46 - Breckenridge Brewery Pandora's Bock

This is a nice bock. Sort of like a red ale with some bitter tang. It is a tangy beer.

Breckenridge don't have anything special here. There is no magic in this bottle, and definitely no unspeakable evils like the mythical Pandora's Box. Let's face it, it is just another bock. Not as bad as the crap one with the goat wearing glasses but not as good as another one that I wish I could remember.

It might be because I have been drinking all night, but this one has made me lose feeling in my tongue. If you have this same reaction please let me know. But I am guessing that I'm just drunk.

I like it, Ill finish it. I just sort of get bored with bocks after 5 sips, I think.

I give it 4 out of 5 bored sips.

40 - Franziskaner Weissbier

I am not sure what I expected with this beer, but it was not a golden, thick, cloudy wheat beer. Maybe it's because I took a beer vacation and after a few weeks drinking pitchers of Yuengling I am just excited for high class beer again. But I liked this beer. I liked its color, I loved how cloudy it was, it tasted great and I am genuinely glad that I can find it around in most coolers in town.

I found the bottle sort of misleading. I assume something that understated would not have the bright flavor or thickness. Good beer.

I give it 3 out of 4 surprise Franciscan Monks.

39 - Saranac Imperial Stout

I am usually metsa metsa about Saranac. I think they are good, but that's about it. But that was until I had this Imperial Stout. I love Imperial Stouts in general, but I liked this beer quite a bit. This is the best beer Saranac makes. They might consider only making this beer going forward.

It was smooth and sweet and dark as hell. It had a great head and a nice thickness.

I give it 3.8 out of 4 Saranacs.

38 - Margaritaville Brewing Co. Landshark Lager

It's hard to say where to begin with a Jimmy Buffet themed beer. The Landshark, I suppose is crafted to go perfectly with your Cheeseburger in Paradise. It is golden yellow in an almost unnatural sort of way. It is like a Corona, but it's better than a Corona.

But unlike the Corona, evertime you take a sip of this beer, you think "Jimmy Buffett?". This effect is so strong that the taste just washes over you and its like a 70s corporate island themed rock concert in your mouth.

It is just like a Corona. Only a little better than a Corona.

I give it 2.5 out of 4 Corona. I just am not a big Corona fan, but if you like Corona, or if you love Corona then I would give it 4.2 out of 4 Coronas.

37 - Appalachian Brewing Co. Trail Blaze Organic Brown Ale

This looks like a Pepsi, and takes me back to when I used to chug a Pepsi (That's right I am being the person who says he doesn't drink soda, cause you know what that means.) But this is good and it makes you want to chug a lug. Not to miss the sweetness or the tangyness. But because it has no bad aftertaste to hold you back.

Did I mention it was organic? That's right when I am not drinking soda, I like to drink things that were made with no pesticides or genetic modification. Am I saving the world? No. I am getting drunk, but in a more "sustainable" way than you. Purchasing this Appalachian Brewing Co. number has added me to the romanticized simple folk of the mountains who I imagine drink fantastic homebrew that is as good as this and makes me want to live in my elitist fantasy mountains.

I love this beer. And I think I mentioned before that I am sort of on the fence about brown ales. I think because my first "fancy" beer was a newcastle and then I got over it. But the love is back.

I could drink 5 of these. I give this 4 out of 4.4 liberal elites.

36 - Belhaven Scottish Ale

I loved this beer. I was all ready to hate it cause of its old timey, simple, old world imagery on the bottle, but this reddish ale is tasty and instantly became one of my favorite beers. Which is unfortunate because until I got it at Six and Save, I had never seen it before, so it is not easily available.

But screw it. This is beer has a great malty, hoppy balance. It has the perfect weight and I could drink it all day.

I may just be in a great mood cause I am going to renew my passport, but I am giving this my first 5 out of 5 welcomed surprises. Awesome.

34 - East End Brewery Session #19 Black Sumthin'

So this was the growler we picked up from the highly secret East End Brewery brewery. Sort of the illegal back room abortion of beer pick-up locations. A nice little set up that does not deserve being likened to a botched abortion.

The Black Sumpthin' is our official beer of the Superbowl game. We brought it to Steve and Ivy's superbowl party. It is good. Similar to the East End Snowmelt, but with a little more flavor and a nice aftertaste...I'll take their word because it works "toasty".

