8.5% ABV on tap

Oh if Kuhnhenn hasn’t quickly become my latest brewery crush.  Yeah, they play a little hard to get here in New York City, only popping up on tap for a day or two at our finer beer bars, but damn if they’ve never done me wrong.  Their Raspberry Eisbock, Fourth Dementia old ale, and even their Bourbon Barrel Barley Wine were pretty much masterpieces, and the only other Kuhnhenn I’d ever had–the All Hallows pumpkin ale–was quite swell for the genre.  If we were scoring at home, the Warren, Michigan brewers would be batting 1.000 with, say, two homers, a triple, and a ground-rule double in my scorebook.  So of course when I saw yet another Kuhnhenn offering on tap at Rattle ‘n’ Hum last Friday–one oddly enough without even a single review yet on BA–there was not a chance I would pass.  And, delightfully, we had another triple, that probably could been stretched into an inside-the-parker.

The second I saw this one poured it was love at first sight.  A frothy, hazy ruby red pour that looked more like some freshly squeezed juice (with pulp!) than a beer.  It’s an awesome experience when you can tell just by sight and smell that you are about to have your ass rocked.  Even my friend stared with awe at my beer, immediately upset that he had ordered something else.  I haven’t had many lambics in my life–most of the tasty but kinda phony Lindemans variety–but if this is what a great one tastes like, I am a new fan of the style.  Hairy Cherry was absolutely bursting with flavor.  Straight up cherry explosion with a tad of a tart finish.  Not really complex, but who gives a damn, that’s fine when you’ve got such an overflow of one particularly delicious flavor.  Not exactly drinkable, I will admit, though I don’t consider that a debit in this case.  This beer isn’t less-than-drinkable because of a hot booziness–it’s actually shockingly pleasant and kid-friendly–but rather due to a dessert-like richness that leaves you more than sated after one tulip full.

True I’ve now had Kuhnhenn’s probably three most “famous” and well-regarded beers, but extrapolate out and these guys are on a Rogers Hornsby 1924 pace with me.  If the rest of their beers are anywhere close to as good as the five I’ve already had, then Kuhnhenn is unquestionably one of my top 10 favorite breweries, probably top 5 even.  I am in lurve.

A

*Note:  While Downtown Bar & Grill is perhaps the easiest place in town for a beer geek to photograph his beer, Rattle ‘n’ Hum is maybe the hardest.  Their taps are against the wall as opposed to on the actual bar, meaning if one wants to photograph an actual tap, he has to humiliate himself by asking the pretty bartenders if he may hand her his camera/phone and have her take a picture of the tap.  And then when anti-Ansel Adams fucks up the framing, you’ll quickly become person non grata by asking for a quick reshoot.  It’s also quite dark in the bar.  Good for drinking, good for flirting, bad for photographing lipstick red lambics to a satisfying degree.

5.7% ABV bottled

The Most Underrated Brewery Around

This is an era of hype and of overrating things.  Of proclaiming each new thing the “best” and the “greatest,” and constantly trying to rank things in an easily digestible top 5 or top 10 or top 100 order. Even I had thought of doing a list of the most overrated breweries in America.  Because, of course, everything in this world nowadays is overrated in some way or other.  In fact, it would seem impossible for something, especially something well-known, to be underrated.  But sometimes things just slip through the cracks.  And today I want to talk about the most underrated brewery in America:  Smuttynose from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

I’ve been guilty of underrating this fine brewery for far too long.  So has everyone else.  Why is that?  They have nicely named beers with great labels, their taps and bottles are ubiquitous on the East Coast and always at an incredibly reasonable price, and, naturally, all their beers are delicious.  But for some reason, I’ve never intentionally sought out Smuttynose beer, nor even reviewed a single one of their brews on The Vice Blog.  For shame, Aaron, for shame.  That’s all about to change with this post.

The odd thing is, aside from their popular pumpkin seasonal beer, I’m not even sure if I’d ever even had a Smuttynose release until I tried their eye-openingly good Smuttynose Gravitation Quad at this year SAVOR event, finding it to be perhaps the best American quadruple around, and good enough to stack up with the legendary Belgians.  It was maybe my favorite beer at a festival that had dozens of rarer and more ballyhooed beers.

Now you would think my experience at SAVOR would have been a watershed moment for me and I would have begun to intentionally start seeking out Smuttynose beers.  But, dumbly, I still didn’t.  I still passed over the countless reasonably priced offerings for sale at my bottle shops, avoided their taps while tying one on, eschewed their offerings completely.  Perhaps it was the simple fact that I always knew I could get Smuttynose beers if I wanted to that led me to avoid them.  Like the slutty girl on your dorm floor that you never hook up with because you know you can always hook up with her if need be.

The next time I tried a Smuttynose offering was the next time I was forced to.  At a mediocre Williamsburg bar with all macro offerings save Smuttynose IPA “Finest Kind,” I obviously had no choice.  And so glad my hand was forced because this is one of the most unique beers I’ve had this year.  Far and away the most pungently bitter IPA I’ve ever had, on my first tasting I alternated between sips of “this is amazing” and sips of “this is absolutely wretched.”  But for the rest of the week I couldn’t get the beer off my mind, and with future tastings I came to adore it.  Finest Kind now stands as one of my favorite single IPAs that are readily available, and if I’m at a bar with a tap of it, I now always have to have a pint.  (A-)

Yet even with that experience I was still not a Smuttynose acolyte.  Next, while trying to find a beer my sister might enjoy, I gave Smuttynose’s Hanami Ale a whirl and I was greatly impressed by this spring seasonal.  A nice and refreshing beer, this is the rare fruit beer that isn’t too overpowering, nor does it have a phony, artificial syrupy taste like most fruit beers.  Hanami Ale is now one of my go-to recommendations to girls-that-claim-they-hate-beer-but-are-forced-to-drink-beer-with-me.  And, you know, they always love it.  (B+)

