Things I Can’t Get Worked Up About

The beer nerd world gets worked up about things on a regular basis. Today, it’s the whole Lagunitas sell-out thing, which, yes, has an ironic component given the deranged ramblings of their owner in the past. But I’m sorry, I just can’t get worked up about it. I’ve got too much beer to drink, not to mention all the other stuff going on in my life. Here’s a few other things I could care less about:

  • Pumpkin Beer in July! Every year with these people. Yeah, it’s faintly ridiculous that a big, heavy, spicy fall beer shows up on shelves in July, and no, I don’t want to drink one whilst embroiled in a humid heat wave. That’s why I don’t buy pumpkin beers in July! No one is forcing you to buy them and there’s plenty of other stuff on the shelves. We’re drowning in a glorious deluge of great, varied beer these days. I can’t get worked up about pumpkin beer showing up a little early.
  • The definition of Craft! Dear lord, why? It’s fermented sugar water, and it’s delicious. That’s pretty much all I need. Look, I enjoy pedantic labeling exercises as much as the next guy, and if you want to see me rant about what the hell constitutes a saison, I’ll go on about it for hours. That is something I can get worked up about, for some reason. But “craft” is basically meaningless to me, no matter how you define it. I’m sure I’ve used the term on here before, but the thing is, you probably understood what I was talking about without needing to delve into how many barrels a given brewer puts out in a year. Language is sometimes ephemeral, and I have a hard time getting worked up about the definition of craft. In certain contexts (i.e. if I worked for a trade organization dedicated to a certain group of brewers), I’m sure it’s super important, but I don’t exist in such a context.
  • Malty and Hoppy are lazy descriptions! And yet, non-beer-nerds seem to get it right away when I use those words. When I say biscuity or bready, they turn their head at me the way a cat looks at their owner when the food bowl is empty. I’m not trying to dumb it down or condescend, but I also don’t want to lecture someone on the minutiae of malt and hops unless they’re genuinely interested. My brother could care less about this stuff, but if I tell him something is hoppy or an IPA or something, he gets the picture and runs in the other direction. That’s all he wants, and I’m not going to force feed him information on hop terroir and the flavor wheel and my personal system for ranking how dank a beer’s hops are. I generally don’t use these broad words here when writing tasting notes, but occasionally one slips out, and I simply can’t get worked up about it.

None of these things are ridiculous, of course, and obviously these are popular topics to write about, I just can’t get worked up about them. This perhaps explains my modest traffic here, as I rarely come down hard on a given controversy. In fact, for a guy who sez he can’t get worked up over this stuff, I just wrote a bunch about it, so um. Hey, look below, beer!

What do I get worked up about? Beer! Here’s a few things I’ve had recently that I didn’t take notes about because I was hanging out with friends, new and old, and didn’t want to bury my nose in my phone because I’m not a total jerk.

BeerNERDS Bottle Share

(Click to Embiggen)

I went to a local beer collective’s bottle share recently and met a whole slew of new beer friends. A good time was had by all, and the bottles were pretty impressive. I didn’t take notes, but a few did stand out:

Alesmith Barrel Aged Vietnamese Speedway Stout

de Garde Yer Bu

That’s Alesmith Bourbon Barrel Aged Speedway Stout, which was spectacular (despite my legendary indifference to coffee) and de Garde Yer Bu, a delicious little Berliner Weiss that clocks in at a measly 2.5% ABV. Also of note was Tuckahoe Marigolden, an obscure NJ brewery making a pretty darn solid American Wild Ale. Literally everything else that was at there share was great too, but those were the standouts.

101 North High Gravity IPA

Speaking of sharing, a friend was over recently and I decided to share some of the haul from my trade with Jay of the most excellent Beer Samizdat blog. This was a quite dank, powerful little DIPA, it felt like a light barleywine with a little age on it, quite nice.

Tilquin Squared

At a local beeratorium, I spied this Tilquin Gueuze Squared. Apparently created by accident when they inadvertently over-carbonated a bunch of bottles. They gave it some more time in barrels before rebottling, but that meant that the ABV had risen a bit higher than normal. Perhaps not better than your typical Tilquin Gueuze, but a happy accident nonetheless, and quite delicious!

Union Duckpin Pale Ale

I’ve sung this underrated beer’s praises before, and while it’s not going to blow your head off, it’s a great little pale ale, citrusy and quaffable. Worth checking out, and if you see Double Duckpin, definitely go for it!

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