I enjoyed the beer. Not as much as the one sports game I watch annually. But the beer was better than the overhyped commericals but not as good as the all-kitten halftime show on the Animal Planet "Puppy Bowl".

I give it 3 out of 5 cute toasty puppies in a basket playing with fleece blankets.

33 - Penn Brewery Oktoberfest 2008

Okay so this was a big bottle that I drank by myself while I mulled around the kitchen listening to CDs and doing the dishes. Those moments are pretty high on my list of favorite things, so I am going to give this a higher than it deserves rating.

I think Penn is a pretty blah blah unremarkable beer. But shit man, when you are listening to Pavement and playing with dirty dishes, a big bottle of Penn Oktoberfest is a joy, even months after Oktober is awesome. In fact the bigger bottle makes it taste even better.

I give it 3 out of 5 dirty dishes. After the first glass you will think it tastes fine.

32 - Bells Best Brown Ale

Have faith beer bloggers. It has been cold outside, but we have been drinking. Unfortunately we handwrite our blogs before we add it to the internet...and our pens froze. Kelly has three or four beers that she has to travel back into the tastebuds of time to share.

And after my last blog where I bitched about the price of beer, I went out drinking with a friend. Four hours later I got talked into buying the most expensive beer of my life. It was a ten dollar single bottle that even drunk, I knew made me a sucker. But that beer is for another day. A special expensive sucker beer day.

Today is the Bell's Best Brown Ale, which should be good for me cause I am not a brown ale drinker and need encouragement to actually drink one.

Well this might be the best brown ale I have ever had. It has a great taste that is a little sweet and has a great consistency and the after taste is basically more of the same great taste. Not sure if that still counts as an aftertaste. More of an extended taste. It looks nice with the nice dark reddish brown color that I can't get over and a smoothness that only comes in the best beers.

My latest scale has been how many of these I think I could drink in a row before feeling sick of it...which is probably 4 and maybe five. Yep I am all about quantity of quality. I am feeling the depth of winter sinking in and this is my favorite drinking season. Drinking a beer everyday had been throwing off my normal drinking patterns, but lately it has been back with a vengeance. Probably cause the groundhog saw his shadow.

Bells!

31 - Victory Hop Wallop

Okay so I decided to complete my recent Victory trilogy. I recently had the Storm King and another one that I forget, but enjoyed both, even if I can't remember the name.

So, despite me burying the lead, just like the other Victory beers, I liked the Hop Wallop. Not as much as I anticipated, but I am not sure whether I had hyped myself up or whether it is just an above average IPA. I recently became a hop lover so my standards for hop are a bit more stringent than they used to be.

But I like it and I will get another three Victory beers for the next round and review them as prequels that I will consider not as good as the first three because I gave it enough time to become nostalgic and jaded from digital effects.

Victory: A New Hop

I give it 5 out of 8 lame cryptic references.

29 - Victory Donnybrook Stout

An Irish Dry Stout. We had this at D's Six Pax and Hot Dogz. I am not sure if this is something I am just noticing or if the price of beer has ballooned in the past two weeks. I find myself doing double-takes at price lists more in the past two weeks for the first time in years when I lived in the "big city." Am I just suddenly price sensitive because of the economic panic? I personally get sort of wigged out when a beer costs more than 4.50, regardless of the economic or social climate. And if it isn't being transported accross an ocean, and isn't even crossing state lines, it is stupid to have such high prices....I am going to make a special "Overpriced Watering Holes" post where I cant ramble...but not now.

This beer was expensive, but it was good. It was dry and had a great smooth taste. Great head. Good flavor. It was dark but not sweet but it was extremely thick. It was possibly the thickest beer I have ever drank. More of a solid than a liquid.

I haven't had a Guinness in years but I will have to get some on tap soon to compare to this, cause this beer was good and I can't really remember a Guinness tasting as good as this Donnybrook.

Donnybrook, Dublin, Ireland, site of the original Donnybrook Fair, which earned a reputation for drunkenness and disorder. But this beer is not very strong and getting wasted and starting a fight was probably the last thing this beer inspired me to do at D's Six Pax. It did inspire me to start rationing my beer money for awhile. I can't afford to drink out for awhile. Luckily we just restocked our supply.

