30 - Southern Tier Phin & Matt's Extrodinary Ale

Here is another American Pale Ale. I think I might've had this one once before but it is a vague memory so I am claiming ignorance and reviewing it like it just happened. Because it did just happen.

This was a good beer. My only problem with this beer is the "extraordinary" claim. I am big on appropriate word usage, even if it is for advertising. And American Pale Ales are by nature not extraordinary regardless of what those two douchebags Phin and Matt say.

Dougebaggery aside, its a nice light beer that goes down smooth. Thanks Southern Tier and sorry about the whole douchebag thing. I'd get this beer again. It is a solid and well balanced beer.

I give it 5 out of 7 you know whats...

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. Midas Touch - Dogfish Head Brewery

I was pretty excited for this beer. We sell it at Lilly Chocolates and I talk it up to almost everyone that is looking at beer because I think it's so interesting.

In the 50's a Penn archiolgoical team discovered a tomb in the region of central Turkey that was the capital of Phrygia, the area where the guy who inspired the King Midas myth lived. So they dug the tomb up and besides finding a guy in a oddly shaped coffin (it looked like a log, or at least was log shaped) they also found one of the oldest sets of drinking vessels ever found. Actually I don't think they were the oldest ever, because they were metal, so obviously there are older ones, but they were important for some reason or another. And in some of the vessels there were the remains of what they were drinking, which I'm almost 100% was indeed the oldest ferment beverage ever found. After the Penn people analyzed, the Dogfish Head folks set off to recreate it and what they ended up with was Midas Touch. Cool, huh? Well I think it's cool, but I'm a nerd.

So the beer has barley, honey, muscat grapes, and saffron it. I was a little afraid that it would be super sweet, but it wasn't. It smelled really great when it was poured and had a nice reddish gold color. None of the flavors knocked you it, they were all pretty subtle, but it definitely had that distinct flavor that mead has. For the record, I do not like mead at all, and so had to try really hard to look past the mead flavor. Once you get past the funky sweet meady flavor, you realize that there isn't that much flavor in your mouth, but it's followed up by a nice bitterness that slides all the way down your throat. I enjoyed this beer more than I have most of the others lately, but at the same time I'm not sure I'd drink it again. Yet again, after drinking my alloted half bottle, I didn't feel sated, but at the same time I had gotten a whole bottle to myself I'm not sure I would have finished it.

But that doesn't mean it was bad. It seems like as I drink a beer every day, I am less likely to want to finish the beers that I'm drinking (and this isn't just the crappy cheap beers). I'm not sure why that is. I certainly don't think that I'm drinking more that I usually do, although it has cut down on my "binge drinking" but I'm also not sure that I'm in the mood for a beer everyday and maybe that is the problem. Oh well. This beer gets 3 gets three intact mumified mythological men and one headless one, which equals 3.75 out of five mummified mytholigcal men.

Also we drank the Dogfish Head Chicory Stout and we agree totally with everything Bill and Kelly said.

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.

27. Helle Hefeweizen - Tucher Breawery

En route to have dinner with our high school English teacher Jordan, Mike and I stopped at Der Braumeister for a beer. Love this place, but sometimes wish their beer selection was better organized. They have beer list which consists of a list and then pages of pictures of bottles and they have a couple coolers full of beer and I'm never sure that everything in the coolers is on the list and it doesn't have prices and they're mostly German so they all have names that I totally butcher when I pronounce them. But it's still good. We finally settled on the Tucher Helle Hefeweizen. Another thing about the beers is that, generally being German beers, they usually come in bottles bigger than your standard 12oz and glasses bigger than a pint. So we each ended up with a 1/2L of beer before we were supposed to go drink margaritas, great. The beer was pretty cloudy as hefeweizens tend to be and had a pretty light flavor. Light, wheaty, with a little spice and coriander. I didn't like it at first, but it grew on me. It was nice and didn't get me as drunk as I expected. Jordan even liked and German beers aren't his favorite. It gets 38 out or 50 beers you have to drink at Der Braumeister to get a free beer stein.

