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RACE ROCKS ALE—All mine…?

It’s my Granny’s birthday today but my mum says we don’t have to make a cake because she’s dead. (I was thinking sherry trifle.) I think my mum is just trying to be a hardass, but she’d better hope none of Granny’s relatives are reading this. “And why would they?” she asked. “Why would anyone read it?”

Since my mum is being so liberal with abuse, let me tell you about her latest beer purchase. Thinking she could appeal to all tastes at LBHQ by buying yet another sampler box, she cruised the liquor store seeking a package that did not contain anything weird or fruity. I’ve mentioned before how limited my parents’ beer bandwidth is. My mum is anti-fruit and my dad is anti-IPA—which eliminated most of the sample packages in the store.

What remained was Lighthouse Brewing’s Premium Pack. Promising three ales and a Bavarian lager, it seemed innocent enough, so my mum plunked down $23 and took it home.

First out of the box: RACE ROCKS ALE. Considering the ordinariness of the packaging along with its lack of informative tasting notes, how could anybody expect weirdness? We were geared up for a run-of-the-mill ale with an ordinary hop/malt interplay. But it wasn’t to be.

Pouring amber-red with creamy foam, RACE ROCKS ALE puts you on immediate notice of wannabe intentions. But what does it want to be? Lighthouse Brewing designates it a craft beer, but OMG, any day now MOLSON CANADIAN will start calling itself that—it doesn’t mean anything, my fellow inebriates. If anything, RACE ROCKS ALE seems to be channeling the Belgian style with its rotting-orchard redolence.

You know when you’ve peeled a bunch of apples and peaches and whatever the hell else, about a day has gone by—a hot day—and gradually, slowly, you begin to notice that the kitchen smells? Well, I wish RACE ROCKS ALE were that subtle. While it’s certainly not as in-your-face as Unibroue’s product line, the fruit is there nonetheless, shaking its ass in your beer.

Okay, weird mixed metaphor, but this is a strange beer.

Get the $*#&@!#^! out of my beer!

On the tongue the ale redoubles its aromatic fruitiness. It’s no longer deniable; the overripe peaches can’t be ignored. Now, this is okay for my dad, because he gets all the remaining RACE ROCKS ALE and possibly its fellows if it turns out the fruit thing is something Lighthouse does with every beer. Score for my dad, but now we all have to live with my mum, who can’t blame anyone but herself for buying the case.

And what did I think of it? Holy crap, you know I loved it, people—I love all beer. But I love some beers less than others, and this is one of those (the ones I love less).

Nor did I like the way my mum pounded her bottle to make it go away. I had to be fast to get any at all. (She said it wasn’t bad enough to throw out. And yes, she does wear ten-year-old jeans for the same reason.)

Ignoring my angry mother, what did my dad think? “It kind of reminded me a little bit of U-BREW,” he said, damning Lighthouse Brewing further.

I guess this means I get all the RACE ROCKS ALE to myself. Too bad I can’t open it. If I could, I’d offer Granny a toast.

HARVIESTOUN OLA DUBH—ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

My Fellow Inebriates,

I was shattered when Christine left our house this morning. By which I mean, when I woke up hours after she’d gone and realized the fact, I felt betrayed. Not by Christine, who can do no wrong. (Christine arrived at our house yesterday afternoon with her special canvas bag containing two fine whiskies, two unique craft beers, and an outstanding Shiraz she’d been cellaring since 2003.) Christine is beyond reproach.

But I felt sort of let down by my parents, who didn’t bother to shake me awake to say good-bye. I actually meant to stow away with Christine this morning in the canvas bag. Although it was still occupied by two bottles of Scotch, it had a compartment I could have slipped into if I weren’t comatose at the time of her departure. Evidently my parents couldn’t entertain Christine until I finished sleeping off last night’s alcohol; I didn’t even get a chance to pant after her booze or press my nose against the window.

Why are my parents so boring? I can’t imagine why anyone visits them at all. What a testament to their dullness that any visitors they do get must bring alcohol to make the visit tolerable. (Come to think of it…well, it’s kind of a wash. If my parents were more interesting they would get more visitors, but the visitors wouldn’t need to get hammered to endure their company.) But still, last night was pretty cool.

