January 21, 2009: Hitachino Nest

My beer for tonight is another one that was chosen solely for the presentation of the product. We were walking down the aisles at my local shop when Quinn noticed this little owl staring out at as from the shelf. The oddly small bottle combined with the owl label made Hitachino Nest white ale stand out right away. I couldn't say no to this charming little Japanese beer, and so tonight I'm giving it a try. The guy working in the shop absolutely raved about Hitachino Nest, even boasting that it was, in his opinion better than Blue Moon, which is probably the most popular white ale in the world. I didn't believe him, but I couldn't wait to get home and try it for myself.

When I cracked the bottle of Hitachino Nest open, there was a curious aroma wafting out from the short little bottle of white ale. I could place it at first, but I'd never smelt a beer like this before. It was almost a savory smell, like a cut of meat. But it wasn't a premium cut of meat, it was more like the smell that came rolling out of your lunch box when you were a kid. My God, I've got it.... it's bologna!!! Honest to God, no joke, swear on a stack of bibles, this beer smelled like bologna out of the bottle. I even asked Quinn to smell it and she agree conclusively; it's bologna beer. When I poured it into a glass, the bolognaness subsided a bit, but I just couldn't shake the scent from my olfactory glands. It's pretty common knowledge that scent and taste are two of the most strongly linked human senses, but the taste of Hitachino Nest wasn't nearly as bad as it's scent. Going by taste alone, this is a pretty good one, but I just couldn't get that damn smell out of my head. I could easily drink this beer all night long if I suddenly lost my sense of smell. Someone else please try this beer and let me know if you detect the hint of bologna in the aroma of the beer!

Kampai!
Ian

http://kodawari.cc/engpage/kodawari/html/product_beer/white_ale.htm

January 20, 2009: Maverick's Obama Presidential Ale

The day has finally come. After 8 years of a miserable, oppressive and idiotic reign of terror, President Bush has finally served his last official day in office and President elect Barack Obama has become the next President of the United States of America. People all over the world breathed a collective sigh of relief as the President Obama's inauguration signaled the end of the Bush administration and ushered in a new era of hope that America's been in desperate need of for a long time. In honor of my new President's first official day in office, I've selected a beer that was brewed specifically for this occaision; Half Moon Bay Brewing Company Maverick's Obama Presidential Ale.

Half Moon Bay Brewering company is a microbrewery just south of, you guessed it, Half Moon bay in northern California. It's not far from the legendary surf spot Maverick's that's known around the world for it killer waves and shark infested, freezing waters. As any lover of beer knows, Microbreweries are always a game. They typically don't have the reputation or heritage of the more established, commercial breweries so it's hard to tell what you're going to get. The Obama Presedential Ale is a special brew concocted especially in honor of Mr. Obama's victory over John McCain in the presidential race, so it's not a beer that's going to be around for a while. Furthermore, this beer can only be bought in the state of California which makes it even more difficult to obtain. Fortunately for the curious ones out there, this beer was really nothing special. More of a gimmick than anything else, I found this ale to be pretty much lacklustre and boring with every sip. It wasn't necessarily bad, but it didn't contain any of the hope, charm or charisma of it's namesake Barack Obama. If you really want to try this beer, you can find it at bevmo but I wouldn't recommend it. For the $3.75 you'd pay for Maverick's Obama Presidential Ale, you could get a much more fulfilling beer, maybe even two. But still I'll give Half Moon Bay Brewery credit for glomming onto the Obama bandwagon, and making me want to buy it.

