABV eschewer like myself realize that you need not be a double-digit ABV asskicker to pack in a lot of flavor.  In fact, these boys from Belgium use a mere four ingredients–one of them being H20–to produce this delight.  I haven’t had a lot of gueuzes in my life, but there surely cannot be many, if any, that are better than Girardin 1882 Black Label.  Highly recommended both to those folks scared to enter the wild world of wilds, and to those more “expert” sour enthusiasts.

A+

Hanssens Experimental Cassis

6.5% ABV

We shift the sour focus from gueuze to the seemingly more common lambic style, which are actually just gueze’s unblended.  I suppose you could call them the single-malts to the gueuze’s blended Scotch.  Glenlivet to Johnnie Walker.  I had never heard of this brewery or this beer before–your Vice Blogger is sadly not quite all-knowing–but Greg pretty much just shoved this into my hand, telling me of its rarity and crazy deliciousness while ringing the register up on my bill.  (Note to beer sellers:  if you tell me a beer is highly rare and just put it into my hand, acting like I would be a damn fool to turn it away, you can pretty much just remove my wallet from my pocket and take out as much of my money as you would like.)  Luckily, the far-more-knowledgeable-than-me Greg was right.  Not only does this beer have a meager twelve total reviews on BA–shoot, it doesn’t even have a picture of the bottle with its profile–but it was incredibly good.  Brewed with black currants (that’s what a “cassis” is you monolinguals) and “matured” in oak barrels, this was nice and dirty, tart and acidic yet balanced out with a nice touch of fruity sweetness.  Smells of intense dark fruits, just a touch of fizz, and quite complex, this one goes down nice and easy.  A slight slight debit for its thin mouthfeel though.  Yet well worth seeking out.  No clue what Hanssens is actually “experimenting” on, but please, keep on doing it.

A-

The Indiscreet Charm of Brooklyn

Cat ears.  Across from me sat a man wearing cat ears.  Like those furry headband numbers chicks wear on Halloween when they want a slutty costume.  Aside from that, he looked fairly normal.  A little bit of a early-1990s “Reality Bites” grunge thing going on with a flannel unbuttoned shirt and some combat boots, but otherwise, fairly normal.  Except for those cat ears.  All the man was lacking was a makeupped on black nose and whiskers.  Cat man called for the check and his wee little “hee hee” Asian girlfriend picked up the tab courtesy of a Hello Kitty credit card.  I was the only one in the entire place rolling my eyes at the ludicrous behavior around me.

I sat in Radegast, a German beer hall in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  I had finally decided to make the scary plunge.  Manhattan may be a great beer town, but Brooklyn is often considered one of America’s beer utopias.  And me, being absolutely awful with direction, scared to go to any place without numbered streets, certain I will get lost if I ever travel below Houston, especially while lit up, had never been drinking in Brooklyn.  For shame.

I needed to pop my Brooklyn beer cherry sometime, and chaperoned by new friend KD, there was no time like the present.  Radegast wasn’t on my list of “must try” Brooklyn places, but KD insisted.  So glad she did.  Radegast is a beer garden that is surprisingly intimate, not a word often associated with beer gardens.  It has both a nice indoor and outdoor area and your standard Americanized beer gardeny things:  hilariously large glasses, picnic table seating, ___wursts of every kind (which I unfortunately forgot to sample), condom machines in the bathroom, and men in cat ears.  It’s also very dark in Radegast, again, mood lighting not something one usually associates with German beer halls, but a Brooklyn quirk that a squinty eyed drunk like me greatly appreciates.

There, I had a glass of Weihenstephaner Vitus, an absolutely lovely weizenbock that can deservedly be mentioned in the same breath as the legendary Aventinus.  Full of rich banana and bubble gum tastes, yeasty and boozy, this one goes down so, so nice.  A-

Foreground: the finished Vitus/Background: man in cat ears

From there, KD and I hoofed it to dba Brooklyn, using a trusty Google map she had printed out since we are apparently the only two people in the world without GPS-enabled iphones, which is something we could each greatly use.  dba Manhattan, in the East Village, was one of my major stomping grounds back in the mid-2000s with their stellar beer, bourbon, and Scotch lists, but I eventually grew sick of the jam-packed poseur crowds, surly bar staff, and hard to read libations chalkboards.

Well, I can proudly say that dba Brooklyn eliminates all the problems I have with their East Village location.  At this new dba location, similar in look and layout, one will have no issue with reading the massive chalkboard beer and spirits listings because the bar is as florescently bright as a Porsche showroom.  And there’s no poseurs to worry about rubbing ironic suede elbow patches with because…there’s no one in the fucking bar.  KD and I were the only drinkers there at 9 PM on a Thursday, and thus, it was downright impossible for the bar staff to be surly.  They were just psyched to see us and to have more than some spare change as their night’s gratuity haul.

We took our drinks to this backyard patio where a few other people were throwing back a few.  Including a man who, unceremoniously removed his t-shirt right in the middle of a date, reached into his man bag for a fresh one to put on, all the time not breaking conversation, nor having his drinking companion go, “W the F?!”

Ill at ease, we cut our dba visit abrupt and walked aways, under the roaring BQE overpass, to perhaps New York’s, maybe even the entire East Coast’s, most famous beer bar, Spuyten Duyvil.  I’d long heard about this beer mecca and I have to say…it met absolutely zero of my expectations.  Which is not a bad thing and which is not to say I didn’t like it.

I was surprised by how conspicuous of facade the bar had, the name barely noticeable.  A creaky swinging front door more akin to the screen door on some cracker’s porch, the interior of the place is shockingly small and fairly indescript.  Decorated like a hipster’s beat-up rec room, packed with thin weirdo grumps in drainpipe jeans, half of whom look like David Cross, the other half of whom look like a Flight of the Concords member.  At a robust 5′11, 175, I was a fucking leviathin amongst these little Brooklyn pixies.

Spuyten Duyvil is known for their remarkable–ahem “remarkable”–beer selection, but I quickly learned that they should be more known for their remarkable ability to list beers, which are all greatly overpriced, even by Manhattan standards.  Indeed, I was at first impressed by the massive amount of rare bottles they claimed, though greatly unimpressed that they only have six taps and one cask offering.  (Seriously?!)  I found myself greatly flummoxed when I tried to order from their bottle list.  I was a little tipsy and feeling jovial, so I tried to buy a rare $46 bottle from Cantillon.  “Sorry, we’re out,” said the hirsute hipster behind the bar.  I tried to buy a $26 bottle of Fantome Saison.  “Out of that too, but that beer sucks.  Have the Fantome Chocolate, it’s much better, dude.”

I smiled and said no thanks, I wasn’t in the mood for that particularly beer, which angered the wee bartender who booked it away from me.  Then, I noticed a Cigar City bomber on the back counter.  Cigar City is a new brewery from out of Tampa that has quickly garnered great acclaim despite their miniscule distribution reach.  I’d been trying for most of the year to score any of their product and this was the first time I’d ever seen it in person.  Excited, I flagged down another bartender.  “Excuse me, what is that Cigar City beer back there?”  Like I had just interrupted him while he was watching an Apes and Androids show, he turned around with a scowl.  “I DON’T KNOW!” he yelled at me and scurried away.  I asked another bartender if I could buy the Cigar City beer and he looked as if I was quizzing him with some Mensa level stuff:  “Look, I don’t know, I’m not sure, I don’t think so, no!” he exhale moaned and stormed away.

I continued staring at the menu, trying to figure out anything to drink.  The first bartender returned, pissed off.  “Look!  Are you EVER going to order something?”

