Commentist Beer Barrel: Nobody Likes a Dry Barrel

Coming on the heels of SonOfSpam doing a great job filling in for our resident Cicerone, make it snow, you were probably all looking forward to getting back to your regularly scheduled programming. Unfortunately, make it snow is locked in the trunk of my car unavailable to share another review this week, so you’re stuck with back-to-back substitute Beer Barrel authors. And this week you get me.

As some of the night owl DFOers know, I’m abstaining from drinking for the month of March. No, it’s not for Lent.

I am not a “skinny man.” And I enjoy a good beer or whisky or twelve. These factors are mutually reinforcing. Between that and a quest to make sure I control my drinking and not the other way around, I typically choose one month a year to go dry to confirm the former is possible and reap the ensuing health benefits. I may not be drinking this month, but a) that doesn’t mean I can’t put my [limited] beer knowledge to use or b) that I had the foresight to finish/give away my remaining beer so I’m not forced to have delicious delicious beer tempting me every time I open the damn fridge this month.

So without further ado, here is a review of all the beer in my refrigerator that I can’t drink until April 1st (aka I’m so thirsty and really want a beer right meow):

The first beer I won’t be drinking today is 21st Amendment’s Fireside Chat Winter Spiced Ale. You may remember 21st Amendment Brewery from some discussion that I can’t find/link to on their excellent for summer without being overly fruity Hell or High Watermelon Wheat Beer, and I’m partial to their Brew Free or Die! IPA, which is pretty damn hoppy without completely overpowering the taste.

My ability to tell you what this beer tastes like is about the same as FDR’s chances in the 400 meters in Rio.

With regards to the beer in question staring at me from the inside of my refrigerator, calling out to me like a well-chilled siren removing her bikini top and offering to quench my thirst and more, Beer Advocate gives Fireside Chat a 78 and says it’s ok. 21st Amendment’s official description is as clever as I am parched: “Like FDR’s Depression-Era Radio Addresses, which were like a kick in the butt and a hug at the same time, our Fireside Chat is a subtle twist on the traditional seasonal brew. We begin with a rich, dark, English-style ale and then we improvise with spices until we know we have a beer worth sharing with the nation.” Rich, dark, and spicy is how I’ve never described my sex life, but a few more days without drinking and I’ll probably be willing to do disgusting things with this beer since I’m not letting myself drink it.

The next beer I wish I were drinking is Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale. I really thought I had finished the last of this sixer before my self-imposed dry spell, and I’m really wishing I had. This is an EXCELLENT beer. I don’t even need a beer review website since I drank a bunch of them during the ridiculous DC blizzard this winter. Just look at that beer:

No idea whose gnome that is

It tastes better than it looks, and I don’t know about you, but I get a kick out of reading the tiny print framing the label on each Lagunitas I drink. make it snow has previously reviewed a similar beer during the seasonally appropriate time to drink a heavier (but not-too-syrupy, which is a complaint some people who are wrong have about Lagunitas) beer (or the first one, for that matter), and while Brown Shugga and its substitute, Lagunitas Sucks, are probably still my favorites, the Undercover Investigation Shut-Down is damn good as well. The fact that there is only one of these left in my fridge makes it that much more painful to have it glaring at me each time that light comes on when I go for eggs, milk, or godforbid root beer. I would drink this warm (though not hot, it’s not Dr. Pepper, sir), in a frosty glass, or mixed in with vanilla ice cream when I start undoing any alcohol abstinence-related weight loss come April 1.

Thirdly, there are five (5!) bottles of Stella Artois in my fridge. There’s a good reason for this number: someone brought a six pack over, drank one, and left the rest to sit with me. I haven’t touched them since I think Stella Artois tastes like carbonated rat piss.

I don’t care how you serve it, Stella still tastes terrible

If this was the only beer in my fridge, this would be a simple March (save the copious bottles of liquor in my cabinet). If anyone has tasting notes for Stella Artois that don’t include the phrase “only if there isn’t a better option,” then you should slap that person in the face and disregard any future opinions proffered from their mouthhole. Beer Advocate gives it a 71, and that’s too high. The first comment is about how it smells a little skunky, which is true every freaking time and therefore a major problem. Coincidentally, this is also why I loathe Heineken. But there are no more Heineken in my apartment since I used the last one to cook with and won’t allow another Heineken to enter my apartment.

Finally, a tried and true flavor, Sweetwater 420. I’m an unabashed huge fan of Sweetwater Brewing in Atlanta, born partially out of an attachment to it from touring the brewery and getting drunk on tour samples while I was in college and partially out of the fact it’s just really good beer.

Color, nose, taste, finish are all excellent. This is the type of beer that I currently miss drinking.

The 420 is brewed in what Sweetwater calls their “Dank Tank” and that nose shines through from the brewery to the bottle all the way to the glass. While I haven’t tasted it since February, this is one beer that I recommend pouring into a glass to open it up and get that dank scent upfront to complement the hoppiness and crisp finish. I’m not an alot of beer, but I think the term “well-balanced” applies here, though not as much as the terms “tasty,” “makes me want to drink six in an hour,” and “someone put a lock on my fridge so that I don’t drink it before April.” The good news for all of you is that Sweetwater went from “we don’t distribute more than three hours away from Atlanta since we don’t pasteurize our beer” to “we distribute a lot further away now and BFC won’t bother to ask questions about safety as long as it still tastes good.” But I do recommend getting a fresh one and/or driving to Atlanta to take the tour and hoard drink tickets from designated drivers and lightweight drinkers that can’t handle tasting each tap. Please take me with you, but don’t go until March is over.

