Some drinking thoughts at Strange Land Brewery and later at home with a bomber

Lately, I've been finding bombers from Strange Land Brewery all over the place in Austin, Texas.  I've written about a few of them, and I've generally thought good thoughts about their beers.  This weekend I had a few hours to kill and it turns out that they have a tap room.  So, I packed up Omar and away we went.

It turns out, I'm a dick.  They have a welcoming and pleasant set up, lots of seats, a great bar seating area, and one awesome dude behind the bar.  He was friendly, informative, pleasant, and remembered everyone's name.  Which is why I'm a dick: I can't remember his name.  Sorry, man.  My bad.

I started, after some deliberation, with the Root Beer Porter.  Seriously, though, they had a root beer porter.  That's cool.  And it certainly did embody the essence of root beer.  Which was also the big problem I had with it.  I like beer.  I like root beer (I'm looking at you, Thomas Kemper).  When you combine the flavors of beer with the flavors of root beer, however, you end up let down on both aspects.  It was interesting, and good for a few swallows.  About half way into my glass, the shine was gone.  By the bottom of the glass, I was glad to see it gone.  All the same, it was a valiant effort, and I salute it.

I went a little wild for my second choice.  Having a previous disastrous experience with a gruit beer, I was skeptical when I saw they had one of their own, so I went with that.  You may call me brave for this.  You may say I am a man among men.  Perhaps, even, you hope to tell your grand children-clones stories about my heroism.  I can certainly understand your feelings, but I'm far too humble to say anything.  The gruit was, in a word, extremely friggin' deliciously good.  I was expecting another lousy theory-beer, but, instead, got a new and exciting booze.  Whoever was behind the curtain on this one, pulled the right levers.  It is hard to describe the taste of it, but I'm told they used a collection of herbs or spices or something instead of hops.  It's weird, but good weird.

If you've never had a third beer with a quality Brit before, you don't know what you're missing.  We met David, a retired IT specialist with gift for gab.  David suggested I try the Dewi Sant, a dark beer with a honey kick.  The Dewi was sweeter than I usually go for, but really damn good.  In fact, the more I drank, the better and better it tasted (blame the 13.5% ABV).  I think I had two, but I was enjoying the conversation, the weather, the tap room, and definitely the beer too much to remember to take a picture.  It looked like beer, though, I promise.  If you find it, drink it.  If you find it along with a retired Brit, take both to a bar and enjoy your new, more perfect life.

I did, however, remember to take a picture of next beer I had, The Last Gentleman Bourbon Porter.  I bought it on the way home at the Flags Store on 45th and Duval.  I'm drinking it now, and it is sort of a mixed bag.  When I took my first sip, I wasn't very impressed.  There was a lot of metallic acidity getting in the way of the beer flavors.  Now, I'm about a glass in, the malt and sugars have elbowed to the front and started to dominate the conversation.  Things are getting tasty.  Sure, the acid and metallic flavors are still there, but, after two glasses, who cares.  The barrel aged body is all warm and gooey in my mouth hole, and I brain-think slippery blurred yummy thoughts.  It may be a sad-ish 6.8% ABV, but a bomber still gets the job done.  Drink this beer.  Alone if you have to, with a friend where you can, and definitely, definitely with a retired, good-natured Brit, if at all possible.

Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co., Bananas Foster, or When I Learned Not To Trust

If you order bananas foster, you have certain expectations regarding what you are about to taste.  If you buy a beer called "Bananas Foster" you have similar expectations: bananas, rum, brown sugar, vanilla, and maybe a bit of cinnamon.  What you wouldn't expect is a glass of dark, bitter, acrid, shit.  Or, at least, I didn't expect that.

Bananas Foster, from Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co. in Houston, Texas.  1 pint 6 oz, 8.6% ABV, brown-butter dark, no head to speak of, and complete horse piss.

The name is pure temptation, the bottle, large and inviting, the label, pleasant and fun, the waxed cap, a sign of care.  All of these things just claw at you to choose this bottle from the shelf, take it with you, and give it a good home in your belly.  But this beer is a changeling, a turd wrapped in gold foil.  Don't be fooled.  Don't repeat my mistake.

Here is what happened when I took my first sip: I smelled the dark, vinegar-ish odor, tasted the cold malt richness on the tip of my tongue, then the zip of copper to the sides, the bitter pucker at the back, and the air of rancid salad that settles over the whole experience like a gross rain on an already humid day.  It's nasty.  I gave some to Omar and he threw a brick at my head.  I think he did the right thing.

It is a horrible crime to toy with my (and to a lesser extent, "our") expectations.  To say to me ("us" again to a way lesser extent), "Here, have a bananas foster beer!  Remember how good the banana bread beer was? Well, this is bananas foster, so it should be equally good, and taste like bananas foster." and then to give me 1 pint 6 oz of young balsamic vinegar, malt, and disappointment.

I hate you, Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co.  I hate you for making me hope, giving me cause to feel excitement, dangling beauty in front of my face, and the ripping it all away.  I will have my revenge.  I will rage and thunder, I will burn the skies, I will pull a face and blow raspberries at you behind your back, but, rest assured, I will have my revenge.  You suck.

Hops & Grain Tap Room, 3 beers.

