11.8% ABV from a 750 mL corked and caged (#5517/11248)

I’ve become a big enthusiast of Boulevard’s terrific Smokestack series over the last year or so, and being a completest in all I do, I of course have wanted to try them all and anxiously wait each new release (these boys at Boulevard seem to have a new one on the horizon every other month!).  The only problem is, there seems to be no place online to find a complete listing of the Smokestacks.  Boulevard’s website fucking sucks–no surprise, most brewery websites suck, they all for some reason so obsessed with bad Flash–and is woefully outdated, still only listing their first five releases.

And, since no one else so far as I can tell has taken up the task, I decided to create a helpful repository for other folks to consult.  With a little drunken research, as best I can do, here’s my in order listing of the Smokestacks. (* denotes I’ve never had before)

#1  The Sixth Glass
#2  Double Wide IPA
#3  Long Strange Tripel
#4  Saison (retired)
#5  Saison-Brett
#6  BBQ
#7  Imperial Stout*
#8  Two Jokers Double-Wit
#9  Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale*
#10 Seeyoulator Doppelbock*
#11 Harvest Dance
#12 Collaboration No. 1 Imperial Pilsner*
#13 Rye-on-Rye*
#14 Dark Truth Stout*

Now BBQ is a beer I had long wanted to try and luckily my friend KH came through with a bottle for us to share just recently.  BBQ is The Sixth Glass quad fermented with cherries and bourbon which makes for a most unique effort and an initial taste I completely did not expect.  At first I thought it too boozy and sour but soon I was love.  This is like a suped up St. Bernardus with a nice underlying hint of vanillay bourbon and tart cherries.  Still, at this age, it was a tad rough around the edges and I wish I had another bottle to put a few years on.  Nevertheless, one of the most interesting and best quads I’ve had in awhile.

A

*Soooooooo, if any one can hook me up or help me out in getting these, I’d be your best friend.  Or, at least, you could be mine.

12% ABV bottled

You know, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I used to think that Founders Brewing Co. was, gasp…overrated.  The first two Founders brews I ever got my grubby little mitts on, oddly enough, happened to be their two most famous brews, Breakfast Stout and Kentucky Breakfast Stout, long-time Beer Advocate top 20 beers in the world*.  I was psyched to acquire these rare-to-me grown up sodas, so eager to suck ‘em down in all their glory, that when I tried them and didn’t spontaneously combust into knickers, I thought, “Ah, I see, another overrated brewery.”  Don’t get me wrong, I gave both those beers A’s at the time, I simply wasn’t OMFG floored.

So, whereas I tried my first two Founders beers with overly lofty expectations, I’ve tried my last dozen or more Founders efforts expecting nothing special.  But, damn, if those Grands Rapids boys haven’t won me over, and then some.  It started with their wet-hopped Harvest Ale, one of the most eye-opening drinking experience I’ve had in the last 365 days and a beer I’d put near #1 in the uber-hopped beer category.  I already can’t wait for the next release of it.

Every since that Harvest Ale, damn if every Founders beers hasn’t tasted absolutely glorious to me.  From their double and “triple” IPAs, Double Trouble (mind-blowing fresh on tap) and Devil Dancer, to their old ale Curmudgeon**, to countless more of some of the most disparate styles around.  They don’t knock everything out of the park–who does?–but they surely have a better slugging percentage than even a juiced-up Barry Bonds.

I’ve probably tried more different and new-to-me beer from Founders recently than from any other brewery and, now, my expectation levels are appropriate.  I now expect a good to great beer and I always get a good to great beer.  And since they seem to have a never-ending stream of releases, there’s always another Founders beer to try that I haven’t yet.  The only problem being that they don’t distribute in NYC at the moment.  Good thing I got good friends in Virginia, Minnesota, and other places who can hook me up.

My most exciting Founders acquisition of recent was their limited Nemesis release, the first in a new series.  I’d never had a wheatwine before, but as a barleywine nut, I was certain to like this effort.  And I did.  Probably not the most “normal” example of the style, Nemesis 2009 is maple bourbon barrel-aged using bourbon barrels which were once used to age local maple syrup.  The beer poured lighter for me than expected, much lighter than a copper barley wine, more the color of a golden ale of some sort.  The smell is straight boozy, just like I like it, with the flavor a combination of boozy bourbon, vanilla, oak, sweet syrup, and of course wheat.  Surprisingly more drinkable and less syrupy than I expected, this is a truly interesting creation.  I only wish I had another bottle!

A-

Founders Imperial Stout

10.5% ABV bottled

It’s heartening to try a delicious imperial stout that can actually be bought on store shelves!  That isn’t a limited release!  And more things to add exclamation points to!!!  This effort from Founders stacks up with the best of the style, limited release or not.  Amazingly complex and rich, with a mild roasted bitterness and a nice chocolaty booziness on the back end.  This beer is just so silky, I loved to let it dance on my tongue and gargle in the back of my throat.  Arguably the best on-the-shelves, non-barreled stout in the market today.  Though, unfortunately, not my market.  Come on, let’s get Founders in NYC!

