Last year, when I tried this beer, I was really amazed and how Blue Moon managed to blend in the flavor of pumpkin into a malty fall ale and have it actually taste really yummy.

You can imagine my chagrin this year however, when I bought this brew expecting that early dose of autumn goodness. Instead I was met with … well … nothing. Its a malty fall like beer I guess. But it lacks any pumpkin flavor. I mean none. Zip. Nada. So how do they justify calling it pumpkin ale? Maybe they brewed it IN a pumpkin patch.

It doesn’t taste bad…just incomplete. And a beer that makes me feel cheated deserves a little squashing. Get it?  Squash…pumpkin? I kill me.

I was lucky enough to have another homebrew delivered to my desk this afternoon. Jonathan Edwards dropped off his latest concoction, Hit ‘n Run IPA. The story goes that on the way home from the brew shop he was actually involved in a hit and run. Something about two meth crazed old ladies who sides-swiped him. Man, the burbs ain’t as same as they used to be!

First off, as we all know I am a sucker for labels. For a homebrew, this one has got a great one. An oregon license plate “Hit n Run” with the alchohol level (just a guess or the real valu?) and IPA as the registration stickers. Nice. Well done.

Beyond the label, it proved to be a very easy drinking IPA. Mr. Edwards apologized ahead of time that it was a little weak. But in a world where IPAs and IIPAs seem to overcompensate for art with more hops, I found it enjoyable. I love a hoppy beer, but it can definitely be taken too far. I could say that Hit ‘n Run needs more hops but I won’t. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Just do what the big microbrewers do (ahem, Fat Tire), just name it something different! If it tastes kinda like an IPA but is easy drinking, just call it Easy Rider IPA or something and put something about how you were trying to capture the drinkability of a lager and the hop-roots of an IPA. Viola!

This has to be the fiercest beer found in “regular-folks” circulation at grocery stores — you of course can get much odder, harsher beers at specialty stores and Trader Joe’s, but this is as far as you can go into dark cheek-biting beers that are stocked next to the baloney at Ralph’s. So I suspect that this beer is to potent stout beers as Avril Lavigne is to punk rock.  This beer is also the next in my Macarthur-Genius-Award winning series on Beers Whose Artwork Can Kick Your Ass.  And in this case, steal your soul and possibly lead to a communist revolution in your very home.  For those keeping track, this is Part 6 in the series, which includes four malt liquors, a viking, and now an indestructible quasi-priest with a serious beard.

And, I might add, serious cheek bite.  Holy mouth burn, does this beer bite!   You may want to go over your tongue with a pumice stone for a few minutes before drinking, just to warm up.  Certainly it’s not the biggest offender out there — specialty store stouts could bite your cheek twice as hard, I’m sure.  Somewhere, somebody is probably brewing some prototype Nuclear Stout that contains so much hops that not even light can escape, a beer that will blast your cheeks into next October, where they will suddenly reappear after you’ve learned to cope without them, reattach to your face and hurt like hell for the next twenty years.  But as far as beers that you can readily find during a trip to buy diapers, this is pretty sharp.  Not a bad taste, though — I do like stouts quite a bit (Guinness being my all-time favorite beer) and so it was definitely a good diversion from the usual horse pee I drink for entertainment’s sake on this site.  But I must ashamedly admit I bought it more for the label, once again suckered in by soul-less commercialism.  Isn’t that how Rasputin would have wanted it?

This is a beer whose artwork can Kick Your Ass, Burn Your Village, and Decimate Your Culture for Decades To Come (and will Later Become the Mascot for a Football Team). This beer’s artwork scoffs at the so-called “badass” artwork of Colt 45, King Cobra, and the like. This beer’s artwork eats Steel Reserve for breakfast. I can’t even get into how it lays waste to the Country Club.

