Though I’ve had a slight compunction in the past in hanging out with the geekiest of beer geeks, this weekend I found myself at Washington, DC’s Savor beer and food “experience.”  Said experience was held in the lovely National Building Museum, a phenomenal space where smartly dressed people, and your’s truly, enjoyed fine beer and soggy finger foods.  A crowd seemingly consisting more of foodies, cultural scenesters, and folks that enjoy wearing blazers just for the heck of it, the beer geeks were easily spotted as those hirsute men taking copious notes in their Moleskines, spending far too many seconds with their noses inside the rims of their tasting glass before taking a sip, too scared to look any of the many attractive women in the eye, and those lads treating Tomme Arthur and the godfather of craft Jim Koch as if they were Dino and Frank (uh…guilty as charged*).

According to my count, I sampled 36 of the 118 available frat sodas, so take the following for what it’s worth.  My highlights from the “experience” include, in alphabetical order:

Avery’s aromatic and white-winey wild Brabant, Boulevard’s silky funky Saison-Brett, The Bruery’s bready and creamy Saison Rue, Foothills’s slightly overrated but still spectacular Sexual Chocolate (on tap!) and vastly underrated Hoppyum IPA, Great Divide’s decadent Espresso Oak Aged Yeti imperial stout, The Lost Abbey’s deserves-all-the-praise-it-gets Angel’s Share bourbon-barreled as well as their tart/sour/boozy Cuvee de Tomme, New Holland’s refreshingly zesty Golden Cap saison, Russian River’s Pliny the Elder which I had misjudged the first and only previous time I’d had it as this is an A+ worldbeater no question, and Two Brothers’s caramelly Cane & Ebel red rye.

Now the above “honorable mentions” are a smattering of A-’s and A’s and perhaps even an A+ or two, but my three Best in Shows in ascending order were:

3.  Smuttynose Gravitation (Big Beer Series) — By far my biggest surprise of the evening.  I knew the boys up in Portsmouth made good if not great stuff and I’d seen this one on shelves plenty of times, but who knew this 8.5% ABV quadruple was so goddamned spectacular?!  Actually, apparently no one knows that or even thinks that as it gets a pedestrian B user grade on Beer Advocate, but let me just state that this is one beauty.  A dominating explosion of sweet Belgian candi and sugary dark fruits, this beer still remains incredibly smooth and drinkable with absolutely no cloyingness.  Honestly, I really can’t think of a better Americanized quad out there, and lest you think I was already in the can and am thus overrating this one compared to seemingly everyone else…it was my first beer of the evening and next to nothing else came close to it for the next four hours.  In fact, periodically throughout the night I would revisit the Smuttynose booth to selfishly have a second and third and fourth pour.

A+

2.  Russian River Consecration — Already quite “famous” in its short period of existence, it deserves all its hosannas as this brew instantly replaces Allagash Interlude as both my favorite wild ale and red wine-barreled beer.  A rust red pour full of acidic tartness, oaky Carbenet flavors, green apple sourness, and some funky vinegar sensations this brew was shockingly refreshing and I could not get enough of its glory.  I’m also glad I didn’t have to pay the bloated costs for this one–reportedly around $25 a bottle–which perhaps led me to enjoy it at maximum capacity.

A+

1.  Odell Woodcut #2 Oak Aged Golden Ale — I’m embarrassed to admit I knew next to nothing about this Fort Collins, Colorado based brewery, had never had one of their beers before, and didn’t even have this brew on my fairly lengthy “to drink” crib sheet I was carrying around in my ass pocket.  Luckily, about halfway through the evening, I serendipitously ran into a beer geek friend and a seemingly innocuous question of “So…whadaya enjoying here?” let to him all but grabbing me by the scruff of my neck and dragging me over to the Odell booth where he claimed that easily the best beer in the house resided.  Quite skeptical, I took his word for it and, wow!, he was 100% right.  A handsomely champagned bottled with a slick label befitting the beer’s name, this is truly one of the most flavorful beers I’ve ever had in my life.  A creamy malt backbone with tastes of buttery toffee and caramel, clean oak, vanilla, and candi this beer is phenomenal and I feel lucky to have tried it.  Now I’m sorry I missed out on Woodcut #1 which my minimal research shows me was released last year in a stingy small case number.  I’d love to get my hands on a full bottle of Woodcut #2 but it doesn’t even appear to have been officially released yet and doesn’t even have a placeholder entry on BA yet.

Whatever the case, Odell hits a moon shot home run in their first at bat against me.  That’s a 1.000 OBP and a 4.000 slugging.  As good as it gets.

A+

*

7.1% ABV from a growler

A Tough Nut to Crack, an Easy Slut to Sack

I flipped open my cell, scrolled to her number in my Contacts, put my thumb on the “Send” button, and…paused.  I realized I had no idea what I was doing.  Shit, I hadn’t done something like this in years.

For awhile I’ve thought I had pretty decent “game.”  Now I’m no Giacomo Casanova or anything, but I’ve always been a deep studier, a student, an autodidact, and a tinkerer and after a decade-plus of noticing my many failures and successes in the world of women, I thought I had developed some pretty decent skills.  In fact, I’d felt for the past few years that I’d made these skills, these dos and don’ts, such an ingrained part of my persona that I could just successfully exist around women on autopilot, which is a great thing when you’re often loaded.  I’d gotten pretty damn good at soliciting reciprocal intrigue from strange women that I was attracted to, at culling contact info from them, landing dates and outings, which typically lead to in flagranteness.  Each of those steps a chance to flounder, to have the process aborted on me, yet I was still putting up both great contact and power numbers.  We’re talking a .350 AVG, maybe a .450 OBP, and a slugging percentage that would make Jimmie Foxx blush.