Cheers,
Ian

http://hmbbrewingco.com
p.s. The fact that I'm wearing an England hat on the day of Obama's inauguration isn't some sort of weird protest, I was just having a bad hair day. =)

January 19, 2009: Warsteiner Dunkel

It's Monday night, and my fridge is beginning to look a bit sparse again as I have gone shopping in about a week. Lucky for me there is a Lakers game on T.V. tonight and some of my friends are willing to come out with me and share a few beers. We've come to The Yardhouse, which is a restaurant and bar famous for it's selection of over 150 different beers on tap to choose from. If I really wanted to, I could easily knock out almost half of my yearly beer schedule at this bar alone, but let's be honest, I'm too cheap and most nights I'd rather just watch T.V. on the couch with my girlfriend than drag myself to a bar and pay like four times as much. But for tonight anyway, I'm here with a small group of friends, skimming over the daunting selection from the menu before me and trying to narrow it down to just one beer. So I ask my friend Drew to pick one for me at random, and his finger lands on Warsteiner Dunkel.

Warsteiner....Warsteiner... I know that name, I'm sure I've heard of it before, but where? I think about it for a minute or two and it comes to me; Oktoberfest! Ja Wohl!

Ah... is there anything I look forward to more than a good Oktoberfest? There's not a drop of German blood in me, but as soon as I hear that polka music, see wenches in leiderhosen doublefisting pitchers of cold beer and smell those greasy bratwursts cooking up on the grill, I feel like I'm right at home. The Germans perfected the modern formula by which most lagers and pilsners are still made with today, but Warsteiner Dunkel is a dark ale. I've had a few of Warsteiner's more standard lagers in the past, so I was curious to see how the Dunkel compared. I knew that Warsteiner Dunkel was an ale, but I didn't expect the beer to be so dark in color. It looked more like an Irish stout than a German ale, but I'm a big fan of the darkest of beers so I wasn't about to complain. Warsteiner Dunkel has a robust scent that belied the black tint of the beer. During my first sip, my tastebuds were overwhelmed by an intense sweetish fruity flavor that rode seem to ride the crest of the standard bitter edge that comes with a dark ale. At first I didn't mind it so much, but I had made the mistake of ordering a"half yard" of Warsteiner Dunkel, which calculates to aboout 2 and 1/2 to 3 standard pints, all in one large glass. By the end of the half yard, I was really sick of that weird fruity twist that had intrigued me at first, and I just wanted it to be gone. All in all, Warsteiner Dunkel wasn't all that bad for me. I guess the key would simply be moderation.

Prost!
Ian

January 18, 2009: Maharaja

It's a busy time at the box offices in America where several critically acclaimed films are beginning to assault the general public in an attempt to make big money. For someone like me who loves art, pop culture and entertainment, I'm surprisingly not much of a movie buff. That's not to say that I am some sort of clod who can't appreciate a good film, it's just that my whole entire life I've always felt as though there wasn't enough time. Why should I sit around in a dark theater, disconnected from those around me, paying too much for a movie I probably won't like. I know I'm coming off as a cranky old bastard here, but it's just the way I've always been. I'd much rather sit around drinking with friends than go to see a movie. Every once in a while however, a movie comes along that peaks my interest just enough to get me to budge, and tonight that movie was "Slumdog Millionaire". I'm not going to use this post to wax poetic about the artistic merit of such a well made film, because frankly, I'm a beer man , not a film man. However I will say that I enjoyed this film immensely and it inspired me enough to try the Indian lager, Maharaja.

Maharaja turned out to be a pretty good beer given the circumstances. It really had nothing going for it before I sampled this beer. No reputation, no national brewing heritage, not much visual appeal. The name of this beer was really the only thing to stand out to me when I saw it in the store, but I guess that enough for me to give it a go. One of the things I loved about Maharaja was how consistant and even the flavor was throughout the course of the beer. I enjoyed this particular beer so much that I was surprised to have never heard of it before I tried it. I would definitely drink this beer again if it were more readily available to me here in the U.S.A. India has a brilliant, virbrant and awe-inspiring culture and Maharaja is in my opinion a great representative of the diverse spirit of a nation like India.

