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.

Texas Honey Ale

In my search for new and exciting booze for my face, I have decided to spend a few ounces each week trying something new.  To be fair to anyone reading this, I don't have a refined palette, a deep well of beer knowledge, or any training to bolster my opinions.  What I do have is a love of hooch, a few meager extra bucks, and a small bit of home brewing experience.  Mostly, though, I like beer, and this is a great reason to try new things.

This week I am trying Texas Honey Ale.  An offering of the Guadalupe Brewing Co., New Braunfels, Texas. 7.32 Alc/Vol, 22oz bottle, honey amber in color, minimal foam to the head. 

From the bottle, there are a few things of note: part of the proceeds go to  Texas A&M's honey bee research, and they would very much like you to know this beer was "hand bottled".  I don't know if I give a shit about any of that, but it makes good bottle reading.  Also the label is more fun than a lot of labels out there. As a designer, I'd say it's "OK", shows talent in the handling of the images, and the details are rich and fun to explore.  All the same it feels pretty literal to the beer. And that's OK.

Now for the important part, how's it taste?  My first glass, the just-drink-it glass, was a good but not overly good beer. It was a bit sweet (which makes sense for a honey ale), smooth, and rich.  Not hoppy at all, a reasonable malt, but not chocolaty. "Honey ale" pretty well sums it up.  My second glass, the sniff-it-swirl-it glass, was better. Of course I had a beer already by then.  This brew is thick (not stout thick, but it sure ain't thin), has some chew to it, and hangs around for a while after you knock it back. First the smell, like honey.  I say "like" honey because when you stick your nose in  jar of honey, it smells like honey, but when you smell this, it smells like honey.  It tastes sweet at first, then big yeast and malt, it fades a bit and finally sublimes to honey.  "Sublimes" is the best verb I have used all week, you should give it a twirl too.

This is a good beer, not too complex, not extravagent, but it tastes nice and makes me smile.  For the money, it's a good value (under $7 for a 22oz bottle), and what the hell, it's named "Texas Honey Ale" and they give money to a school. Go for it.