A

Founders Porter

6.5% ABV bottled

As I’ve mentioned a lot recently, the porter has become one of my favorite styles, even though I’m still not quite sure what differentiates them from stouts.  Kinda like how I can’t tell a real blond from a bottle blond.  I don’t ask and just enjoy them both.  This is a great effort with another great label–besides making great brews, Founders is in the running for best labels in the biz too and I love their squat little bottles for even more plaudits!  Rich and tingly, a strong-roasted flavor with next-to-no sweetness, smokey and earthy.  Full-bodied yet drinkable, quite enjoyable.  This is a no-frills beer, but there’s nothing wrong with that sometimes.

B+

Now that I’ve fallen in love with Founders, now that it’s become one of my favorite brewers in America, in my mind one of the best in America, I’ve even gone back and tried those two famous beers, Breakfast Stout and Kentucky Breakfast Stout, with my now acceptable level of Founders expectations, and realized those two are truly glorious beers, some of the best of their styles.

In a world of such scrutiny nowadays, things aren’t overrated or underrated.  They are, for the most part, rated correctly.  It’s you, or me, that simply hasn’t encountered enough of the sample size to know that.  I know that now.  All hail Founders.

*Son of a bitch, why can I still not get a taste of Canadian Breakfast Stout?!?!?!?

**Or another old ale, Black Biscuit, for that matter?!?

10% ABV bottled

New York’s Worst Bars:  Lucky Strike Lanes Lounge

The first in a potentially ongoing series…

Meatloaf.  I was immediately assaulted with the odd smell of it.  Not Meatloaf as in Virgin Record’s recording artist, birth name Marvin Lee Aday, but meatloaf as in the gross shit your mom used to make when she was too lazy to put together a proper dinner for you.

I’d been invited to a friend’s party at Lucky Strike bowling lanes and, when he dumbly neglected to make a reservation for the Saturday night, we encountered a three hour wait and were forced to hang tight in the alley’s lounge.

Lucky Strike is so far west in Manhattan you’re almost to New Jersey.  I took a cab to Tenth Avenue, told my cabbie “It’s cool, I can walk from here,” and still took another fifteen minutes or so to get to the entrance on 42nd Street and the West Side Highway.  There’s absolutely nothing going on that far west on the island, not even hookers or drug deals, especially on a frigid February night, so it was especially galling when the three Neanderthals guarding the faux-velvet roped door scrutinized me to make sure I fit within the bowling alley’s lengthy dress code.

It’s bad enough that the sport of plebes has tried to be promoted to swanky in New York, but what’s even more annoying is when a piece of shit bowling complex situated amongst street meat Halal cart storage facilities and the Chinese Consulate (seriously), dares tell you what to wear to patronize their establishment.  Shitty bars in shitty cities have dress codes, not decent bars in New York.  Bars in New York that have dress codes have dress codes for one of two reasons:  they are trying to be “classy” or they are implicitly racist.

As one of the world’s great underdressers, I know a thing or two about defying dress codes.  And when the dress code at a bar such as Lucky Strike explicitly lists such no-nos as do-rags, hooded sweatshirts, jeans with graffiti on them, and sneakers, let’s just say…they aren’t trying to prevent a rich hipster in his American Apparel hoodie and Chuck Taylors from getting in.  Luckily, as per usual, I was wearing my black sneakers, the “trick” dress shoe for the elderly and lazy people that prefer comfort over class, and I easily slipped in the door.

The actual bowling alley portion of Lucky Strike is bad enough, disco lighting and garish scoreboards, but the lounge takes the cake.  Lucky Strike lounge is an upscale bar for people that think Heineken and Amstel Light are upscale beers.  For people that pronounce classy with the shortest short vowel a sound you’ve ever heard.  The decor there is strip club chic, gauche overstuffed pleather booths, tiny ottomans strewn about inexplicably, wall decor best befitting Henry Hill’s house circa 1977, and a bar with barstools screwed to the ground and countless bottles of flavored vodkas and the kinds of crappy overpriced tequilas only morons purchase.

The staff was truthfully not awful, no better or worse than any Manhattan bar, your typical handsome/pretty muscular/fake-titted wannabe actors/models/dancers that can’t remember drink orders, take forever to get your check, and spend most of the time playing grab-ass with their sexy cohorts.

Of course there was a DJ, a DJ so guido-rific he made Pauly D appear subdued in comparison, spinning the kind of hits that people found ironically funny no more recently than 1998.  Just like a playing of “YMCA” can quickly detect the idiots on the dance floor at a wedding, a bar’s playing of “Baby Got Back,” “Rumpshaker,” shit, any novelty song about big asses, can quickly identify the likewise idiots.

The clientele was even worse.  Of course gin-u-wine New Yorkers, real New Yorkers that is, not Gin-U-Wine as in the long-forgotten Southern rapper who, come to think of it, had one of the better songs ever written about big asses–or was that Juvenile?–would never set foot in this place unless invited for a party.  And I’m not even going to besmirch my beloved B & T brethren by acting like they formed the customer base either.  No, this was straight up tourists, and not the cool kind either.  These were the kinds of tourists that think, “If what I typically do in [insert crappy hometown] is fun, then that same exact thing must be even better in the Big Apple!”