27 - Victory Storm King Imperial Stout

I drank two Storm Kings. The first one I loved and then the second one, I liked. Not sure how much longer this beers diminishing returns will continue. It is an Imperial Stout, which I believe is a Russian style. It is dark as hell and strong...9%. It is sweet but doesn't taste carmelized or sugary sweet some of that chocolate coffee thing...but maybe that is from the dark smoothness. It is dark and black as the night....Dark as the abyss ...of the soul...But unlike souls you can probably only drink two before you done with it.

I give it 3.635 tortured souls writhing in eternal punishment...just kidding there is no such thing as a soul. I give it 3.6 evil owls out of 4.

26. Genesee Cream Ale

Haley thought we were done with the cheap beer, but guess what- Genny's here. On Sunday we bought a dozen pounders- the 16 ounce cans, as opposed to the tallboy's, which are 24 ounces. Those little mini cans have a name that I learned on Sunday, but I can't recall what it was. If it comes to me I'll enlighten you. Back to the beer. I'm going to have to say that this is the best cheap beer we've blogged about, edging out a narrow win over Ballantine. We decided we both like it better than Pabst and it didn't make Haley sick the next day like some of the others have. I was still miserable the next morning, but when you take as much lithium as I do, anything more than 3 beers means you have mad morning sickness. Don't worry though, Haley and I didn't sit around and casually kill 192 ounces of beer all on our own. We had help in the form of Mike and Mitch. We all enjoyed the beer, it's sweet and foamy and smells like crayons. A lot actually. It has a nice sweet finish as opposed to the metallic aftertaste we've been experiencing for the past week. Yes this beer is good. I'm going to say it gets 9 pounders out of twelve. Let me warn you however, drinking this beer may have weird side effects (or it may just be Mike). You see, in the course of the evening Michael drunk dialed his high school english teacher, now we're all meeting her for dinner this evening at Luchita's. That to me is strange. Also, it seemed to fill him with the overwhelming desire to see some titties (though he did admit that he had been horny all week). So we left the comfort of our home and went to Bugsy's. It was great, but I won't get into that too much. What I will say, and this is something that Haley has said before, is that Budweiser is really, surprisingly, good. I really like it. I didn't really feel like paying $6 for it at Bugsy's though. Which is why when we went to Service Industry night (sin night) at Diamond (where we got in free, you know, since we all work at Phoenix coffee) and they were $2 I was real happy. Sunday night was really fun and I would like to thank the boys for all their help in tasting the beer. We skipped our beer last night on account of Der Braumeister closing at 9 and us not wanting to leave the neighborhood to find other beer. We will make it up to you though. I promise.

25. Indian Brown Ale - Dogfish Head Brewery

Ok so this is a make-up beer for Monday. Lets see. I didn't like this beer so much, and I had high hopes for this beer because I actually like brown ales. But alas, I didn't like this one much. It tasted like three parts Bell's Best Brown and one part Leinenkugel's Winter Brown or some shit like that. Had it been more Bells and less Leinenkugel it would have been great. But the sweet rootbeer-y taste ruined the whole beer. Too sweet but also too boring, not very rich. Ok yeah, enough about that beer. Blah and disappointing. 2 out of 5 brown dogs with fish heads

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.

Gonzo Imperial Porter, Flying Dog Brewery

This was a mouthful of a beer. I found it to be very complex, and very delicious and very drinkable. It resembled motor oil, and had a slight hint of a soy sauce flavor. I sensed a little bit of a hard alcohol flavor within in it, almost like there was a trace of tequila, but Bill didn't sense this at all. There was some chocolate going on, some coffee happening, yet all so very smooth at the same time. We did try this one on tap which was a nice bonus. It poured one the most beautiful heads I have ever seen. I don't really have much else to say on this one other than it was very different and very delicious and a refreshing break from the others we've tried recently. We were both very surprised and would order it again.

I would give it a 11 bottles of soy sauce out of a case of 12.

24 - Stone Double Bastard Ale

We went to Smokey Joe's in the southside. Normally I don't go to this area of town which I lovingly named "Douchebag Alley" but Smokey Joe has a great selection of beers on tap. My cubicle neighbor recommended we try the two beers on tap for today. My choice was the Stone "Arrogant Bastard" Double Bastard.