A la sature!
Ian

January 17, 2008: Zhiguliovskoye

The night of January 17th, 2009 will forever go down in infamy for the unbelievable series of events that a small group of friends and I unwittingly encountered at a monster truck rally of all places. I'm sorry that this post is so late, I've been wrestling with how to approach writing about this night in a way that will truly do it justice. I've come to the sad conclusion that perhaps this blog is not the right venue for this tale; not right now anyway. I'm already four days behind on my other posts for the sake of brevity and my own sanity, I'll stick to the review of Zhiguliovskoye for the time being and come back to the epic tale of Monster Jam 09 when I've got a bit more time to sit down and hammer it out properly. For those of you who can't contain your curiosity, I'll just tell you now that the tale of Monster Jam 09' has some of the following elements: Copious amounts of alcohol, drinking with bums, selling beer to frat boys, encounters with generous drug dealers who are covered with blood, Losing a ticket among a buzzing sea of liquored up meat heads and somehow finding it again, and of course, the famous gravedigger. But we'll save this one for another day, and when it finally gets posted, you will get the entire story... that much I can promise you.

Anyway, tonight my friends and I partook in one of the most hallowed of modern American traditions...the monster truck rally. I can no longer claim to be a monster truck virgin after tonight, and I doubt that I will ever be the same again. In keeping with the customs of those brave pioneers who came before me, I came to Monster Jam 09' with a warchest full of all the beer I could possibly handle in one night. Included in that alcoholic arsenal was the one and only Zhiguliovskoye(which I will henceforth refer to as the Ugly Z, for the sake of brevity), which was my beer for the night. I only wish I had left the ugly Z behind, because the putrid taste of this beer is still haunting me days later.

This is not an exaggeration; Ugly Z is the absolute worst beer that I have ever had the misfortune of drinking. Ugly Z actually hardly resembles beer in any way, and it's taste was so unpleasant that I had to wash down every sip with another beer of higher quality. It's actually surprising to me that there is enough of a market for this beer for someone to pay for it to be imported to the states. Maybe I just had a bad batch or something, but it was utterly undrinkable. When I was choking this horrible swill down, a homeless man collecting cans came by seeking donations. I tried to offer him the remains of the Ugly Z which was about half full, but he flatly refused. He was more than happy to take one of my bud lights off of my hands instead. I honestly wouldn't drink this beer again if you paid me less than $30, because the digusting experience is just not worth it to me. But for more that $30, who am I kidding, I'd do just about anything including drinking Ugly Z again.

Budem zdorovy!
Ian

January 16, 2009: Affligem

Confession: I was a bad boy last night. For me, the photos that usually accompany my posts are absolutely critical to the effectiveness of the 365 brews project. I forgot to bring my camera tonight, and to all my readers out there I am truly sorry for that. I have however, supplied a few pictures of Affligem from various websites, and posted two other random pics of my friends because frankly they're more interesting than looking a stock photo of a beer bottle.

Anyway, since I forgot the camera, let the wordsmith stoke the fires of your interest by taking you on the perilous journey that was my Friday night.

It's another Friday night, Quinn is tired from being around thirty fifth graders all week and understandably doesn't share my zeal for going out and getting tanked. Fair enough, but I decide to venture on without her for the night. Some of my coworkers were going to a Mexican restaurant to share some drinks, eat some chips and salsa, and talk shit about all the kids we work with. My friend Stephan who saved my life earlier in the week (see the Sapporo post from Jan 12) joined the festivities and needless to say I was obliged to buy my new hero a drink. So someone suggested a round of patron shots (On my tab...fuckers) and then another (On Tiff's tab, thanks!). After a few beer, I was pretty good and tipsy, but the night was still young. Most of my friends and coworkers decided to go their separate ways and do who knows what, but for Stephan, Tiffany and I, the night was just getting started.

We ended up in Laguna at a club called Oceans that was pretty cool until a swarm of bros invaded the bar with their affliction t-shirts and backwards hats in tow. After a few 7&7's (my favorite non-beer alcoholic drink) we decided to leave the bar when some clumsy fool stepped on Stephan's sandal, ripping the sole from the strap.

