9% ABV bottled and boxed!

Day Drinking

Upwardly mobile big city yuppies often like to try and make each other think they’re still very much immersed in the more transgressive and fun parts of society.  That they still “got it.”  That they’re actually having as much fun as the rest of us.  They’ll even make up and throw out certain buzz words, catch phrases if you will, to reinforce these faulty thoughts.  “Day drinking” is probably the biggest of these such words.  As in, “What are your plans for today?”  “Oh, just doing some day drinking.”  Like we’re supposed to be really impressed they have chosen to spend their Saturday or Sunday like most normal cool people do–BY DRINKING.  There’s even a Facebook fan page set up for this lamest of self-back-patting hobbies.

Let me fill you guys in on something, there’s nothing outrageously cool or profligatic about drinking a Bud Light on a Saturday at 14:00 hours.  Nothing ornery about slurping down a Bloody Mary with brunch while rocking your massive SUV of a stroller parked next to the booth.  What?  You think you’re being “bad”?  You think that drinking while the sun is out and bad Big Ten football is still on the air is naughty?  You think you’re only “allowed” to start tippling once the dinner hour begins?  Grow up.

“Day drinking” is St. Patty’s Day or New Year’s Eve in micro.  A time us cool people set aside for the amateurs to drink so we can quickly clear them off the streets in time for us to actually start guzzling.  It’s like how New Yorkers give the tourists Times Square and 59th Street, us real drinkers give you phonies Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 to throw down in public.  We’ll be at home getting loaded by ourselves.

You want to be a real badass?  Don’t day drink on a Saturday or a Sunday, or the occasional Monday or Friday holiday off.  Go day drinking on a fucking Tuesday.  Or a Wednesday.  That’s when the real badasses are day drinking.  Take off work on any normal and insignificant Thursday and go get shitcanned by yourself.  Oh you will see characters my friend.  You will see the dregs of society.  Men, always men, that somehow skirt the paradox between having absolutely nothing going on in their lives, yet still enough money to fund their “disease.”  And what a grand disease it is!  The sun pouring into the quiet bar, “Oprah” or maybe “Family Feud” on the wall TVs for there are no sports on air at this hour, maybe–maybe–some cricket or rugby or hurling from some weird country, but that’s about it.  Bartenders reading the NY Post, the occassional suit going all “Mad Men” for a liquid lunch, some vacationing foreigners.  There is no talking, there is no mingling, there is certainly no flirting, this kind of day drinking is all about you and your hooch.  It is no group celebration but fuck is it fun.

But I don’t want to be an alcoholic you say!  Only “alcoholics” day drink on those days!

My point exactly!  So you admit you simply wanted to be a faux-alcoholic for a little undeserved street cred.  Just like you wanted to be when you went to that faux-dive bar last week.  Let me let you in on a little secret:  there’s no such thing as a chain dive bar.  And those buffalo wings ain’t that wild either.

Alcoholism, drunkenness, is an all-or-nothing proposition, friend-o, you’re either fully in or fully out.

Though maybe you’re like me.  Ya’ want to be a boozehound without all the unpleasant whispering from the Joneses of society.  Then do the day drinking all by yourself.  It’ll be our little secret.  Stay inside your tiny little abode and just start shredding through your beer cellar.  How zen!  How stoic!  Much better than tai chi.  Open that boxed Widmers you just got.  Wait a sec?  Widmer makes a BOXED fancy beer?  But I thought they were like a “macro-micro”?  So did I brother, so did I.  But you know I can’t turn down a boxed beer.  And goddamn am I so glad I got to try it.  It was really quite good.  Your classic chewy dopple maltiness, rich chocolate, etc, but with a beautiful underlying hint of dark cherries and a vanilla oak finish.  This is actually a one of a kind beer, and I greatly enjoyed it.

I’m not gonna quite induct it into the dopplebock pantheon alongside, say, Celebrator, Salvator, Thomas Hooker’s, them boys is legends, but it’s pretty freaking good.  I hope to try it again and all of the sudden I’m looking at Widmer with a new eye, like a girl that just got implants, hoping to try some more from them.  What else ya’ guys got?

A-

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.

Cure for the Common Cold

The say you should treat the common cold with lots of fluids, tons of medicine, and plenty of rest.  Yeah, that shit never works.  But a thing that does work is binge-drinking.  Think about it, does not heavy imbibing of beer handle the “lots” of fluids, “tons” of medicine, and, eventually, force you to have “plenty” of rest?  Swimmingly it does, I might add.

Firstly, drinking oodles and oodles of ounces of ounces of the cocktail made with two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen is so boring and unflavorful.  Not like beer.  Secondly, swallowing big ol’ horse pills of ear, nose, throat, and head pain relievers is no easy task.  Unlike throwing some beer down your gullet.  And no one likes to force themselves to rest, so why not drink yourself into a sleepy oblivion?

I mean, why do you think ER patients in intense pain are sometimes forced into a coma?  So that they won’t have to experience all the terrible things happening to them as the recover from trauma.  Why have a “lost weekend” when you’re well?  A lost weekend when you’re in tip-top shape will involve missing all sorts of fun.  Hanging with friends, partying, playing with girls, and general revelry.  When you sober up and hear what you missed while you were blacked out you’re always inevitably pissed.  But, a “lost weekend” or week, in some cases, while you’re sick?  Why that’s genius!  Start drinking heavily and next thing you know you will have missed several days of a groggy head, pulsating sinus pressure, hacking up a lung and ejecting all sorts of green stuff from your nose, as well as being forced to watch daytime TV (although “Family Feud” continues to be hypnotizingly addictive).

As someone who is currently sick from the common cold, I can tell you that nothing can and will heal this pain save time.  So, I’ll just have to ignore it.  I will have to become a sort of drunken time traveler.  Start drinking heavily right now, and next thing I know, I’ll have woken up flawlessly well on Friday morning, totally having avoided the expected misery of this week.  Like a bear hibernating through the coldly harsh months.