“Eating at Applebee’s in Des Moines rocks, but in Times Square…?”

“Seeing ‘Stomp!’ at the Springfield Amphitheatre is a blast, but in the East Village…?”

“Bowling at the Brunswick Lanes in Tulsa is da bomb, but on the ass corner of Manhattan…?”

BLISS!

Around midnight or so, still an hour away from our bowling lanes being freed up, a man dressed like a giant bowling emerged from the lounge’s back room and started cavorting with drunken and overdressed tourista, much to their delight and amusement.  Many hilariously posed pictures were taken by the kinds of people that still used disposable cameras.  I’d had enough, needed to cut my losses and forget about trying to bowl my best game ever, and headed home to my actual good beer.

My last thought before heading back out into the cold was:  “Where was that fucking meatloaf smell coming from?”  I never found out.

Back home in a flash, I’d overzealously popped the top on Victory at Sea like I was returning to an old lover who had actually been at sea.  My man Jesse the Hutt hooked me up with this beauty and I enjoyed it for all it’s worth.  An imperial porter infused with vanilla and coffee this tasted to me like a liquidized Tootsie Roll.  Which is odd, cause I never really like Tootsie Rolls as a youth, but I loved this fucking beer.

A

14% ABV bottled

Overrated and Underrated Drinking Days

With Super Bowl Sunday fast approaching, I thought I’d take a quick glance at what are the worst, and secretly best, days of the year to tipple.

Overrated

6.  Christmas Eve — This drinking day has gained a lot of traction in the past few years but it is still mainly just a day for single Jews to get drunk with other single Jews, which in theory isn’t the worst thing in the world, until you realize that most of this Jew mingling has been collated into specially organized “Matzo Ball” events which are essentially just lame J-Date-esque mixers.*  The alienated loneliness just permeates the latke-aromaed air, believe me.  A positive:  Jewish women are normally pretty easy, but at the Matzo Ball…every little Jewish boy feels like Sandy Koufax entering a bar in Flatbush after pitching a no-hitter.

5.  Halloween — Halloween used to be an underrated drinking day at the turn of the century, back when most adults didn’t even consider the fact that they could celebrate this holiday, but the continued infantilizing of adults and the oft-repeated meme that “all women dress like sluts” on Halloween has lead to the bars being filled with a lot of moronic yahoos on both sides of the gender aisle, bumping into you because they have no cognizance of their costume’s spatiality.  A positive:  all women dress like sluts.

4.  Valentine’s Day — A certain kind of man will tell you that Valentine’s Day is an awesome day to go drinking because the bars will be littered with sad and desperate single women.  Well, actually, that kinda is the truth.  But, what no one ever considers is that the bars will also be packed with the kind of irredeemable douchebags that go to bars on Valentine’s Day simply because they think the bars will be filled with sad and desperate single women.  A positive:  Still better than going to some crummy $500 “romantic” prix fixe with your boring S.O.

3.  Super Bowl Sunday — The Super Bowl is celebrated by all.  The young, the old, the gay, the straight, the cool, the dorky, the carnivorous, the vegetarian, the married, the single, the drinker, the teetotaler, the sports fan, the Olympics enthusiast.  And when something is celebrated by all, that means that a lot of morons will be out and about as most of the world is obviously moronic.  Like #2 on our list, Super Bowl Sunday can be majorly enjoyable when celebrated in a sealed environment amongst a select group of close friends, but if you dare to watch it in public well then caveat drinker.  A positive:  the early start time for the game means one can and should be shit-faced by 8ish and will often be passed out in bed before midnight, making Super Bowl Sunday one of the few drinking holidays that doesn’t wreck your next day.

2.  New Year’s Eve — Shockingly, the quintessential Amateur Night is only #2 on my list.  Admittedly it is an awful, awful night of over-priced food and drink, dumb plastic \ 2 0 1 0 / glasses and noisemakers, and packed bars full of the kinds of suburbanites, aging farts, and tourists that choose not to have fun on the other 364 days a year and who don’t know the actual words to “Auld Lang Syne.  But, at least these people are fairly behaved because the bars are too packed and service is too slow for any one to get enough drinks to get lit up, not that I’d dare set foot in a Manhattan bar on December 31st.  A positive:  free champagne toast at midnight!!!!!  (Just kidding!  Why do bars thinks a 50 cent plastic flute of Korbel is some great attraction?!)

1.  St. Patrick’s Day – I’ve written on this topic before, but the day designated for celebrating…uh…I’m not sure has truly become a yearly celebration of daylight hours obnoxious buffoonery.  A positive:  acts as a bit of a drinking eugenics for these kind of bozos, giving them such massive hangovers and “I nevah wanna drink agains” that the bars will be pretty devoid of these fools from the late evening of March 17th til at least the 23rd or so.  Capitalize on that.