That is until I met Miriam.

My god was she gorgeous.  Just silly attractive.  About as good-looking as a girl could be without you thinking she must surely be an actress or a model, though, then again, when you actually meet actresses and/or models you’re often like, “That’s it?!”  But I digress.  I was in a piece-of-shit Murray Hill sportsbar killing some time one night when I heard violent shouting to my right:

“Goddammit Ilgauskas, could you defend the fucking the pick-and-roll?!  Big Baby is torching you!”

“Would a little hustle be too much to ask, Delonte?!”

“Yep, me too, Lebron, I’d be shaking my head in dismay too if I was playing with these bozos.”

The shouting was female.  I turned and saw her.  5′2″, 110 pounds, flowing golden locks, emerald green doe eyes, high cheek bones beset on a flawlessly symmetrical face, the flattest stomach I’ve ever seen peekabooing from just under the bottom of her tank top as she pumped her fist in the air after Anderson Varejao took a charge.  Who was this divine creature?

“Big Cavs fan, huh?”

She didn’t even respond to me, as if she was ignoring me completely.  But she wasn’t, because the second the game went to TV timeout, she turned to me with the sweetest smile on her face, the softest voice, kindly explaining that, no, she wasn’t a Cleveland Cavaliers fan, not in the least, she was just a sports fan.  An addict.  Who was this dream girl?  I was intimated.  Good lord.  Both by her attractiveness and sports acumen.  Now, I’m no chump in the sports knowledge department, not in the least, but when a 10-out-of-10 beauty turns to you and matter of factly says, “Am I crazy or is Mo Williams overplaying Rondo to the left?,” there’s not much you can do besides go, “Uh… so would you like a drink or sumpin’?”

Not that I usually ever buy drinks for girls because I am an insensitive cheapskate and I’m not a sap and I am a guy that always usually knows what to say and offering to buy a drink is the last refuge of the sap and guy with no clue and, shit, now I was a sap with no clue what to do.

Unfortunately, she didn’t drink.  Didn’t drink?!  Who doesn’t drink?  I mean she drank liquid, water and Gatorade and ginger ale, she was in no danger of dehydrating don’t fret, she simply didn’t drink al-kee-hawl.  She wasn’t religious or a recovering alcoholic, just very much into fitness and energy and health and she didn’t find that alcohol fit anywhere into that lifestyle.  My plea that alcohol makes sure your blood is thin and pumping, didn’t even convince her.  So I awkwardly sat there trying to flirt with this teetotaling, gorgeous, sports savant, no clue what to do…but get loaded myself.  I drank so quickly and nervously that I don’t really recall much of how that night ended, but I guess she liked me somewhat because before I left she coolly handed me her card and said, “Call me.”

Call her?

Shit, I hadn’t called a girl in years.  My modus operandi for the longest time had been to get girl’s e-mail addresses.  A lot of people make fun of me for that, but it’s so much simpler.  Besides the fact that I hate talking on the phone, I also don’t like dealing with things in a time sensitive manner.  Nothing better than shooting off an e-mail in the morning and giving the gal all the time she wants to respond for the rest of the day.

I first realized I had a power with words back in 11th grade.  I knew I was a good writer, even then, but I didn’t know the effect my words could have.  That was until the last day of class that year when during a yearbook signing period I quickly scratched out a message to a girl I had an unrequited crush on.  Now, I hadn’t written anything romantic or perhaps even creepy, if that’s what you’re wondering, I had just slopped down a nice “good to know you” message.  The kind of message I would slop down for any one, guy or girl, that I honestly felt it was good to know.

I thought nothing of that message until later that night when the girl called me–she never called me!–to tell me that her and her mother had been rereading over my message all night, it had moved them so much, to tears even, and she just wanted to thank me for my beautiful note.  From that point on, I realized how I could affect people with my writing, and I began wielding my pen like an epee.

And now I was being handicapped, one of my greatest skills taken away from me!  I hadn’t called a girl to ask her on a date since like 2002.  How did one even go about doing such a thing?!  I was actually getting nervous!  I don’t get nervous for anything any more.  Shit, what to do?  I went to Facebook to look at her page.  Maybe she wasn’t as good looking as I recall.  Perhaps she was not truly that interesting.  Maybe she listed her religious affiliation as Wiccan.  But she didn’t even have a page!  The hell?  What twentysomething chick doesn’t have a Facebook profile?  Well, at least I knew she didn’t have any children, cause no new mother nowadays can possibly avoid posting zillion of pictures and inane status updates about their miserable rugrats.

Should I just text her?  Naw, that would be cowardly.  And, I later found out, impossible.  She didn’t even have a cell phone.  I called the number she gave me, a landline, and fought through the nerves to arrange a date.  She had only one rule:  we had to go to a bar with plenty of TVs, and good ones, she wasn’t going to miss that night’s Nuggets/Lakers game.

Meeting up with her that evening, she was just as gorgeous as I recall.  I pounded Sierra Nevada Celebration Ales while she drank cranberry juice.  I quizzed her on her seeming lack of technology, her Luddite values.  She didn’t have a Facebook page because she thought it was childish, a time suck.  I couldn’t disagree with that.  She didn’t have a cell phone because she didn’t like to be reached at any time, any place.  She also thought it was rude to have your ears and eyes glued to a device while out with other people.  Again, couldn’t disagree with that.  As for e-mail, she only checked it once a week, so sending her messages was borderline pointless.

