Sorry for the long gap in posts. You see, when I found out that Stumptown Tart was a limited run, and it was soon to be gone forever, I headed over to Magic Beer Station and cleaned them out. Many drunken nights later, I have finally decided to try something new, keeping up the appearance that we actually do something with this website.

On to Wolaver’s Organic Brown Ale. This review is going to be painfully short. Because really, the beer was good. Not awesome, not bad. Just one of those good beers. Calming and enjoyable. The beer version of smoking a nice cigar on a leather sofa.

Unfortunately, its hot outside, I’m getting that sweaty leg on leather thing, and the AC is on so the cigar smoke is swirling around the house making me cough. In other words, Wolaver’s Organic Brown is great beer, but is here too early. Come back in November dear Wolaver, when I’m ready to lement the loss of Oregon sun by wallowing in Thanksgiving turkey and dark malty beer. August is not for you.

Welcome folks to the first installment of a new series here on Frosty Goodness, the “He brews beer” collection. Quite a few of our fellow drunkards have begun brewing beer of their own, and we would be remiss if we didn’t highlight the ups and downs of their foray into garage speakeasies. So without further ado, lets begin.

This is Doug Boyer. Doug is a great guy, and when not coming up with ways to make our livers swim, is actually in charge of shaping our future as a big wig at a local school. Doug’s submission into the always dangerous hands of Frosty Goodness was a dark and tasty porter that we at the Goodness have officially named “Boyer Bathroom Porter“. (More on the name later)

Many of you no doubt know that I am no real fan of porters. They tend to have this “gristle” taste to them, as if someone just shoved a bunch of junk in a pot and cooked it until it stopped wiggling. I have had in my day, a few good ones. But until I sat on an empty stomach in Doug’s kitchen and drank 20 or so ounces of this beer, it had been really shaky. Kudos to Doug then for curing my fear of the dark yummy roast. BBB as we’ll call it for short, was super drinkable, had a yummy “toasty” flavor, and gave me a wicked buzz that carried all the way up to me putting my swooning head to bed. Luckily for me, if not for my liver, I walked away with “one for the road”.

In revisiting from above, why the name “Boyer Bathroom Porter”? Well, I really hope it had it’s brown color before the fermentation process. Because as it turns out, Doug did his fermenting in the downstairs family bathroom. Which as I told him, is a statement that is really a joke in itself.

As a father of three, one of which arriving in the last 2 weeks, it is odd that I am writing to you completely alone in my usually busy house. With a new baby boy, two pre-teens, and a wife who I love to talk to, it is very odd indeed.

I returned from my indoor soccer game (we won, 10-3… yes!) to find the house empty. The whole fam damily was off visiting Grandma. I stopped at my local New Seasons picked up some meatloaf, some garbanzo bean salad, and the first pint and 1/2 that caught my eye. I love the selection at New Seasons. It makes choosing a beer hard, which is a good thing in my book.

It came down between El Hefe, a hef from Seatle’s Hale’s Ales and Laurelwood’s Vinter Varmer. I was about to buy both but I decided against upon inspection of El Hefe. Being from the home of Widmer Brewing, I expect my Hef to be golden and cloudy. I could see right through the bottle, and like my drinking water, I don’t trust anything I can see through. With that I vowed to try the El Hefe some other time and buy the Vinter Varmer. Also, I have to admit the label had me at the cute little squirrel (he drinkin a pint!). I am a sucker for label designs and this was no exception.

Fresh from my soccer victory I was feeling great as I sat down to enjoy some meatloaf and American Chopper. The Vinter Varmer was a perfect match for the meatloaf. I love meatloaf and it made me yearn for some Raccoon Lodge stout gravy. This stout had a nice carmely finish with rich undertones. Not your typical burnt-chocolatey stout. Very nice.

The pint and a half format is perfect for this kind of beer. Of course, the best way to enjoy this beer would probably be sitting down at the Laurelwood with Frosty and connman with some pub grub but the next best thing has to be this. I couldn’t imagine myself drinking a six-pack of this stuff (I don’t think they even sell it that way) but it is great in a single serving.

I think I might try to make some gravy with some Vinter Varmer but I will probably end up drinking it instead.

Ok, sorry about the posting delay. My liver and I had a heart to heart, and it had asked me kindly to give it some time to recoup from the onslaught of the holiday booze fest to let it return to normal. I relented. For awhile. But with reality creeping back in to remind me of why I drink in the first place, it’s on with the review.

Long a favorite of mine at the local German Pub, Gustav’s, Spaten Optimator is one of those beers that makes you feel like swaying your mug right to left and singing some drunken pub tune. Its got a certain “I’ve never been to Germany but I bet this is what the beer there is like” taste to it that I enjoy. Dark, malty, with a bit of “foreign dark beer kick” which seems to go away the more drunk on it you get. I had 48 ounces one evening with Foobar and by the end it was the smoothest damn beer I’d ever had, and I had solved the problem of world hunger, world peace, and spilled on myself. Good times.

I give this a 4 instead of a 5 however, because as one would expect, the bottled version isn’t nearly as good as the draught you get at Gustav’s. And unless you readers happen to leave in the northwest, the bottled is all you’ll get. It’s still good, but teeters on affirming my old saying: “all beer in green bottles tastes funny”. Yeah, you heard me Heineken.