I menacingly looked him straight in the eye, restraining myself from grabbing him by the collar of his vintage snap button cowboy shirt:

“Motherfucker, I just tried to buy a $46 and $26 bottle of beer, both that you were out of.  Gimme a fucking break.”  He smirked but his demeanor quickly changed.

From that point on the scuzzy drinkslinger gave me the respect I so desired.  I finally ordered what I should have in the first place, Cantillon’s most famous offering perhaps, St. Lamvinus…on tap!  Score.  I found it a lot less fruity that I expected.  A subtle red wine grape taste but with an effervescent carbonation.  Mild funk and sourness, a true treat.  I also had Ithaca’s delicious Brute on tap for the first time, and though that still remains a great one in my mind, St. Lamvinus just blew it away.  A true granddaddy of a lambic.  Not to be missed.

I also found a $20 bill on the floor and a pregnant women drinking in Spuyten Duyvil’s back room so I ain’t sweating things much.  Look, I won’t lie, Spuyten Duyvil certainly deserves much acclaim and I will certainly go back there again, but with its paucity of taps, high prices, lack of bottles of which it claims to have, and absolute fuckheads working there, I see absolutely no way we can consider this a better NYC beer bar than, say, Rattle ‘N’ Hum or Blind Tiger, both which have superior tap lists, perfectly respectable bottle lists, clientele that doesn’t smell like clove cigarettes, and bartenders that treat you like human beings.  I’ll probably only return to Spuyten Duyvil in the future when they have a particularly rare and limited offering.

Well lit up at this point and it now 2 AM, KD and I decided to press on to one more stop, nearby Barcade.  Again, my expectations were completely different, but, this time, this was a very good thing.  I was absolutely shocked at the size of the bar.  A huge warehouse type industrial space with every single wall tightly packed with vintage arcade games, several dozen in fact, surrounding a bar in the middle.  A solid tap list, I grabbed a delicious Avery Hog Heaven and a stack of quarters and KD and I went to work.  I must say, shit like “Tetris,” “Ms. Pac-Man,” and “Q-Bert” are exceedingly hard when you are wasted yet still guzzling high ABV barley wines.

My last memories are Q-Bert falling off the side of his staired pyramid, KD and I trying to find a gypsie cab back to her place…

I shall return to Brooklyn again.

A+

8% ABV bottled

Last Friday would prove to be one of the greatest extended drinking days of my life, and when all was said and done, I had polished off eight top 100 beers, five of them in the top 25, and three in the top 10.*  The centerpiece of the day being a much-anticipated blind tasting between the two best quadruples in the world:  Belgian trappist beers Westvleteren 12 and Rochefort 10.  Now these beers are often said to be nearly identical.  Rochefort 10 considered a worthy and accessible proxy for the rarer Westvleteren 12.  In fact, many people think the 11th rated Rochefort 10 to be every bit as good as the “best beer in the world” Westvleteren 12, save for the fact that it can pretty much be bought in every Whole Foods in America while the Westy is only able for purchase on a few days a year and straight from the source, the Abbey of Saint Sixtus.  I’d had one bottle of each beer previously, given each an enthusiastic A+, and though these tastings had been separated by several months, in my mind I believed that Rochefort 10 was the better beer.  In my notes I had thought it boozier and with a more pleasant candi taste that the muted Westvleteren 12.

Well…let the blind tasting speak for itself:  Westvleteren 12 absolutely humbled Rochefort 10.  The Rochefort–how can I put this?–smelled vomitous.  I thought I had a dirty glass at first, but no, it was certainly the beer.  And The Captain agreed with me.  Did we have a bad bottle?  No, I just suspect the Westy was so damn good it had rendered the Rochefort 10 worse in our mind.  Admittedly, though, the Rochefort’s taste was fine, even good.  Boozy, a little uneven, a dry maltiness and minimal candi taste.  The superior Westy though was sweet and incredibly smooth, liquid silk, with tastes of dark fruit, Belgian candi, and toffee.  And, this time, the semi-mocking quote marks came off and it was truly THE BEST BEER IN THE WORLD.  On this day at least.  I had never had a better single beer.  Which is what makes great beer interesting.  A different batch, a little more aging, a little less aging, and even the same beer can be eons different.  Perhaps the next time these two venerable quads face each other the results will differ, but on this one day in July, 2009, Manhattan, New York City, Westvleteren 12 was the ungodly victor.

Later, I got my first crack at little brother Westvleteren 8, a dubbel.  I can now proudly say I have had 21 of the top 25 BA-ranked beers in the world, only lacking four hard-to-obtain tap-only offerings.**  And, just like Westy 12, Westy 8 would quickly replace Westmalle as the best dubbel I’ve now ever had.  A creamy yeast and malt combination with some raisins, plums, and just a touch a smooth booziness.  Thinner mouthfeel and a tad more carbonation than Westy 12, which is to be expected.  Perfectly constructed.  Simply sublime.

A+

Westvleteren Blonde

5.8% ABV bottled

Finally, I got to complete the trappist troika with Westy Blonde, the low-ABV “table beer” for the Saint Sixtus’s monks.  This beer is obviously not meant to knock your socks off, and it doesn’t, especially since I don’t believe monks wear socks, but it is still quite solid.  Tart, fizzy, almost a little sour like a subtle Brett beer.  Just nice craftsmanship.  This is a very good session beer and a nice little bottle of “liquid bread.”  Don’t trade the farm to acquire some, but an interesting beer curio for sure, and I am happy to have had it.

B+

*R-L:  Three Floyds Dark Lord, Rochefort 10, Lost Abbey Angel’s Share bourbon and brandy barrel-aged, Westy Blond, Westy 8, and Westy 12.

My day would also include, among others:  Stone Imperial Russian Stout (on tap!), Goose Island Night Stalker (on tap!), AleSmith YuleSmith, and Brooklyn Locals 1 and 2.  Wow!

**For the record:  Pliny the Younger, Dark Lord Vanilla Bean, Dark Lord Oaked, and Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout.  I wonder if I’ll ever locate these bad boys or attend the rare events where they are tapped.

Never have I religiously continued to watch a show I so detest as I have continued to watch the deplorable “Entourage.”  For whatever reason, every Sunday night at 10:30 I’m back in front of the TV cringing through twentysomething hard-to-endure minutes of lame plots, boring cardboard characters, excruciatingly mundane and unoriginal ideas, and trite dialogue.

I don’t even think Doug Ellin and his cast and writing staff are still trying.  Take last Sunday’s episode which was supposed to end with a moment of great pathos, when, in the final scene, dunderheaded charismaless “A-list” movie star Vincent Chase returns to his house alone, confused, and saddened that he has to spend the wee hours of the night with just his brain to keep him company.  (”Entourage” viewers lament this fact on a weekly basis.)

Who hasn’t been crushed by an overwhelming sense of loneliness and despair?  Everyone has.  And we viewers might feel for Vinnie if not just an hour earlier in his night, in the episode’s penultimate scene, he got to fuck a 10-out-of-10-hot one-night-stand in his brand new Escalade.  Oh, not to mention, Vinnie has just attended the premiere of his new soon-to-be-both-critically-and-commercially-successful movie, Martin Scorsese’s “The Great Gatsby” retelling, in which he stars.  (Though it’s hard to imagine what role the effete and dull Vincent could possibly be fit to play.  My bet’s on Daisy Buchanan.)  And, have we mentioned that the house he’s alone in is a massive double-digit bedroomed mansion in the Hollywood Hills?!  Oh, whoa is me, Vinnie Chase!

And that demonstrates the exact problem with “Entourage.”  Its storytelling lacks any sort of tension, any sort of drama, any sort of human problems, which are the basis for truly good comedy.  Each week new-but-similar plot pivot points are brought up and within minutes they are solved and Vinnie and the boys go back to living a life of mind-numbing leisure.  Which would be perfectly fine if it was actually enjoyable to watch.  Which it’s not.