I soon realized, I had no fucking clue what to do.  I’d followed a very simple pattern with the previous zillion women I’ve dated:  get e-mail address, send pithy and humorous message the next day or so, meet at bar around happy hour, get loaded going drink-for-drink with a girl I outweighed by fifty pounds at least, be funny, be interesting, and by midnight or later I was usually in bed with said female.  I had a system, a damn good system, but now I was flummoxed.  Especially, when at 9 PM, Miriam told me she had to get to bed.  As in, go to bed alone.  Seems she wakes up every morning at 4 AM to work out in order to be at her job by 7 AM.

Who was I dealing with?!

She quickly kissed me on the lips and sprinted from the place, leaving me there to reassess what went wrong.  Our chemistry had been solid enough, sure, but I never felt like we were making a full connection, she seemingly more interested in Carmelo Anthony’s shooting that night than in my hilarious anecdotes.

I typically wouldn’t even continue going after a girl like Miriam after such a modest failure of a first date, but she was too goddamn hot.  Maybe she was just shy, nervous herself.  And did I always have to take the easy way out?  The easy sluts to sack or the tough nut to crack?  I needed to try to pick up my game, swim in the deep end without any floaties on my biceps.  You can only get better at things if you challenge yourself, right?

Forced to call her again for a second date, I would have to show up and be as charismatic as I’ve ever been, and be aggressive and sexy and manly.  I’d have to work quick, cause I’d only have til her witching hour of 9, but I could make it work.  I’d barely drink as well, flip the tables on her.  Yes!  Maybe she was only so intimidating, so cocksure, because she was a sober beauty dealing with drunken buffoons like me, each pint we drank knocking five points off our IQs until Miriam was dealing with a borderline retard.  But I would flounder again this time, too self-conscious at my behavior, my lack of drinking, her placid and sober demeanor.  After we again chastely kissed goodbye at 9:00 on the dot, I knew it was over.

Walking home up Ninth Avenue, I came to the realization that I must have no game.  Sure, I’m good at meeting women, good at getting them to meet me out, and good at–I guess–taking semi-advantage of them while we’re both equally drunk.  And, once a women’s slept with you once, the hard part is over.  Even if she doesn’t like you once you’re already one of her “numbers,” a tally on her sexual abacus, she figues you guys might as well forge some sort of relationship out of this fact, whether you become as much as boyfriend and girlfriend or just sometime besotted bedmates.

In fact, it could be said that chemically, once you’ve slept with a woman that first drunken night, the bond has been formed for the immediate future as Oxytocin is released into the women’s nervous system during distension of the cervix and hopefully for her sake orgasm, causing her to have a mysteriously uncontrollable and intense need to bond with you.  Even for a night.

I went home, dejected and popped the top on a growler of Alpine Nelson which the great Jesse the Hutt had procured for me.  Macro straw clear with a head like a root beer float yet otherwise minimal carbonation.   Likewise minimal bitterness and smooth sweet rye taste accented by prominent hints of citrus and mango.  Dangerously drinkable, I quickly took down half the growler on that first night and spent the whole next day thinking about the second half I still had to enjoy.  Shockingly, my second day of the Nelson growler was even better and truly put this number over the top.  It had become even sweeter and almost completely lacking in carbonation now it had the mouthfeel as if it was off cask.  Simply one of the best single IPAs I’ve ever had, right up there with Pliny the Elder, Masala Mama, and Sixty Minute.  You absolutely have to find this beer if you can.

This weekend I went back to hanging out with the kind of sweetheart of a girl that will completely communicate with me via text and e-mail, the kind of girl that has a Facebook page, that will drink hard with me til 5 in the morning, slowly getting drunker and drunker, more and more into me.  Predictably, I of course, found amatory success with that time-tested formula and we had a swell night.

Yes, I may not truly have any game, but at least I’m goddamn good at meeting attractive and technological savvy drunkards that are allowed to sleep in.  I’ll stick with them for the foreseeable future.

A+

9.5% ABV bottled

They–meaning “good” people–always say to truculent assholes like me that, yeah, you’re right, the world will obviously still be up and running on all cylinders when me and you die, no matter how poorly we treat it, but we still have a responsibility to leave this world nice for our children and for our childrens’ children.  Recycling and maintaining itty bitty carbon footprints and not exploiting the land or our fellow man.

Well, I don’t plan on having any children*, so I guess I can continue to be an anti-environmental asshole, right?  Maybe.  But maybe not, if being a nice, sweet “green” dude means it will now be a part of my ethos to drink fair trade coffee.

Allow me to explain…

A few weeks ago I was bored, dicking around on Beer Advocate when I started studying their Top 100 list a bit trying to tip myself off to some great brews I had perhaps never heard of.  Those are sadly becoming fewer and farther between as my beer studies advance.**  However, this time I noticed a pop residing at the #15 position.  One I’d never heard of.  One with an odd “foreign”-soundin’ name.  Peche Mortel.  Interesting.  I didn’t do much further research at that moment and simply filed my newly-culled fact away in the ol’ Goldfarb memory bank.

Luckily, my research would serve me well as just a few days later I found myself at Whole Foods and came across a lone bottle of Peche Mortel residing on a high shelf.  My memory jogged like Chuck Bartowski’s Intersect-affected mind on “Chuck”–does any one in the entire world watch that show because that is one killer analogy I just made–and I quickly snatched the 12 ouncer off the shelf.  I examined the bottle.  Hmmm…an imperial stout from Montreal.  Odd, for some reason I thought it was gonna be a fruit beer from Belgium.  Maybe because I dumbly translated “peche” to mean “peach” and thought the funny language looked Belgian-y.  For the record, your honor, Peche Mortel actually stands for “Mortal Sin” if you’re as ineptly monolingual as I am.