The only drawback to drinking while sick is that your sense of smell and taste are too FUBAR to fully enjoy the great craft beer you’re drinking.  Alas, everything does have its debits.  Then again, some beers are so aromatic and so flavorful that even a man without a face could enjoy them.  The new Stone Vertical Epic comes to mind.

I’ve kinda been down on Stone lately.  Stone was the first craft brewery I loved and I’ve long considered it THE best craft brewery in America, but lately I’ve been fairly disenchanted with them.  I was beginning to wonder if Stone could just no longer compete with some upstart breweries or whether the ubiquity of Stone products and the amount of each of them I’ve enjoyed over the years had finally made me familiarly contemptuous of them.  Glad to say that with their recent super-hopped 13th Anniversary Ale, and now especially 09.09.09, Stone is still firing on all cylinders.

09.09.09 is quite a subtly unique little beer.  Like a dubbel mixed with a banana rich weisenbock in a way.  Flavors of mixed orange and chocolate with hints of vanilla bean as well as some oakiness too.  A very nicely crafted beer and certainly not to be missed.  All hail Stone, they are certainly still the kings.  And if they had a stupid little 200 bottle special release party for some new wild ale or tequila-barreled porter, they’d go back to getting the attention they rightfully deserve.  Shit, I just hope I can get a bottle of that tequila-barreled porter!

A-

8.5% ABV on cask

The Great RV Trip Non-Debacle 2009

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

No.  We were somewhere around East Stroudsburg, near the Delaware Water Gap, when the vodka began to coarse through us.

No.  That’s not right either.  What is it about besotted road trips that makes every one want to pay homage to the master?  To steal from Hunter S?

I shall start again.

What is it about moving while drinking that makes it so much more enjoyable?  Whether on plane, train, boat, or car (hopefully not while driving) it is such a greater pleasure than to imbibe while static.

We were in a twenty-five-foot-long recreational vehicle, an RV you dope, hurtling down the highway as fast as King Otto could drive without the governor stopping us.  The governor on the car.  Not Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, though he wouldn’t have been thrilled with the activities we were partaking in as we marred his miserable state.

In the back, Cuseman and I sat in the booth across from one another.  Dean, Dean, the Sax Machine (aka:  The Tapdance Kid) lounged on the back bed dispensing homemade pineapple-infused vodka–much more potent than you will ever know–from a two gallon tub.  Atop the bunk bed, the babe of the trip, Epstein slept.

When King Otto suggested we rent an RV for our sojourn to State College, PA to see our beloved Syracuse Orange lose to Penn State, I was a little leery.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I signed up immediately, but I was certainly leery.  Leery about:

• the quality and comfort of a rented RV
• living with four men within the confines of about fifty square feet for forty-eight straight hours
• King Otto’s ability to drive the thing
• not dying from any of the above

One thing I wasn’t leery about:

• actually getting a hilarious story from this most certain debacle of a trip.

I would live on the RV, tailgate with the RV, and hang with likeminded RVers, many of the professional variety, for an entire weekend so that none of my readers ever would have to.  I would be the Bear Grylls of driving, sleeping, relaxing, eating, pissing, and shitting all within the same vehicle.  I was certain I would be incredibly glad to have gone on this trip, and almost certain that I’d never want to do it again by trip’s end.

I have to say, I was so very wrong.

First of all, I was greatly impressed by our Cruise America “standard” rental.  If you’ve never had the fortune–yes, fortune–to ride in an RV, let me briefly explain its interior.  Though it looks no bigger than a utility van or a smallish U-Haul on the outside, inside it’s like a funhouse and you are simply blown away at how much is packed into the thing.  Pure American ingenuity and efficiency.  Above the driver’s cabin–identical to a truck cabin but with access to the back living quarters–a bunk bed big enough to house three heterosexual men that don’t mind incidental contact, three across like sardines.

In the middle of the living quarters, a sitting booth akin to what you’d see at a Denny’s or standard dinner.  A perfect place to play cards, eat fast food, or get tie one on hard while the “dad” of the trip–King Otto in this case–drove.

Loaded up and ready to go, King Otto took the wheel still smarting from layabout Cuseman’s insubordination in loading up and preparing to go in a timely manner (let’s hope the two of them wage a war of words within my comments below–it will truly be hilarious), and we were off.

The drive to State College from New York City is…well, honestly, I have no fucking clue.  I wasn’t paying attention in the least.  Nor really was Cuseman, Epstein, or Dean, Dean, the Sax Machine (aka:  The Tapdance Kid).  It was raining hard, it was dark out, but the back was like a bar where time simply doesn’t matter.  Yeah, sure, like a bar with no TVs, no women, inaudible car radio, and only four customers in it.  But the drinks were free, the cold beers were only an inch away from you at any time, and there was never a line to the pisser.  A bathroom about the size of an airplane lavatory, I should note.

Drinking on road trips is always not just a desire, nor a necessity, but of the utmost importance.  Shit, I’ve been known to risk life, limb, and the tender skin on my palms just to get an open bottle of beer for a ride.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone drinking and driving in the least and I’ve only done it once in my life–no lie–but I condone drinking and passengering with all of my being.

Why it is a crime in America to drink alcohol while not driving a car but while simply sitting in it is extremely baffling to me.  A typical case of America finding solutions to problems that don’t exist and which are really not solutions at all.  (Have a lot of drunk passengers wrecked the cars they weren’t driving?!)  I suppose lawmaking muckety-mucks would say you can’t drink and passenger because, well, because it sets a bad example for the man at the wheel.  Heck, it might even make him downright jealous.  Well shit then, shouldn’t it be illegal to not read while in the passenger seat?  Or do a crossword?  Or play air drums to “Dazed and Confused?”  Or fucking sleep?!  Cause, while I may not be any sort of vehicular safety expert, I know countless people that have successfully driven a car while lit up like a menorah, but I don’t know a single motherfucker that has successfully made it from point A to point B while fast asleep.