This beer has a whole lotta flavor and was real good. I haven't had a good beer in awhile and this beer was how I like my women, smooth, strong and full of hops. But it is great cause it doesn't have the weird flower bouquet fragrance. I was happy to drink this beautiful looking red brown colored beer. It did get a bit bitter as it got warm, it recommend drinking it quick if you can handle the flavor overload.

We liked it and it was nice drinking at a bar, until we go the bill where we paid more for these two local drafts than I have ever paid for any beer ever in my life. If you need beer selection, go to smokey joes, but hit the check cashing place cause you clearly like rip offs.

I give it 3.3 out of 4 Douchebags.

24. Birra Moretti - Heineken Italia

We went out for dinner with my parents and ended up at our go-to neighborhood Italian place. Since we were there we firgured it was time for an Italian beer. They only have two Peroni and Moretti and Jordan had already had Peroni so Moretti it was. It basically tastes what like you would expect when you see who it is made by -- an Italian Heineken. Except that we both liked it more than Heineken and it didn't make my stomach upset like the big H does. So I guess it was more like an Italian Budweiser. An aside about Bud: we went out for a fancy dinner and then decided to go to a strip club afterwards (classy, I know) and after having a few overpriced, watered down Cape Codders we switch to Bud (figuring that there was no way to water down bottled beer) and it was surprisingly good and flavorful. I wouldn't want to drink it always but its goodness was one of the highlights of our evening. Anways back to Moretti -- it was super easy to drink and was rather inoffensive taste-wise, but totally made my face get really red and hot. Drinks sometimes do that to me, but this was particularly pronounced. I think we should give this one 4 out of 6 sterotypical Italian dudes named Fabio.

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.

23. Labatt Max Ice - Labatt Brewing Company

Yay(or not). More cheap beer. We grudgingly bought a tallboy of Labatt Max Ice after debating about the merits of Natural Light vs. Natural Ice and things like that. Neither of us were particularly excited to drink this and so we've decided that the cheap beer run has come to an end for the moment, because this should be a project that we embark on joyfully, not grudgingly. So regardless of whether we are broke-ish or not, we will only knowingly be drinking crappy beer when we want to (expensive crappy beer will probably sneak up on us at some point though). On to the beer. It was a tall boy and we split it. Jordan drank his glass and I had two sips of mine and left it on the counter and went to bed. It alternately didn't really taste like much and tasted like malt liquor. No thankyou. Although Jordan would rather drink that then the stuff we drank on inauguration night. This gets .5 out of 4 crappy tall boys of gross beer

22. Pacifico Clara - Grupo Modelo SA de CV

For the final catch-up post we have yesterday's beer, an unexpected Mexican contribution and deviation from the cheap cheap cheap that has been our deciding factor lately. We went out to get food and ended up at Luchita's due to some difficulties turning left out of our street. It's right down the street, but we'd never been before. It looks kindof dive-y on the outside, but has a beautiful bar and a bright dining room. Dinner was a little bit more expensive than we were expecting, but was really good. Since we were out we figured that we should get our beer here. They had all the standard Mexian choices, which would have been fine for me since the only one I'd ever had was Corona, but Pacifico was the only one Jordan hadn't drank, so that's what we got.

They of course came with big lime wedges and for most of the beer that's all you could taste, almost like a slightly beer limeade. It also had that generally musty taste that most cheap beers have. Between the lime and the mustiness, it totally didn't go with my enchiladas, which was a total shame because they were delicious. Jordan's chile rellanos were also great. This beer gets 1.5 out of 5 lime cliche lime wedges.

21. Schlitz - Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company

So what's with all the talk about Schlitz you might be wondering. Well, our beloved Prosperity has a special place in their collective hearts for Schlitz and is decorated accordingly. Finally on Wednesday we got a chance to try this fabled brew and well it was a little bit of a let down. I was just expecting something a little better than your average generic cheap beer (perhaps like Balantine, which at least has some flavor). Intead, Schlitz is just boring. The can promises "a kiss of hops" and that is about all you taste. This gets one z out of four z's because it is just so boring.