Later this very summer, while at Rattle ‘n’ Hum one Saturday afternoon, I noticed Smuttynose’s Baltic Porter as being the only beer on the menu I had never tried.  Interestingly, as much as I had ignored Smuttynose, I had been ignoring porters for even longer.  For some reason, I assumed them to be the red-headed step-brother of far superior stouts.  I’ve since learned that is very much not the case and, in fact, though they are similar and this is purely anecdotal, I’ve found, ceteris paribus, that I actually often enjoy porters more than stouts.  Whereas a bad stout can have that overly roasted, burnt taste like a Starbucks coffee, porters often have a more pleasant, sweet and malty taste.  Such is the case with this phenomenal Baltic Porter.  Big bold flavors of sweet dark fruits with just an underlying hint of chocolate, this is one incredible beer.  (A)

Shockingly, I still wasn’t on the Smuttynose bandwagon.  What the fuck did I need?!  Am I such a dope that I need a brewery to have multiple entries on the Beer Advocate Top 100, that I need them to have a slew of barrel-aged beers, that I need them to have countless small batch release parties and overpriced beers for me to hail their greatness?  I guess so, because, again, just this week while watching the Yankees clinch #27, I only ordered Smuttynose’s Star Island Single because I was forced to with nothing else appealing on tap.  Glad my hand was played again because this Belgian pale ale, Smuttynose’s newest regular lineup release, is imminently drinkable and quite tasty.  Strong tastes of banana Laffy Taffy-like esters, honey and a nice citrusy yeastiness, I could drink these all night.  And, in fact, I did for 9 innings.  (A-/B+)

Finally, after having liked, loved, and been blow away by five Smuttynose beers in a row, did I decide last night to intentionally purchase one, grabbing a bottle of their Robust Porter to enjoy with the “Mad Men” finale.  Of course, such as life, this was my least favorite Smuttynose beer so far, but it was still very solid.  Dry and roasted, with a nice coffee and chocolate taste, this is a no-frills beer that is quite drinakble.  (B+)

I feel like it’s taken me a full year, if not a whole beer-drinking lifetime, to “discover” a brewery.  A brewery whose beers have been around me since I first started tippling the good stuff.  I’m excited to now have tons of new beers I want to try from Smuttynose.  Their Really Old Brown Dog old ale and their Big A IPA and their imperial stout and wheatwine and barleywine and all their others I have yet to have.

I still don’t understand why Smuttynose is universally underrated, maybe it’s due to their odd name, maybe due to getting overshadowed by their sister brewery Portsmouth and their legendary Kate the Great imperial stout, but I will no longer underrate what has easily become one of my favorite breweries in America.  Nor should you.

10.9% ABV bottled

On Geekiness

Now it makes perfect sense to me how the world of comic books and sci-fi and computer games can attract geeks.  Of course they attract geeks.  Geeks are stereotyped as overweight undersexed obsessive loner nerds.  Why wouldn’t they commit their free time to fantasy worlds better than their own?  To worlds where nerds just like them can get bitten by a radioactive spider and are all of the sudden the coolest pajamas-wearing dude in all of the five boroughs.  Where innately knowing how to wield a lightsaber gets your hot sister to want to make out with you just to make Harrison Ford jealous.  Where being a shut-in who is really good at video games affords you the opportunity to play Super Mario Bros. 3 in front of adoring fans.   Geekiness makes sense among fantasy world devotees.  These people aren’t geeks because they follow fantasy.  They follow fantasy worlds because they are geeks.

Then what about sports?  Sports, at first glance, would seem surely less a bastion of geekiness.  I mean, aren’t jocks the ones usually picking on geeks since the beginning of time?  And, any how, everyone likes sports.  And most people played them at one point in their life too.  So how does geekiness infest the sports world?  I would argue here it’s an aspirational thing.  A fantasy world that is actually feasible for real humans to achieve so long as they practice hard and take lots of PEDs.  Sports also attracts nerds because it allows them to implement their honors math skills in a real world setting.

Now, I don’t think most people could possibly understand how beer could be geeky.  I’ve been a beer connoisseur of varying degrees for at least a half decade and I didn’t even fully understand the magnitude of beer geekiness until recently.  I mean, beer is so cool, right?  Beer is what the “bad” kids in school drank under the bleachers while the rest of us were cheering at pep rallies.  Beer is what we fed to girls in college to get them to sleep with us.  And have you seen beer commercials?  Uh, does that look like a geeky time?  Shirtless hunks and gummy-bear-implanted women and a lot of “woohoo-ing” and Spuds McKenzie!  No fucking way is that anything but the antithesis of geekiness.

But, sorry to say, beer culture is just as geeky as Star Trek or comic books or LARPing or baseball card collecting.  Go to any beer tasting or convention or special release party or event where a legendary brewmaster is set to appear and you will be slack-jawed at the geekitude.  The air will be permeated with the stench of dork.  (It smells kinda like inappropriate sweating and unfounded pretentiousness.)  Oh man, could you imagine if craft breweries had commercials depicting the true world of craft beer?  It would’t be hunks and sluts and party animals and Wassssuppping and Clydesdales.  No sir, an accurate craft beer commercial would depict a sausage party with a paucity of pussy and guys with pubic-like beards in too tight of brewery t-shirts proudly wielding their own personal tasting glasses like Minnesota Fats brandished his prize cue while debating the difference between storing their cellared bottles upright or sideways and waiting for Sam Calgione to arrive so they could pester him with arcane questions about yeast strains.  Par-tay!!!!!)

Thinking about how such a seemingly cool thing like beer drinking could have as great a geek quotient as a Half-Life party got me thinking.  Are there geeks in other aspects of life?  Perhaps in all aspects of life?  Are there geeks even in what would seemingly be the most super-cool niches of this world?!

Rock ‘n’ Roll

With drug-addled, chain-smokin’ long-haired men on strobe-lighted stages singing symphonies to the devil while gyrating the armadillos in their trousers in overt sexual manners, rock music has long attracted a committed following from two specific groups.  Reprehensible sluts is one, obviously.  But scratch the surface just a bit and you see that rock also attracts massive geeks.  For whatever reason, gross Matt Pinfield/Lester Bangs/Cameron Crowe types have long loved obsessing over men that are much cooler than them and the minutiae of the music these men create in the spare ten minute refractory periods in between their groupie fivesomes.  Like beer geekdom, a “High Fidelity” like obsession with rock music also involves a lot of hanging out with men men glorious men.  Perhaps the reason John Norris is such a big rock ‘n’ roll geek, come to think about it.