And that’s the great thing about having the RV.  With a car, you’re always conscious, always worried about a cop driving by and seeing you opening a cold one, about empties littering the floor, about needing to break the seal too early and slowing down your entire trip.  But all those problems are negated in an RV.  With the curtains closed, no one else on the road could possibly see what mischief we were getting into.  It was our private sanctuary, our own movable speakeasy, for throwing back the hooch with no consequence.  Unless of course King Otto wrecked the car and then we’d face the quite troublesome consequences of seeing what happens to a man who is standing in the back of an RV, chugging a beer, when said RV fishtails into a highway girder.  Perhaps we should wear helmets in the back next time?

Without question, this was the most enjoyable roadtrip I have ever had driving-wise.  On other roadtrips, you’re obsessed with the time while en route.  “How’s are time?”  “We making good time?”  “What time do you think we’ll be in?”  Why?  Well so you can get to the bar and start drinking.  But when the bar is with you, time is of the utmost insignificance.  We could have arrived at 9 PM, midnight, or next year and I wouldn’t have give a damn.  Unless the beer had ran out.

The insignificant time we did arrive ended up being 10:50 PM.  Pulling into the grass rolling hills of a parking lot at 10:50 PM we were floored.  Hundred upon hundreds if not thousands upon thousands of RVs already set up, as far as the eye could see.  There must surely be an RV caste system as we were ordered and then tucked away into a far corner of the lot amidst other smallish rentals and amateur RV enthusiasts.

We immediately grabbed a handful of beers and set out to explore.  To see the real RV pros at work.  We took laps around the ad hoc “streets” of the RV City, our wasted eyes agog like Dorothy in Oz.  We soon learned that the lot opens at 5 PM sharp on Thursday night with a line of RVs already ready to enter and set up, and for the next three days the place becomes like a slapdash wild west mining town, thrown up over night to assure a place’s newest and likewise temporary inhabitants, can find places to grub, drink, gamble, and fuck while finding as much gold as possible.  We were amazed to see impromptu sports pubs, dance clubs, karoake bars, and even gambling venues pieced together through a series of interconnected tents–closer to circus than pup–covering all sorts of tables, furniture, and electronics powered by miles and miles of extension cord connected to satellite dishes and RV generators.  Suffice to say, many if not most of these big time RV “establishments”–for lack of a better word–were larger, more spacious, and had far more eminities and creature comforts than not just my Manhattan apartment but most groggeries in New York City proper.

There’s nothing better than waking up at sunrise on Saturday, walking outside in your sleep clothes, taking a piss in the dewy grass, and immediately popping a beer to shake off the cobwebs, then sparking up the grill, and setting up the Cornhole boards.  (As we all know Cornhole is the greatest outdoor drinking game in the history of the world, and any time I get a chance I play it until my arm falls off, my liver explodes, or, more likely, the cheap wood board shatters.)  We drank and ate burgers and sausage, played Cornhole and Beer Pong until 11:50 AM before hightailing it to the stadium.

There’s not much worth discussing or explaining about the day’s game.  Beaver Stadium may the biggest stadium in America and the third largest in the world, but it’s fairly unspectacular.  You might say, well, Penn State was playing the miserable Syracuse Orange, sure.  And that does justify the fans lack of enthusiasm and propensity for sitting on their hands.  But that doesn’t justify it being an undistinguished Erector Set of a dilipidated sporting venue, nor the school have a shockingly ugly student base.  King Otto, Cuseman, Dean, Dean the Dancing Machine (aka: The Tapdance Kid), and Epstein can back me up on this, the four State fans in front of us were of another species.  A species that surely evolved and survived by not being the fittest, but rather by being so goddamn repulsive no predators possibly wanted to get near these mutants.  Literally slack-jawed with the gummiest mouths you’ve ever seen, acne-riddled skin, hair straight from the bird’s nest wig collection, and the dopiest hick hollers of “Cuuuuuuuuuuum’on, less’go Stuuuuuuuuuu-ate!”  Sickening.  And this is coming from a man that hadn’t showered or even brushed his teeth that morning.  My standards were not exactly high on that misty day.

Of course you can’t drink during the game because the hypocritical NCAA likes to pretend that it has some ethics, so I was forced to swig on Diet Pepsis all game, which I won’t deny were incredibly reasonably priced so yay for that.  After a 28-7 loss, after nearly falling asleep from our three hour lack of alcohol, we jumped back into drinking and exploring the RV scene.  (Marv Albert voice:  “With authority!”)

An expert myself, I am not one to haphazardly praise the drinking prowess of others, thinking most “party” schools to be grossly overrated, most hardcore imbibers hardly able to throw it back, but I can say this:  Penn State fans can drink.  They are one of the finest drinking schools I have ever dealt with.  Good lord, State College on a gameday might be the drinking capital of America.

As a connoisseur of drinking games, I was both intrigued and excited to learn that Cornhole and Beer Pong have pretty much become passe at State College.  Still respected sure, but more in a retro way like, “Ha, isn’t it cute.  We’re playing beer pong!  That game we used to play when we were in junior high!”  Oh no, these ugly Penn State fans have moved on to far more aggressive drinking games.  Games of the highest skill, abilities, and suicidal tendencies.  I learned at least four new drinking games but my two most eye-opening favorites were Dizzy Bat and Speedball, explained as follows:

Dizzy Bat–Take your classic yellow Wiffleball bat, cut the bottom of the handle off it, fill the barrel with an entire can of beer and…CHUG!  After you’ve finished chugging, put the bat on your forehead, bend over, and spin around ten times, then stand up and try to take a swing at the empty beer can as a friend/enemy tosses it at you.  Amazingly, or not considering how awesome America is, there’s actually countless great Youtube videos of this sport.