So we leave Ocean's, Tiffany's friend Michelle showed up at some point and is trying to catch up to our level of beligerance that is steadily increasing. It's an uphill battle and I know that she's not going to catch up to us, but God bless her heart for trying. So now we're making the drunken stroll to my absolute favorite spot in Laguna called Brussels. Stephan is barefoot, Tiff and I are smoking cloves and I'm pretty sure I drunk dialed a friend but I can't be certain.

Brussels is going off as usual. Here's an equasion for you mathematical types out there: Belgian beer + Euro Dance Music + Dark Bar + Already being too drunk to care = Good times. Brussels bills itself as a Belgian cafe by day, and a bar by night, and it's pretty much the only bar in Laguna that's not filled with your typical Laguna people. Over the course of this night, I had four different beers, but Affligem was the only one that I felt was worth writing about. At Brussels you can expect a crowd at the bar, snooty Euro bartenders and the occaisonal creepy fifty year old man who stands in the corner with a glass of Chardonay spying sheepishly on the young women in the bar, but it's all worth it for the selection of beers they have. You won't find Budweiser anywhere near this place. They only serve fine Belgian beers, and the selection they have is hard to find anywhere else in Orange County.

Affligem was one of those beers that I had somehow never tried before. I'm admittedly a sucker for Belgian style lagers, but this one was definitely a cut above the rest. I was clearly very drunk at this point, but the quality of this beer was enough to somehow bring some clarity back to my wandering mind and take notes. Affligem had such a refreshing taste, it almost felt like I was drinking a glass of water (in a good way). My only regret is that I know I didn't get the full experience with this one, because I was already so drunk that all I really wanted to do was dance and raise hell. Regardless of my pitiful attempt to review a good beer while I was already completly tossed, I can assure you that Affligem is a beer that's well worth the price tag that inevitably comes with a Belgian import. Get out there and try it for yourself.

As for the rest of the night? Nothing amazing really happened. Michelle drove us home and Stephan crashed on my couch and left sometime before I woke up. All in all, a great night, capped off with a great beer. I'm a happy man.

Op uw gezondheid! (Flemish speaking part of Belgium) A Votre Sante! (French speaking part of Belgium)

Ian

www.affligembeer.be
P.S. Affligem has a kick ass website. Check it out, it has chanting monks in the background. Classy!

January 15, 2009: Okocim

Poor Poland. Has any country in modern history gotten a worse rap than Poland has for no reason? You know what I'm talking about. Somehow someone somewhere for some unknown reason decided to make the Poles the laughing stock of Europe. They supposedly invented the submarine with the screen door and the helicopter with the ejector seat, along with a litany of other completely frivolous inventions. Poles are unfairly characterize as being dumb, cloddish brutes and it's simply not true. Take Copernicus, Chopin, His Holiness Pope John Paul II and Marie Curie; all poles who made significant contributions to art, science or culture. Being roughly a quarter Polish, I've tried to stick up for the nation that's been bullied by Germany and Russia for centuries. I never thought the dumb Pollack jokes were particularly funny, but when they brew a beer like Okocim, it's kinda hard to defend the Polskis.

Okocim is the beer on the docket tonight, and I'm not impressed. The brewers of Okocim claim that it is a Polish style bier, but if that's true, I think they should copy the recipes of their German neighbors. Even with my overwhelming pro-Polish bias, I couldn't really find one thing about this beer that I liked. No earmarks of quality or class. No refreshing taste or tantalizing scent. Just a bitter lager that had little to nothing to offer. Maybe I'm being a little hard on Okocim because my taste has become acutely sharpened due to the sheer volume of beers that I constantly sample, but the ultimate question I ask myself with every beer is "would I buy this again?" and the answer for Okocim is a resounding no. But don't just take my word for it, get out there and try it and decide for yourself. And lay off the Poles for Christ's sake, they're trying really hard!

Na zdrowie! (cheers in Polish)

Ian

http://www.okocim.com.pl/