It’s always been hard to buy Vincent Chase as a huge movie star and the “best young actor of his generation” because, well, the actor that plays him, Adrien Grenier, is neither handsome enough, talented enough, or interesting enough to be anything more than a pay cable semi-star which ipso facto means he is not a “Vincent Chase.”  Most of the other acting, though, is admittedly passable.  Jerry Ferrara as Turtle is one-note but enjoyable enough, perhaps the only lovable character still on the show.  Kevin Dillon as Johnny Drama used to be a highlight of each episode with a good self-deprecatingly inward zinger or two toward his own lackluster career but now he’s become just a pathetic old manchild more concerned with making fun of who good buddy “E” is or is not fucking.  (In one of the lamest running plot gags in “Entourage” history, and that’s saying something, Drama has become obsessed with razzing E for maybe still having feelings for former flame Sloan as played by Emmanuelle Chriqui.  I don’t know about you, but I usually goof on my friends that are fucking one of the hottest women since the invention of breasts and vaginas.)  Speaking of E, Kevin Connelly seems to have developed some disease which is causing him to shrink at a rather alarming rate.  Always lilliputian, this season Connelly has become downright pocket-size, looking like some crows-feet-eyed ventriloquist dummy who gets to hang out with a movie star and fuck women that could tomahawk dunk on his wee head.  (Hmmm…that gives me an idea for a new pilot.)  I do actually like Connelly and think he is a skilled enough actor but Ellin does him no favors with the dialogue he places into his tiny mouth.  You can almost see Connelly cringing as he delivers feeble line after feeble line.  I feel bad for him.  Even Jeremy Piven as agent Ari Gold has become downright boring, though he’s such a good actor and such a better character than everyone else that by comparison he seems to be operating on an incredibly elevated comedic stratosphere.

Lame plots, boring cardboard characters, excruciatingly mundane and unoriginal ideas, and trite dialogue.  You might say, “Entourage” isn’t supposed to be good, it’s junk food for the brain.  Fair enough, but it’s not even good junk food.  It’s not Sour Patch Kids but Brand X Sour Gooeys.  I could stomach the show in its first few seasons when it was actually presenting a world anyone of us would want to be a part of:  lots of fast rides, hard parties, and bare breasts.  But these ennui-riddled characters don’t do any of these things any more and it’s actually alarming how few bare breasts now appear on the show per week.  You get as much out of the “On next week’s ‘Entourage’” thirty-second teaser as you do watching a full episode.

If you want some actually enjoyable comedy junk food for the brain to replace “Entourage,” might I suggest Showtime’s “Californication,” now through two seasons.  While no masterpiece and perhaps not even a great or even very good show, it is an incredibly enjoyable show and an eminently digestible one.  The story of a famous New York novelist turned Hollywood fuckup, “Californication” revels in presenting onscreen similiar Los Angeleno pleasures as “Entourage,” laziness, driving fast cars around all day with no purpose, drinking, drug use, partying, and promiscuous sex, but it is all shown in such a more interesting and realistic way.  Like “Entourage” the show isn’t much about “anything” but it has sharp dialogue, funny and original situations, three-dimensional characters, the effortless charm and comedic chops of David Duchovny who is truly a great actor, and a Warren Zevon-infused soundtrack.  If you start this show on DVD or OnDemand you will burn through it quickly.  You won’t be talking about it or obsessed with it by any means by the time it’s over, and aside from Duchovny’s work you will have probably forgotten it within weeks if not months, but while watching it you will be highly entertained.

Going back to the late great Warren Zevon, his best song is fittingly “The French Inhaler,” a scathing critique of Hollywood dreams gone awry.  An all-time favorite track of mine, listening to the lyrics I can’t help but think the crummy “Entourage” would do good to take its cues from the brilliant song to realize how truly worthless it is.  How soon it will be just another piece of shit in television history if it doesn’t have a little course correction.  Were he not dead Zevon could have easily been talking about “Entourage” when he wrote this great piece of poetry.

How’re you going to make your way in the world, woman
When you weren’t cut out for working
When your fingers are slender and frail
How’re you going to get around
In this sleazy bedroom town
If you don’t put yourself up for sale

Where will you go with your scarves and your miracles
Who’s gonna know who you are
Drugs and wine and flattering light
You must try it again till you get it right
Maybe you’ll end up with someone different every night

All these people with no home to go home to
They’d all like to spend the night with you
Maybe I would, too

But tell me
How’re you going to make your way in the world, woman
When you weren’t cut out for working
And you just can’t concentrate
And you always show up late

You said you were an actress
Yes, I believe you are
I thought you’d be a star
So I drank up all the money,
Yes, I drank up all the money,
With these phonies in this Hollywood bar,
These friends of mine in this Hollywood bar

Loneliness and frustration
We both came down with an acute case
And when the lights came up at two
I caught a glimpse of you
And your face looked like something
Death brought with him in his suitcase

Your pretty face
It looked so wasted
Another pretty face
Devastated
The French Inhaler
He stamped and mailed her
“So long, Norman”
She said, “So long, Norman”

I think I’m done with “Entourage.”  As the failed actress said to her pimp in “The French Inhaler”:

“So long, Norman.”

Pannepot (2006)

10% ABV bottled

I had the great fortune to try my first ever De Struise beers over the weekend, not coincidentally their two most famed creations, both mainstays on Beer Advocate’s Top 100 list.  First up, the supposed #43 beer in the world, Pannepot.  There is so much going on with this beer, it is truly as complex as they come.  Like a mix between a quad and a stout, maybe even a strong ale, it’s really hard to even accurately categorize it.  A potent aroma you can smell across the room, packed with tastes of coffee, bourbon, and vanilla along with subtle hints of candi, molasses, cookies, caramel, sugar, and spice and everything nice.  I’m not sure if this beer is oaked or not, but it sure tastes like it.  I can’t believe how much flavor is packed into this thing.  It reminded me of a glorious Rochefort 10 with a whole buncha spices mixed in.  A true highlight of my beer-drinking year!  Seek out at all costs.

A+

Black Albert

13% ABV bottled

Next up I had De Struise’s stout Black Albert which teeters at the bottom of the BA Top 100.  I found Black Albert a little too burnt, bitter, and dull for my liking.  A muted coffee flavor, the smell was more enjoyable than the taste.  Somewhat thin and quite drinkable for the highfalutin ABV, I just didn’t love it, yet I still had to admit it was good and well-crafted.  It just made me wish I was still drinking Pannepot.

A-

13% ABV bottled

My Drinking Life

Author’s note:  Inspired by a recent reading of Pete Hamil’s exquisite classic “A Drinking Life,” I decided to write my own imbibing bio.

I remember once when I was fifteen or so I walked into the living room and saw my dad drinking a beer while watching TV.  It was a Corona.  “What the fuck are you doing, dad?”  We cursed heavily and with great aplomb in my family, one of the few things my parents were highly laissez faire on.

“I’m having a beer, what?”

What?  What?!  I had never seen my dad have a single sip of alcoholic in his life.  And now all of the sudden he thinks he’s Homer Simpson, able to just come home from work, pop a beer, and veg out in front of the boob tube?  Where did this mystery bottle of beer even come from?!  He surely didn’t go to the store and buy it.  He wouldn’t even know how to do such a thing!