Underrated

5/6.  Fat Tuesday/Cinco de Mayo — Honestly, I have no idea what these holidays celebrate, nor even when they are celebrated–though I’m guessing the 5th of Mayonnaise for the latter–but damn if I don’t always somehow accidentally find myself in a bar on these two days.  And I always have a blast!  One would think these would just be the Cajun and Mexican versions of St. Patrick’s Day, a bunch of yahoos painting themselves purple/gold/green or red/white/green instead of orange/green, Creole stomping and Mexican hat-dancing instead of “woohoo” jigging, downing Hurricanes and tequila instead of Guinnesses, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  For some reason, I’ve only encountered cool and normal people looking to have a great–and more importantly, civilized-ish–time on these two fauxish holidays.  Plus, jambalaya and etouffee and burritos and chimichangas are vastly superior to rotten wet cabbage.  A negative:  Louisiana and Mexico pretty much only make shitty beers (I’m looking at you Abita and Corona.)

4.  Sunday nights – What kind of degenerate has all weekend to go out but waits until Sunday around 10:00 PM to do so?  What kind of subjugate goes out drinking on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and goes, “You know what?  That simply wasn’t enough” and heads out for some more?  What kind of unemployed, underemployed, or self-employed transgressive decides there’s no better way to start off his week than by waking up late Monday mid-morning with a wicked hangover?  I’ll tell you who–the kind of person we like!  A negative:  aside from the aforementioned, Sunday night bars can also be full of sloppy fat guys in tight football jerseys who have been drinking and eating wings since the 1:00 o’clock games and have just forgotten to go home.

3.  Christmas Night –  Christmas Eve may be a shitty Hebrewic drinking night but Christmas Night is incredible with bars full of true drunks of all religions and bar staff so upset they have to work they’ve decided to get sloshed, not give a damn, and over-pour your drinks and under-charge your bar tabs.  A negative:  most bars are usually not open or have limited hours.

2.  4th of July — While all the nimrods are standing outside slack-jawed and staring up into the dark sky, you’re inside avoiding the lame fireworks you’ve seen for the last 30 years–has there been a single technological innovation in fireworks in the last million years?!–getting loaded with the kind of people that realize drinking a good American beer and hitting on a bar floozy is patriotism to its core.  A negative:  you just end up watching the fireworks on the bar’s TV.  Which is actually kinda lamer.

1.  Thanksgiving Night — Now most everyone is “allowed” to go drinking on Thanksgiving night, but only a certain kind of person chooses to and these are the kind of people I really like spending time with.  The kinds of people that spent all day getting loaded to stave off the pain of having to deal with their annoying relatives and who now want to spend the evening getting even more loaded while commiserating with strangers about how annoying their respective relatives were that day.  A negative:  so bloated with Thanksgiving food you can’t find any more room to cram beer into your body.  Another positive:  not needing to pick up a drunken pizza slice at 3 AM but instead being able to go home to raid the fridge for leftovers which you of course eat straight from the Ziploc bags using your bare hands.

And maybe the most underrated time to drink is simply by yourself and at home, where I do most of my tippling.  I mean, it’s not like bars are going to be selling the delicious Alpine Great, generously provided for me by my main man in San Diego, Jesse the Hutt.

The smell of Great is right in my wheelhouse, powerfully intoxicating like J.W. Lee’s Harvest Ale, you can smell this one from across the room.  Awesomely boozy with a dark fruity richness, burnt molasses, toffee, and syrupy caramel.  It finishes with a bourbon vanilla scorch (though it’s actually Jack Daniels barreled which of course isn’t a bourbon but a Tennessee whiskey if we’re being pedantic).  A perfect dessert beer this one is just crazy complex, surprisingly smooth and drinkable for the thickness and ABV.  Minor bite on the finish but other than that no real complaints.  This one would surely be flawless with a little age to smooth out the slightly rough edges, but even youthful it’s one of the best barley wines I’ve ever had.  Sure wish I had another bottle!

A

*Remind me to tell you my best Matzo Ball story some time soon.

7.5% ABV on cask

I was dining with a friend’s family at a nice joint when I ordered a Scotch.

“Mmm…I just had my one Scotch for the month last night.”

It was my friend’s grandpa, Mr. Gibson, a 91-year-old but fit as a fiddle, he still walked on his own, drove short distances, and had an incredibly sharp memory.

“Your one Scotch for the month?” I inquired.

He explained that though he was very healthy, all things considered, once you get old you simply shouldn’t drink that much, if at all according to his doctor, but since he loved his Scotch, there was no way he was going to completely nix that from his life.  So he came up with a solution:  one single glass per 30 days.

Wow I thought, how delicious must that single monthly glass taste?  Surely better than anything I ever drink.  He must savor every last drop of that Scotch, inhaling it with all of his senses, understanding aromatic and flavor complexities that an over-consuming hedonist like me quickly glosses over as I dump the liquid down my gullet.

I decided to try and take inspiration from Mr. Gibson by abstaining from drinking more frequently, by trying to make each great drink I have more special.*  I’m getting better.  One beer I explored recently was perfect for this focused task.