That very weekend, while watching the sublime new “Thrilla in Manilla” doc on HBO, I popped the bottle with much anticipation and was floored by the intense coffee smell as the hot booze punched me in the snotbox the second I began to transfer the liquid from bottle to glass.  Whoa Nelly and Holy Cow, this is one great beer.  It tingles the tongue with a roasted coffee taste and pronounced bitterness, a smooth and creamy espresso body, and finishes with a subtle hint of sweetness.  I’ve had several great coffee beers lately, most notably Brooklyn’s Intensified Coffee Stout and Surly’s Coffee Bender, but this trumps them both.**  This is an incredibly complex stout and, personally, I think it’s even better than the much ballyhooed Kona-coffee-infused Founders Breakfast Stout.  That fair trade stuff is the real deal, brother.  And no, I still don’t really know what fair trade coffee is and am far too lazy to read the Wikipedia entry on it.

I honestly have no clue how rare this beer is as I just stumbled upon it through pure happenstance, but I am glad to learn that America, Jr. up north actually has another great beermaker aside from Unibroue.  Although, I’m not even sure if Brasserie Dieu Du Ciel makes anything else worthwhile as I know nothing about their other beers other than that they have some cool looking labels and their Aphrodisiaque sounds most exsquisite.  I’d love to get my hands on some if any one knows where to score ‘em.

Hey, it’s the era of grade inflation and I can’t help if I keep having masterpieces so…

A+

…I’ll try to drink something shitty this weekend, I promise.  Those are the most fun reviews.

Speaking of which, if any one has any tips for something abominable I can tipple for my next video review, please let me know:  theviceblog [at] gmail.com.

*On purpose that is, and probably not on accident either as I sit with a laptop on my balls for ten-plus hours a day, every day, and were my scrotum to be vivisected it would probably show a bed of long-perished spermatozoa floating atop a pool of neon green seminal fluid like dead fish at the end of a stream which has a tributary coming out of a nuclear power plant.

**If any one ever calls me an alcoholic, I’ll just start saying my beer studies are quite advanced.

**Quoth the brewers:

If you love really good coffee and really good beer equally, you will be thrilled with Péché Mortel. If coffee isn’t your cup of tea, and caffeine makes you bounce off the ceiling, then just put the bottle down and find something else to drink. This beer is all about coffee. Indeed, you may have seen ‘coffee stouts’ before, but no brewer has ever married coffee and beer so naturally and seamlessly.

12% ABV bottled (#28600)

Last year a friend introduced me to Aventinus and I quickly fell in love with it, making the German brew one of those beers that I must have frequently.  I’m a man that gets off on novelty in all aspects of life and that is especially true of beer.  Even the beers I love I don’t drink more than a few times a year, much rather preferring to roll the dice with something new, yet I still manage to have Aventinus at least once a month.  Which shows how very much I like that beer.

Thus, I was quite intrigued when I found this semi-special bottling of Aventinus on the shelf at Whole Foods.  It looked pretty similar to the original with its iconic purple label.  The only difference seemed to be the limited edition numbering on the back.  As I’ve mentioned once before, I’m a huge sucker for gimmicks, so there was zero chance I wouldn’t pick up a specially numbered bottle, no matter what was inside.

When I got home, I did my research to discover just exactly how this bottling differed.  And, straight from the brewer’s website it’s story-tellin’ time:

Aventinus, the Wheat Doppelbock of Bavaria, has always been known to be the most intense and complex wheat beer in the world. This was the case for the past sixty years, but not anymore…

Up until the 1940’s, Aventinus was shipped all over Bavaria in containers lacking temperature control. Consequently, the precious drink partially froze during transportation. Unaware that the brew was concentrated by the separation of water from the liquid. People were baffled by this unique version of Aventinus. By chance, the first Aventinus Eisbock was created.  Well aware of this story, Hans Peter Drexler, brewmaster of the Schneider brewery, decided to recreate this classic “mistake” in a modern controlled facility. Thus, the Aventinus Eisbock is reborn sixty years later… Prost!

Certainly sounded intriguing.  And, with 8% “normal” Aventinus a top 100 beer, “supersized” Aventinus might bring me to orgasm.  Or at least make me Prost! in my pants.

My first sip of supersized Aventinus punched me in the back of the throat and I started coughing and snorting like some junior high kid taking his first hit from a bong.  After I composed myself, I greedily went back to the teet for more.  Goddamn was this good.  Packed with banana flavors, like liquized bubble gum and, oh so freaking boozy.  The smell, consistancy, and taste of a port wine, perhaps a Belgian dubbel, or we could just say a wheat barleywine, with hints of dark fruits and spices.  Phenomenal.

I am so glad an act of kismet–or marketing gimmickry–caused me to grab this beer because it is one of the best I’ve had this year.  Hell, it may be in my top ten of all time.  I’m gonna be stocking up on it while it is still around.  If you love Aventinus, you’ll be floored by this.  Hard to believe Aventinus can get even better but with this it has and it is.

A+

9.5% ABV

HIQ:  Hungover Intelligence Quotient

I was slurring my words, unable to form complete sentences, a screwed up syntax, barely able to even move my mouth and tongue in the correct way to ejaculate words.  I had the most mild form of brain damage:  a massage hangover.