Suffice to say, alcohol did not really play a part in my parents’ or my life as a youth.  No, my parents weren’t teetotalers.  Alcohol just seemed to not interest them in the same way, say, American politics or CBS’s primetime lineup simply doesn’t interest me.*

Thusly, in high school I hardly drank at all which makes you think I must have been one of three things:

1.  A huge nerd

2.  A huge health nut.

3.  A huge religious freak

EH!  Wrong.  I certainly wasn’t Big Man on Campus Jock King Sirfucksalot or anything but I was quite popular, even the class president one year, though we all tend to overrate how high our approval ratings were at a younger age.  Likewise, though I played various sports year-round, my diet pretty much consisted of Taco Bell, McDonald’s, chain pizza, and the like.  I wasn’t exactly a foodie just yet.  And, even before my face necessitated shaving, I already was a virulent atheist amongst a sea of kids that thumped the bible, studied the bible, and quoted the bible on the back page of your yearbook (”Aaron, Have a terrific summer but never forget Proverbs 10:5 ‘He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son.’”)  Not to mention, even if I wasn’t an atheist I was a Jew and we’re allowed to drink religiously from like age 5 on.**  Alas, the Manischewitz always made me start snoozing during the latter part of shul.

I never snuck off into the woods to drink, I never stole a nip of some uncle’s vodka and refilled the bottle with water, I never paid an older kid to get me a six pack from 7-11.  In 12th grade I got busted by the police for simply being at a party where underage people such as myself were drinking.  I’d only just arrived and had only had a single sip of cheap keg beer.  The schnook of an Oklahoma City cop tried to emasculate everyone by forcing those under eighteen years of age to call their parents on speaker phone in front of the entire party to tell them, “Mommy, daddy, Officer Jeffries has just busted an alcohol drinking party I was attending and you need to come pick me up lest I get a ticket from this kindly man.”  Pretty sure he broke protocol for what was a most cruel and unusual punishment.

Those eighteen or older like me didn’t have to call our parents but we were cited with a hefty Minor in Possession ticket and an ensuing court date.  The whole ride home after having picked me up, my histrionic mother cried and shrieked, “Now you’ll never get to go to college!”  “But mom, I’ve already been accepted.”  “Syracuse will find out and they’ll take your scholarships away!  They’ll throw you out of school!  You’ll have to go to some shitty community college!  Your future is ruined you fucking idiot!”  Eventually my court case was thrown out, my ticket was revoked, I was allowed to attend and even matriculate at Syracuse, and that still, amazingly, as far as I can recall, remains my only brush with the law.  Alcohol related brush that is.  Purely alcohol related brush that is.

At the aforementioned college, Syracuse, I drank just like everyone else, nothing special, nothing to brag about.  Thrown into a collegial melting pot with kids from major cities such as New York, LA, Chicago, and Miami, and, more significantly, kids from ramshackle blue-collar drinking towns such as Scranton, Pittsburgh, Utica, a kid from Oklahoma quickly realized how much of a bumpkin, how much of a drinking neophyte he truly was.  Many of these kids had not only been inside bars, they were regulars at bars already.  They didn’t just drink whatever they could score, they actually had favorite beers and liquors.  Admittedly, in retrospect, their favorites were shitty, but being that I only knew about those beers that had major network commercials and those liquors that had full-page ads in Sports Illustrated, I was duly impressed.

I shouldn’t have been.  What we, what everyone drank, in college was foul.  Kegs of shit like Milwaukee’s Best (”Beast”), cans of Natty and Genny Light, bottles of Labatt if we were splurging.  Plastic handles of Popov, airline bottles of Seagram’s 7 we’d stolen from whomever, fifths of Bacardi if we were super lucky.  Always mixed with a potent punch or a generic supermarket cola to make the vile liquor even less detectable.  We drank worse than many local bums.

By now I loved getting drunk, but I didn’t love drinking.  It was a means to an end.  I sucked it up for that first hour or so just to get to the ultimate euphoric feeling.  I eventually switched to potent Long Island Iced Teas just to ameliorate and expedite the process, and for economy’s sake (they were only $5 a pint at our favorite bar.)

I loved getting drunk, but I couldn’t help thinking:

This can’t be it.

This can’t be why everyone drinks.

There has to be more to this.

For thousands upon thousands of years, man has drunk, and man has considered beer and liquor the nectar of the God’s.  And I’m not talking about just the morons over the centuries, the beerbellies, the buffoons, the dummkopfs, the rubes throughout history.  No, I’m talking about truly smart people:  Pliny the Elder, US Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, Edgar Allen Poe, Dorothy Parker, Hemingway, Ben Franklin, and Winston Churchill.  There was just no fucking way that these great people were praising something as horrific as Molson Ice from a tallboy can.

Yet, I seemed to be the only person my age questioning things.  The only person around having an existential drinking crisis.  Everyone else was perfectly content with sucking down vile pisswater so long as it eventually got them shit-canned.

There had to be more.  And I was going to discover it.  I was determined!

I was still more a liquor than a beer guy back at the turn of this millennium and now, while prebarring back in my college hovel with my friends, I’d get on the dial-up internet and go to cocktail websites, find one or two drinks that sounded interesting, that had a cool name, and then order them that very night.

I’m not proud to admit that I became the kind of twenty-two-year-old jackass who went to packed college bars on a Thursday night and would order a round of drinks for his friends like this:

“Yeah, could I get two of the $4 Coors pitchers for my friends, and for me…a Rusty Nail.”

To which, inevitably, a fellow classmate of mine, forced to tend bar to earn enough for the following semester, just trying to get through the night, maybe get a sexy female patron’s number, hopefully not have to clean up too much bathroom vomit, would incredulously reply:  “What the fuck’s a Rusty Nail?”

Luckily I’d memorized all the drinks I wished to try and I could proudly say, “Why that’s three parts Scotch and one part Drambuie.  Serve over ice in a rocks glass.  Garnish with a lemon twist.”

“Uh…yeah…I don’t think I know how to make that.  I can pretty much only make ‘blanks’ and ‘blanks’ where both ingredients are named in the name or shots that slutty women drink to justify their promiscuous behavior.”

He’d turn over his shoulder to the “senior” bartender, some drop-out from our very college who was now twenty-five and still bartending to fund his drug and fucking young sorority girls habit, and call out, “Eh, Scotty?  We got Drambuie?”

“Dram–what?”

“–buie?”

“Buoy?  Like in the water?

“Drambuie?”

“Oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen a bottle of that stuff.”

And ten minutes later a dust-caked bottle of Drambuie would surface, the cap soldered onto the bottle by the sticky liquid and the fact that it hadn’t been twisted off in years, since the last time some wannabe had taken a gamble on it, and then the poor bartender, who by now had missed dozens of drink orders and ensuing tips, who had caused a line of peeved dipsomaniacs to congregate at the bar, would try his damnedest to make me a Rusty Nail.  And it would inevitably be overly heavy on the booze component because we were college kids and we made our drinks strong and, you know, who wouldn’t prefer more liquor in a drink than mixer?  Only a fool.

I feel bad about these years, this behavior of mine.  And most of the drinks I forced these poor bartenders to make were fucking horrendous.  Old man drinks from the roaring 20s when I guess people had more tolerance for absurd recipes that featured components like milk, honey, and even onions.  Sure, I discovered a great cocktail or two that I still throw back on occasion to this very day–a Manhattan, an Old-Fashioned, even a simple gin and tonic–but I mainly drank a lot of overpriced-for-a-college-kid and poorly-mixed-by-a-college-kid cocktails.

I was trying, I was embarrassing myself, and my drinking life was most certainly not improving.  Nor was my sex life as no twenty-one-year-old dame really wants to fuck the weirdo drinking a Sidecar in a bar loudly playing Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me.”  And I was getting drunker quicker than all my friends as I matched their watery pitchers of lite beer with Scotch and bourbon based drinks.