Now I hadn’t been overly wowed by the “standard” version of Jai Alai–even got in a little friendly e-mail tiff with Cigar City founder Joey Redner–but I’d been really excited to try something from their Humidor Series.  Nowadays there’s so much invention in beermaking that there’s paradoxically almost no invention.  Not that I don’t love many if not most of them, but when all breweries are oak-aging, Brett-ing, chocolate nibbing, and bourbon-, wine-, rum-barreling their beers, these things no long really seem that special and you start to wonder if there is any new ground to break.  With the Humidor Series, Cigar City shows there clearly is.

Humidor Series beer are aged on the rarely-utilized cedar which the brewery itself believes has a more “subtle” effect than a more oft-used beer-aging wood like oak.  I actually thought the flavor wasn’t that subtle but I loved it all the more for that very reason.  The tropical fruitiness and floral hop aromas still come through, and you never doubt for a second that this is clearly an IPA, but that cedar just makes it so much more interesting.  Off cask and uncarbonated the flavors just came together so beautiful and I think I really prefer the cedar to oak.

I’m a big cigar smoker and this one tastes just like a liquidized cigar you’ve pulled fresh from your humidor, evoking pleasant memories of relaxed evenings lazily smoking with friends.  Now I’m sure that kinda sounds gross to you but the cigar “taste” is more a result of mind association than actual beer content.  I really hope to try this again, along with the rest of the series, hopefully with an actual cigar in my other hand this time around.  Though that is probably impossible in a bar due to NYC’s draconian laws, so perhaps I’ll have to figure out a way to acquire some Humidor Series for home-usage.  This beer is truly one of a kind.

A

*Says the author, having just gotten loaded for six straight days and nine of the last ten.

A year ago at this time I’m not even sure if I’d heard of Alpine Beer Co.  That seems hard to believe now–now that they have four beers on the Beer Advocate Top 100–but even just a year ago they were a tiny tap-only outfit near San Diego worshiped by locals, not really known by outsiders.  Luckily, just last summer, a great man named Jesse the Hutt insisted I let him send me a growler of Alpine’s Nelson and my IPA world was rocked–it was probably the best I’d ever had.

Alpine finally started bottling stuff in the last few months, and in a recent trade, when Jesse asked what I wanted sent to me from the other coast, I pretty much just screamed:  “EVERY SINGLE ALPINE IPA POSSIBLE!”  And, indeed, last week I received Alpine’s four bottled IPAs, all of which I drank as fresh as possible last weekend.

Pure Hoppiness

8% ABV from a bomber

Seemingly Alpine’s flagship brew, I started my Friday night with this “mega-hopped” bad boy which uses hops in the boil, more hops in the giant hopback, plus an incredible amount of dry-hopping.  Honestly, I wasn’t that blown away at first, but just like Nelson, the more I drank it the more I noticed its complexities and really started to enjoy it.  Pure Hoppiness is a very citrusy hop bomb with just a tad note of sweetness. An odd but not unpleasant thin, cask-like mouthfeel too allowing it to go down easy with minimal bite.  I loved it, but was not OMG floored.

A

Duet

6.75% ABV from a bomber

Saturday afternoon I lugged Duet and Nelson over to an NFL playoff party at a friend’s apartment who, though he is a bit of a beer connoisseur, just doesn’t dig on IPAs.  Has never been able to enjoy that certain hops bitterness we all love.  I, of course, am constantly trying to force-feed him great IPAs and figured I’d give it one last go with these beauties, assuming that if couldn’t enjoy these, he truly would never enjoy hoppy beers.

My gamble paid off as Duet opened his eyes to the brilliance of the IPA.  It opened my eyes too.  I’ve drank hundreds of IPAs in my life, but never anything like this before.  An incredible smell of Simcoe and Amarillo hops “in harmony” (hence the name.)  Sticky and sweet, Duet is one of those great hoppy beers that causes two side-effects that you would think would be bad, but which always seem to denote a great IPA:

1.  Burping–hoppy beers always make me belch as the bitterness tickles the back of my throat and, you know, it’s not entirely unpleasant to keep “re-tasting” a great hoppy beer long after you finished drinking it.

2.  Phlegm production–hoppy beers can also be like a really pulpy glass of  fresh-squeezed OJ which causes the insides of your mouth to form sticky spiderwebs of throat snot, make it a struggle to just open your mouth.

Remarkable how much body and complexity comes out of a “mere” 6.75% beer.  I don’t like to quibble between single and double IPAs, but it’s hard to believe a single IPA could be better than this.

A+

Nelson

7.1% ABV from a bomber

My first time to have Nelson from a bottle and it totally stacked up to it straight from a fresh growler.  Much lighter and fizzier than Duet, almost looks like a macro beer in fact on the pour.  It’s amazing how different two IPAs of similar strength from the same brewery can be.  Nelson is far more bitter and grapefruity than Duet and lacks that sweet tinge of a finish that Duet has, but this is still a masterpiece and definitely a hallmark for those that prefer their IPAs drier.

A+

Exponential Hoppiness

10.5% ABV from a bomber

I saved them granddaddy of the all, the brilliantly named (it uses multiple kettle hop additions with the technique of doubling the hop amount each addition, thus exponentially) and beautifully labeled Exponential Hoppiness for last.  I saved this one for me, me, and only me, as my macro-swilling friends drank some Bud Light tallboys on Sunday afternoon.