I give this beer 4.2 out of 5 shelalees. Or 8 out of 10 screaming banshees. Or 18 out of 20 Portaits of Artists and Young Men.

28 - Unibroue Ephemere Apple

First off, excuse moi for not adding the appropriate accent grave and egu with this posting title. I just can't figure out how to access those letters with this computer. But since I took 4 years of French in school, I probably should figure it out, or I've wasted my life.

This is a tasty Ale. Kel liked it a few ticks more than me, so maybe she should be writing this, but shoot, I am on a roll. It is an apple and coriander beer, but it is not a cider. It is definitely an ale but has a strong apple presence and is very sweet. I only had half of a bottle on Thursday night (Guy's night). So here it is on Guys night and I am hanging out with a girl and drinking an extremely sweet green apple and coriander beer with a picture of a fairy on it. The folks at Unibroue up in Montreal make extraordinary beers. They have thier own style that is not really Belgian, but it has the floral and champaign quality of Belgian beer, but definitely not as we in central North America do it. It is sort of like a pixie cocktail, like a magical lord of the rings challice beer. It's good, but more like desert than a meal if you know what I mean.

I give it 3.5 magical woodland elfin spirits out of 4 mystical trunk trolls.

Side note: If you can find it, go and get Troegs Nugget Nectar before it runs out for the whole year. We bought a case yesterday. Also good luck to the Steelers and the other sports team that they are playing at the Supergame Sunday.

26 - Stoudt's Scarlet Lady ESB

After the jingoistic American Pale Ale which I gave some sort of half-hearted review, I decided to give them another shot with something I am equally as half-hearted about, redheads.

I like the red color of the beer, and almost always like red beers. On a side note, when I don't shave I actually grow a read beard. Anyways, this beer is good. It has a nice flavor, with a little complexity and a little zing. I won't say like a redhead, even though they are stereotypically characterized as zesty and wild women. Men with red hair just seem mean.

Back on track. This beer is an ESB. This stands for either Extra Special Bitter or Extra Strong Bitter. Special is vague and unreliable. But strong could work. I am just going throw some words out there on this one: Thirst quenching, sweet and fruity, bitter, tangy but not super tangy...it's good. It is like drinking an alchoholic sort of BBQ sauce...but only in spirit, not necessarily by taste. Like as if this beer would be good whenever and adds some flavor to what you are doing like some BBQ sauce. It would cover up the last bland beer you had.

On a side note, Kelly said she wasn't into it because she is having her "." which I think is outrageous. For the record she is not a redhead.

I give it 3.5 out of 4 wild, outrageous, stereotypical redheads.

23 - Stoudt's American Pale Ale

This is a "nice" beer. It is a very drinkable and sort of jingoistic beer with a big ole boot up ass American flag decal. But in reality it is actually just a very standard IPA. Perhaps they confused India Pale Ale with Native American Pale Ale and copied it. But if you like the IPA then you will like this. It is very agreeable and easy to drink, that is if you like to drink a beer with some hops.

Nothing creatively amazing, just your "run of the mill" Native American Pale Ale.

I give it 2.8 of 4 whooping native Americans around a wagon circle.

20 - Dogfish Head Chicory Stout

Chicory AKA curly endive AKA cornflower AKA those little blue flowers are the basis of this Dogfish Head creation. Dogfish Head AKA DFH seems to be the Frankenstein of beermakers with strange creations (Note that I am noting Frankenstein and the maker and not the monster which is AKA Frankenstein's Monster).

While I'll believe them that cornflower is present and accounted for, the real mover and shaker in this brewsky AKA beer is the Mexican coffee that they slide into the description in lighter text. I do not doubt this clever marketing coup will lead most beer drinking slobs AKA consumers to mistakenly believe chicory is spicy and assume that chicory should be AKA chipotle. But we may never know what Chicory tastes like. But the bottom line is that this beer is exactly as advertised "smooth, dark, rich," and has the slight coffee kick that makes it an interesting and complex flavored stout without any of the lazy syrupy sludge that is usually AKA stout.

I give this 3.3 out of a possible 4 potentially tasty chicory pedals. (P.S. This beer is dedicated to Senor Douchebag AKA I am not the president and guess what butthead neither are you.)