My first year out of college I moved to Hoboken, a helluva drinking town, anecdotally called the “per capita bar capital of America,” “more bars per block than any place else!” locals will tell you, but if you’ve ever done even a modicum of traveling in this country you’ll quickly learn there’s about a dozen places in America that make these same ludicrous and uncomfirmable claims (Austin, TX; Athens, OH; Lacrosse, WI; Newport, RI; Anchorage, AK; to name a few.)

In Hoboken I was fortunate enough to live with two friends that greatly shaped my drinking career.  One, an inveterate drunkard from Scranton taught me about manly bar culture.  How to get the bartender’s attention, how to order a drink, how to tip on a free round, how to drink a Guinness, how to throw back Irish whiskey, and how not to get 86ed for inappropriate behaviors.  Seemingly simple things to know now, sure, but so is kissing, yet everyone sucks at that the first times they try.  You have to learn these things somewhere.  The other friend, a well-heeled white boy from Cincinnati, Kevin, taught me about the finer vices in life.  Raised by a country club epicurean father, he knew about good Scotch, cigars, and vittles by the time he graduated from high school.  Not to mention, he’d spent a summer of college actually working in Belgium.  He told me that this was the greatest beer producing country in the world, first introducing me to the more ubiquitous Belgian fare:  Leffe, Hoegaarden, Chimay, and Duval.  All these beers absolutely fucking floored me.  Yes!  I was finally drinking, and getting drunk!, on good stuff.  My dreams were becoming reality.

Now, on Friday and Saturday nights, in the early evening, while our other friends were throwing back cheap pitchers at some dive, Kevin and I would go to Belgian bars like the wonderful Markt–then in the Meatpacking District–where we’d casually and coolly sit at the relaxed bar like two proper gents.  Enjoying delicious Belgian brews from their appropriately logoed and designed glasses–a revelation!–amongst Markt’s typical crowd of golddiggers and men that dress like celebrities (fedoras, sunglasses indoors, sneakers with pinstriped suit pants) but aren’t really celebrities (musicians without gigs, scenesters, “artists”).  Of course by drink four we were back down the street at the late, great Village Idiot where we would recklessly drink pitchers of Miller High Life, vomit onto the sawdust covered floor, try to find a woman sans STDs, and misplace our memories.  Yeah, real proper gents.

I still assumed American beer was shit, “fucking close to water” as they say, I mean it’s all but axiomatic isn’t it?, but this final barrier would change sometime later that year on my first ever visit to the glorious Ginger Man.  Strolling the garbage covered, urine soaked streets of the W. 30s while on a day date, looking for something to do, looking for clean air to breath, I recalled having read about this brilliant nearby bar with a gobsmackingly prodigious draught list.

I would later, upon becoming a regular, learn that this huge place is usually packed during happy hour and on evenings, but on this one particular Saturday afternoon it was completely empty. Me and my date were the only customers. (And, yes, I do take dates to dark bars in the middle of a beautiful weekend day. What, like I’m gonna go hold hands at a museum, Christ.)  The sole bartender on that first day of attendance was bored out of her wits. She needed to find some way to liven things up. You know how Baskin-Robbins lets you sample some of their 31 flavors with those little pink plastic spoons? Well, on this Saturday afternoon, the bartender let me sample many of the Ginger Man’s seemingly hundreds of craft beer draught offerings.

One tap that day immediately caught my eye: Arrogant Bastard. What a name! It was exactly what I thought I was at the time (I was actually just a Big Douchebag but that isn’t a great name for a beer). Arrogant Bastard’s gargoyle logo was so freaking cool too. Oh, and the taste! It was an eye-opening experience, like losing my virginity. I didn’t know beer could smell so good, look so good, and taste so fucking good.

Instantly, on the drunken spot, I declared Arrogant Bastard my favorite beer in the world. Believe me, it didn’t have that stiff of competition back then.  By the sober next day, after kicking the girl out of bed, I was on the Stone brewery website reading all I could about my new favorite brew. I even ordered an Arrogant Bastard t-shirt and pint glass. I wore my shirt proudly and often that ensuing year and it garnered much attention and chuckles, acting as a great conversation piece. I think most people assumed it was one of those faux-vintage pseudo-hip fake company t-shirts you get at Urban Outfitters.

“Nope, it’s a real beer,” I’d tell them, “It’s my FAVORITE beer.”

Wow. I thought I was so freaking cool for having such an “obscure” non-macro as my favorite brew. Back then it was pretty hard to find Arrogant Bastard. Only a few bars had it on tap and only a specialty store or two in the NYC area had it bottled. Now, of course, it’s one of the most ubiquitous craft beers around.  One I rarely even have much any more because I’ve come to take it so much for granted.  But, the few times per year I do have it, it brings back nostalgic memories much like it must have done when Proust bit into his madeleine.  Simply tasting it makes me feel young and dumb again.  And you can’t beat that.

From that point forward, my life would never be the same.  I discovered Beeradvocate.com and their “Top Beers on Planet Earth” list, printing it out in a minuscule footnote-sized font so I could keep it as a handy reference in my wallet at all times.  Now, whenever I hit a beer store or nice bar I would discreetly pull out my list and see if they had anything on it.  They rarely did.  An Old Rasputin here, a Victory Storm King there, but those were few and far between.  Even as recent as 2004/2005 most of these “great” beers simply could not just be stumbled upon, you truly had to seek them out.  And I still had no clue where to look and the majority of my friends certainly didn’t want to assist me in my new found hobby.  They all still preferred drinking Miller Lite.  But my drinking was still improving and I was on my own discovering new craft breweries to love by the week.  Not just Stone but Victory and Dogfish Head, Rogue, Allagash, and of course local favorite Brooklyn Brewery.

And now here I am in 2009, often drinking many of the finest beers in the world.  Such as the great and faux-limited Dark Lord.  OK, it is fairly limited, something like 20,000 bottles made per year, and, of course, only available on one day per year (aproposly, Dark Lord Day.)  And, yes, I couldn’t get it any other way than in being lucky enough to know a great guy like The Captain who kindly procured a bottle for me.  So I am indeed eternally grateful to have it.  I am blessed in my beer-drinking life.

Back in the mid-2000s, really so recently, I would look at the BA Top 100 and fantasize about having any of the big dogs.  I was near certain I would never, never, never get to even sniff any of the legendary bottles on that list from places like Russian River, Founders, and Three Floyds.  Where did you even go to get such oddities?!  Hell, as recent as 2007, probably the best, most highly-regarded beer I’d ever had was Stone’s Imperial Russian Stout.***  But now I get to try all the great stouts.

Dark Lord is a glass-staining black stout with a potent aroma of roasted malts, dark chocolate, coffee, and stinging booze.  Additional tastes of dark fruits with just a hint of candi sweetness.  Smooth mouthfeel, neither too carbonated, nor too syrupy.  Wonderful and meaty, a top ten stout in the world for sure.  I didn’t quite like it better than Darkness or Kate the Great, but when we’re getting into such rarefied air, it’s like splitting hairs now, isn’t it?

And my drinking life goes on…

A+

(I’d be curious to hear other beer bloggers’ (or simply drinkers’) “A Drinking Life,” either in the comments or your own blogs.  Go for it!  Let’s make this an internet sensation!!!!!!)

*What’s that great Jim Gaffigan joke:  “When you don’t drink, people always need to know why. They’re like, ‘You don’t drink? Why?’ This never happens with anything else. ‘You don’t use mayonnaise? Why? Are you addicted to mayonnaise? Is it OK if I use mayonnaise?’”

**Not to mention, according to Dr. Drew on a recent episode of The Adam Carolla Podcast, Jews can’t even become alcoholics.  Something wacky about our Semetic blood.  Nice!