Speedball–Probably the most dangerous drinking game I’ve ever encountered aside from gloryholing, this game works like this:  Two-versus-two with each team set up on opposite ends of your typical beer pong length table.  Each player has a full can of beer placed in front of him.  One teammate hurls a ping pong ball at one of his opponents’ two cans and, assuming he hits a can, his partner is allowed to begin chugging his beer and chug it as long as he can until the “defending” team is able to retrieve the ping pong ball and lay it smack on the table.  Sounds easy, sure, but here’s the rub:  the player that hurled the ball at the defenders’ beer cans is allowed to chase after the ball and the defenders and use any means necessary–kicking, scratching, blocking, tripping–short of outright tackling, or covering the ball, to prevent the defenders from returning the ball to the table.  Teams go back-and-forth taking alternating shots, game is over when both of a team’s players have drained every last drop of their two cans.  You are guaranteed to be sweaty, tired, filthy, perhaps injured, and certainly wasted after a game of Speedball.  Fans gather around like they are watching a Michael Vick sanctioned canine UFC event.  Not surprisingly, all the players and spectators, are men.

As nightfall came and drinking games became an impossibility, now wasted and worn, we walked around the dark lot getting into trouble and creating memories at the various dance clubs, bars, and various drinking scenes.  Making friends with strangers, watching nationally-televised football games on projection satellite TV screens blasted onto walls and giant RVs, and eventually becoming shit-canned enough to hit on ugly ugly women (photographic evidence destroyed.)  We even managed to get a little illicit gambling done, with Dean, Dean the Sax Machine (aka:  The Tapdance Kid) absolutely mopping up.

I was worn and wasted before even 1 AM, after approximately seventeen straight hour of drinking and twenty-six of the last thirty-three hours with a drink in my hands, I aptly feel asleep that night still clutching a half-drunk brew.

I'm even a legend while I sleep

Th next day, the RV was an absolute pig sty, our toilet not overflowed but filled to the brim, our two gallons of vodka killed, our three bottles of spice rum decimated, and 84 out of 96 cans of cheap beer taken down (OK, who was the slacker here?).  We were most certainly ready to get back to civilization.  Unfortunately, the drive back home to New York through the tumbling hills of nowhere land, where you can’t even find a McDonald’s for hundreds of miles, is a lot more boring when you’re hungover and not drinking.  Oh well, road trips always end poorly.  No one ever says:  “Man, you know what the best part of this road trip was?!  Driving home at the end of it!”

Having said that, I’m pretty sure the five of us are now RV enthusiasts for life.  It’s a lifestyle I think I could get into, the cornerstone of a splendid lost weekend, though I would die an early death if I did it more than once a year.

Though I guess I may have to change my life expectancy:  King Otto’s considering buying an RV.

After having not showered, or defecated, sorry for the too much information, for the entirety of the trip, I had to handle both post-haste upon re-entering Manhattan society.  But I also had to hightail it to Rattle ‘N’ Hum because after drinking garbage macro beer all weekend, I needed some flavorful, weighty, and potent sugary poison in my system, and luckily, my favorite bar was hosting the Gotham Cask Festival, with quite a few notables on tap amongst several dozens specialty casks.

I started things off with Sixpoint’s Hops of Love “IPA 4 Evah” dry-hopped cask beer.  I was quite impressed with this 6.2% offering and found it even better than their well-acclaimed Bengali Tiger.  Hops of Love was made specially for Sixpoint brewer Ian’s wedding and apparently they made far too much, which is our gain!  Our at least mine.  Dry-hopped with cascade and Northern, this is a flawless and complex blend of grapefruit, piny hops, and bitterness all in a slippery smooth little package.  I really enjoyed this luxurious beer which just coddled my throat (A-)

I also tried the official beer of New York City Craft beer week, the NY3, a collaborative effort between Empire State brewers Captain Lawrence, Ithaca, and Southampton, brewed with local honey from each of the three brewers, dry-hopped with Willamette hops among others from Pedersen Farms.  I eagerly anticipated this effort but was a tad let down.  A solid session effort no doubt, kinda like Liquid Gold Lite, but nothing spectacular, and a beer that easily got lost in the shuffle compared to all the legendary, high ABV offerings I had around during the past week (B+)

But I had come specifically to the cask festival at Rattle ‘N’ Hum for one much desired beer, a Beer Advocate Top 100 effort and no doubt George Lucas unapproved, the Imperial Stout Trooper.  A vintage 2006 keg no less!  I found the stout to be a most warm and relaxing imperial that actually tastes far more boozy than it truly is.  Burnt and roasted coffee tastes, a kiss of chocolate, silky and most delicious, though I don’t think it deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with the all-time legends.  At least on cask.  I hope to snag a bottle this winter.

A-

*Of note, you can still drink at Syracuse’s Carrier Dome, so fuck all you teetotaling heathens.

(Be sure and check out this fun interview Jay at Hedonist Beer Jive did with me)

8.5% ABV on tap

When I was a prepubescent I wanted to meet my favorites sportsmen, guys like Darryl Strawberry and Charles Barkley and Barry Sanders, and get their autographs on balls and cards.  When I became a pubescent I wanted to meet my favorite rock stars and learn why women loved them so.  When I was in college I wanted to meet my favorite filmmakers and writers and ask them about their craft, perhaps learn a thing or two.  But now that I’m thirty, I simply want to meet my brewing idols to thank them for making the sugary poison that enhances my life.  And by “enhances,” I mean gets me drunk and causes me to do funny things.

Luckily, yesterday I would get to meet my two biggest beer idols, Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head and Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery–coincidentally the two most-reviewed breweries here on the Vice Blog–both making appearances at Blind Tiger and Rattle ‘N’ Hum respectively to celebrate New York Craft Beer Week.