Thursday was one of the more epic days of my year.  Kicked it off around 4:00 PM splitting a bottle of Portsmouth Brewery’s legendary Kate the Great with my friend Derek who had actually trucked up to New Hampshire to secure it earlier in the year during KTG Day.  Currently BA’s 5th ranked beer in the world, I too was blown away by it.  Coca Cola dark with a beautiful smell of booziness.  Tastes of sweet molasses, rich chocolate, and a little spiciness to go along with a slight fizzy carbonation and some alcoholic heat.  Imminently drinkable, this masterpiece still doesn’t quite touch Surly Darkness in my all-time stout rankings, but it definitely battles for the #2 slot along with luminaries Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Brooklyn Black Ops, and Avery Mephistopheles’.

After catching our collective breath from our Kate the Great orgasms, we headed to 33rd Street for several hours of manly drinking before entering the World’s Most Famous Arena where, getting further lubricated on The Garden’s $8 Labatt Blue pints, we watched perhaps the Greatest College Basketball Game of All Time.  Euphoric in joy, somewhat sobered up being that MSG’s last call for brews was some TWO hours before the game actually ended, we headed back to Stout for some aggressive tippling and victory celebrating in that special hooliganistic way unique to upstate New Yorkers.

By 6 AM I somehow found myself in a luxury hotel room with three adorable Pitt fans I’d met earlier in the day, polishing off overpriced mini-bar M&Ms and impromptu vodka and Ocean Spray cran-whatevers.  I awoke the next day in the Park Avenue establishment feeling like I’d taken a shotgun blast to the head.  Still reveling after watching the greatest event ever in the history of tattooed pituitary cases placing round objects in peach baskets, I triumphantly walked up 42nd street, a slight limp in my gait from a groin pull which I’m still not certain whether I acquired during or after the game.  Still wearing my beer and sweat soaked team logo hat and T-shirt from the previous night and receiving countless compliments from spectators for picking such a grand school to matriculate at, numerous high fives were released.  But I didn’t have much time to relax and recover back home on the couch, a sack of ice on my crotch, watching back-to-back replays of the game on ESPN Classic, for I had to head back to the Mecca that evening for the Cuse/West Virginia semi-finals tilt.

To say my Friday was a tough one would be putting it mild.  My brain was absolute mush.  My vocabulary had to be at best at a fourth grade level, we’re talking maybe two syllables max per word.  Comprehending a dinner menu was tough, remembering how to take the subway tricky, understanding the rules of basketball an impossibility.  My trademark wit was sapped from me and I had become a retarded dullard on par with Charly Gordon with a jaw full of Novocaine.  I couldn’t even get my brain to execute the hand-eye coordination needed to simply claps my hands together after a made basket.

This got me thinking.  How dumb exactly had one of my all-time massive hungovers made me?  Minus 10 IQ points?  20?  I’d dare say it was more like a loss of 30 to 40.  I’ve never had such empathy for the dolts in this world if they have to walk around 24 hours a day like I was feeling on Thursday, their neural synapses misfiring more often than Leno during his monologue.

The stat nut that I am, I now want an actual quantitative measurement of my hangover induced dumbkopfism.  I know my approximate resting, sober IQ–something I just confirmed via an online test–so from now on dear readers, any time I am moronically hungover, I will take a similar online test and see how I fare, posting the results.  This should be a fun experiment.

Wow, taking IQ tests with a pulsating booze-created headache, what a way to spend a Saturday!  Much more exiting than ordering in some greasy diner food and watching a “Tool Academy” marathon.

A+

15.92% ABV bottled (Nov. 2008 BATCH 4)

A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Homeless People in America from Drinking Low ABV Shit Beer, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public

If I was the kind of guy that was into charities, the one I would found would be called Craft Beer for Bums (CBB).  Oh how it upsets me so when I’m walking through my tony Manhattan neighborhood and see a hobo trying to keep himself warm with a pathetic forty of Olde English.  How saddened I am upon encountering a wino trying to drink his troubles away while forgetting that he smells like the Kansas City stockyards as he slugs some fortified wine.  How many tears have trickled down my cherubic cheeks watching a transient try to numb his pain and pass out for the evening on some rotgut potato vodka.

No, I will not stand for it any longer, from now on I want the homeless of the world drinking craft beer.  It just makes sense!  Man needs a certain amount of pleasure in his life.  You’re getting a lot of sex then you don’t need much else.  Not getting any intercourse and all of the sudden you’re gorging on food.  It creates a vicious cycle no question.  Which came first:  the girl was fat or she wasn’t getting laid?

The homeless are the same way.  Stinking like urine, members of the fairer sex are obviously not talking to them and thus the closest they get to coitus is that pocket pussy they stole from Babes in Toyland.  Likewise, little culinary pleasure can surely be derived from day old Dunkin Donuts munchkins.  Thus, the homeless have no choice but to get their daily minimum of pleasure from alcohol.  And I am the satyr that will orchestrate things.

What kind of life is it for these gentleman to be laying in a gutter drinking 4.2% Bud Light tallboys?!  It’s not a life, not at all.  They need stuff with taste and flavor and enough alcohol per volume to put them on their motherfucking asses.

A splendid beer to start a craft beer neophyte homeless man with might be Avery’s Mephistopheles’ Stout.  For years I’ve considered Avery as a good but nothing special brewery.  I’m not sure why that is, because I had no reason to feel that way, no proof whatsoever.  And, considering the last few beers I’ve had from Avery have been their splendid Collaboration with Russian River, their top-of-the-line DIPA, and now this stout masterpiece, I must admit my visceral regard toward them was unequivocally wrong.  Mephistopheles is simply one of the best stouts I have ever had.  I tippled it in the same sitting that I had the A+ Dark Horizon 2.0 and Dogfish Head’s Worldwide Stout and it outshone them both.  Probably the regular release beer I’ve found to be the closest in deliciousness to Surly’s phenomenal Darkness.  A very sweet stout, but not cloying in the least.  Lacks that overpowering dark chocolate/roasted coffee flavor most big boy stouts have which makes it quite unique.  Its prominent tastes are molasses, dark cherries, sweeter chocolate, and boozy, stinging, delicious rummy alcohol.  Even though it ain’t cheap–we’re talking a couple of sawbacks for just 12 ounces–you absolutely have to try it.