Drugs

Surely there must be hard-core drug geeks that take their love for illegal narcotics to the same highly-critical extremes that we do.  There’s got to be a Coke Advocate website somewhere.  “The pour of my Bolivian Marching Powder from my two gram Ziploc baggy onto my West Elm mirrored coffee table cascaded out in a luxurious white stream akin to Niagara Falls in December…”  There must be a RateMeth too.  “The symetrical crystals had a nice mouthfeel as I swallowed them whole, unable to locate my pipe and a spare sheet of tin foil, no matter how frantically I searched my house…”  And there’s surely the Great American Weed Festival held every year in Boulder or Portland or Madison to honor the year’s best in marijuana releases.  I’m certain of all of this.

Sex

The idea of sex geeks seems paradoxical, impossible even, but I know they must exist too.  Men that go on message boards to scrutinize technique with each other.  Who attend conventions of some sort to trade insider secrets on the state of the art of fucking.  Men with Excel spreadsheets where each sex geek meticulously logs his “wants” and “hads.”  (Had:  twins, GMILF, ginger;  Wants:  Albino, hermaphrodite, circus clown.)  Actually, come to think of it, I may very well be a sex geek.  Moving along…

But even if I am a geek in any other genre, by now beer geekiness must surely be my forte.  And my geek fancy couldn’t help but be tickled by a line of beers that so brazenly holds a mirror up to us.  Aside from last year’s collaboration with Stone, these would be the first beers I had ever had from Mikkeller and, whoa, what a place to start!

Beer Geek Brunch Weasel

10.9% ABV in a 500 mL bottling

I was lucky enough to try this at the wonderful Paradiso in our nation’s capital and so glad I did because this is a stunner of a beer.  From what I understand, Mikkeller doesn’t have their own brewery–in fact, the Mikkeller brewmasters actually have day jobs!–and this was brewed at Nogne O’s brewery.  Brunch Weasel is an asskicker of an oatmeal stout brewed using “the world’s most expensive coffees” (according to Mikkeller it’s around $100/lb) and “from droppings of weasel-like civet cats. The fussy Southeast Asian animals only eat the best and ripest coffee berries. Enzymes in their digestive system help to break down the bean. Workers collect the bean-containing droppings for Civet or Weasel Coffee” (again, according to Mikkeller…uh, are they joking????)  Whatever the case, this cat-shit beer is incredible, frequently residing in the 95-100 range on the BA Top 100*.  One of the most coffee-tasting beers I’ve ever had, yet not in that burnt, unpalatable roasted way a lot of coffee beers unfortunately are.  This has a nice chocolaty sweetness and a good boozy burn.  Much better for waking you up during Sunday brunch than a measly Bellini.

A

Beer Geek Breakfast

7.5% ABV in a 500 mL bottling

Based purely on anecdotal evidence, Breakfast seems to be easier found than Brunch Weasel and, such is life, it’s also not quite as tasty.  Though it’s still solid.  Opened for me with a frothy, latte explosion.  Bitter and muted, oaty and dark chocolaty, I missed the lack of booziness in this one compared to Brunch.  Good, but not worth trampling over a kid in a wheelchair for (Brunch most certainly is worth trampling over a handicap child for.)

I’d passed over Mikkeller beers for far too long–perhaps due to their lofty price tags (about $12-15 for the smallish bottles where I live)–but now I’m most certainly eager to try more of their offerings to see what these crazy Danes have a-brewing.

Looks like there’s a few more from the Beer Geek line, though they appear to be small-batch bottlings only available in Europe.  Darn.

A-/B+

Question of the day:  Where have you seen utter geekiness where you least expected it?

*I should note I have now become almost disenchanted with the BA Top 100.  It has become just too much of a Sisyphean task to tackle it.  Every time I have a Top 100 beer, a new exciting release comes out and meteorically jumps onto the list.  And, then, that same release usually has several similtaneous, even rarer, tap-only iterations (bourbon-barreled, oaked, vanilla beaned, cocoa nibbed) which add two to four more beers onto the Top 100 and all of the sudden you’re not gaining any ground on conquering the Top 100.  And let’s not discuss those times when you finally take down a Top 100 “white whale”–see Veritas 004 which I had last night–only to see that beer become “retired”–which Veritas 004 will almost certainly be in a few weeks or so–and then totally disappear from the list.  It becomes frustrating and I feel like I’ve been stuck in the “had” 65-70 of the Top 100 for the last few months with little traction made.  Which actually makes me happy, because now I’ve decided to just enjoy great beer, may the Top 100 list be damned.  (Unless of course I ever get me hands on some Black Tuesday and then, woohoo!, #1 beer in the world!!!!!!)

Note: 2/3rds of this post comes courtesy of a trade with Jay at Hedonist Beer Jive.

When I get together with my friends DW and Batch, we like nothing more than to set up a blind taste test amongst some hard-hittin’ beers.  There’s no more accurate way to judge, and enjoy, a great beer than with no preconceived notions.  No inner monologue dancing around your head saying stuff like, “I think I kinda hate this beer, but it’s #13 on the Beer Advocate Top 100 so maybe I actually do like it…?????”

For this blind, I’m sure some beer geeks are going to get all up in arms that we pitted an American double stout vs. an American porter vs. a Russian imperial stout.  Blasphemy they’ll say!  He disrespected beer!  They might even start a nerdy discussion about it on the sad BA Forums.  But I’ll argue that it was an apropos matchup.  These styles are virtually the same and in this case, all three beers had near identical ABVs and, more importantly, strongly relied on coffee for their flavor profiles.*

The contenders were the currently #13 beer in the world AleSmith’s Speedway Stout, the #73 beer in the world Deschutes Black Butte XXI, and, just to throw a would-be tomato can into the mix, Pozharnik from Pennichuck Brewing from out in New Hampshire.