I finally made it to the Hops & Grain tap room before it was about to close. The nice guy bartender greeted my pleasantly and showed me the ropes. The beer tickets were 4 for $10 and mostly good for a beer per ticket.  Four beer for ten bucks... not bad.

The tap room was mostly empty. There were a few beer folk and post work bar slouchers like myself warming bar stools and bench seats. The menu had too many goddam IPA's, but I've come to expect that kind of treachery from craft brewers.  Still, the place smelled like malt, and was decorated mostly with beer barrel, like a sad polka.

Scanning the menu, I'd had the Zoe and the AltEration before. I ogled the bourbon barrel aged Porter (it looked sexy, but I decided on the Belgian pale ale to start, because I'm a coward and chickened out of diving into their Dispensary selection ("aggressively dry hopped").  Somewhere a Molly mocks me.

I waddled my beer to one of the many ubiquitous wooden benches that is required seating at tap rooms, and sipped into my first beer.

Belgian pale ale:

It was pretty tasty actually. I wasn't expecting that.
Floral but not heavy handed. Light, but with plenty of substance. 

It had a weight to it, like drinking it in the sun and heat would definitely result in passing out in a pool of your own vomit. You know the kind of beer I'm talking about. 

It left a metallic hops flavor coating on the tongue. I like it less the more of it I drink. It settles heavy.

 
A hop head or other weirdo would certainly be in love with this beer, but I'm a decent person, who sympathizes with the plight of the under-malted beer drinker.  I believe there is more to drinking than what some dumb-ass beer blog has to say.

Still, I drank it all to fortify myself. I'm going for the big ugly hoppiness next.

Imperial IPA: 

I asked the goodly barman for the baddest of the bad. The hippity-est of the hops. The most depraved of the immoral IPA's. From the super dry hopped Dispensary line, he poured me the Imperial IPA.

I was expecting to look like Preacher comic's fan-favorite character, Ass-face, but the pucker-factor was minimal. I was confused. 

This beer is round. It's like drinking a beach ball. That kind of round. Sure, hops and some bitter notes. Some floral. Some lingering tongue-salad herbiness. Fuck me, though, I like this beer.

It's like when the nerdy chick in the teen movie takes off her glasses and let's her hair down and suddenly she has a great rack. And at 10% ABV... damn. This beer just shoved it's flute up my teen sex-comedy reference.

Bourbon Barrel Porter: 

 Holy shit monkeys. I paid two fukkin' tickets for this beer, and it tastes like someone left raisins, prunes, bitter cherries, and booze in my delicious beer. Which is awesome.

I suspect some kind of demon has just traded me for my shriveled soul. Demon-chump! This beer is great. I wanna dunk my head in this tiny glass and live as a beer-fish. Is that still legal?

This beer is far too vocal to be this enjoyable. It's yammering on about all sorts of flavors and crap, but what about the flavors?! Ooohhh, such many tasty flavors. 

Hey drinky! Get off your ass and find this beer. It's mellow yet lively! Like a mongoose in a smoking jacket. 

I give up. Screw you blog, I'm busy drinkin'!

Texas Keeper Cider Weizen

Lets take a moment to appreciate good beer.

Mmmmmmm.... beer...

OK.  Did you do it?  You're a horrible bastard if you didn't, you know.  Beer, good beer more so, has done so much for us, you and me personally, that it deserves a moment of appreciation.  So, if you skipped it, take that moment now.

In the last few weeks, I have dunked my head in the finest of the world's beer rivers (pictured below).

The Fifty-Fifty Eclipse Imperial Stout, was,without a doubt, one of the finest beers ever aged in a whisky barrel and bottled for my personal joy.  I won't say much about it, except that it redefined what a goddam great beer is.  (Not available in Texas).

The Fifty-Fifty was so good, in fact, that I was tempted to try something... different for this week's beer blog.  A cider.  

I was conflicted at first: is it really a beer, does it have a place in this blog, am I being wild and brash, what are these feelings I'm feeling, do I dare do all that may become a man?  After a period of reflection and meditation, I decided to go ahead and try the cider.  What is the worst that can happen?

Texas Keeper Cider Weizen, cider made with fancy beer yeasts.  It is a dry cider, with an interesting idea behind it.  It is also horse-piss swill, and I don't even think that horse was a diabetic.  Sure I choked it down, but only to decide how much I hated it.  I hated it very many and super much.  

I have enjoyed many ciders.  Most of them were acceptable, some were even good, but there are always a few bad apples.  

"I'm funny as hell and deserve this award for Best Pun Of The Century."

~J. "Bad Apples" Dodson

9-2015

Pun Awards Dinner acceptance speech

This cider sucks, but mainly because it is a very dry cider.  I accept that some weirdos like dry ciders.  That's fine.  As long as they don't try to force their beliefs on me (I'm looking at you, IPA people).  If that's your bag, then by all means, chug away.  For me, I will continue to look for a decent and respectable beverage, something more in line with my system of beliefs.  I'm a decent person.  That's how I roll.

I hope that, if you take something away from this blog, you make an effort to drink good beverages instead of bad ones, and where bad ones enter your life, you have the good sense to recognize and shun them.  In that spirit, I invite you to join with me in a pledge:

"I, (state your name), pledge to drink mostly exclusively good booze, and will cast my vote

for the Author of this blog to win the Best Pun Of The Century Award, just as soon as I can."

Thank you