beer

PETE BROWN TRIBUTE ALE—Better than thongalicious

When my girlfriend Dolly saw yesterday’s thong pictures she disavowed any connection with me. Not for the first time, of course, but this time she was explicit.

Cuddly and reasonably innocent

Obscene

And with that she was looking at Fluffy Bear again. Pointing out that the kids could just as easily have put Fluffy in a thong as yours truly didn’t acquit me. She said I’d attracted the thong. That I’d sent out a thong vibe to the universe. That nobody ends up in a thong who doesn’t really want to be in one.

Of course I wanted to crawl into the bottle immediately. Not because I was sad but because my ass was chafed from the makeshift g-string. Even the kids, after fashioning it, had had second thoughts about the project and abandoned it. I waited for my dad to get home and rescue me, but when he arrived he was too preoccupied to notice. Finally my mum released me from the thong, but not before snapping some pics.

This insult came after my parents declined a Canada Day barbecue featuring Grey Goose and lemonade. Their weekend was too hectic, they said, and they couldn’t make it. Nor did the sound of distant fireworks compel them to open our last bottle of wine.

So I hope my American friends are having a more festive celebration today than we did on July 1. Let’s hope you’re not in the grip of a thong or recovering from wearing one, and that you have some good hooch to celebrate the day with. For my wonderful American readers, a suggestion from California:

This is another tasting I owe to the incomparable Christine and her canvas bag. Brewed in Healdsburg, CA, PETE BROWN TRIBUTE ALE pours a deep rich brown with a gorgeous, languorous tan head and big, thick lacing. Immediately it bodes greatness.

I should mention we sampled this brew on June 30, long before any thong notions had developed. (Were the kids even thinking “thong”? Who knows?) We’d just tasted OLA DUBH and followed it up with a decent but slightly barnyardy Carmenere, so while PETE BROWN TRIBUTE ALE had a tough beer act to follow, our tastebuds had been brought back to earth somewhat by the wine (plus my mother’s weird cooking). Would this second beer hold its own?

First olfactory impressions are of malt and caramel with toasty nuts and brown sugar. These aromas are generous and presage a substantial and generous mouthfeel. Even if, for the sake of argument, you had premonitions that you’d be wearing a thong a couple of days later and that the rope would cut you between the cheeks, this ale’s heady redolence would be enough to short-circuit those negative fears and envelop you pleasantly.

At 6.3% alcohol, PETE BROWN TRIBUTE ALE is a big beer. The initial shot across the palate is bready with mocha and caramel. My dad used words like “good” and “nice”—but let’s remember my dad is a guy who couldn’t be bothered to notice my ass being flossed for several hours. PETE BROWN TRIBUTE ALE coats the tongue with deliciously smooth malt and punchy fizz that settles down creamily as the beer transits to the back of the mouth, where it delivers a long-finishing mild-hop finale to complete a marvelous flavor arc.

Wearing a thong? We’ll never know for sure.

This beer rocks, people, and if you can get your mitts on some in time for the fireworks, you definitely should. Just remember that some beer stores don’t permit patrons to buy beer while wearing a thong.

Once again my infinite thanks goes out to Christine, who chose this particular brew because of the bear on the label. Not only does Christine have exquisite taste in booze, but I’m certain:

  • She would never put a bear in a thong.
  • She would never leave a bear in a thong.
  • She would never dump a boyfriend if she found him in a thong.
  • She would never take exploitative pictures of a bear in a thong.

May your Fourth of July be flowing with beer and free of thongs*.

 

*The idea of being thong-free has been knocking around in my head since I read this post by Red.

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. 😉

ISLAND LAGER—When you’re overwhelmed by thongs

My Fellow Inebriates,

Without a reminder from The Dogs of Beer (fascinating and worth checking out), I wouldn’t have realized today is summer solstice. I mistakenly thought it was National Thong Day.

The misunderstanding originated with my mum, who, after dropping P off at school, commented that everyone was wearing thongs. I thought she meant “a thong” rather than “thongs,” a term that dates my mother’s adolescence to the early 1980s—before the term “flip flops” became necessary for differentiation from the thongs I thought she was talking about.

My mother meant these.

I thought she meant these.

In their own ways, both types of thongs call for a stiff drink.

Unquestionably the drink should be refreshing and summery. How about an ISLAND LAGER from Granville Island Brewing? Effervescent and golden, this brew has a mild, inviting aroma—slightly sweet and grainy. It has a nice balance of malt, barley, and hops; if anything, it’s uncomplicated, which is precisely what you need after a Thong Onslaught.

When you’ve seen one too many thongs, it’s not just your vision that needs a rest—your whole body needs to calm down and cease being stimulated. ISLAND LAGER is undemanding that way; there aren’t any weird, exotic flavors that might send your brain on an irritating quest to place them in remote memory. The fizz is happy and sparkly—whee!

Seeing a lot of thongs can sometimes make you feel you’ve slipped a dozen IQ points. All the more reason to seek out a basic beer that will make you feel smarter than it is. But don’t let thongs drive you toward a nasty, metallic macro brew. Sure, ISLAND LAGER is basic, but we know from Granville Island Brewing’s other more exotic offerings that it could have been otherwise. This is a fine, unchallenging product that features malt and hops playing nicely together—with neither one snapping the other’s g-string.