I headed to Blind Tiger in the early afternoon to beat the rush but soon the place had become the typical Star Trek Convention-esque scene like most big beer geek events.  Men either incredibly lithe or incredibly burly, no one weighing anywhere in between (i.e. “normal”), all hirsute of face, in vintage t-shirts and Rivers Cuomo spectacles.  I came alone and, with no one to whisper mocking barbs to, was lucky enough to quickly find a compadre, the only girl at the event who didn’t have a look on her face of “I can’t believe my boyfriend dragged me to this nerdfest/I can’t believe he gets this excited for beer/I can’t believe I fuck this loser/Hey, is that the Vice Blogger over there?!”  She had shockingly come under her own cognizance.

With a full slate of Dogfish Head beers on tap, I sipped on some I’d had before, some I hadn’t.  I enjoyed:

Raison D’Extra (2008)–This 18% amped up version of Raison D’Etre is maybe the most boozy beer I’ve ever had.  But I like that!  Dried fruits, spices, strong malts, and an oaky vanilla finish, this brew pummels your throat like a bourbon neat.  A-

Black & Blue (2007)–Not nearly as fruity as I expected, nor boozy, especially compared to their great Fort, I found this one light and refreshing.  A sure “panty dropper” for the ladies as it’s a surprising 11%.  Not sure if aging does much for this one though.  B+

120 Minute IPA and World Wide Stout (2007)–Though I’d had both ABV-asskickers (21% and 18% respectively) bottled numerous times, I’d had neither of these on tap before and was most excited.  120 Minute is a masterpiece any way you slice it, a true Hall of Famer in the beer world, and it was a pleasure to finally try it on tap where the hops come through more and make it far less the de facto barleywine it usually is.  As for World Wide Stout, I’ve always liked, but never loved “young” bottles of it.  Found them lacking in complexity and far too boozy.  But aged for a few years and on tap, this stout becomes a masterpiece that can surely be mentioned in the same breath as the other imperial stout big dogs of America.  both A+

Halfway through my World Wide Stout, the beer geeks started squealing like little girls do when a Jonas Brother enters the room, signaling to me that Sam had clearly arrived.  Perchance, I happened to be the first person he talked to and the most congenial man chatted it up with me for a good five minutes about his upcoming Life and Life collaboration with Sierra Nevada.  He was very excited for its November release, as am I.

(I was also excited to meet a surprise guest–pictured above with me and Sam–Achouffe brewmaster Chris Bauweraerts.)

After Sam moved on to placate some other geeks and avoid getting lice from their unkempt, greasy beards, someone remarked, “Wow, he was really nice.”

Uh, yeah, he makes and drinks beer for a living.  I’d be the nicest motherfucker in the world too if that was my life.

By now the scene at Blind Tiger was getting unruly with pencil-necked, raggedy-armed men gushing over Sam and making the line to get a drink at the bar at least a half-dozen deep on all sides, so I left to hotfoot it thirty-some-odd blocks north to Rattle ‘N’ Hum to meet beer legend #2.

After four straight double-digit-ABV Dogfish Head beer, I probably needed a respite, but audentes fortuna iuvat, fortune favors the bold, and any how, low ABV beers kinda suck.

Rattle ‘N’ Hum had a full slate of Brooklyn brews and I was stunned to see one I’d never had before, a DIPA, Brooklyn Blast Pale Ale, available on both cask and tap.  I opted to try both.  You know, science experiment reasons.

And wow, what a great beer!  An intense smell of pine and grapefruit, a wet and juicy hops taste with just a tad more sweetness on cask than tap.  Complex with just the right blend of maltiness and bitterness.  This might be the most “West Coast”-style IPA I’ve found on the East Coast as most of our DIPAs tend to gravitate more toward the malty sweet barleywine variety (see:  Southern Tier Unearthly or Dogfish Head 90 Minute, both divine though, don’t get me wrong).

I ask, how is Blast not more “famous”?  It certainly deserves mention in the same breath with not simply the east coast’s best DIPAs, but all of America’s.  I sure wish this was a more common find in these here parts for it is truly superb.  Either on tap or cask, and I don’t typically love cask IPAs mind you, I could drink it all fucking day long.  A

Relaxed and bordering on post-coital after downing two separate Blasts, I was excited to see Garrett in the house and made my way over to shake his hand and cajole him into a “Can we smile big and pretend we like and know each other?” picture.  He kindly obliged.

He also gave me the scoop on his new bacon beer (none of us hoi polloi are ever gonna get to try it) and his upcoming $350 pairing dinner at Per Se (none of us hoi polloi could ever possibly afford it) before I had to be escorted away by security so that he could get back to enjoying a slider.  (Garrett Oliver eats sliders?!?!?!)

Besides meeting Garrett, though, I had come to Rattle ‘N’ Hum with one other major goal in mind, having one of the world’s first tastes of his new Manhattan Project, a beer still of this second without even a single review on Beer Advocate.

Lately Garrett has become obsessed with using his Brewmasters Reserve series to make experimental beers that taste like other, atypical to beer, things.  And, with the Manhattan being his favorite cocktail, he was curious if he could make a beer that tastes like that amazing concoction.  It’s by far my favorite cocktail too so this was right in my wheelhouse and I expected to make a mess in my pants over it.

A rye beer aged in Rittenhouse Rye whiskey barrels and then infused with botanicals from sweet vermouth and bitters, this beer smells spot-on like a glorious Manhattan and the taste is right there too.  It is a most interesting execution, something maybe only Garrett could come up with.  Really boozy, you can feel the rye.  A little too sweet in a cough-drop type way, but that’s a minor quibble.  A slightly uneven blending, with a tart cherry finish, this isn’t quite as seamlessly smooth as I’d like and I’d probably enjoy a thicker mouthfeel.  Or, maybe, I’d just enjoy a straight up 100 proof Manhattan.  Naw, this beer is great, a truly sui generis offering.  I hope it’s around for a long time to come.  It’s a beer I’m gonna remember for a long time.