A single bottle of this and a malnourished, scurvy-riddled bum would be in lala land, having the most pleasent of dreams.  And the benefits of well-drunk homeless people would be immense to us beer geeks.  No longer would one have to waste a few minutes on Beer Advocate or RateBeer researching upcoming brew purchases.  Naw, you could just walk down you block and “Hey, Smitty, had any good saisons lately?”  The streets would be literally lined with beer recommendations.

You might think me callous, “Bums can’t be getting shit-faced on expensive, super alcoholic beer!  Have a heart!”

But ask yourself this:  who is callous?  Me, who wants to give the dregs of society a little pleasure in their lives, or the sanctimonous leftist city that won’t even sell cheap booze in the parts of town where their homeless congregate?  Move to New York, homeless folks, CBB will get you well snockered.

If you agree with my cause, please PAYPAL me your donations.*

A+

*Please don’t.  I don’t want to go to jail for running a false charity.  But feel free to send me some money or beer to satiate mine own dipsomania.

11.3% ABV along with a Casa Magna Colorado Gran Toro cigar

I’d already celebrated my 30th birthday with a party at Blind Tiger, a decadent last weekend in Philadelphia, and with further plans this upcoming weekend in Syracuse, so I decided to spend my actual birth date in solitude, completely enjoying a deluge of some of my favorite vices all by my lonesome.  Kinda like Chris Farley’s final day but with no drugs, no hookers, and/or no chance of death.  OK, minimal chance of death.  And hookers.

In the early morning and afternoon, I overloaded with good coffee and some of my favorite movies (”Hoop Dreams,” “2001:  A Space Odyssey,” “Aguirre, the Wrath of God”) before switching to beer and cigars in the early afternoon.  The cigar of the day was Casa Magna’s Gran Toro, the same cigar that in the Robusto size was rated 2008’s #1 cigar of the year by Cigar Aficionado.  A stupendously economical stogey for around $5-$6 a stick, I’d had my first the previous weekend at the legendary Holt’s.   I was on an empty stomach then and found the cigar incredibly spicy and a bit of an asskicker and, thus, somewhat not deserving of its lofty status.  This time around though, with my innards settled and some stout to nicely pair with the smoke, I found it more smooth and palatable.  Quite good.  PASS

Interlude rant that proves I’m a dickhead: As communication becomes more and more ubiquitous and all people achieve more and more relationships (or, er, “relationships”) in their lives, birthdays start to, well…kinda suck.  No, they don’t suck, per se, I’m being overly dramatic, but lately, on my actual birthdays, I’ve started to feel like a motherfucking secretary.  For a guy who hates phone calls, looooooooathes phone calls, one’s birthday becomes a never-ending string of my cell vibrating more than a sexual toy owned by a lonely fat girl.  It was kinda impossible yesterday for me to completely relax and fall into a slumber of my vices when I was answering my phone like a switchboard operator every few minutes to have awkward don’t-know-what-to-say conversations with relatives, friends, and exes I never even think about on the other 364 days of the year.

Even worse, is when you miss a phone call on your birthday, and you of course know why the person just called you, but not wanting to be rude and ignore correspondence, you call the person back to essentially say, “Hi, it’s Aaron–uh, you wanted to wish me a happy birthday?”

Finally, my birthday taught me one very interesting thing.  I have a TON of Facebook friends who I not only don’t remember being “friends” with, not only don’t even know, but don’t even recognize their names!  And, oddly enough, my Facebook friends that I don’t really know were many of the first to wish me a Happy Birthday on my Wall.  I guess the kind of person that would Facebook friend a human being they absolutely don’t know are also the kind of lonely persons that would e-wish that same human being they don’t a Happy Birthday as fast as humanly possible.  Yeah, I should probably unfriend some people and thin out the waste.  Seriously, stop clogging my News Feed with lame status updates, John Rathmuller.

Yeah, I know I’m a dickhead.  I’m lucky to have any friends.  And how sad would I be if I truly got no calls, e-mails, texts, or Facebookings yesterday?!  OK, so ignore my rant I guess.

In the early evening I switched to more higher octane beers to couple with some rare steak.  The beer highlight of the entire day was my first foray into Rochefort 10, the #12 beer in the world according to Beer Advocate and the #1 widely distributed beer in the world according to Rate Beer.  In fact, it’s that very piece of cake accessibility that has led to me ignoring it for so long, but I’m so glad I finally grabbed it.  You should grab it too and, assuming you don’t live in the kind of city that gets excited when a new Olive Garden or Cheesecake Factory opens in town, I’m certain your local beermonger will stock the Rochefort line, one of the seven trappist monasteries making frat sodas.  This quad has a very boozy smell.   The taste is rich and silky almost like a wine or port.  Banana, toffee maltiness, and a little spice.  This beer came with high expectations and met them as it is probably the best quad I’ve ever had–admittedly a style category with not a lot of contenders–a bit ahead of La Trappe’s and St. Bernardus 12.   One further note, I had this beer right off the shelf and thus not much aged at all.  I would love to try it not so young when the hot booziness would probably be a little smoother.