***I currently count some 58 beers I’ve had on the Top 100 as of this second.

9% ABV from a bomber

Almost any time I saunter into a typical BYOB party, a six pack of craft under my arm, some wiseguy sipping a Stella always has to look me up and down, a sneer on his face.  “So, what are you?  One of them beer snobs?”

How is this something to mock?  And why does drinking good beer make one a “beer snob”?

If I’d walked into the party with an attractive women on my arm would the same chap have queried me:

“So, what are you?  One of them pussy snobs?  Can’t be content just fucking boring, average women?  Need to get your dick wet on something a little more sexy, huh?  Yeah, I see.  Snob.”

Luckily, last weekend’s July 4th party was hosted by a beer “snob” just like me and further luckily he’d just returned from Chicago with one more suitcase than he’d flown into town with.  That new suitcase packed to the gills with Three Floyds bombers.

I’m embarrassed to admit I’d never even heard of Blackheart, but an employee at the (what I understand) is amazing Binny’s, had all but shoved a bomber of this in my friend’s cart and said it was a must buy.  So glad that man did, because this beer was silly good.  Named after their parlor and with a sick label by San Fran tattoo artists Tim Lehi and Jeff Rassier, this is one aromatically robust IPA.  English IPA for that matter which I, honestly, can’t really differentiate from our Yankee IPAs.  This is probably the most flawlessly balanced IPA I’ve ever had.  The perfect amount of pine, grapefuit, hops, and malt.  It’s not a “bomb” of any sort, just dangerously easy drinking deliciousness.  I almost wept when the split bomber was finished.  We were slurping it back like Gatorade after five sets of tennis.

Why is this beer not more “famous”?  I honestly think its better than Three Floyds’ much more regarded Dreadnaught. Hell, I think this is one of the best IPAs I’ve ever had.  Exquisite and not to be missed.  Stock up.

A+

Three Floyds Broodoo

5.5% ABV from a bomber

Next we went with Three Floyds’ “harvest ale” Broodoo which is actually just a typically hoppy IPA.  Solid, no question, but it quite frankly pales in comparison to the Blackheart.  It almost felt unfair to drink anything after the glory of Blackheart but Broodoo had to be the sacrificial lamb.  Though I did like this beer, I could see myself enjoying it scads more if it were my first or only beer of the night.  A tasty biting and spicy hops bitterness that tickles your tongue, this beer still remains remarkably drinkable (seems to be a theme with 3F stuff and I’m not complaining!)  Then again, at a mere 5.5%, this one felt a ton more boozy than the Blackheart.  A little too over-carbonated as well.  But these are minor quibbles and this is a nice, expertly-crafted brew.

B+

Popskull

10% ABV from a bomber

My final brew from my impromptu Three Floyds Weekend troika was actually a collaboration beer with Dogfish Head.  Doesn’t your dick get hard just hearing those words?  Two of my favorite brewers, two of America’s finest brewers.  I’m such a sucker for collaboration beers even though these gimmicky brews are usually nothing special, and in fact, with rare exception–off the top of my head I’m thinking of Collaboration Not Litigation and Stone’s collabs with Mikeller, Nogne O, et al–most are just mediocre.  And, I hate to admit it, but such is the case (somewhat) here as this “Threeheaded Floyddog Production” is nothing special.  It’s a flavorful but not really mindblowing brown.  With less hype and fanfare, I’d call this a very solid example of an (imperial?) brown ale.  It’s very drinkable, has a nice little sweetness, tastes of roasted and sweet malts, a hint of vanilla.  It didn’t really taste that complex to me despite the wood aging.  Which, speaking of, makes me just realize that I would much prefer to simply have Dogfish Head’s own Palo Santa Marron, a truly exceptional brown ale.  Seems that in the beer collaboration world, too many cooks spoil the broth.  Eh, but I’ll keep on buying them nevertheless.  A sucker may not be born every minute, but I’m unable to control myself when it comes to over-priced, over-hyped collaborations.  (Now when are Miller and Coors going to team up for their special collaboration beer????  AMERICA IS WAITING!)

(And, yet another hat tip to The Captain for grabbing me one of these bottles on Dark Lord Day.)

B+

So what did I learn over the weekend?:

1.  “Snobbiness” is very sexy.

2.  Adults that still ooh and ahh fireworks are fucking morons.

3.  And Three Floyds is clearly one of the best brewers in America.

10.2% ABV bottled

Guys like me don’t have “best moments of our lives.”  At least not the kind of ones stereotyped by Hallmark commercials and romantic comedies.

We’re fuckups hedonistically drifting through life, bypassing and neglecting all the so-called status quo achievements that are supposed to make up an existence.

We don’t get engaged, or god forbid, married because we can’t keep a nice girl on the hook that long.  Naw, we’d rather hubristically keep rolling the dice, trying to get better and better and more and more women, which ultimately just leads to us squandering everything and being drunk and lonely.

We won’t ever buy a nice first house in the suburbs because we’re still renting an urban shoebox at age 30.  How could we possibly afford anything better?  Anything we’d actually own?  We don’t save money.  Good lord no.  We futz it away.  Spend it on stuff that is only tangible from the time it takes to enter our mouth, filter through our system, and come out the other end.  Good food and drink.  And smokes, maybe narcotics.  Wine, women, and song.  And stupid bets.  Always stupid bets.

Raises schmaises.  You got to be kidding me.  How ’bout just having health care for once in your life?  Isn’t it ironic that the people that live the most risky, transgressive, daredevilish lives are also the ones least likely to have health care?  The guy that puts on Haggar wrinkle-free dress slacks and a golf shirt every day to go to his beancounter job, who never over-indulges in anything, never does anything not by the book, yeah, of course he has health care, and a great plan too, but what’s the worst thing that’s gonna happen to him?  Stub his toe at night?  Get a cold from his sneezy secretary?

And let’s not talk about offspring.  Isn’t it funny how for a married, or at least in love, man, impregnating someone (er, his partner), is the absolute greatest moment of his life, never to be topped.  While for a financially unstable single man, that would be far and away the worst moment of his life?

Great moments in life deserve a great beer.  (Did I just make up a new slogan for Coors?!)  And the greatest beer of all is most often considered to be the immortal Westvleteren 12.  (I’ll allow you to do the Google research yourself.) And it is the phenomenally reviewed, very rarest of finds Westvleteren 12, a beer you may only be lucky enough to have a single bottle of in your entire life, that most people tend to save to augment one of the aforementioned great moments of their life.

Kid pops out of your wife’s twat?  Hey, let’s pop the Westy 12.  Just signed the mortage on your first house?  Why open the Westy 12 friendo.  I’m getting a promotion (in name only)?!  Nice.  It’s Westy time!

But I don’t get those great moments.  Perhaps I never will.  How sad.  So what does that leave me with?  What are gonna be the great moments of my life?  When do I get to drink my Westy 12?

Discovering masturbation was an awesome and seminal (rim shot!) moment of my life but I wasn’t exactly into craft beer back around Bar Mitzvah age.  Making a little love to a hot chick is always swell, but most girls want you to talk to them post-coitally, not go, “Uh…could you excuse me while I pay a visit to my beer cellar?  I want to drink a glorious beer to celebrate just having intercourse with the…let’s say 9 out of 10 that you are.”  My favorite sports team wins a title?  I celebrate another birthday having not been killed by gang violence?  A new season of “Mad Men” premieres?  Another STD free year?!  YES!  It’s Westy time!