A-

In late-1800’s New York City, the top spectator sport at bars was dog versus rat fights.  This replaced the previously most popular sport, a man in heavy work boots trying to stomp out one-hundred rats as fast as he could.  Which, replaced the previously most enjoyed sport:  bear wrestling.  Yeah, the New York bar scene was pretty goddamn badass a way back when I have learned from reading Luc Sante’s essential compendium of New York vice “Low Life.”

Back then, many dive bars–known as “blind tigers” or “blind pigs”–didn’t even have glassware.  Men were issued a rubber tube which they then connected to a keg and from which they were allowed to drink as long as they could on one single breath of air for each beer purchase.  Predictably, always-savvy New Yorkers developed incredible lung capacities and devised ways to cheat the system.

But it wasn’t all days of wine and roses back then.  For one, most dives, usually located on the outskirts of Manhattan island, had actual trap doors in the floors in which deceased customers could be kicked into the East or Hudson Rivers.  Besides murder and suicide, frequent in-bar deaths might have been due to the fact that this rubber-tubed-sucked beer was abject swill, laced with all sorts of poisons that quickly got you drunk…and then killed you.  Or, at least blinded you.  Not exactly good for repeat business.

And the only women hanging at these dives were of the sporting kind.  Hookers who would, at best, fuck you full of STDs.  At worst, slip you a “Mickey Finn” when you weren’t looking and steal your wallet as you lay prone in an alley.  OK, so I guess I’ll quit complaining about the annoyingly shrill JAP habitues and hipster too-cool chicks so often surrounding me at the bar.

Suffice to say, craft beer was nowhere to be had, and, begrudgingly, I guess that means I have to admit that the 2009 New York City bar scene is better than the 1889.  Even if all we have to do at bars nowadays is play darts and “Big Buck Hunter.”  Not exactly a stomping-on-rats level of in-house excitement, but surely less messy and grizzly.

This past week I had the fortune to drink six beers that could of and would have never existed back in seedy 19th Century New York.  Six beers from Boulevard’s esteemed Smokestack line.  Three of which I’d had before and three of which added new notches to my brew bedpost.

Double-Wide India Pale Ale

8.5% ABV from a 750 mL  (1st in the series)

Double-Wide emits the always popular sack of weed aroma we’ve come to know and love in many West Coast IPAs.  A nice bitterness and packed with sour citrus.  Boozy yet drinkable, I was very impressed and if I was an east coast elitist man I would add that I was very impressed that this great IPA came out of Kansas City.  A part of me, though, wonders if this is an out of date bottle from when the initial Smokestack offerings were first released nearly a year ago.  That seems impossible because, damn, this beer was fresh and juicy.  Well worth locating.

A-

Long Strange Tripel

9% ABV from a 750 mL (2nd in the series)

This is a very respectable, damn good American tripel.  And, tasting it side-by-side with maybe my favorite tripel in the world, La Fin du Monde, Long Strange was outshined (outshone?) sure, but by not that great of magnitude surprisingly.  It’s incredibly yeasty with just a hint of nice sweetness.  Bubbly, fluffy, and pillowy, I really enjoyed putting this back in the mid-day patio sun, and was shocked at how easily it went down.

A-/B+

Two Jokers Double-Wit

8% ABV from a 750 mL (8th in the series)

Dangerously, shockingly, drinkable for such a high ABV beer, but then again, witbiers are so fucking lame, maybe I was just trying to get it down, slurping it down like flat apple juice, so I could move onto something more interesting.  You know, Two Jokers ain’t terrible–and I love the label–but it’s just not that interesting.  Packed with cardamom, coriander, orange peel, lavender, and the always sexy grains of paradise, I will admit this was a great beer to begin a long day of college football watching with.

B

I have now had six of the nine Smokestack releases* and here are my current overall rankings:

1.  Saison-Brett (an absolutely epic beer well deserving of all its acclaim)
2.  Double-Wide
3.  The Sixth Glass
4.  Long Strange Tripel
5.  Saison
6.  Two Jokers

*I have still yet to locate bottles of the 5th and 6th Smokestack releases, their Imperial Stout and BBQ (Bourbon Barrel Quad), nor of the newest release, the 9th in the series, the Seeyoulator Doppelbock.  I would kill to try any and all of them, especially the BBQ.  Hit me up at theviceblog [at] gmail.com if you can make a little Jewish boy’s dreams come true.

9% ABV on tap

Aaron is Celebrity Spotted.  (Almost.)

The cute blond walked into the bar and instantly I knew that I knew her.  But how?  From college?  Naw, she was too young.  Had I drunkenly hooked up with her in my past?  No, too good-looking to forget.  Then what?  She sat five barstools down from my friends and then it hit me.

Nearly a year ago a girl had discovered my blog and sent me a nice e-mail.  We wrote back and forth a bit, semi-flirtatiously in that way people who have no chance of having anything ever happen write–she lived several state away–but we mainly focused on beer talk.  And oh boy did she know a lot about beer.  Far more than me.  Eventually, we friended each other on Facebook and I saw that not only was she smart, she was damn cute too.  Cute for a normal girl in society, smoking hot for a beer geek.  Alas, we eventually ran out of things to talk about and, thus, quit talking.  And now she was sitting ten feet from me.

There are obviously bad things about being a celebrity but the good far outweigh them.  Getting to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game.  Instantly turning women 500% more promiscuous.  And having people walk up to you and go, “Say, aren’t you…HIM?!”  As a shameless narcissist, I have always dreamed about having someone come up to me and go, “Say, aren’t you Aaron Goldfarb?!”  Now was my chance for this to finally happen.  But she just wasn’t looking my way yet.

I didn’t tell my two buddies what was occurring, wanting to blow their minds while acting super-smug if and when she finally approached me.  Their eyes agog as I responded, “Why yes, yes I am Aaron Goldfarb, but hey, keep it down, don’t want to get mobbed.  Here, I’ll autograph this cocktail napkin for you.”