18 - Ecaussinnes Ultrablonde

Oh sweet sweet Belgian beer! There is a moment when I am taking the first solid sip of a new beer and I look down the glass at the beverage flowing like an awesome tidal wave. And as the smooth sweet malty, gently hoppy taste hits my "buds" I notice that there are lots of little "flavor floaties" swimming around my beer, like tasty little colonies of sweetness. I love this moment, when I see some scientific residue hanging out in my brew. This beer is a Belgian White...which for me always means the lightest and most easily drinkable beer available. It's like Gatorade for my system and I want to run down the street infused with Electrolytes.

With that said, I do not beleive there are any Electrolytes in this beer, but it is refreshing and tasty and the worst part is that I am splitting an 11.2 oz bottle which is like two and a half sips.

I also have to "flame" my beer drinking Pittsburgh counterpart who says "This sucks. It tastes like the Beglian Shlitz." If we hadn't invested so much in our upcoming nuptial I would put her out on the street to fend for herself with only our our new dog to protect who. That would be the new dog who bit me yesterday and is walking on thin ice with me.

I give this beer 3 out of 4 floating tasty colonies of Electrolyte scientific specimens.

15 - Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat

Unlike last nights beer, I don't like this beer and can't explain why I don't like it. It is like the evil twin. It has a faint blackberry aroma. But it has a Bud Lite aftertaste. So where is the middle ground here?

It is a nice light beer with a sweet sudsy Bud Lite watery body. Maybe it's just too cold...

Okay, so I let it get warmer and it just loses any of the taste that it used to have. Drink it ice cold on a hot day, at 11:30 on your lunch break from doing construction work. Or maybe put a little blackberry on the edge of your glass and just refer to it as your Blackberry spritzer.

It gets 2 out of 4 flavorless blackberry bunches.

14 - Blue Point Brewing Company Toasted Lager

Maybe I've been so bitter and jaded with all of these medicore beers, and I am looking for hope and change...but I really liked the Toasted Lager. Its like drinking a the Honey Bunches of Oats cereal. Kelly wasn't thrilled with it and didn't finish hers...which bums me out, cause I would've finished it. I am not sure why I liked it so much cause I have no words to explain it...

I give this 3 out of 4 honey bunches of oats.

And I gave extra special hugs and hangout time with our two dogs. We are all watching movies and eating cheese. Except for Bjarni, cause he smells bad enough without needing to eat cheese.

13 - Otter Creek Rasberry Brown Winter Ale

We drank this Raspberry Brown Ale and I never realized that Raspberry had a 'P' in it. Unreal. Anyhoo this was good. Good like a Seagrams wine cooler. Good like a rasPberry ginger ale...it had that "Kshhht....Ahhhh" soda TV Ad refreshment bite to it. So it was like a beer but more like a soda. It wasn't syrupy or sweet, but it had a carbonation and was very light.

It didn't have the heffenweisen or wheaty taste that comes with most fruit beers. It also didn't have the fruitcake juice winter ale syndrome. It was a rasPberry flavored beer with a hint of nut brown bite.

I would drink it again...when I feel like drinking a berry beer which is almost never.

More than 2 but maybe not quite 3 out of 4 whatevers.

11 - Saranac Black Diamond Bock Dark Lager

Before I get balls deep into this review...The banana beer from last night was not banana-y at all. I was straining my taste buds to even catch the faint inflection. I mark yesterday as the beginning of my quest for a banana beer, and I will make my own if I haven't had one by the end of this year.

Anyways the Saranac Black Diamond Bock Dark Lager is crisp, tasty beer with the zesty zing of the Bock...I chose the bock because I wanted some bock perspective. And out of the past few bocks this one is solid...maybe a bock can only get so good, cause this seems better than some, but not much different. Kelly notes hints of pepper...like the banana, I do not catch this hint. I need something with some flavor and this one tastes good and definitely drinkable. But nothing more vibrant or exciting...just solid....wait for it...solid as a bock.

While I am hoping for a beautiful banana beer in 09, I am also feeling destined to find a bock that transcends the typical run of the mill everyday hard working bock.

Sarnac gets the double black diamond out of a possible quadruple chair ski lift.