Eh, I don’t know.  The devil may care, but I ultimately just picked an unassuming Wednesday afternoon and decided to split my sole eleven ounces of Westvleteren 12 with a good beer friend*.  The anticipation was palpable and the beer of course delivered, but first I lost about a solid ounce upon opening as this one was a gusher (something I’m told is typical).  Every dark fruit in the book, raisins, plums, banana esters, caramel, gingerbread, a touch of yeast, and some smooth dry booziness.  Very drinkable, goes down with ease and pleasure.  A true privilege to drink.

There’s not much else to say about it that hasn’t been said before.  Is it the best beer of all-time?  That’s the question that everyone who has never had it always wants to know.  And, the answer is…maybe.  You tell me you think it’s the greatest beer of all-time and I won’t debate that.  It’s one of the best I’ve ever had in fact.  But, surprisingly, in the trappist quad category, I think I like Rochefort 10 a tad better due to its slightly more flavorful sweetness.  Whatever the case, Westvleteren 12 is magnificent, and you need not worry about saving it for a “great” life moment.  Then again, don’t be so cavalier to just chug one straight from the bottle (with a koozie!) while mowing your lawn.  Although that would actually make you pretty awesome in my book.

A+

*Yarmulke-tip to The Captain for hooking me up with this bottle.

19% ABV

This is to be my first and perhaps last and most likely only wine review ever.

Aside from drinking wine a good deal, I really don’t know a whole lot about the stuff.  Yeah, I know that any wine bottle with an animal on it (whether fishes or penguins or yaks) is almost certainly undesirably tannic shit.  I know that the “house” wine at Italian places manages to get you drunk just as good as anything else there (and it manages to give you a wicked hangover too).  I know that I may be a classless vulgarian, but I still seem to be one of the few people around that grips wine glasses correctly while drinking (from the stem, fellas, you look like a goddamn fool when you cup the bowl like you’re giving a testicular exam to an old man).  I know that becoming highly skilled at briskly swirling your wine is a boffo party trick (though it does have drawbacks two-fold in a. making you look like a pretentious asshole and b. occasionally causing you to swirl red wine right onto your friend’s new white carpet when you don’t quite realize how drunk you already are).  I also know that only a moron orders the second cheapest wine at a restaurant.  As we all know from watching hacky sitcoms, since most men are clueless (and cheap), not wanting to look clueless (and cheap), said men pass on ordering the cheapest bottle of wine on a restaurant menu and instead confidently order the second cheapest bottle as if they know what they’re talking about.  Well guess what?  Restaurant owners know this and now often place the wine they bought the cheapest wholesale in the second-cheapest slot on the wine menu.  So now, in most cases, the second cheapest wine in any given restaurant is both the most overpriced and lowest quality wine and you’d be better off just ordering the cheapest and pretending you’re getting a real “steal” on something underrated.

My friend DW had long told me about this little known masterpiece from a favorite winery of his in Charlottesville, Virginia and on his most recent visit he snagged me a bottle with the caveat that I write a review of it.  Whoa, is this a truly unique product.  Perhaps the most singularly unique alcoholic beverage I’ve ever had in my life.  A 19% ABV wine, who has heard of such a thing?!  That’s due to the fact that this white wine aperitif is created by taking Chardonnay grapes and then blending and fortifying them with brandy which is then aged for six weeks in Jack Daniels barrels.  Wow!

Aperitif, wine, brandy, whatever the hell you want to call it–I called it “the Sunday night pass-out”–this beauty is incredibly delicious. If you can believe it, Kluge Estates actually recommends serving this chilled on ice with a slice of orange!  That sounded sacrilegious to me so I simply drank it slightly chilled, not wanting to miss out on any of its great flavors.  So bourbony and sweet and obviously boozy, boozy, boozy.  Very complex yet still refreshing.  Notes of peach and orange and pear, with darker flavors of licorice and vanilla coming from the Tennessee whiskey.

If you like wine, if you like bourbon, if you like high-ABV shit, and alcohol that challenges your palate, you absolutely have to try this one.  This is truly wine taken to the next level, a level I’m not sure many people even want wine taken to.  Heck, why don’t you order a bottle online?  You’ll thank me later, Goldfarb guarantee.

A+

11.7% ABV on tap

No matter their ethnicity, race, intelligence, classiness, drunkenness, wealth, politics, ideals, or odor, I’m always willing to listen to an older man tell me a thing or too about love and sex.  The rare topics that advanced age always gives advanced wisdom too.  Usually.

I was drinking alone on an early evening at the Ginger Man, pre-barring at a bar if that’s possible, before meeting up with some macro-loving friends.  I had nearly fallen out of my chair the previous night when I had seen the rare Night Stalker first appear on Beer Menus and needed to score some before it got tapped.  (For the record NYC folks, I do believe Night Stalker should be around for at least a few more weeks, but I’d still advise hitting up the GM post-haste.)

One of the most buzzed-about beers in America right now, the Goose Island offering has had a meteoric rise up to the #33 beer in the world slot on Beer Advocate’s top 100.  (Then again, we are in the era of super-hyped (and sometimes over-hyped) beers that go straight from released to the top 100 list in a matter of days it seems.)  But, being that Goose Island Bourbon County Stout is one of my absolute favorite brews around, I was fiending to try this one.  You see, Night Stalker is essentially Bourbon County sans bourbon barreling.  Jet black and rich, so chocolaty and full of bold espresso goodness, this sucker makes Brooklyn’s awesome Intensified Coffee Stout taste like motherfucking decaf.  It’s easy to just think that Bourbon County Stout minus the boozy bourbon would make it far less complex and tasty, but truth be told, eliminating that bourbon actually allows many new flavors to shine through creating a just as complex stout.  Certainly not a “lesser” one by any means.  Night Stalker is more bitter than Bourbon County, “dry hop(ped) like madmen” says Goose Island, more chewy, and more spicy.  Alas, I will not go so far to call it as legendary as Bourbon County Stout but it is fantastic nonetheless.  And it may very well now be my favorite unbarreled stout. Is that possible?!  Brooklyn Black Chocolate, Avery Mephistopheles’, Dark Horizon, Lost Abbey Serpent’s, Kate the Great…yeah, I think it is very well amongst that esteemed class.

Lost in my own world, my nose inhaling the Night Stalker like I was a Hebrew anteater, slurping it down greedily, my romance was ruined by those few denizens in my vicinity.  Behind me, two yahoos in cheap Red Wings sweaters with thick yet ambiguous and unlocateable accents swigged Bud Light bottles and shouted at the screen as Marc-Andre Fluery let another cheap goal trickle in.  They were scaring, to my right, two Asian skanks seemingly having a pow-wow about whether becoming hookers during a recession was a savvy economic strategy.  And to my left, a wasted mustachioed harlequin in a sleeveless T harangued the bartender.

“Eh cutie.  ‘ow can youse possibly be oldanuff to bah-tend?!  Youse mustbe like…I dunno, justa kid…hey, when can I kiss yer palm?  Naw, not the palm, dat’s not what I meant.  Whatevah’s on da udder side of da palm, dat’s what I want to kiss, like a real gentleman.  While yer attit, couldja gimme a’nudder rum ‘n coke?  Dubba.”

The bartender put on her best face, working for no doubt a tip that would be culled from the lint covered coins in his Dickies.  “What rum would you like, sir?”

“Eh, howzabout Cap’n Morgan?  Naw, wait.  Make’it Bacaw-dee.  Naw, naw, Cap’n’s good.  Bacaw-dee.  Eh, Cap’n'll work.”

“Is that your final answer?”

I was getting annoyed with this edition of “Scumbag Millionaire” as I made some more nasal love to my snifter of splendid stout wondering why the great Ginger Man always attracts such non-craft-beer-loving miscreants.

“It ain’t ‘er palm I’s really wantta kiss.  Heh, heh, heh.  Eh guy, ain’t dey got duh hottest liddle numbahs in here?”