But she still wasn’t looking my way.  I began jutting my head out well over the bar so she could see my face in all its glory.  Didn’t work.  I started laughing uproariously loud at my friend’s jokes.  Didn’t phase her.  I began inserting my name into my own conversations.  (”So then the guy looks at my driver’s license and goes, ‘AARON GOLDFARB?  That’s funny, my best friend’s name is AARON GOLDFARB, who would think there’s another AARON GOLDFARB in this city?”)  She remained unflappable.  My friends must have thought I was losing my marbles with my atypical behavior.

I began to pull out the big guns.  I loudly inquired about incredibly obscure beers on the bottle menu, even asking what vintage they were.  I made pedantic explanations of style to my layman drinking friends (”…and that is what differentiates a saison from a biere de garde…”)  Started throwing out all sorts of arcane beer argot (”I expected this one to be more phenolic and less diacetyl…”)  Quizzed the bartenders on the taps (”And what’s the original gravity of that?  Say, is that on nitro or cask?”  I began drinking my beers like a beer geek loser par excellence, histrionically swirling my glass, sniffing it with a aggressiveness more akin to a coke fiend, and slurping my sips with my tongue in order that it tickle each and every one of my taste buds.

Didn’t matter.  I got nuttin’.  She totally ignored me.  I thought about going up to her, tapping her on the shoulder, “Hey, aren’t you a fan of mine?!”  But I figured that was uncouth.  Not to mention it kinda negates the coolness factor if you celebrity spot yourself.

Eventually she left and I was left with just my beer.  Bear Republic’s Racer X.  A draught-only offering I’d been wanting to try for quite awhile.  This is a bit of an oddball of an IPA.  Actually smells like a barleywine, while tasting like a DIPA.  Bitter and slick with an intense sweetness on the back end, I greatly enjoyed this beer.  And, following it up with Bear Republic’s 7% Rebellion IPA–I found it very bitter and not complex at all, a little too light and watered-down as well (B)–I got a good comparison for how very good it is.  The Racer X absolutely dwarfed Rebellion.  Still, I’m not sure if it’s a Top 100 beer in the world–and I’m pretty sure I prefer the smells-like-a-dimebag hoppy freshness of yet another Bear Republic IPA, Hop Rod Rye–but this is a very good brew nonetheless.

A-

The Indiscreet Charm of Brooklyn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I shall return to Brooklyn again.

A+

9.8% bottled

Hat tip to reader Kyle who pointed me toward this I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-satire Q&A from the increasingly more irrelevant, growing grayer and grayer old lady, the inglorious New York Times.  This comes from the “Career Couch” section where some moron whose only job it is to answer dumb questions dumbly, claims expertise in the wild world of employment.  In this week’s installment, aforementioned moron Eilene Zimmerman tackles the terrifying world of drinking (not-exactly) on the job in the hiiiiiilariously titled:

Are Three Martinis Three Too Many?

Q. You are new to the corporate world and not sure what to do at business functions or after-hour gatherings where alcohol is present. If everyone else is drinking — including your boss — should you drink, too?

Eilene says (and seriously you GOT to see the pathetic artwork with this one):

A. For those new to the professional world, the line between a work event and a social event is often unclear. You may see all the trappings of a party — food, music, even dancing — but any gathering where colleagues are present is business and you should stay sharp and avoid alcohol, said Jody Queen-Hubert, executive director of cooperative education and career services at Pace University in New York.

“Don’t be fooled,” she warned. “You are always being scrutinized by colleagues, so professionalism at all times is a must.”

Cy Wakeman, president of a human resources consulting firm bearing her name in Sioux City, Iowa, says that when it comes to drinking with colleagues, “the risk is very high that something negative will come out of it.” She says that it’s acceptable to have one or two drinks but that it is best to stop there.

“I even advise staying out of photographs with groups of people drinking,” she added, “because it could wind up online somewhere, like Facebook.”

Everyone you interact with while drinking has the potential to affect your career. A colleague today may be your manager six months from now and will likely recall any indecorous behavior.

If colleagues regularly have drinks after work, order what everyone else is having but sip it slowly. “Make it last all night,” Ms. Queen-Hubert said. “Holding a drink without drinking is a way to feel like part of the crowd without compromising your judgment.”

Indecorous, ha!

First of all, the only advice I’m going to taking from a hyphenated-named Pace prof is where the closest subway stop is to get the fuck out of the gross downtown-spooning-with-the-Brooklyn-Bridge-area of Manhattan and to a more happening part of town.

“Don’t be fooled,” I note.  “In any job I’ve had I’ve scrutinized my nerdy coworkers and made fun of my lame colleagues that tried to exhibit such nebulous traits as ‘decorum’ and ‘professionalism’ versus absolutely punishing a free open bar and trying to make inroads with the new intern.”

Meanwhile, can you believe the glorious Times has to fucking call some rube all the way out in Sioux City just to get a pull quote?!  I mean, seriously, Cy, I understand why you’ve come to think it risky to drink with colleagues.  In fact, I would be on my best behavior if I was drinking near you.  And I most certainly would not want pictures of me to appear on Facebook if I was seen drinking with some hag that looked like you.*  Personally, in the Cys I’d rather fuck category, Young wins over you.  I’d rather drink with Cy Young too.

Revel in the glorious puffery of our Cy who self-describes herself as “a dynamic, well-respected national keynote speaker, workshop facilitator and trainer.”  Meanwhile, she looks like she just swallowed a fart.  Or maybe she’s just mad that I have more Twitter followers than her.

Seriously, how boring of fucking evening would one have if they had to go out drinking at the Sioux City, Iowa Applebee’s bar with Cy and with Ms. Queen-Hubert whose just trying her darn tootingest to fit in by HOLDING HER DRINK WITHOUT DRINKING IT.  FOR THE ENTIRE NIGHT!