We were anxious to throw these down, but we faced one crucial problem:  how to set up a blind tasting when we were the only three people around.  Usually there’s a wife or a girlfriend, a macro-drinking friend, a teetotaling toddler, you can enlist to set up the glasses for tastings but in this case all those kinds of people were shunning us.  Three people born in the 1970s, well-educated, and we couldn’t possibly figure out how to set up a blind to drink ourselves.  Perhaps we were a little toasted too.  And I was most anxious to get on with this tasting as I was getting a firm case of drinking blue balls.

Finally, DW decided he could pull out nine total glasses, label three of them with a 1 on the bottom, three with a 2, and three with a 3, pour the same beer in the same numbered glass, then have Batch mix the glasses up, then have me distribute.  It worked.  May drinking beer never be so hard again.

On with the tasting notes:

Beer #1:  I found this one strongly smelling of soy sauce while all three of us detected a spicy chili pepper scent on the nose, recalling Dogfish Head Theobroma a bit I thought, oddly enough.  I found this one thin in the mouth, and bordering on unpleasant.  I didn’t even want to finish my blind taster glass.

Beer #2:  This was sweeter than #1 and quite flavorful.  I found it, likewise, to be a little thin on the mouth, but it was a very solid effort I enjoyed.

Beer #3:  By far the best of the three, all three of us blind tasters thought it easily won the troika matchup.  Rich in coffee taste and with a silky mouthfeel, toasty, roasty, and chocolaty, I greedily slurped this one up.

And the reveal:

Beer #1:  Black Butte XXI

Beer #2:  Pozharnik

Beer #3:  Speedway Stout**

We were all floored how resoundingly the beautifully wax-dipped Black Butte XXI got its ass kicked.  After the reveal, we still struggled to enjoy it and nearly considered passing the remaining 3/4th of the bottle to a bum outside.  (Respect that BA!)  XXI would be the only of the three bottles we didn’t enjoyably finish.  But, to be fair, it explicitly says on the Black Butte XXI bottle that the beer is best after 10/17/2010, but with such a lofty numerical standing and such rave reviews pretty much to a man at this very second in time, I would have hoped for better.  Nevertheless, I would really like to try another bottle of it exactly 369 days from now and I’ll give it a marginal benefit of the doubt til then.

The little-discussed Pozharnik was also quite a surprise, in the more pleasant surprise direction, and held up quite well in matching the wax-dipped XXI with a plastic plungered bottle.  The victorious Speedway Stout opted for the silver foil-wrapped top, completing the trifecta in what may not have been our greatest blind tasting ever, but was surely our greatest fancily-capped bottle tasting ever.

Black Butte XXI:  B-

Pozharnik:  A-

Speedway Stout:  A

*Commercial descriptions:

Speedway Stout: “A HUGE Imperial Stout that weighs in at an impressive 12% ABV! As if that’s not enough, we added pounds of coffee for a little extra kick.”

Black Butte XXI: “Building on the existing chocolate notes already present in Black Butte Porter, brewers added Theo’s Chocolate cocoa nibs from Seattle,  1000 pounds of Bellatazza’s locally roasted Ethopian and Sumatran coffee, and then aged a portion of it in Stranahan’s Colorado whiskey barrels.”

Pozharnik: “The 2007 Pozharnik is an intensely flavored Russian Imperial Stout infused with espresso that compliments its rich chocolate & roasted malt character.  Pozharnik is guaranteed to warm a winter chill with its 10% ABV and dark fruit (raisin & plum) & vanilla undertones.  Notes of whiskey aromatics are brought on by the aging process in a “single barrel” whiskey cask.”

**Interestingly enough, the only of the three to NOT be barrel-aged.  Though, I’d love to try the barrel-aged version of this one if any one wants to hook a brotha up.

10% ABV bottled

Oktoberfest

I have just recovered from a big four-day drinking weekend down in Washington, D.C., highlighted by my first ever visit to Rustico’s Oktoberfest.  Luckily, it was a little drizzly out which kept the kind of drinking element away who only hears about events in this world courtesy of “morning zoo” DJs while listening to Top 40 radio.  The overt beer geek element was fairly low too for that matter, now that I think about it, though I did see one dweeb in a Kate the Great shirt proudly trying to get his picture taken with a “St. Pauli Girl” whose boobs were veinier than Iggy Pop’s arms.  It was mostly an Alexandria/Arlington lot of MILFy women in giant fuck-me boots with even gianter rocks on their hands and pushing the most giantest strollers you done ever seen.  As much as I wanted to hate on these women for pushing SUV-sized strollers of crying babies through a beer festival, I was actually kind of jealous that these runner-up trophy wives got their own portable cupholders for them to place their beers in while showing off their engagement rings to other yentas or while holding hands with their latently homosexual husbands.  But I digress.

I think I have now well exceeded my amount of fall seasonal beers for 2009 and like the smart kid in elementary school, I may need to skip a grade all the way to winter drinking.  I tell ya’, if I never see a malty marzen or a pumpkiny pumpkin beer again this year, it might be too soon.  Some of my fall seasonal highlights of the Oktoberfest, all which I’d score an A- minimum:

Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale
Avery The Kaiser Imperial Oktoberfest
Bear Republic Late Harvest Oktoberfest
Clipper City Heavy Seas - Prosit! Oktoberfest (cask)

(Surprisingly, my lowlight of the weekend, besides passing out wasted at 8:30 PM on Saturday night, was Flying Dog’s Dogtoberfest, recently awarded the gold medal in the marzen category at the Great American Beer Festival.  I found it to be a stunningly awful malt mess and since I had no drain nearby to pour it down, I had to resort to dumping onto the parking lot near the Port-o-Potty release plug.  Fitting.)