Finally, I saw another human nearing midnight and bday + 1 when a girl brought me several cakes she had made for me–coconut cream, carrot cake, and straight up yellow birthday cake.  I don’t much like cake in normal circumstances, but drunk I dove my hands in sans utensils and ate like a wolfboy.  I found crusty icing in bed this morning.  At least that’s what I think it was.  Gross.

A terrific 30th.  I may start spending them all alone until I die of a heart attack at age 35.

A+

17.5% ABV (bottling #11,554; November 5, 2007)

Deleted Scenes

A few brief tales, anecdotes, one-liners, and happenings that never came to complete fruition from my recent life that were not quite good enough to make the theatrical release.

*BB and I picked up two best friends at a swank bar in Philadelphia who brought us back to my girl’s apartment for a sordid slumber party.  The next morning, under the guise of needing a Starbucks, they escorted us out of the building.  Awkwardly standing on the sidewalk, no one quite sure how to wrap up the one night stands, I said to the gals:  “So how you want to end this thing?  Handshake?  Hug?  Kiss on the cheek?”

*Brunching at a college diner on a Sunday, a man arrived amidst the sweatsuit-clad completely overdressed for 11 AM in a tuxedo.  My friends and I began loudly snickering and openly mocking him, perhaps due to the intoxicants still in our systems from the night before.  One friend nicknamed him “James Bond” and I couldn’t help but humming aloud Dum da-da dum dum dum.  Finally, I came up with the swell idea to secretly send the tuxedoed dork a shaken-not-stirred martini–a splendid value at only $6.50 I might add.  Unfortunately, the man departed before our waitress returned to our table and potential hilarity was averted.

*There was the night my youthful looking friend couldn’t locate his driver’s license, something that worried him since we were going out drinking later at a bar with ball-busting bouncers.  I told my friend not to be concerned for once we got to the pub, I handed the meathead doorman my ID, matter of factly asking him:  “You let Jews in here, right?”  He put his hands up in minor dismay, pleading with me:  “Why yes!  OF COURSE we let in Jews!”  I smiled good and pulled my IDless friend toward the entrance.  “I need to see his card.”  “He lost it.”  “I’m sorry, but I can’t let him in then.”  I exploded in anger, loudly calling out for the whole block to hear:  “You’re not letting my friend in?!  Cause he’s Jewish?!  That is unacceptable!  You anti-Semitic bastard!”

*On a similar note was the drunken night I decided to expose bigots, taking the guise of an anti-Semite and confiding in the bartender:  “Just between you and me, fella, I hate fucking Jews.”  I asked him if the rumors were true and Jews were indeed poor tippers.  He confided indeed they were, those swarthy money grubbing bastards.  I played it cool, but later in the night and much drunker I began laying waste to the bar, ripping decorations of the wall and “making it rain” with cocktail napkins, swizzle sticks, and lemons.  Of course I was 86ed but I must admit the bartender was quite prescient:  this Hebe gave him a zero percent tip.

*There was this previous weekend where I was talking to my friend on the phone as he worked, making a plan to visit him in his office later in the day.  I heard schoolgirl giggling in the background and my buddy revealed that the laughter was coming from a co-worker who had discovered the Vice Blog and was a huge fan, now excited and nervous to meet a “celebrity” later in the day.  Since I’m an inveterate egomaniac, of course I’m more excited to meet a fawning fan of mine than even they are to meet me.  And I was most excited to find her an attractive girl.  I now hope to meet more unknown fans in the future.  Come on ladies, have the balls to reveal yourselves to me and take me out for drinks, something I will reward with a few autographs and by letting you touch me.

*And the most recently disappointing “What coulda been…” an all-time legendary story was a few weeks ago as two friends and I closed down a bar when who should enter the deserted watering hole but an absolutely model stunning collection of ten friends.  I quickly made friends with the group by asking them if they thought the girl one of my friends was hitting on was a lesbian.  They took the analysis of that question with utter seriousness, mocking my friend enough that he soon skipped out on his girl and joined me with the ten hotties.  Quickly, we learned that these leggy youngsters were an entire college basketball team from a college you’ve never heard of in Pennsylvania.  These beauties loved me and my friends and were almost battling over who got to be paired with whom.  Heck, we even made plans to drive up and watch the nationally ranked team play a basketball game and then afterward sleazily party with them in their dorm rooms.  Attractive, 5′11″, leggy, college athlete, party girls.  It doesn’t get much better than that.  Unfortunately, after a few Facebook communiques over the next week, we all lost touch and the most epic orgy of all time never materialized.  Oh, what could have been…

My friend Derek hooked me up with a bottle of the second edition of Dark Horizon.  The first batch currently resides in Beer Advocate top 100 and it would seem the younger bottling is just as good.  In fact, the self-proclaimed “Uncompromising Brewery” has made one of the better stouts, if not outright beers, I have ever had, pushing the threshold of punishing booziness with its 17.5% ABV.  Being that the incredibly handsome tin and tissue-wrapped packaging notes “mature til Fall 2009, best by 2020,” I imagine this beer will only get better and better and better.  Though even drinking it not quite “ripe,” I found it to be just a hair below the immortal Bourbon County Stout in my all-time stout rankings.  Full of dark chocolate, coffee, a slight sugar sweetness to even out the bitterness, and a silky wine-ness, this brew is amazingly drinkable for its potency, and a true Norwegian masterpiece.

A+

10.7% ABV from a bomber

One of my best friends Mookie, a frequent reader of the Vice Blog despite the fact that he has never had a sip of alcohol in his life, sent me an angry text on Christmas Eve:

“I am reading the Vice Blog on my phone and am trying to plow through the beer snobbery to get to a funny story.  You gone soft on us?”