Wow.  Is that really who you want to work with?!  An adult who pretends to drink in order to fit in but is too chickenshit to actually drink and have fun?   Christ on the cross.

Q. How do you politely decline to drink, especially if others are urging you to have one?

A. A simple “no, thanks” should suffice, said Debra Benton, a career coach and author of “C.E.O. Material: How to Be a Leader in Any Organization.” If everyone in your group is ordering a drink, get a soda or a tonic and lime.

You don’t need to make excuses, she said, or give a reason that reveals personal information, like “I’m on medication.” You can, however, give the reason if it is less personal — you will be driving, for example, or you need to finish some work when you get home.

If you are at a dinner where bottles of wine are ordered, you don’t want to protest because it will bring unwanted attention, said Debra Condren, a business psychologist and president of Manhattan Business Coaching. “You want to fit in, and that might mean getting a glass of wine and having a few sips or just letting it sit there,” she said.

Cy, Ms. Queen-Hubert, and now Debras Benton and Condren. My lord, these bitches are so boring, such wet blankets, they make Abigail Van Buren and Ann Landers seem like Dorothy Parker and Tallulah Bankhead.

Methinks these four were not exactly cool growing up what with all their concerned talk about “fitting in.”  I’ll tell you what ladies, and I may not have any made up titles behind my name like “career coach” or be the president of a phony institute, but the best way to fit in is to fucking relax and not act so goddamn inhibited.

Funny though, usually my friends, when they say at the bar, “I’m on medication,” aren’t making an excuse to turn down a drink, they’re just preparing me for the shit show that’s about to follow from them mixing Vicadin with Jameson.

As for me, I only decline a drink if it’s something real shitty and I feel like being a snob.  I’d never turn down something delicious from the Michigan greats Founders though.  I was thus excited to try their Old Ale, Curmudgeon.  Old Ale is a style I’ve recently gotten into, enjoying it’s somewhat suped up barley wine qualities.  This is a nice example too.  Sweet and flavorful with a slight bitterness, malty and sugary, boozy but not too hot, and fairly drinkable.  Another enjoyable effort from Founders.

Q. When you attend business-related social events with more-senior colleagues, they always seem to be holding a drink. Could your refusal to do the same draw attention to your youth and inexperience?

A. In some corporate cultures, having a scotch or bourbon is a way to build relationships, a way to take part, Ms. Condren said. “If you are at a high-profile event and all the executives are having a drink, you may feel you need one to be part of the club,” she noted. “That being said, you can still drink very little of it or have one drink and then switch to water.”

It’s essential, however, to know your limits. If you’re inexperienced in such situations and your clients or bosses are throwing back Johnnie Walkers, you can’t follow their lead, Ms. Condren said. If you try to keep up, you will likely drink too much and act unprofessionally — definitely drawing attention to your youth and inexperience.

Here’s some advice:  quit being such a fucking pussy and learn to drink.  What exactly were you guys doing at college?!

Q. If you wound up overdoing it at a company event, what’s the best way to deal with it the next day at the office?

A. If you offended or insulted anyone you must make amends, but do so privately. Making an apology to the entire office or department is unnecessary and can seem self-indulgent, Ms. Wakeman said. “Talk to people individually, saying you drank too much and learned a valuable lesson and that it will never happen again,” she said. “And remember that if it does happen again, you will lose your credibility.”

I usually just send a mass cc’ed e-mail:  “If you’re wondering…yes, yes I did.  And Cy gives terrible head.  Maybe if she drank more she’d be a little looser.  Ha, no pun intended.  LOLOLOLOLOL!”

If some dweeb came to me and said they learned a “valuable lesson” from the previous night’s tying one on, I’d immediately have them transferred to the Vice Blog’s Sioux City branch.

Q. Is it acceptable to call in sick if you are suffering from a bad hangover?

A. No. Even if the culture is one of “playing hard,” there is also an expectation you will work hard the next day, Ms. Queen-Hubert said. Use your trusted hangover remedy and soldier on.

If you are too sick to get out of bed, you will have to meet with your boss when you return and find some way to make restitution, said Dallas Teague Snider, founder of Make Your Best Impression, a business etiquette consulting firm in Birmingham, Ala. “Offer to work an extra day or take your sick day as unpaid vacation instead,” she said. “Your boss may say you don’t need to do that, but you should still offer.”

Absolutely!  No one gets “sick” any more.  Hangovers are the NEW sick.  And if you’ve unfortunately blown threw all your vacation and sick days already, start your day with a mimosa to turn the old engine over, a liquid lunch to keep you going.

(Seriously, the Times quoted a “business etiquette” firm out of Alabama?!  OK, they have GOT to be fucking with us, right?  Right?  Doesn’t business etiquette in Alabama start and end with wearing your best golf shirt to important meetings and making sure there’s no Carl’s Jr. sauce stuck in your mustache before speaking to clients?)

Q. How can you tell if you have a drinking problem that needs to be addressed?

A. If you can relax at professional events only by having a drink, that could indicate a problem, Ms. Condren said. “If you are embarrassing yourself or sometimes don’t remember your behavior,” she said, “it’s a good idea to seek professional counseling.”

You may be using alcohol as a crutch when navigating uncomfortable social situations, Ms. Wakeman said. Rather than relying on alcohol, find a co-worker who is naturally adept at mingling and ask if he or she could help you develop those social skills, too.

What does it say about me if I need alcohol as a “crutch” to read this column and am now using it as an even bigger crutch to help write these acerbic barbs?

Seriously, this section of the Times shouldn’t be called the “Career Couch,” it should be called, “How to be a Big Sniveling Vagina that Will Never Get Invited to Work Happy Hours.”  Well done, NYT!

E-mail: ccouch@nytimes.com

I’m just drunk enough right now to think that a good idea.

A-

*I love how Cy has already added this very article to her “In the Media” section of her ugly website.  Prestigious!  Maybe she’ll have more Twitter followers than me soon!