It's a Friday night and since I got the day off of work, I've decided to use my day to run various errands that I have been putting off for a long time. Anybody who has ever been to southern California on a rainy day knows that none of us can drive in any kind of precipitation. The second a drop of water falls from the sky and hits the pavement, people begin to lose their minds and drive into each other uncontrollably. As a result, my errands that would have taken me maybe an hour on a normal day have taken well over 5 hours today. By the time I get home, I'm beyond frustrated and all I really want to do is sit down with a book for a few hours and just chill.
But who am I kidding? It's Friday night I've got some drinking to do. My wanted to go check out a bar called Proof in Santa Ana, so I decided go along with them. This is the part of the story where I admit that I dropped the ball and committed a cardinal sin for the 365brews project. In all the hustle and bustle of getting ready for a night out on the town, I'd forgotten to plan a beer for the night. No problem, I'm going to a hip bar, so they'll sure have a decent selection of beers on tap to choose from. At this point I could have easily turned the car around, and picked a beer from my own fridge and been done with the whole thing. I decided against this option however, which proved to be a big mistake.
When we arrived at Proof Bar, I was immediately taken with the place. It was the kind of place that just seems to radiate cool, so much so that I wasn't sure if it was really the right place for me. They had a pretty good D.J., were projecting the beloved 80's class "Masters of the Universe" high on the walls, and there were throngs of hip, young beautiful people pouring into the bar by the minute. There are many advantages to living in Orange County, but the nightlife is not really one of them. It was refreshing to try out a cool new place for once, and I was in extremely high spirits until I took a good look at the bar. Proof Bar was one of those bars that inexplicably choose not to serve beer on tap. Why any bar would ever choose to serve beer exclusively in bottles doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I had to make dues with my options that were starting to thin out before my very eyes.
I asked the barmaid what beers they served in bottle, to which she replied "Um......... I think Budweiser, Bud Light, Corona, Miller, Miller light, Coors, you know, the usual." Lord, what did I do to deserve this cruel fate? A night that seemed so full of unlimited promise was now reduced to a bland variety of domestic beers that I didn't really feel at all like drinking. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind drinking a Budweiser when the time is right, but when I'm in the middle of an ultra-cool, exotic bar, I want an ultra-cool, exotic beer! I walked away from the bar and pouted to myself in the corner for a few minutes, until I saw this young guy carrying a strangely unfamiliar bottle. "Whoa, whoa, whoa... what is that?" I asked the bartenders, and I was presented with my savior for the evening; Flying Horse Lager.
Hallelujah! I gained favor with the beer Gods once again and they've decided to drop an obscure Indian lager right into my lap! I wasn't too concerned with how this beer was going to taste to be honest. I was just excited that I had something a bit more interesting to write about than a domestic beer that everyone already knows about. This is the point of the night when I made my second mistake. I was so excited to the Flying Horse Lager that I forgot the age old art of pouring a beer, and I rather gracelessly dumped the contents of the bottle into my glass without giving it a moment's though. The predictable outcome was a foamy, white five inch head that sat obstinately on the top of my beer and refused to go away. Seeing as I'm the beer guy among my group of friends, they all had a bit of a laugh at my expense when I was forced to swallow my pride, and the foam, and rescue the beer that I almost ruined.
Flying Horse Lager was only decent at best. If there were any interesting flavors lying just below the surface of this beer, they were certainly to subtle to come out. On top of that, I didn't particularly care for the thin mouth feel of Flying Horse, which seemed pretty blah even for a lager. Flying Horse did have a crisp herby quality to it, but it wasn't anything to write home about. In short, I didn't exactly enjoy this particular beer, but I'm still grateful that I was saved from some of the less appealing alternatives.
A la sature!
Ian
http://www.theubgroup.com/
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