Bluntly put, this is now the best IPA I have ever had.  It’s like a boozier Duet.  Sticky sweet with a bitter finish and the slightest hint of the oak chips its aged on.  Can Pliny the Younger seriously be better than this?!?!  I truly hope to find out in the next month or so.

A+

My final rankings:

1.  Exponential Hoppiness
2.  Duet
3.  Nelson
4.  Pure Hoppiness

and the first three would probably be in my top 5 or so IPAs of all time.  Alpine is the KING of IPAs!

On Monday I e-mailed Jesse to praise Alpine and ask him if they made any more delicious IPAs.  He quickly rattled off “O’Brien’s IPA, Bad Boy, Sippin on the Dock of the Bay, Tuatara, and a steam IPA called California Uncommon.”  Unfortunately, all tap-onlys.  I’ll try ‘em one day.

8% ABV from a 750 mL

I never thought I’d be a saison fan, but sure enough, I have become one late in 2009.  Coincidentally well out of saison season as we hit the snowy, bitter winter of New York.  Oh well, I’ve never exactly drank to season any how.  Of course, it’s easy to fall for these French-named, Belgian beers when you’re drinking some of the best of the style, as I did twice in the last week while snowed-in and with nothing to do but get drunk and play Cranium by myself (harder than you think).

I’d been looking for Fantome Saison for well over a year since I’m a shameless follower of the Beer Advocate Top 100, where Fantome has long resided and, luckily, I finally stumbled upon a sole bottle at a beer store in lower Manhattan.  Believe me, I paid a handsome penny too but it was well worth it.  I loved Fantome mainly because it’s not what I–probably erroneously–”expect” from a saison. It’s not thin, it’s not simplistic, it’s not bordering on non-alcohlic.  No, this sucker is like a double saison.  It opened so foamy it seemed like new life was still being created as it just oozed from my bottle.  Incredibly citric with the usual suspects of lemon, orange, and peach giving it a little tartness though this is no simplistic brew.  Very refreshing as per the style, but with some nice heft as well, though still majorly drinkable.  This was a solo drinking effort, and unlike Amelia Earhart I enjoyed every single second of the journey.

A

Southampton Cuvee des Fleurs

7.7% ABV from a 750 mL

While some of Southampton’s “little” bottles and tap-only selections are no great shakes, their big boys, specifically from the “750 Series,” are nothing but huge winners and that is again the case here.  You’d have to be an expert horticulturist to completely understand what you’re drinking as des Fleurs is flavored with a blend of edible flowers including L. augustifolia, A. nobilis, C. officinalis, R. canina and H. lupulus.  OK, whatever.  Excluding hops of course, the only other beers I can ever recall drinking that are made from, you know, flower flowers would be Elysian’s Avatar Jasmine IPA and Dieu du Ciel! Rosee D’hibiscus and neither of them hold a candle to this effort.  Extraordinarily fragrant, truly like stuffing your head in a rose garden while someone sprays perfume over you, the taste is also deliciously herby and sweet, atypically full-bodied and thick for a saison as well.  I just sucked it down like Vitamin Water.  Of course it’s incredibly unique, but this is truly one of the most flavorful saisons I’ve ever had and one of my most pleasant drinking surprises of the year.  (Then again, so was Southampton’s Grand Cru.  Perhaps I’m just not showing these Publick House boys enough due deference yet?  Never again will I folly.)  I shared this beer with my two non-beer connoisseur sisters who absolutely adored it as well, leading me to believe that us fellas can now present this beautiful flower beer to our wives instead of, you know, real flowers.  Of course, I’m not married, so why the fuck would you trust me on that?

Fantome Saison and Southampton Cuvee des Fleurs are truly at the apex of the saison style alongside only, let’s say, Boulevard Saison-Brett and, maybe, Hennepin and they should be sought out accordingly.  (And don’t think I don’t feel like a bit of yokel for having three of my four favorite saisons being from Kansas City, upstate New York, and Long Island.)

A

8% ABV from a bomber

One of the fun things about beer trading is getting sent stuff you absolutely have no interest in.  I’m being serious.  Every place in America has those certain beers that locals know about, and love, but that for some reason no one else seems to know about and love. Everyone knows about California’s Russian Rivers and AleSmiths and Stones, etc., but few have probably heard of Marin Brewing Co.  So, of course, when a local Californian like my pal Jay at Hedonist Beer Jive hooks me up with some West Coast beers I surely know, and had asked for, something like this White Knuckle DIPA stuck out like a store thumb and you can’t help but being like, “What the hell is this?!  I’ve never seen this on BA’s Top 100!  I’ve never heard about this being released on a one-day only $15 a bottle, four bottle limit party!  Surely this beer sucks.”

But of course it doesn’t.  There’s a reason why a smart guy and a savvy beer drinker like Jay insisted I have it.  And God bless him cause Goddamn is this good.  Wow!  Just a juicy, juicy smell and full of tasty hops goodness.  Packed with grapefruit and a tropical mango/peach/apricot-like melange of fruit flavors this is one complex sucker.  Piney yet with a balanced bitter/sweetness finish it just tickles the tongue.  I loved every sip of this one and drew out my enjoyment of the bomber so long you would have thought I was Tantric.