But my two highlights for the weekend would be Clipper City’s Heavy Seas - The Great Pumpkin and The Bruery’s Autumn Maple.  I had The Great Pumpkin on cask and I have to say, flat out, it is the best pumpkin beer I have ever had by an order of magnitude.  Well outperforming such legendary luminaries as Southern Tier’s Pumking and Dogfish Head’s Punkin, my previously-thought-to-be two best in the category.  The Great Pumpkin tastes like if you just dunked your head in a giant pumpkin pie.  It’s probably the most pumpkin-tasting pumpkin I’ve ever had as it doesn’t suffer from the over-spicing a lot of pumpkin ales do.  And it’s so silky and creamy, oozing down your throat as smooth as a nitro Guinness.  Whereas even the best pumpkin ales one grows sick of after a pint or two, this was the one beer I kept revisiting at the festival, going back to the cask booth time after time after time.  I really wish I had a cask of this in my house right now, it was that good.  Perhaps it was the fact that it was my first ever pumpkin beer on cask–I got to compare The Great Pumpkin side-by-side on tap and it simply lacked the same oomph the cask version had–but this one deserves legendary status.  A very impressive effort for Baltimore’s Clipper City.

A

Now, full disclosure, Autumn Maple was actually the only beer I have discussed today that wasn’t available at the Oktoberfest but I did happen to try it the very same day.  A damn shame it wasn’t at the festival, because this might be the finest “Oktober” beer around.  Like most The Bruery beers this is a most unique creation.  Instead of opting to make a pumpkin beer for fall like everyone else, the boys from Orange County opted for a sweet potato beer.*  Huh?!!!  Mmmmm, actually.  Yams and maple syrup, tons of classic pumpkiny spices, this beer absolute worked for me and along with The Great Pumpkin has to be maybe the best seasonal beer out currently.  I know most The Bruery beers are a little pricey compared to other American options, but don’t be scared off in this case.  I’m shocked that it merely gets a B on Beer Advocate because this is very much a solid…

A-

*Perhaps for a lack of a category at the moment, BA lists Autumn Maple as a Belgian Strong Dark.  Whatever.

13.5% ABV on draught

My addiction is consuming me.  I can no longer keep it at bay.  I am now Mr. Hyde 24/7.  I am not an alcoholic.  Oh no.  Far from it.  At least not your standard one.  I can go for days without having a drink (though why would I want to?!)  And loved ones never criticize me for my drinking (then again, I only love those that the love the drink themselves).  Nor do I ever feel guilty about my drinking (usually too hungover to experience any other emotion).

I am not an alcoholic, yet I do have an unyielding addiction toward alcohol.  Toward locating rare beers that is.  It’s all I think about lately.  These rare beers, these beers I’ve never touched before, these new releases, special releases, one-time releases are always on my mind.  I can’t focus on work any more as I visit Beer Advocate, Beer Menus, and Beer News countless times per day for the latest updates.  I read other beer blogs and trade e-mails with beer friends all day long.  It’s gotten so bad I can barely follow sports any more.  Or celebrity gossip!  It’s even affecting my social life.  I organize activities in neighborhoods that are closest to beer stores I need to visit.  Strongarm dates into joining me at local groggeries with special one-offs on tap.  Shit, I even found myself talking in my sleep the other night while in bed with a gal.*

I think the pinnacle of my abhorrent behavior occurred last Wednesday night.  I was sitting around relaxing, unwinding as my evening neared its end, watching “Intervention” on A&E and surfing the net.  I made my half-dozenth visit to Beer Menus for the day and my heart nearly hit the hardwood.  Somehow, amazingly, I had failed to notice that a full line of Kuhnhenn brews had gone on tap that day at Blind Tiger, including their highly acclaimed, Top 100s in the World, Raspberry Eisbock and Fourth Dementia.  Beers from a little Michigan brewery that had never before been in New York, that I thought I might never get to try.  That I had been dying to try.

I didn’t know what to do.  It was now past midnight and I was very sleepy.  I debated throwing on a bathrobe like a local kook and hailing a cab ASAP to get me the sixty-odd blocks downtown to Blind Tiger to just rotely suck down the beers in minimal enjoyment.  Alas, I decided that even I am not that obsessed.

I was wrong.

I couldn’t sleep that night, tossing and turning.  Had I truly missed all these great beers, perhaps never to have them again?  Why, I couldn’t live with myself if I did!

I woke up at the crack of dawn and proceeded to stare at the clock just watching the minutes slowing tick off until Blind Tiger’s 11:30 AM opening.  All the while, refreshing Blind Tiger’s currently-on-draught page hoping for an update.  A positive update, hopefully noting the beers were still there, but an update nonetheless.  It never came.  I played scenarios in my mind, of the kegs being slurped down by some lucky and unknowing sonofabitch that knew little about beer and just so happened to stumble into Blind Tiger on the luckiest of nights.  Of more savvy beer geeks than me filling up growler after growler with these rare beers until the keg was dry.

Mere seconds after Blind Tiger opened for the day, I burst in, panting and out of breath.  The first in the bar for the…uh morning, without taking a seat, without even answering the bartender’s friendly greetings, I simply stammered:  “Do you still have the Raspberry Eisbock?”

She laughed at my overzealous ardor.

Luckily, they did.  Luckily they still had every Kuhnhenn beer on tap in fact.  I suppose that’s what happens when you’re a brewery known for making thick and viscous double-digit ABV beers.

As the bartender pulled me my six ounce glass of the Raspberry Eisbock, I took out my camera to photograph it.

She smiled at me.

“Lemme guess…beer blogger?”

Nope.  Rare beer hunter addict!

Oh boy, and am I so fucking glad I got to try these beers!  The Raspbeery Eisbock is truly like nothing you’ve ever had before.  It’s fruity, sure, but thick and chewy like an imperial stout.  Tastes of raspberries, sweet malts, and smooth wheat.  And it goes down with a boozy, roasted dark fruit burn like a quad.  A six ounce glass of it was more than enough.  It is exceptionally good and well worth the hype of being the #45 beer in the world as we go to press here at the Vice Blog.  Damn hard to categorize stylistically, this is a true revelation of a beer.