No, I haven’t gone flaccid and I don’t need any Cialis.  Just nothing that particularly interesting has happened to me in the last week or two while I am simultaneously trying to unload a backlog of beer reviews before the New Year.  Having said that, I’ll offer a brief anecdote from last week to tide you over, Mook.

Drinking heavily on Thursday after an office Christmas party, my friend Johnny and I decided to go the absolute diviest bar in the neighborhood.  One of those Irish joints–Blarney Stone, Blarney Rock, Blarney Shit, I can never recall  its exact name–where anything goes, with the exception of smiling or happiness.  The kinda place that doesn’t even have mixers behind the bar, you best drink your liquor straight, perhaps on ice.  The kinda place that would even be too dingy for Mickey Rourke’s character in “Barfly.”

Just as Johnny and I were entering the Blarney, the bartender was furiously ejecting four girls.  Four fairly attractive and marginally put-together girls.  Certainly not the kind of females that typically go to this joint.   (The kind that do go usually need to put two barstools together to create a super-stool to sit their wide loads on.  The kinda lasses that bring in their own pizza pies to the bar.  The kinda women that order entire pitchers for themselves.  Though I ain’t hating.)

When the Irish barkeep returned I asked him what had happened.  His still seething response of which I will not try to replicate the cadence of?

“So I picked up one of those girls and took her downstairs to the basement to fuck her.  Since I’m the only bartender tonight, I told her friends to serve themselves while I was gone.  When I returned they had plowed through tons of top shelf bottles!”

The nerve!

I only wish I’d arrived at the bar a half hour earlier.  No, not to pick up the slut before him for a quick downstairs romp, but rather to be left to my own devices and bottles of Jameson Gold.

“Movie and some Chinese food?” is what every non-Jew thinks he is being highly comical in asking a Chosen Person about their Christmas day plans.  It’s the “Check please!” joke of the holidays.  In stereotypes there are some truths though.  I do indeed spend Christmas at the movies–always–because, shockingly, even in Manhattan, almost everything is closed.  After a movie or two I usually grab a steak and then proceed to get loaded.

Today’s (first) libation was Black Ops.  I’d been anxiously awaiting this beer.  Since Brooklyn Brewery refused to announce an exact release date for it, I was forced to call the Whole Foods Bowery Beer Room literally every single day from the Friday after Thanksgiving until just a week ago when the fed up employees were finally able to change their answer to my question of “Has Black Ops arrived?” from “Are you the guy that keeps fucking calling every day?” to “Yes, it is finally here!!!”

I expected nothing short of a masterpiece from Black Ops and indeed it is.  I’ve been having lots of bourbon-barreled beers recently, the world class Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout just two days ago in fact, so I was in perfect shape to compare this one to several other greats.

Aged for four months in bourbon barrels, bottled flat (no clue what that means), and re-fermented with Champagne yeast with an always seductive cork sitting atop it.  A filthy black pour that instantly stained the sides of my glass.  A deliciously boozy aroma of chocolate, vanilla, and much roasted coffee.  The oaked bourbon sensations absolutely pummeled my tongue.  I half-expected to piss stout after finishing this bottle.  A great beer that I felt could have used just a tad more sweetness, though that is the most mild of gripes.

This is a beaut, but I’d say it still loses by the smallest of margins in a photo finish to Bourbon County which remains the king of bourbon-barreled stouts.

(Oh, one final note, I really didn’t think this tasted like Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout at all, though I’d like to do a side-by-side comparison to be sure.  I had thought that Black OPS was simply a bourbon-barreled version of that one but now I believe this is a completely different stout.  Though I may be wrong.)

A+

13% ABV bottled (2008 BATCH)

Beer connoisseurship is kind of like drug addiction.  I just realized this.  Every “lower” beer a gateway to something higher.  Once you’ve had a 6% stout it becomes hard to ever enjoy a 5% one.  And once you’ve had a 10% beer it becomes hard to enjoy that 6% one you so used to love.  Bourbon or whiskey barrel that 10% brew and now a “normal” 10% tastes like a Coors Light!  It’s a slippery fucking slope.  Us beer geeks are always looking for the higher buzz and it makes us jaded men and women.  It’s not a good thing to be at the point where throwing back pale ales is like drinking a root beer.

I’d been anxious to try Bourbon County for several years now.  It’s not exactly a rare beer, but it never seems to make it to the East Coast.  Though it seems now that its distribution has been kicked up a notch throughout all of America.  The 29th ranked beer in the world, my friend had lucked into a bottle the day before Thanksgiving.  On Thanksgiving day, when he went to grab the bottle, it placed atop the fridge, he slammed the Kenmore a little too strongly and the bottle rocked, rocked, rocked and then in slow motion tumbled the five feet, shattering with a glorious and potent explosion.

In shock and holding back tears, we fell to the floor, using our fingers like a cat uses his paws in a milk dish in order to taste a little of the wasted brew.  Yes, despicable but true.  We had no choice.  We thought we might never get to try it again.  Fortunately, I again found a bottle of it this week and snatched the sucker up.

Aged in sixteen-year-old charred oak bourbon barrels for 10 months this is one massive brew.  One Beer Advocate commentator described it as a “beer-aged bourbon.”  That about sums it up.  This one kicked my ass and I spent well over two hours indulging in the 12 ounce bottle.

Packed with hints of vanilla, caramel, smoke, chocolate, and a prominent and scalding bourbon booziness which I totally dig, this is right up there with Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout and the likewise bourbon-barreled Schlafly Reserve.  In fact, I will go so far as to say that this is the second best stout I’ve had in my life after Darkness.

A+