I really don’t understand why this beer isn’t more notable.  It’s even more bizarre that it get a solid, solid “A” on Beer Advocate.  Yeah, well then why in the heck isn’t every non-California beer dork demanding his California buddies send him some?!  You really should as it’s honestly one of the best IPAs I’ve ever had and one of the more unique ones too.  I really see no flaw in it AT ALL.

A

Telegraph California Ale

6.2% ABV from a corked-and-caged 750

A second heretofore-unknown-to-me California beer that Jay insisted I try was the aptly named California Ale from Telegraph Brewing Company.  Listed as a “California Common,” the only beer I’ve had of that style, and I would guess you have to, is the iconoclastic Anchor Steam.  But I haven’t had an Anchor Steam in ages so I don’t exactly remember the calling card of the style.  This beer poured incredibly frothy and foamy.  I loooooved the aroma of it and the first taste was fairly enjoyable.  It tasted like a malty saison to me if that paradox could possibly makes sense.  “Belgianish,” it was yeasty and bananay yet caramely.  A bit of an oddball.  I found it a little too carbonated, a little too thin of mouthfeel, but overall not too bad.  I was glad to try it.

B

10.2% ABV from a stubby bomber

The extended Thanksgiving weekend is a time of overindulgence, placation toward people you don’t really like, and ersatz enjoyment.  What I’m saying is, it’s a crash course on all that’s wrong with the television industry’s coverage of sporting events.

How do you fuck up televised coverage of sports?  Seems like you’d just need to find a good spot to place a camera or two, turn them on, then simply capture world class athletes doing world class things.  Yeah right.  Not even amateur pornography can be shot so haphazardly.

I won’t claim for a second that televised sports are worse now than they used to be.  Of course they aren’t.  Turn on ESPN Classic or check out an NFL Film and even games from the 1980s look so old that you half expect to see Knute Rocke or Vince Lombardi roaming the sidelines.  The graphics are comically bad, the font choices are laughably dated, the halftime sets more public access than “Wayne’s World” (that’s before they were sponsored by Noah’s Arcade, natch), and the basic footage is abominable.  Shit, even if you accidentally turn on a non-HD channel to watch sports nowadays you’re immediately like, “Mine eyes!  Mine eyes!!!” as if carbolic acid had just been poured on them.  How many times I’ve selected an inferior sporting event on an HD channel over a superior one only available on non-HD, ipso facto.

Nevertheless, despite the immense technological advances, today’s coverage of sports are not without their flaws.  Most of which can be summed up by the phrase:

TOO MUCH!

1.  Cutaways — Johnny Pointguard from Syracuse makes a nice layup.  CUT!  Johnny backpedaling downcourt with a smile on his face.  CUT!  Johnny’s parents–done come all the way from Plano, Texas–decked out in their brand spanking new ‘Cuse gear, lovingly cheering on their son.  CUT!  Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim observing the action, ostensibly happy.  CUT!  UNC coach Roy Williams observing the action, ostensibly miffed.  CUT!  Back to wide shot and we’ve just missed two steals, a monster dunk, and a three-point play.  If action is occurring on the court, WE WANT TO SEE THE ACTION OCCURING ON THE COURT!  We don’t want close-ups of players not currently involved in the play, craggy old coaches sitting stoically on the sidelines, coaches’ wives, parents in the stands, fans in the cheap seats, baby mamas, baby babies, fucking mascots, or even cheerleaders (unless they’re the USC Song Girls–vavavavoom!)  Just film the action please.  It’s what we’re watching this whole dog ‘n’ pony show for…the dog ‘n’ pony.  Not their wives.

2.  Graphics — On a similar note, enough with full-screen graphics.  Over the weekend I was watching one of those preseason hoops tourney tilts from some shitty tropical destination which is really just an outdoor American shopping mall with a Senor Frogs or two.  Any how, the game opened with one of those full scale graphic “Keys to the Game” things that look kinda like this:

The Funyuns Keys to Win-yuns

Kentucky

• Dunk the ball a lot
• Don’t point shave
• Hope Coach Cal remembers to send 5 players out on the floor instead of 2 or 3

Bartlesville Tech

• Recruit more athletes (black people)
• Pray God exists and hates UK as much as everyone else
• Poison opponents at half-time

The two D-list announcers were laboriously going over these most inane “keys” while underneath the graphic I’m hearing sneaker squeaks, rim clanks, and John Calipari’s hair grease dripping onto the hardwood like some sort of Greaseball Water Torture.

The announcers finally finish speaking, the graphics finally disappear, and we return to action, the score 5-2, 18:25 left in the half!

Networks cover sports as if a retarded person from another planet decided to watch his first game and needed to understand the most basic aspects of these contests.  When the fact is, 99% of people that follow sports–especially obscure early season games–know more about sports than 99% of these network buffoons running the show.