A

Fourth Dementia

9.4% ABV on draught

Next, I got to try the currently 94th ranked beer in the world, Fourth Dementia, an old ale.  I’ve had very few old ales in my life until very recently but it’s quickly becoming a favorite style of mine and this is the best I’ve ever had.  Sweet and sugary, malty and boozy, Fourth Dementia is as equally unique as the Raspberry Eisbock but I liked it just a tad better.  A long-time lover of barley wines and other malty sweet boozebombs, Fourth Dementia is right in my brew wheelhouse.  Absolutely exquisite.

A

Also that day I had the fortune to try tasters of Kuhnhenn’s Flemish Sour Red and their ass-kicker par excellence, the 19% Solar Eclipse imperial stout, a beer that should be served in no vessel bigger than an eye dropper.  Kuhnhenn may be new to me, yet with pure extrapolation, I know that it is one of my favorite breweries on planet earth and I can’t wait to try more from them to actually prove this fact.  Hopefully I will.

I’m also happy to reveal that I haven’t visited beer websites since this fateful day, this moment of clarity.  I’m trying get a hold of my addiction before it gets hold of me.

Oh shit, it’s NYC Craft Beer Week in two days!

*“You were talking in your sleep.”

“Really?  That’s weird.  What was I saying?”

“You said something like, ‘That’s the best tripel I’ve ever had.’  What the hell does that mean?  Triple what?”

“Honey, I believe I may have been dreaming about beer.”

On the Manliness of Drinking Beer

Come on pussy, meet me out at the bar.  I don’t care if you got shit to do.  I don’t care if you gotta get up early.  It’s time to drink beers.  The manliest thing a man can do!  What’s so manly about drinking a shit ton of beers you ask?  I can’t believe you don’t fuckin’ know.  Uh, lemme count the ways:

1.  Doing something as many times as you can possibly do something is manly.  Giving it your all!  Whether it’s fucking tons of bitches, eating fifteen cheeseburgers, or drinking two dozen beers until you fall off your bar stool, all that shit is M-A-N-L-Y.

2.  Drinking a lot of beer gives you a beer belly.  Nothing more manly than that.  It also makes you burp, fart, shit, and sometimes even throw up.  Manly!  Except throwing up.  That’s for bulimic little fairies.  Unless you like do a ton of car bombs or somethin’, then it’s acceptable I guess.

3.  Drinking a ton of beers makes you do stupid shit.  Like get in bar fights and hit on ugly women and sometimes even get arrested.  And all that shit is manly.  You think a pussy would do that kinda stuff?  No way!  Only a drunk man’s man.

4.  But it’s most manly to not get drunk.  That’s the paradox.  Hey, I can’t even believe I know what the word paradox means but that’s the paradox.  That we’re going out to get drunk.  To get wasted, shitfaced, cocked, hammered, blitzed and three sheets to the motherfuckin’ wind.  And in order to save time and money you’d think we’d want to get drunk as fast as humanly possible.  But that’s not manly.  Getting drunk after a beer or two is more pussy than coming after two pumps inside a chick.  What’s manly is to take hours and hours on end, and drink beer after beer after beer, before you’re even buzzed.  Sometimes when I’m at the bar, I’m like on beer number ten and my friend is like, “Whoa, I’m getting buzzed” and I’m like, “Shit, I barely feel like I’ve drank anything.  I could go drive my truck right now flawlessly.”  And I think less of my friend from that point on.  You know why?  Cause I’m manly and manly men don’t get drunk until they’ve had like an entire case minimum.

Man I’m so manly, yeah, and you’re manly too I guess, but look at all these so-called men around us.  Look at all these pussies drinking their faggot beers.  I don’t mean “faggot” like homosexual, I mean faggot like GAY, bro.  That guy over there with his beer with it’s fancy foreign name.  If you don’t like American beer, like this Bud Light I’m drinking, then go back to wherever you’re from.  What’s that you say?  Your saison is an American beer?  And my Bud Light is actually owned by In-Bev, a Belgium company owned by Brazilians?!  So fucking what?  It’s the image that matters.  And Bud Light is manly and your frou-frou “saison” beer is womanly.

Look at that guy, he’s been nursing that dark beer for the last hour.  Hey!  Drink up you fucking pussy!  My lil’ sister drinks faster than you, hahaha!  What’s that you say?  You’re drinking an 19% Russian imperial stout?  Russian?  Jesus H. Christ, again with the foreign beers.  You say your beer is nearly five times as alcoholic as my Bud Light?  Yeah, so what?  I’m drinking tons more bottles than you and that’s all that matters.  I’ve drank like three in the time it’s taken youse to drink just one of those sissy Communist beers.  More beers drunk equals more manly drinker.  And that’s me!

And, another thing.  Beer isn’t supposed to be dark and warm like that beer you’re drinking.  It’s supposed to be yellow and fizzy and foamy.  And made out of shit like corn and rice, not oooh fancy organic local ingredients.  And you ain’t supposed to drink it out of that balloon bulb of a glass.  I’m embarrassed for you.  Straight from the bottle!  Like a man.  Like a manly man that doesn’t want to dirty up a glass and hafta wash the dishes like some little housewife later in the night.  (Uh, ’scuse my language, ladies.)

Oh, and check out that queer over there.  The one surrounded by the hot chicks.  He must be the biggest pussy of them all.  Drinking a fruit beer!  Just perfect.  A fruit drinking a fruit beer.

“Did I hear you making fun of me buddy?  It may be a fruit beer but it’s the world’s strongest fruit beer coming in at a whopping 18% ABV.  In fact, I’m not so sure I would even call this a fruit beer.  With it’s boozy alcohol burn and tastes of dark fruits highlighted by an overabundance of Delaware raspberries, this tastes more like a quad than a fruit beer too me.  Even at the high ABV it is quite drinkable and quite delicious.  Fruit beer or whatever, I don’t know, it’s simply fucking delicious.”

A quad?  A quad?!  A quadruple what?!  Like I’m s’posed to know what that shit is?  Maybe you’re just a quadruple pussy.  Now I’m gonna go slam my Bud Light and leave this pussy bar.

A

Unorthodox Orthodox

I live in a very Jewish part of town known as:  Manhattan.  And, after an incident on Sunday, and if I can stereotype a bit, here I recollect on the ten most atypical things I have seen an NYC Orthodox Jew do.

