Strange Land Brewery The Old North Road English Strong Ale

"Brewed with vanilla, rum, and oak."  From Strange Land?  For me? Yes, please!

I've had a lot of luck with the fanciful beers of Strange Land Brewery, so this weeks' selection wasn't a big risk.  It has some IBU's and some ABV's.  The label is nice enough to be good, but not so nice as you'd notice.  It claims to be an English strong ale (whatever that means).  And absolutely none of that matters for more than a thought or two.  What matters is the putting of beer into my face.

I'm stuffed up right now, which makes the sniffing of the beer a less than detailed investigation, but even through the nasal mud, there is browns, sweets, and malts.  It's smells like sitting in a comfy wing-back chair, while wearing a smoking jacket and fez.  Yup, smells English-y as fuck.

It's dark.  It's frothy.  It's thick and an all but opaque dark brown.  This beer looks inviting, like it calls to me.  "Come here and drink me! Never mind those rocks, sailor."  While some cowards might lash themselves to the mast, or stuff their ears with cotton, I know that the proper action is to dive into the water and go drink that beer.

It is a very rich, very sweet, lightly coppery, heady, infused with that "barrel aged" goodness, and a very very slow drinking.  There is a sort of brutal directness to the strength and richness of this beer.  I'd call it a beast, but this guy demands to be consumed slowly, too slowly for quaffing.  Sipping is top speed for this guy.  I like a beer that makes me take my time and enjoy it.  I'm at hour 2 on this bottle.  Send help.

Drink it.  Really, drink anything from Strange Land Brewery.  There's no point in reviewing them anymore.  They make good beers.  I'm out!

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.

Strange Land Brewery Atholl Brose Scotch Ale

Well, holy shit, that's a good beer.  It's sweet and malty.  It chews back at you like you were making out with a starving hyena.  It comes in a big damn bottle, so there's plenty more.  Nice friggin' work, whoever-the-hell Strange Land Brewery is!

OK, so look at this picture over here.  Burn the label art into your memory banks, hard drives, cloud servers, and gelatinous meat-brains.  Now go buy some.  Then drink it.

Assuming you followed my instructions, you are now a much happier person.  A happier person who is currently enjoying a bouquet of fancy flavors like fresh bread, sweet honey, caramel, raisins, and fuckin' good beer.

Here are a few fact about this beer and how much I give damn about each of them: my bottle came from batch #2 (I don't give a shit), it is bottle conditioned (more fun than being gassed, but I don't care), it derives its name from a whiskey which derives its name from when the Earl of Atholl poisoned a well (OK, I actually think that is pretty cool, but it has nothing to do with enjoying this beer), it registers a fancy 16 IBUs (part of my brain just hanged itself out of boredom), 8.9% ABV (good to know, but not impressive enough of a number to make me care), and it says it is "hand crafted" (... just fuck that guy, to whoever spawned that bullshit phrase).  I hope you learned something about this beer from those facts, and I hope you learned something about skipping the trivia and just drinking the damn beer, too.  Drinking beer is a good thing, maybe the best of things.

I'm two glasses into this beast of a 22oz bottle, and the going is getting rough.  Sure, I've had four beer earlier today, but not within the last hour.  Yes, I ate a big tasty cheeseburger and fries for dinner.  Certainly I'm feeling shooting pains down my arm.  Dammit, I'm short of breath.  And, of course, I'm dizzy and nauseous.  But, none of that is important right now.  The most important thing right now is to keep drinking my tasty tasty beer. It is a struggle, but I'll stiffen my lip, gird my loins, stand up straight, clutch my chest, and soldier right on down to the bottom of this glass!  It's gonna be a long trip though.

As good as this beer is, and despite my normal position that a good beer should be horded, this would be a great bottle to share with a friend.  You'll both have plenty of tasty drinky-booze but not enough to land you in the cardiac wing.  It would be great shared between two people on a comfy couch watching some baaaaad asssssss blacksploitation cinema or a grainy kung-fu, Shaw Brothers epic.  Try it, you'll see.

This beer has balls, but it also has class.  If you've been jonesing to swallow some classy balls then this is just the thing for you.  So, go on, get out of here.  Have some fun.  Drink too much.  Take a cab to the bedroom and watch the world spin.  Do me a favor, though: when you're drunk and talking too loud, don't turn to a stranger near you and slur loudly, "Atholl Brose".  I like your nose just fine the way it is now.