3. Speaking of buffoons, now would be the time you might think I would indict announcers.  But, you know, I really don’t have a problem with most.  Announcers are like politicians:  boringly mediocre.  Sure, there’s the incredibly dumb and annoying ones (I won’t name names), even more rare the remarkable ones, but most are just mediocre, a hair better than incompetent.  For the most part, people become announcers and politicians because they aren’t good at anything else in life.  (And I say this having very good friends thriving in both professions–I doubt they read here though.)

4. No, what’s annoying and awful when it comes to personnel are the sideline reporters and studio show schnooks.

Sideline reporters — The absolute paradigm of the “too much” conundrum in sports coverage, I’m not quite sure why these people exist.  To get the “scoop” on how Phil Jackson feels being up by 7 at halftime?  Uh…good?  It’s even more shocking when a sideline reporter is ugly.  (Aren’t they supposed to be a little eye candy to make us not feel gay for spending all day watching underdressed buff Adonises grappling with each other?)  Or male.  (Craig Sager and his sweet suits excepted.)  The one time we do need sideline reporters is when a player gets injured so that we may learn of the severity.  Yet what do they always say:  “Uh yeah, Craig, Polamalu was just carted off to the lockerroom, seems to be grimacing in pain.”  Well no joke, we all just saw that!  It’s no wonder the typically deplorable Fox baseball broadcasts have scrapped sideline reporters altogether and now just have some lackey strap a Madonna “Vogue”-era mic onto Joe Girardi or Mike Scioscia between half-innings to have them quickly espouse their state-of-the-art theories on the crucialness of the three-run homer, Earl Weaver eat your fucking heart out.

Studio show schnooks — Perhaps the absolute scourge of televised entertainment.  Have you ever met a single human being that actually enjoys studio shows?  Who wakes up early on Saturday or Sunday to specifically watch them?!  Would they be your friend for one second longer if they did?  Featuring some of the most deplorable and annoying people on planet earth–the bulbous ooze known as Chris Berman being the most egregious offender–these are nothing more than hours-long yuckfests with minimal entertainment, oft-repeated platitudes, and absolutely no insight.  This is perhaps best demonstrated toward the end of these shows, right before the “experts” make their weekly predictions, when said “experts’” season picks records are posted, usually looking something like this:

The Diet Mountain Dew Code Red Picks of the Week
(through week 11)

1.  KENNY   12-25

2.  KEITH   11-24

3.  CARL   9-26

4.  BOOMER   5-21-1

Having these standings end a studio show telecast is more of a stomach punch than the endings of “The Sixth Sense” or “The Usual Suspects.”  “You mean I just wasted three hours of my life listening to these experts?!?!?!?!”

Yes you did.

It’s enough to almost make you want to attend these games in person.  Then again, that would create a whole new set of annoyances.

At the least, while watching sports at home, you can ignore the televised miasma with a little help from delicious craft beers that sports stadiums would never sell you.  Such as the new rarer-than-I-expected Dogfish Head/Sierra Nevada collaboration Life and Life.  I apparently got a bottle from one of only three cases in the entire city, and I feel eternally lucky that my friend Kevin tipped me off on when and where to score some.  I’d been greatly anticipating this beer as a Dogfish Head acolyte and it certainly delivered.  Life and Limb is made with pure maple syrup from Sam Calagione’s Massachusetts family farm and estate barley grown on the Sierra Nevada estate and fermented with both breweries’ house yeast strains.  I loved the rich smell and the brew tasted like a root beer, actually more like a birch beer in fact with it’s syrupy mouthfeel.  Silky like a brown ale with a barley wine-like malty sweetness on the back end.  A nice boozy bite but immenently drinkable.  Well worth the cost if you locate it, I really loved this beer.

A

9.2% ABV from a bomber

So after Jay at Hedonist Beer Jive proposed we make our first cross-continental trade, one of the first beers I knew I would ask for from him would be Moylan’s Hopsickle.  The great-named imperial IPA, never available in New York, and long a mainstay on Jay’s all-time top 75, this was a beer I had long wanted to try.  Of course, and this sounds like a joke, literally the same week Jay’s massive beer package arrives–thanks man!–I notice that Manhattan bars and bottle shops are now stocked with Moylan’s.  Uh yeah…guess The Empire State finally got a distribution deal.  Alas.

Hopsickle just smells fantastic, absolutely excreting delicious grapefruit fumes.  The taste is dry and bitter, very herbal, with a nice little tinge of sweet grapefruit.  Packed with Tomahawk, Chinook, and Anthanum hops, this beer is incredibly fresh and earthy tasting.  Massively drinkable for the ABV with no bite whatsoever.  Just a terrific example of the west coast style.

A

A few days later I got to try Moylan’s “standard” Moylander DIPA on tap at Rattle ‘n’ Hum.  Everything great about Hopsickle, Moylander simply lacked.  While it was bitter too, it was quite simple.  No real body and despite the 8.5% ABV a quite thinnish mouthfeel.  The smell was solid but the taste simply didn’t match up.  Decent if this is the only Moylan’s around, but Hopsickle easily tops it as the brewery’s best DIPA.

B-

Nevertheless, I greatly look forward to trying more Moylan’s offerings as I come upon them.