Before starting this site, this used to be one of my favorite beers. But somewhere, among the 70 or so different varieties of hoorays and hurling, it lost its way. It’s a shame really, because I bought it to help clear out the taste of that particularly bad Brazilian beer, and it failed.

Perhaps nothing short of drano could clear out a swig of Einsenbahn, or maybe my affinity for stouts is waning. I mean I trashed Snow Plow, and short of a Black & Tan at an Irish Pub one night, I haven’t really enjoyed a stout in a long time. I still give this a four however, because its the second best stout I’ve ever had.

Oh the taste? Well, its stout smooth, mellow to no aftertaste, with a hint of a flavor I can assume is “chicory”, an ingredient that a few short seconds of wikipedia surfing reveals to be essentially poor man’s coffee.

There’s really not much I can say about this other that yum. When SwillJockey and I were cooking up the idea for this site, we stumbled into a beer pusher and bought a large collection of random beer. Tannen Bomb, from McMinnville, Oregon was one of them. I honestly don’t remember much about them apart from a little piece of paper I kept that said “Tannen Bomb - thumbs up”.

And yes it is! I wouldn’t say its a “memorable” beer, but its one of those beers that you drink and go…damn this is good. It’s dark, malty and super smooth going down. And unlike some other beers I’ve had that I though were good, I drink every last sip. And truly, the measure of a good beer is if you want to drink even that lukewarm semi-fuzz that sits at the bottom of the glass.

There is a certain amount of danger in letting your daughter choose a beer for you, but I couldn’t help it. Staring at the wall of beer in my local Market of Choice, I was fraught with indecision. “Honey”, I said, “what beer should daddy buy?”. “The Moose!” she replied. And such it was that I had a six pack of the unfortunately named “Moose Drool”. It is brewed by our friends at Big Sky in Montana, home of the low budget beer wrapper. And much like its other sampling we’ve had (Summer Honey), its really quite good!

Despite what the name and wrapper may imply, this nutty brown beer is real good. I’m a big fan of the nutty brown ales, and this one is no different. Slightly toasty, slightly nutty and without any drool-like aftertaste. It also has what I refer to as the “Brown Tang”, a sort of flavor that comes with browns. I like it, as it gives it a sort of signature brown ale flavor, but the wife finds it nasty, so to each their own.

So in short, although I can’t vouch for actual moose drool tasting this good, if you like Brown Ales, you’ll like Big Sky’s Moose Drool.

You know those moments where you remember something so fondly from when you were a kid,. You remember how amazing this one experience was. Then you try it later as an adult and find out it was lame, boring or horribly nasty (hello Nesquik “Strawberry” Milk). Sadly, this is exactly what Widmer Snow Plow did to me.

I can’t remember why it was, but for some reason I had it built up in my head that this beer was this awesomely brewed past lover. I imagined us strolling on the beach together, sharing a good laugh and sipping from each other’s malts.

But in a scene straight out of a college “post beer goggles” morning wake up, what greeted my lips was something just short of totally nasty. Wha? Where was that beautiful yummy glass of pure joy I remember? All I can guess is that some really big burned tree fell in the vat. Because that can to be the only excuse for something that tasted straight out of the SoCal Wild fires.

I wanted to give this beer a 3 for the good times I remember us having, but in the immortal words of Bruce Campbell, “Baby…you got real ugly”.

I do love New Belgium beers, so imagine my horror this morning when I read our dear skylark saying that they all tasted the same! *shock and alarm*. To his defense, Skinny Dip is really just Fat Tire Light, but my dear skylark, you must try 1554! 1554 by New Belgium is this completely awesome dark belgian beer that is absolutely unlike anything else they make. In fact, it is almost unlike anything anyone else makes at all (Standard micro breweries anyway). While most are playing the “we can be more hoppy than you” game, NB dares to make a dark malty beer with kick ass distinction. It’s so good, its actually one of my favorites of all time.

Perhaps its my affinity for beer I can’t see through. But when I read “Belgian Black Ale” I was sold. Someday, if I ever go to Belgium the country, I am going to get so wildly drunk on Belgian beer that I may forget I was ever there. Of course, with the way internationalization goes these days, Belgium is probably full of Budweiser and Coors. Then I’ll just drink milk and wonder why Belgian beer only tastes good in America.

They say “a picture is worth a thousand words”. And if you take a close look at the picture on the left, you will see something that perhaps tells you more about this beer than even a thousand words could. Can you see what it is? For the astute, you will have noticed that the cap is still on. And that’s the way the remaining bottles of this icky stout will remain.

There are many stout makers that really get what a stout is all about: Black Seal Stout at the Rock Bottom in La Jolla, Snow Plow by Widmer, and our Patron Saint, Guiness to name a few. But then there are the others. Bison Chocolate Stout, Boone Valley Oatmeal Stout, and this one. “Stouts” from brewers that seem to think that burnt wood is a flavor people would like in their beer. I want to believe that they made it taste like this on purpose, but even so it doesn’t make it better. You get some yummy stout flavor on first sip, but then the rest of this bottle is like “juice of firepit log.” Steer clear.