Lord willing, make it snow or someone else with a better sense of the appropriateness of temperance will resume control of the beer barrel next week. I hope this thirst-laden post was an acceptable substitute, or at least an acceptable substitute for the substitute. And lest you judge too harshly, ask yourself one question: next week, will it be YOUR turn in the barrel?

0 0 votes
Article Rating
BrettFavresColonoscopy
BFC is a Chicago native transplanted to our nation's capital and transplanted again to the mountain West, then to SoCal, then back to the mountain West, and then again back to our nation's capital. He enjoys football, whisky, and the oxford comma.
Subscribe
Notify of
22 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

[…] time I filled in for this column I wasn’t drinking. Boooooooooring. This time around I was already a few beers in before I started to throw together […]

JerBear50

Glad you’re doing good with your exile. I’ve been five weeks now without a beer and I decided to hold out until MLB opening day. I wiped out my fridge on the last night before beerlessness though because I knew I wouldn’t last if I knew they were sitting there. Even managed to eat vegetarian for a week, but then I started running over animals out of spite. There are some vicious rumors going around about a half-gallon of 100 proof attacking me last week, but since I don’t remember most of it I’m gonna maintain that it didn’t happen. Good god I’ve never wanted to watch baseball so badly in my life.

Old School Zero

I love the good “dank” beers. So much so that if I see it being sold as “dank” or “sticky” I’ll at least give it a try. There’s a brewery in Corvallis, Oregon called Block 15 that makes one called Sticky Hands that is dank as fuck and I adore it.

Kungjitsu

I don’t get the Stella/Heineken hatred; it’s beer and contains alcohol. I can’t remember the last time I bought either one of them because they’re boring and insanely overpriced, but if someone hands me one at a party the only thing they hear from me is “thanks”. I understand preferring other stuff, especially as you get older, but Stella/Heineken are variations on the basic German lagers that are ubiquitous in America. How did people who despise these two beers get into beer? Because they don’t taste worse than Bud or Miller or whatever local shit, like Natty Bo or Lone Star, teenagers like to drink.

Kungjitsu

Stella/Heineken are definitely the BMW 3-series of beers. But I was at a cookout a few weeks ago and my beer choices were Stella or Newcastle Brown Ale. I don’t like Newcastle very much, it’s too sweet. So I got hammered on Stella.

For me, there’s a difference between what I’ll drink and what I’ll buy. And Stella and Heiny are both drinkable but not buyable because of their prices, as opposed to Keystone or Mad Dog or Cisco or vodka.

ballsofsteelandfury

Newcastle is God’s Nectar!

Then again, I do have a sweet tooth…

makeitsnowondem

I think Stella and Heineken are more or less bullshit, Heineken more so because of the insistence on trying to turn lightstruck beer into an intentional and distinctive flavor. I’d probably accept a Stella if offered, but I won’t buy either of these. At any price, really, but especially at the market price, which is more a product of successful marketing campaigns than anything.

Moose -The End Is Well Nigh

For those two I don’t hate them in the least. I will not buy them unless there are few choices. I do prefer those over a Bud/Coors/etc. I don’t think it is pretentious to want to sell your product and to differentiate it from your competition. I would disagree that they are markedly worse than Pacifico or Labatt, however I do prefer those two over them. The Newcastle is too sweet for me too.

ballsofsteelandfury

For some reason, I can’t handle Pacifico. Something about it just doesn’t sit right with me. Stella, for me, is better than Heineken,which is on par with Budweiser, Corona, etc. However, I don’t drink too many lagers, so I don’t drink Stella often.

Moose -The End Is Well Nigh

A good friend toured the Pacifico brewery…… apparently not as clean or as OSHA as a US brewery; SURPRISE!

I am going off memory; the last Heineken I had was in London two years ago and before that probably six years before.

SonOfSpam

Lagunitas is a great brewer (like Gorman Thomas) who never seems to make a bad product. Didn’t love their Hairy Eyeball offering, but everything else I’ve tried from them is delicious.

It’s too early for a beer, yes?

Moose -The End Is Well Nigh

I don’t care for Brown Shugga, but I don’t like that type anyway. All others I’ve had have been good to fucking excellent. Hairy Eyeball; I will look for it just to try.

entropy

Agreed, Stella in the US tastes like Satan’s piss (Heineken is the same way)…. but in Europe? Liquid fucking candy, and you can drink a lot of it.

I wanted to mention I had something called “Coldcock Whiskey” at my brother’s place a few weeks back, and it has taken me this long to be able to speak calmly about it. It is utter shit. They label it as “spiced whiskey,” and it tastes like someone dipped a 60s-era hippie who bathed regularly in patchouli and whatever kitchen spices he had laying around into what might have been decent liquior at some point. My taste buds died by the thousands beneath this onslaught of over-flavored shitwater.

If someone offers you this, take the bottle from them and club them to death with it like Matt Dillon pretended to do to Neve Campbell in Wild Things.

Low Commander of the Super Soldiers

Never tried that stuff, but this is how I feel whenever anyone offers me Fireball.

comment image

entropy

All this flavored whiskey shit is aggravating to me… I don’t hold with that “unless you drink X you’re a pussy” thing, and all the cinnamon flavor and honey Jack and the rest just screams to me that they are trying to appeal to that market.

...

The biggest issue I have is that Fireball and its knockoffs are really liqueurs like Bailey’s, Amaretto, or Kaluha but still get called whiskey.

ballsofsteelandfury

This is a very important point: Stella and Heineken are WAY different in Europe than in the US. WAY different and better there.