And yet the beer itself didn’t quite live up to the label — maybe I’m unfairly comparing it to Samischlaus, the 28-proof brewed-only-once-a-year uber beer I just reviewed. If I’d been drinking Coors all week, I’m sure SkullSplitter would have knocked me on my shield (which is oddly shiny and clean, for a Viking). This is definitely not a weak beer, and I’m sure it earns its name the next morning after drinking a six-pack. My wife (Mrs. Liquor) took one sip and her appendix burst (not really, but same facial expression), so it might be me. I may have to conclude that I’ve broken my taste buds. I also inexplicably taste licorice in all Scottish beers, including this one, leading me to think I can’t be trusted to objectively rate beers anymore. And why does a Scottish beer have viking iconography? Historical glee at how the Vikings were one of the few cultures to subjugate the British, subjugators of Scots, Irish, Welsh, India, and the rest of the world?

It’s not a bad beer, though, and definitely packs a wallop in alcohol. It has a vaguely thick fruity taste, strong initial bite, not bad aftertaste, and possibly discovered America hundreds of years before Columbus. I would in fact judge it to be about halfway between McEwan’s and Samischlaus (though I haven’t tried enough other Scottish beers to really fill out the coordinate system there). If not quite conjuring up feelings of gnawing on a giant roast wildebeast leg at Valhalla, it’s an interesting beer experience and worth a swig or two.

Recently I toured the Stone brewery in Escondido, and boy is it pretty. Anyone who lives in the area should take a spin in that direction. But this isn’t about the building, this is about the beer they make in it. I’ll be the first to admit, hoppy beers aren’t my normal drink of choice. And Stone beers are nothing if not hoppy. But I’m learning to appreciate quality beer even if it takes bitter beer face to the extreme. All told, I tried their Pale Ale, IPA, Arrogant Bastard, Smoked Porter, Russian Imperial Stout, and Old Guardian barley wine. The first four were part of a sampler that they offer after the tour. The stout and the barley wine we took home and drank later. All of their beers were good, but suffered from a bit too much flavor, text book 3’s all around.

When I finally got to the barley wine, it didn’t take long to get to me. With the word “wine” in the name, it seems like it could be classy. But at 11% abv, the 1 pint, 6 oz. bottle that they sell it in is more than enough to get me feeling… loopy. I got to admit though, I think Old Guardian is my favorite of all the Stone brews. It has that signature hoppiness that all Stone brews have, but it doesn’t kick quite as much. Maybe the high alcohol content and the high hop content cancel each other out, I don’t know. All I know is that I liked it.

Yikes! Whooo!!! As I write this, I’m about halfway through a bottle of Samichlaus, and I’m quite loopy — this beer is advertised as officially rated by the Guinness Book of Records as the strongest beer in the world, at 14% alcohol, more even than the malt liquors I’ve been reviewing. This is not a beer for the mild at heart — the flavor more than stands up to the bite from all the alcohol, and needless to say the alcohol itself will cause some complications in your life if you have one, say, on an empty stomach at the start of a business lunch. (”No sir, we didn’t land the Stevens account, because I burped up my spinach omelet into the salad bar…”) It has a licorice taste reminiscent of McEwan’s (or about eight McEwan’s distilled down into a thick slurry) to go along with the kick from the alcohol. All beers over 7 or 8 percent alcohol have a punch-in-the-teeth “Holy Crud!” bite to them, probably from the unexpected combination of beer taste and ethanol. I just dunno if it works, though — ale flavor can’t really stand up well to the alcohol kick as well as other boozy non-beer beverages in the same range, for example cinnamon schnapps (whose taste could overwhelm coal tar).

The label is strangely understated (though the font is so gothic and serif-advanced that I can barely make out the name), much as the champagnes that are superior have the bland labels — they don’t need lots of fuss and business for Jay-Z to know to buy them. Plenty of fuss goes into making this beer, however — it is brewed only once a year on December 6th (St. Nicholas’ birthday — “Samichlaus” translates as Santa Claus), then is left to age for ten months to age before escaping to specialty beer stores. Hardly needs to be said, completely wasted on me. For the average joe like me, this is the beer equivalent of $100 wine that you and 19 of your friends bought together just to see what all the fuss is. And for me, the fuss with Samichlaus turned out to be not much more than getting unexpectedly plowed on a Tuesday night…

This review is going to be short. Real short, because sadly, Lagunitas Censored Ale is one of those forgettable beers. It’s not awesome and not terrible. Ale-y with a slight hoppy kick, but not too obnoxious. I suppose I could try and say something funny about the fact they had to censor its original name, but much like the real Kronic, I’ve had too much and can’t feel my face….man these keys are so big…wow look at my hands!