20. Ale to the Chief - Avery Brewing Company

This was our beer for the 20th. Inauguration day!! Avery brewed this beer in celebration of this amazing, historic, awesome, long awaited day. The label has this great sentiment on it: "Ale to the Chief! We the Brewers of Avery Brewing Company, in order to form a more perfect ale, require new leadership that can liberate us from our quagmires in foreign lands; embrace environmentally sound energy alternatives to imported oil; heal our ailing healthcare system; free us from tyrannical debt and resurrect the collapsing dollar. We hereby pledge to provide him with an ample amount of our Presidential Pale Ale to support in the struggle for the aforementioned goals! Hail to the New Chief!"

Although I was excited by the concept of the beer, I was secretly dreading drinking this beer because it was a pale ale that they had added extra hops to, and I really don't like pale ales. But then we picked up some fried chicken from Mr. Chicken and I figured perhaps the bitterness might go well with the delicious greasiness of the chicken. I was wrong, sure enough the beer was terrible. Jordan thought it was ok for the first half of his first sip and then it just had a bad aftertaste that ruined that sip. It only got worse as we drank more. After two sips I was done with it and Jordan was done soon after. It was a big beer and we felt bad about it, but we poured the rest out. Neither of us really had any interest in finishing it. I guess by default this one gets a 0 out of the five members of the Obama family (including Grandma Robinson).

19. Straub - Straub Brewery

Monday the 19th's beer was Straub. If you order one make sure you pronounce it Straw-b, Strobe is apparently some other beer. Anyways, we drank this one because Prosperity wasn't going to get more Schlitz until Wednesday, and it's pretty bad. It's darker than most cheap beers, and tastes like musty basements and stinky cheese. On top of that it wasn't even very remarkable, like it was bad, but not so bad that I will never drink it again, in a year or so I might forget and order it again and then remember why I don't usually drink it. After we each drank our obligatory beer we switched to other things, but the basement cheese taste stayed in my mouth and ruined my usually delicious Bell's Porter. It gets 1.5 out of five wheels of stinky cheese hiding in your grandma's basement. Maybe even two, there are worse beers out there.

18. Balantine XXX Ale - Falstaff Brewing Co.

First off, Jordan and I haven't abondened this fair blog, we just don't have the internet, and I've been too busy doing actual work at work to blog. Second, this is the blog for the Sunday the 18th.
Since Jordan and I are pretty much officially broke, we've ended our run of winter beers and moved on to the cheap stuff. We wanted to start off with Schlitz, but our beloved Prosperity was all out, so we settled on the cheap beer of choice for our drinking companion, Mikey P. Before we knew it "I guess we'll drink Ballantine since they don't have Schlitz" night turned into "Bally X-treme Night." Ballantine, it turns out is pretty darn good. It's tasty, which most cheap beers are not. We wrote some tasting notes up (and even got a brandy snifter out to smell it) that are lost somewhere, but I think they mostly said: kindof hoppy with a little citrus taste and a little of that metallic smell and aftertaste that you usually associate with cheap beers in cans, but oddly enough this came in a bottle.
















It wasn't particualarly remarkable but really what are you expecting when it costs 2.75 in a bar? So we all had one and then another and another, the final toll was 32 I think. Which led to me learning an important lesson that I probably should have learned long ago: just because the beer is cheap doesn't mean it won't get you drunk and also that I shouldn't drink as much as Jordan or I will feel bad in the morning.















So while not the best beer, it inspired a great evening and would probably be better on a hot day. I think this beer gets a 2.25 out of four drunk friends.

Railbender, Erie Brewing Co.

We both really enjoyed this beer. Thankfully we have an extra in the fridge for later. We tried this at the Thunderbird poured into a half pint glass. It's amber in color with a somewhat malty, sweet sugary smell, but doesn't taste sugary or sweet. In fact it sort of reminds me of when you have an orange and stick cloves and cinnamon into to, but it only sort of tasted like that, although not citrusy like sticking an orange slice in it either. It had some carmel flavor going on. This would make a nice winter beer without sticking the winter label on it. Glad we found this one, and it's brewed just north a bit in Erie. Bill and I will both be drinking this one in the future, but it's not a favorite, although we would recommend it. I'd give it an engine and a caboose and a steam car, but not the passenger car.