10. There was the time an Orthodox Jew sat beside me at a real hellhole of a Village dive bar.  It was nearing 4 AM and it seems he was depressed about something or other.  After a few shots of well whiskey he began to doze off in his barstool.  The bartenders at this joint, feisty tattooed dykes in tight wife beaters, had a habit of hosing down clientele with the water gun when they were so rude as to pass out.  As this Jew lolled his head where he sat, a bartender raised her gun, tentative.  It just seemed wrong, even to her.  “Should I do it?” she asked me.  “DO IT,” I smirked.  She nailed him right in the face, jolting him awake as he snapped his head back and ejected his yarmulke from his skull and to the sawdust covered floor.

9. The Orthodox Jew in my Hell’s Kitchen hood who road a big Harley, he enjoyed idling in front of his Synagogue and annoyingly revving his engine.  Never during Shabbos though.

8. The two Orthodox Jews I once saw nearly coming to fisticuffs over a parking spot.  A shoving match ensued, sidelocks jiggled, Coke bottle eyeglasses rattled, Yiddish profanity was unleashed.

7. The time a gaggle of burly Rockefeller Center construction workers cat-called a shockingly attractive female Orthodox in a standard ankle-length Tzniut dress which did nothing to mask her junk in the tuchus.  I swear I saw her self-satisfyingly grin.  Only in New York, kids, only in New York.

6. The Orthodox Jewish day school youngsters I caught heckling a WASPy little boy in a Christmas tree sweater around the holidays.  “You only get one day of presents!  You only get one day of presents!”

5. The Orthodox Jew playing pick-up hoops–with all “brothas” no less–while in his full Orthodox regalia, black wool suit, big clunky shoes, flapping-in-the-wind fringes, and a Shtreimel hat.  He was pretty good actually.  A deadly jumper from the elbow.

4. The Orthodox Jewish couple I saw passionately kissing out the top of a quite decadent Bentley stretch limo as it sped along the Westside Highway.  Her Tichel headscarf flapping in the wind.  My Middle Eastern cab driver got off his Bluetooth long enough to turn around and angrily say to me, “Do you believe this fuckin’ city?”

3. The Orthodox Jew I saw sharing a joint in an alley with some “normal” people as Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” played on a cheap ghettoblaster (shtetlblaster?).  The Jew kept Bogarting the joint I noticed, not passing it in a timely fashion.

2. And then there was the time I was walking down Broadway around 72nd street when I passed a smoking hot girl in her workout clothes, which were simply a sports bra and some borderline pornographic bicycle shorts, God bless her.  Being no better than any other lascivious male, I of course turned to ogle her backside as she passed me, what the gays calling “cruising” I believe.  And, of course, who do I see doing likewise, in identical synchronicity with me, but a Methuselah-esque bearded old Orthodox.  I saw him and he saw me and he winked at me as if to say, “I’d like to give her a little Shvanz if you know what I’m saying?”

1. Then, just yesterday, as I was jogging through an intersection on the UWS, an Orthodox Jew in a Cadillac floated a stop sign and nearly took my legs out.  Furious, he had the gall to vigorously honk me, then slowly follow alongside me down West End Avenue all the while unleashing an aggressive pumping middle finger at me for a good three blocks.  I wonder if he was a Rabbi?

Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey

47% ABV (distilled: 9/3/06; batch # 38)

I’d heard the rumors of this small-batch whiskey from Colorado’s only microdistillery, but never did I think I would get to enjoy some (though it apparently isn’t as rare and as “Colorado-only” as I once had thought).  So glad my friend DW hooked me up.  Stranahan’s is a remarkably interesting and unique whiskey, truly one of a kind, it can’t be categorized or compared to other whiskeys you’ve had.  So vanilla-y, even neat this charred-oak barreled spirit tastes like a bourbon-based cocktail.  It’s hard to believe there aren’t other ingredients mixed with it.  But it’s so goddamn hot and boozy you’ll quickly realize this is 100% malt.  At around $55 a bottle I’d call it perhaps a hair overpriced, considering you can get world class stuff at that point, but it’s damn good and well worth having a glass or two if you ever see it on a menu at your better restaurants, bars, and/or brothels.

NOTE:  Long in cahoots with Oskar Blues, the two have recently joined forces to produce a Ten FIDY aged in Stranahan barrels.  I’m getting a boner just thinking about that.

A

9% ABV on tap via Randall

I was pulling out all the drunken tools in my seduction arsenal.  I asked kindly.  I begged.  I pleaded.  I whined.  I cried.  Offered money.  Solicited.  Played the “Don’t you know who I am?!” card.  I enlisted my lady friend to help out.  She fluttered her peepers.  Showed some cleavage.  Insinuated sexual favors.  Eh, it was no use.  The Blind Tiger’s bartender would not be swayed.  Could not be cajoled.  He simply refused to let me go into the basement keg room.  (Something about breaking New York City health codes.  Yeah, like I’ve never done THAT before.)

And why did I want to go into the keg room?  For no reason other than to be face-to-face with Randall the Enamel Animal.

And who is this Randall fella you ask me?  Why none other than “an organoleptic hop transducer module.”  Say what?!   “A three-foot-long, cylinder-filter packed with a half a pound of whole leafhops [affixed] to the beer line leaving a keg.”  In this case, the beer was Dogfish Head’s legendary 90 minute and the whole leafhops were of the amarillo variety*.

I didn’t get to see this process take place in the keg room, nor did I get to snap a picture–the one above is from DFH’s website–but I did get to try the motherfucker.  And whoa Nelly!  What a beer!  I’m an inveterate 90 Minute fan but the Randallizing of the beer makes it even more spectacular.

Whereas 90 Minute has a strong, almost barleywine-like malt backbone propping up its pungent citrusness, the oily soaking of the amarillo in the Randall module smooths out the whole beer making it far more balanced, surprisingly bitter for the ABV, and remarkably drinkable.  It was truly a treat to have, and truly a one-of-a-kind drinking experience.  The kind of experience that you can only luck into in a place like Manhattan.  I had meager Sunday night drinking plans, and never in a million years did I expect to run into a beer I had so long desired.