Frosty and I took our buddy visiting from Texas, B-rad, to our local McMeniniman’s. The Cornelius Pass Roadhouse is a great place to take visitors. The antique timbers, local artwork, and proximity to the Silicon Forest make it an easy way to give someone a taste of Portland.

We sat down for some good pub grub and conversation and ordered a pitcher of Starfire IPA. Frosty had the Summer Wheat or something because he is a hater. The IPA was distinctly different on the first sip. Both B-rad and I immediately blurted out  salmon. Puzzled, Frosty took a sip and came to the same conclusion. Smoked salmon to be specific. It was nice, kind of mellowed out the hops. It was almost like someone dropped a piece of charred cedar from a smoke house in to the hops.

Pleased with our choice in beer and our interpretation of the flavor we continued to dig on some cajun tots. After a while I took a deep swig from my now half empty glass and caught a distinct whiff of  B.O…. you know, body odor, man-stink. And not just any B.O. I’m talking a true ripeness. Ball-sweat. Taint-drip. Mary Catherine Gallagher neurotically shoving her hands in her pits and thrusting them in her face.

It was the unmistakable smell of your Grandpa’s BVD crotch after a strenuous game of Texas Holdem… and he didn’t come away ahead. You know what I mean? Yeah you do… he was clenchin’ those cheeks all the way to the River.

In the end, however, I learned something about myself. Turns out I can appreciate a good ball-sweat. I mean, I think I am going to refrain from getting it right from the source. That might have some unintended consequences and perhaps a slightly different aftertaste. No, definitely not but I guess what I am really saying is that it didn’t ruin the beer entirely. The unique smoked-salmon flavor really set it apart. I would simply request that those hippy brewmasters down at McMeniman’s refrain from throwing their sweat-soaked frisbee golf uniforms in with the hops.

From Pizza Ports website on ole viscosity:

“Not your Dad’s Wimpy 30 Weight is how our original label used to describe this massive chewy and thick beer. Code named by our brewers-”The Big Black Nasty,” this is monstrous dark ale is brewed to no particular style. Thick and sludgy like oil from the crankcase of a wheat threshing combine, Old Viscosity blurs the boundaries of Porter, Stout, Old Ale and Barleywines.

Ok so its been a while since I drank this. But before I go to far into this, you should know that I have had a colonoscopy, and they make you drank this terrible stuff to purge your colon so your doc doesn’t have to stare at the cheeseburger you ate a few days prior. Well that experience was awful, the damage this did to me was almost instant. They compare this brew to motor oil. I think IT IS motor oil. Imagine the darkest porter you’ve ever had. This is darker. And thicker. This is the kind of beer that I want to serve to those jackasses that think Guinness is a really thick strong beer. I meow in your direction.

Its hard giving this a mug, because from my personal experience its really a 1, but in looking around the internet people that love this kind of beer freaking LOVE this beer. Yeah, they probably look like the kind of people who drank this. Pizza Port’s Wipeout IPA is right now my favorite beer, and if it wasn’t for the fact I had a wipeout (look for a review coming soon) before this old viscosity, I would have never tried another brew from them.

Oh, and thanks honey for buying extra flushable wipes, my buttcheeks thank you.

Okay, I just got done writing a long tirade on Hair of the Dog, but I have to do it again. But, this time I’ll be gentle. Afterall, this is New Belgium. Fat Tire has always been in my top 10 or 20. Skinny Dip was a nice change this summer too. But as I drink my 3rd variation of New Belgium beers, I can’t help but think something is missing. That something would be VARIATION. Three different beers, pretty much the same taste. I love you New Belgium, but I think we need to spice up our relationship.

Of course, I’m going to enjoy the rest of my six-pack. In the end, maybe that is the message: if you love New Belgium and they’re all out of  Fat Tire, don’t worry about it. Just have some Skinny Dip or 20 Below! They all taste pretty much the same.