First out of the canvas bag was HARVIESTOUN OLA DUBH SPECIAL RESERVE (18). Translated as “black oil,” OLA DUBH is so named for its “gloopy and viscous” mouthfeel. It is “the first ale to be aged in malt whisky casks from a named distillery and, with traceable casks and numbered bottles, the first with genuine provenance.” Christine found this 8% brew at a specialty liquor store in Olympic Village where it commanded $8 for its Highland Park–cask aging. Short glasses seemed fitting, so the humans poured it three ways (I gadded about between the three glasses, ending up with the lion’s share).

“Black oil” is not a misnomer. In the glass OLA DUBH is thick, oily, and darker than Coca Cola. Harviestoun compares its appearance to that of “used motor oil,” but I don’t know of any automotive waste that exudes such symphonic waves of dark chocolate, espresso, sherry, and peat. This breathtaking aroma is but a prelude to an exquisite cascade of malty, smoky, leathery toffee-tinged gloriousness—enveloping the palate and winding up with a soulfully bitter cocoa finish. Prickling the tongue with gentle carbonation, OLA DUBH is a rhapsodic hybrid of whisky and beer, warming and mellow yet curiously tingly on the palate. Sweeter than a stout and infinitely more complex, OLA DUBH wrenches a forbidden word from even the most hardened and obdurate taster—the taster who has sworn never to utter the word—yes, against his will and without resistance, my dad said it: OLA DUBH is sessionable.

Because if you could—if you possibly could—you would want to draw your experience with OLA DUBH out over several hours. With its glass-clinging, massive body and absolutely subjugating intensity, this beer takes over your mind; it controls you; it OWNS you.

After everyone drank their two fingers of OLA DUBH, there was no way we could immediately sample another beer. It wouldn’t have been fair. So everyone sipped Carmenere while my mother concocted one of her meals seemingly designed to bother and disconcert everyone’s palate, and together those incongruous new tastes helped arrest everyone’s pining for the OLA DUBH.

In all honesty—although this may be the sort of creeping determinism my furry head cooked up to cope with the emptiness of the OLA DUBH bottle—I doubt you could drink such a viscous beer all evening. At least humans probably wouldn’t want to. But we bears have some crazy stomach enzymes. 😉

BROCKTON IPA—Sometimes you need a kick in the head

My judgment is feeble at best, my fellow inebriates, so when Scientific American emails me about a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Venus transit  the Sun, appearing as a small black disk in front of our blazing star, I’m not sure if SCIAM is advising me to look at it.

All my instincts are telling me it’s not okay to stare at the sun, but I’m thinking maybe I can get away with it just once. Venus won’t do this again until 2117. Astronomers are excited by it because it illustrates the way they find exoplanets orbiting distant stars—by the planets’ silhouettes.

I asked my friend Scarybear whether I should look at the sun* to see the Venusian disc. He said I definitely should**, for long enough to adjust my eyes to the glare and then a bit longer to make out the small dark spot. He said it would be “the coolest thing ever.” When I asked him if we need to put a special filter on the telescope, he shrugged and said that my eyes would “probably heal pretty fast.”

And the winner is…the lager.

Sounds like a plan. After all, a solar filter for our telescope would probably cost more than a few cases of beer. Between a filter and another GRANVILLE ISLAND BREWING Mingler pack, I’ll take the beer.

And while I wouldn’t gravitate toward an entire case of BROCKTON IPA, I don’t mind finding three of them in the Mingler. Sometimes an India Pale Ale provides just the bracing, hoppy kick in the head that a bear needs.

Deep golden with white foam, BROCKTON IPA gives off a strong, earthy aroma—hoppy, bready, and slightly astringent. The taste is more bracing than the smell, with pine notes and hops front-and-forward but some malty caramel notes balancing it somewhat. With moderate carbonation and substantial weight in the mouth, BROCKTON IPA finishes with a lingering, satisfying bitterness.

IPA isn’t a style we seek out too often at LBHQ; it always seems off-kilter with its emphasis on hops at the expense of milder front-palate-pleasing flavors. And BROCKTON IPA is an example of a beer in which hops pretty much beat the shit out of the other taste sensations, not to mention the drinker. But sometimes you need a beer that kicks your ass, and when you do, one like this is great.

We could buy four cases for the cost of a solar filter! I mentioned this to my mum, who had no idea why I would posit the comparison until I told her I was following Scary’s advice to watch an unfiltered Venusian solar transit*** while pounding cases of IPA.

For someone who doesn’t like using the word “retarded,” she sure unleashes it on me a lot.

* Do not do this.

** Do not do this.

*** Do not do this.