A forearm with a tattoo of Popeye with a tattoo on his own forearm needled me in my tenth rib.

“Uh, I suppose.”

There was really not a women in the joint worth getting in a tizzy over.

“Ya’ think that bah-tender’d fucka guy like me?  Naw, course’not.  Dat’s whatyer thinkin’ right?  Some ugly mook like me?”

He stared right at my face, dramatically pausing as if he was about to blow my mind.

“Well youse wrong.  Lemme tell you sumpin’ bout women.  D’ere all sluts.  Every last one of dem.  Even my ma’, god rest her soul.  My old man walked in on her suckin’ off da’ plumber.  Nudder story for anudder day my friend…”

I hoped that “nudder” day would never come for me as I listened to Popeye Guy’s romance tips.

1.  Get her wasted

“Foist of all, ya gotta get da chicks loaded.  Make’em match youse drink fer drink.  Look’at me.  Been drinkin’ since nine ay-em and you’d t’ink I’d just been sippin’ cola, right?  And if a girl’s wit me, she’d be messed up big time b’now.  D’ese gals wanna be sluts but when dey’re sober dey’s just fuckin’ bitches.  Getta cocktail or two in’dem and soon you’ll have your cock in’dem too.  Heh, poetic right?  Like champagne for my real pain…sham friends…how’da fuck dat clevah line go?”

2.  Be old and wise

“D’ese girls respeck a guy with age, wiz-dum.  I’m fiddy-two.  I know, I know, shocked’ya agin.  Prolly thought I was yer age.  Naw, when I was yer age, hant-some, vig-er-rus, I didn’t even need ta’go’ta bahs to pick up chicks.  Dey was just bangin’ down my door so dey could bang down wit me.  Ha, look at dat, I was poetic again.  I’m a real…uh…name a poet or something.  I’m a real Dr. Soooze.  What ‘as I sayin’?  Oh, yeah, young girls want to be with an old guy who knows what ‘e’s doin’ like me.”

3.  Act manly

“Butcha’ also gotta act like’a real man.  Ladies wanna feel like ladies and dey want a man dat’s a man.  I see all deese little sissies walkin’ around Man’at-ten nowadays.  I dunno whether dey’re gay’re straight but dey’re all fag’its if you ax me.  That ain’t no slur, and I ain’t na’ ‘omophobic or nuttin’.  I juss calls ‘em like I sees ‘em and dey’s a buncha fag’its.  Dey don’t make guys like me no more.  Real men.  Now you look alright.  Not tough or anyt’ing but not a fuckin’ pussy or nuttin’.  But compared ta’ these udder guys your age you’re fuckin’ John Wayne.  Even wit dat fag’it fancy beer in yer hand.”

4.  Pretend your rich

“But manliness ain’t enuff.  These sluts also like a guy with a little coin if ya’ know what I’m sayin’.  I’ma classy guy, ya’ know, and I like to treat my ladies well so I’ll take’em ta nice places, chop’ouses, planning on pickin’ up da’ bill.  But da’ second a girl ack-shully axes me to buy ‘er sumpin’, I’m like, ‘Buy youse sumpin’?!, why don’tchoo suck on my cock?’  Naw, that doesn’t always work but it has before a few times.  I still had to buy dinner though.”

5.  Be great in bed

“Now dis is da most impor-ent point, my friend.  More important den any udder nugget’a wiz-dum I’s given you tonight:  Fuck’er like she ain’t done nevah been fucked before.  You make’a bitch cum and she’ll never leave ya’ side.  Believe me.  Truth be told, I can’t fuck deese bitches one-hundert percent because I’m so good that they’ll stalk me and my pecker forevah.  So I usually just fuck’em at like…say…sixty percent first few times.  Let her know I have da’ tools, but I choose to use them at my discretion.  Dat way, she’s in my control forevah.”

By now I was done with my slow-sipping Night Stalker and had to get going to meet up with my friends.  I thanked the man for his swell advice and he thanked me for listening by picking up my pint.  As I left he winked at me and nodded at the cute bartender with her back to us–it was time for the “expert” to go in for the solo kill.

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow any of Popeye Guy’s advice that night and I went to bed alone at 5 AM.

Coincidence?

I think not!

A+

Deschutes The Abyss (2008)

11% ABV bottled

vs.

Avery The Czar

11.03% ABV bottled

vs.

The Lost Abbey Serpent’s Stout

10.5% ABV bottled

When you’re a besotted loner, it’s virtually impossible to do blind taste tests.  What are you going to do?  Have your cat pour you some beers and mix them up?  Visiting friends in DC over the weekend, I decided to bring along a bottle of the legendary and possibly highest regarded stout in the world, The Abyss, sent to me by San Diego legend Jesse the Hutt to share with my pals.  And when I noticed that my friend Derek had bottles of similarly ABV’ed and not-as-well-but-still-well-regarded The Czar Imperial Stout and Serpent’s Stout, I thought it might be fun to do a little blind taste test.

I always hate, in a way, giving universally regarded beers A pluses because I often wonder if I’m reviewing the beer or the esteem the label already has.  It’s almost impossible to separate the two unless you do it blindly.  It’s why symphony tryouts nowadays are conducted behind curtains.  No matter how hard they tried, no matter how non-biased they thought they could be, judges couldn’t stop themselves from down grading certain minorities, unwittingly thinking it impossible they could play as well as others.

We had Derek’s kindly girlfriend distribute the glasses and here were my findings.

Mystery Beer A

I thought this beer had a great smell, a very complex nose which reminded me of the splendid Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout.  Unfortunately, the taste was much simpler, nothing like that A+ offering.  A creamy, smooth beer with bold chocolate and espresso flavors and a fairly sweet taste bordering on cloying.  A very drinkable, frequent-tippling stout, though no masterpiece.

A-

Mystery Beer B

An incredibly smooth nose that drove through my nostrils and into my brain.  Delicious!  A kind mouthfeel with strong tastes of burnt coffee, molasses, black licorice, and even a little vanilla.   Absolutely wonderful and I would drink it every single day of the year but it did not completely knock my socks off.

A

Mystery Beer C

This one was right up my alley.  Everything I want an imperial stout to be.  Incredibly boozy like some stout/quadruple sort of hybrid, but smooth as silk.  Tickles every single inch of your pharynx and larynx before plummeting into your belly and filtering through your liver and making you dance around the room with joy.  What a pleasure to drink.  A rich chocolate sweetness perfectly balanced with roasted coffee, a burning rumminess, oodles of dark fruits, and a tad hops bitterness.  Smooth, outstanding, a masterpiece.  Cannot say enough about this surely already legendary beer.

A+

Though I liked them all, I didn’t really think it was close, Mystery Beer C won in a blowout on my scorecard.  In fact, it won on 5 out of 5 taste testing friends’ scorecards, all 5 thinking it a landslide.

Beer C had to be the gorgeous wax-dipped bottle of The Abyss, right?

Wrong.

We were shocked when Derek’s girlfriend revealed the answers…

Mystery Beer A:  The Czar (A-)*

Mystery Beer B:  The Abyss (A)

Mystery Beer C:  Serpent’s Stout (A+)

NO!

This can’t be possible.  With newfound knowledge of what each beer was, we tried them again, and still had to agree that the handsomely corked-and-caged Serpent’s Stout was superior to them all.

The next day, we ran into Tomme Arthur at Savor and told him of our findings.  He gave us a stern eye-bulging and said, “Shhh…keep it down, don’t let any one know.”  A cocky smirk fell over his face, like he was proud of the little secret that only he and a few others know, that his imperial stout is better than maybe the most highly-regarded stout in the world.

*Unfortunately not as great as their masterpiece Mephistopheles’ Stout.