Sam Calagione is without question the mad scientist of the craft beer world and his invention of the Randall is yet another avant garde touch that I simply adore.  Now some of you may think this is nothing more than a gimmick, but I can most certainly assure you that it is not.  The Randallizing of 90 Minute turns an already great beer into something sui generis and spectacular.

I hope you all are lucky enough to try it one day.  Hell, I hope I’m lucky enough to get to try it again.

A

*Some other noteworthy Randalls in the past have been filled with stuff such as lemongrass, mint & bourbon balls, melon & assorted fruits, pine & spruce, roasted pine nuts & dried oregano, and warrior & Columbus hops.  Wow.

9.8% ABV from a 750 mL bottle

Here’s a little tip:  if I’ve “heard” of some “good” restaurant, or store, or part of some town that we need to visit, check out, see…don’t listen to me.  Or, at least, realize that I’m simply trying to secretly steer us near a desired beer.

Such was the case earlier this week when my mom was visiting my sister way out on the tip of Long Island in Port Jefferson.  They invited me to take the two-hour EXPRESS–God lord!–train out from Manhattan for dinner one night and I agreed.  You see, I had a plan.

“So, Aaron, what kind of food would you like for dinner tomorrow night?”

“Oh, you know, mom, whatever.”

“Whatever?  Thai?  Italian?  American?”

“Yeah, something like American food is fine.  I’m really easy, just whatever.”  PAUSE.  As if I had just had a great realization.  “You know…now that I think about it, I believe I recently read about a great little restaurant that just might be out that way.”

I sent my mom and my sister a link to the Southampton Publick House’s PDF menu and, wouldn’t you know it, they liked the looks of it.

So, early in the afternoon on Wednesday, I took the train all the way to the end of the line where my sister and mom picked me up in the car for a 45 minute ride through Long Island farm lands and sleepy hamlet after snoozing village before we finally arrived in the tiny town of Southampton.  There, we found ourselves on a residential neighborhood’s cul-de-sac street where what appeared to be a former mansion had been converted into greatness.

(Always puttin' on the Ritz, Aaron calls ahead to assure that exposed knees and socklessness are not against establishment dress code)

The Southampton Publick House is massive, nearly palatial, a whole estate with a lawn and outdoor seating galore and an infinite amount of different dining rooms inside, highlighted by a huge bar up front.  Upon entering my mom saw the working brew vats displayed off to the side through a window and she noticed the beer bottles on the wall with Southampton’s name and logo on each and every one.  A leery glare at me.

“This is some sort of brewery, huh?”

She then smiled at me.  She knows her son.  She had probably let me dupe her into going there.  What a great mom.

But what a great restaurant.  Not just a brewpub with a 100% focus on beer and an inept menu of greasy food simply for soaking up the booze so that you may drink more, the Southampton Publick House is surely fine dining.  A teetotaler could even have a great night there, and since the majority of diners were blue-haired blueblood Hamptons WASPs, I’d say I may have actually been the only person there to get loaded.

I got to sample a variety of delicious menu items including the Irish nachos (essentially a mix of some of the best French fries I have truly ever had, topped with nacho fixin’s), Thai spiced jumbo duck wings with orange ginger dipping sauce (could easily replace buffalo wings and bleu cheese as America’s ubiquitious bar snack), the gorgonzola-crusted pub steak (a flawless blend of stinky cheese and juicy meat), and a rack of baby back ribs (so gigantic and smoky I was sure they were beef, but a smell and succulent taste that was 100% pig.)

But one particular beer was why I had really come to Southampton…

I’d had some other Southampton brews in the past and found them nothing more than mediocre to slightly above average, though, admittedly, I had never tried any of their pricier big bottle selections.  The one brew I had connived my way to town for, though, was the 93rd ranked beer in the world, their Grand Cru selection.  Though, I was somewhat dubious at the lofty positioning of this beer, I was nevertheless anxious to try it.

And…I was floored!  It was truly delicious.  Such an unexpected surprise.  Sure I thought it would be good based simply on its esteemed standing, but Southampton had shown me nothing in the past to make me think they had this much greatness inside of them.  And one doesn’t usually expect such heights to be reached by a Belgian pale ale.  An imperial stout, a bourbon barreled beer, a DIPA, sure.  But a Belgian pale?  A Belgian pale made by a little Long Island brewpub with middling distribution?  Crazy.  Usually Belgian pales are just yeasty, a tad spicy, and, though palatable, somewhat boring.  But Southampton’s Grand Cru is absolutely packed with flavor and complexity.  Dried orange peel, coriander, star anise, pineapple, mangoes, a touch of sweet malts, and a slight delicious mustiness.  For the ABV this is as drinkable as lemonade and I had to slow myself down so I could actually properly savor it.

Yes, I am being a tad enthusiastic, and I wasn’t even sure whether this was an A or A+ as I greedily slurped it down.  My enthusiasm probably came from the fact that, though it’s local, I never thought I’d have the Grand Cru or even drink at the Publick House and I was having a truly great evening.  We were having a truly great evening.  My mom and sister even greatly enjoyed the Grand Cru and, for the first time, I saw an “AHA!” look in their eyes which was them finally “getting” how I could have such a beer passion.  How beer could achieve such heights in my mind.  Maybe I no longer will have to dupe them into going on beer adventures with me in the future.  (”So long as you don’t write about me on your blog!” says mom.)

I think this might be the best Americanized Belgium beer around and I wish I could send a bottle to every non-NY beer geek I know so they could see for themselves.  Whatever the case, even if the next time I have it I’m not quite as blown away, I do think it’s up there with the best of the style, even better than Brooklyn’s splendid Local 1.

Afterward, I had a flight of all the taps on the menu I had yet to try–L to R:  Tripel, Bavarian Wheat, Summer kolsch, Secret Ale altbier, and Lager–and though I could tell they were all good, solidly crafted beers, the Grand Cru was so fucking delicious, was still lingering so much on my palate, that it had turned these fine brews into tiny shots of dirty bathwater.  I simply wanted more Grand Cru.

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