Green Grass and Cold Beer

My usual Sunday dinner this week was spent at a good friend’s house and, as a rare occurance did not include wine (well one wine, in fact a very good wine, but that’s fodder for another post).  The fact that my buddy is the General Sales Manager for a large beer wholesaler and with all the beer consumed on Memorial Day I thought it was time to put up a post I’ve been holding on to about an interesting tasting Grasshopper* and I had recently.

Beer

It is a poorly kept secret that despite the wealth and abundance of food and wine in New Orleans that our beer situation is pretty much a joke.  Its getting better to a degree as of late, and even though recently the number of  domestic microbreweries and artisanal importers represented in the market place have been on the rise, the fact remains that by and large the Big Easy remains a barren wasteland when it comes to depth of beer selections.  Now a lot of folks really wrench their hands in a “woe is me” kind of thing when talking about how much beer ISN’T here.  Personally I think its more a situation of “the grass is greener” and what you see in New Orleans is sometimes – not always – a situation of wanting what you can’t have.  Case in point was Flying Dog.  Flying Dog hit the NOLA market in ’04 and sold with a fury because it was one of the first craftbrews west of the Mississippi to hit the market.  Now that Full Sail, Bear Republic, etc and other craft brews are in the market, Flying Dog doesn’t seem to sell anywhere near as fast as it did.  The novelty wore off and the beer had to stand on its own merits.  At first I personally drank my weight in Flying Dog Tire Bite, but now, eeeeh?  I’m over it.

Anyway, back to my post.  It’s a band of brothers, it is, this community of beer lovers who bemoan the fact that you can’t get a lot of good craft beer in the city (I know there are folks in Mississippi who read this blog and are saying “Yeah buddy, cry me a river”).  This group of fine folks, the beer community that is, are always trying to figure out what the next great thing they can bring in will be and for some of them being informed about what isn’t in the market is some sort of badge of courage.

It happens that recently Grasshopper – a professional beer geek in his own right – recently got back from an out-of-state trip where he stopped at some sort of beer and liquor superstore and loaded himself up with several cases of brew that is of some repute elsewhere but you can’t get in New Orleans.  His idea was for us to have a tasting of stuff you can’t get here so he could go and crow about it to the rest of the beer geek community in NOLA.  Me, I’m not in it for the geekiness of it – I have plenty of wine geekdom to deal with on a daily basis – I’m just in it to try new beers.  So, Grasshopper and I sat down to try the first flight of beers to see if we are missing out entirely, or if indeed the grass is just greener.

With a line-up of 6 beers there were only two that blew me away, three I wouldn’t pour down the sink because of the water I would have to waste rinsing the sink out and one that was, at best, an interesting novelty.  This first tasting showed that grass to be pretty brown.

The First Round - More to come

The Line up (with my tasting notes and * ratings):

Boulder Beer Company Hazed and Confused (Boulder, Co) – Off puttingly dry, bitter, short finish, no fruit, no flavor.  Like licking a 9 volt battery. (*)

Dogfish Head 60 Minutes India Pale Ale (Milton, Delaware) – Great malty, fruity aromas and finish.  Perfect bitter balance, amazing texture. (*****)

Weyerbacher Hops Infusion India Pale Ale (Easton, PA) – Chalky, musty nose, medium weight, no bitter at all.  NO finish. (no stars)

Rogue Juniper Pale Ale (Ashland, Or) – Not as pungent or aromatic as I thought it would be considering the source (no cascade hops).  Not “Pale Ale-Y” in texture (**)

Dogfish Head 90 Minutes Continually Hopped IPA (Milton, Delaware) – Holy crap is this good!!!  A true pale ale.  Coffee nose???  Great balance, great finish, long, lingering flavors. (*****)

Boulder Beer Company Mojo Rising.  (Boulder, Co) – Promises a lot on the fruity, rich nose but you can not even tell there is beer on your palate.  All show, no go.  Pass (no stars)

(* – it seems to be a fun thing to assign clever little names to recurring characters in blogs.  Hey, I like it and I’m going to jump on this entirely widely used bandwagon and flatter all those who have done this before me)

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