Wow, has it really been a week? Sorry for the delay in posting something that really needs to be said before I disappear into another unexplained website absence. The time has come to give a nice shout out to Idaho’s own Laughing Dog Brewery, and their Cream Ale.

I bought this stuff on a whim as I filled up the “variety six pack” at New Seasons. “Sounds Nasty” I thought to myself. “This should be fun”. Well, slap me around and call me Susan, if I wasn’t 100% wrong. Laughing Dog Cream Ale is fantastic! Why? Because its not creamy! In fact, its a great light smooth easy drinking ale that was absolutely perfect for the camping trip I just took. Nothing quite says ’sitting around a lake doing nothing’ like this stuff. No weird flavor, smells nice, looks nice and was “Session-y” in the sense that I drank a lot of it in one sitting. (go liver!)

Having had a few, I figure that they got the “creamy” moniker from the fact that the special concoction of ingredients make it so there is no sharp aftertaste, which I rank as a plus. I can’t give them any points for the label, but for the taste, a new spot has been earned in the 4th of July cooler.

(Up next: Captured By Porches Kolsch gets double teamed, and Bridgeport reigns generous supreme!)

Samuel Smith’s Organic Strawberry Fruit Ale (0/6)
Don’t drink this. Its terrible in a way that only bad fruit ale can be. Rancid sharp strawberry flavor, in otherwise fine ale. Admittedly, I didn’t expect it to be any good, but even I was surprised just how little I was able to drink before I had to pour it out.

Red Hook 8-4-1 Expedition Ale (1/6)
Your mileage may vary on this one, but I just didn’t like it. There was something about it that didn’t jive with my taste buds, and I was generally unhappy with the results. It’s not terrible, rather just the epitome of “That boy ain’t right”.

Full Sail LTD 02 (4/6)
Yay LTD! I just love this stuff. It’s on the maltier end of the Easy Drinkin’ spectrum, but it definitely qualifies as a cooler filler if the occasion arises.

Bridgeport Blue Heron Pale Ale (4/6)
Up to this point, Bridgeport’s Haymaker was holding the crown as one of my favorite Easy Drinkin’ beers. But now that I have had this, I think Bridgeport may have unseated itself. It’ll be perfect for the July 4th BBQ, when you force those family members who drink Budweiser products (…sorry I just threw up a little in my mouth…) to drink quality beer. Easy, non-offensive, tasty.

Great Divide Collette Farmhouse Ale (5/6)
I like Farmhouse Ales, but usually just for tasting. They tend to be a bit strong for a six pack or even a full 22. Collette, however, is an exception. This ale is great. And, although being farmhouse tasty (mmm…farm taste), its mellow enough to be had regularly. Or in large quantities *drunken stumble*

Widmer Sunburn Ale (2/6)
The blogosphere gave this beer a lot of happy thoughts recently, but I just didn’t see why. Widmer has decided to use some new “Citra-hop” variety of hops, which although novel, is super distracting to the taste. Its like beer flavored orange juice. Not a fan.

Dick’s Pale Ale (2/6)
Despite promising to do a huge run of Dick’s posts, I purposefully didn’t mention this one. Not because it’s bad, but just because it practically non-existent. It takes Pale to a new level by being the taste equivalent to translucence (see I know big words!).

Jonathan Edwards “Lost Finale” Lager (4/6)
I round out this blast of posts with a nod to our favorite local homebrewer Jonathan Edwards. Recently, he dropped this German Lager down on my desk, and I can happily say it was yet another notch in his impressive homebrew collection. Its crisp yummy taste helped drown out the sorrows of watching the Lost Finale. And made me buzzed enough to not care about the cheesy cork in the island scene. Prost!

And the result?  After all the build-up, the flavor is just as odd as you’d expect — and oddly, it’s the least flavorful beer I’ve ever had.  Of course any normal beer probably tastes oddly flavorless to me, after trying Budweiser’s Clamato — but even after correcting for my forever-damaged taste buds, this is a very subtle beer.  It’s almost refreshing, practically alcoholic mineral water, and would be a good beer to drink after a marathon, if for some reason you had to drink a beer instead of a sports drink.  (Try it!)  But after the subtle dignified label and the promise of exotic sorgham, I was ready for a complex spectrum of unusual and challenging flavors to process, for tastes and top notes and bouquets and aftertastes, but instead I had to consciously check midway through to see if it still tasted like beer at all.  In other words, this is a Radiohead album cover containing a compilation CD of soap opera background music.

Or maybe, its the Dick’s Mountain Amber Ale in my hand. Like the fourth wheel on car, this super tasty brew makes the whole package complete. Smooth, flavorful in a nice way, and a good malty finish.

Ladies and gentlemen, I may have just found my Summer 2010 Easy Drinkin’ beer.

And the beer?  Well, I like my Smithwick’s as much as anyone else, but the beer in the kegs in the above photo is the actual best beer in Ireland:  Guinness.   Slainte!

It may be the DayQuil I’m on talking, but this beer really brings me back to beach bonfires and lost time with semi legal substances. Karl has many beverage options, but the Amber is the classic. Its smooth and crisp.  And perhaps its just nostalgia, but it epitomizes what I think of when I say “easy drinkin beer”. Its the perfect summer beer….which in San Diego, feels like its all year round.

Most pale ales these days want to smack you around with hops and make your cheeks beg for mercy. Not this one. Well balanced, light, and malty, it’s the perfect “I want a beer, but not a challenge” beer.

It’s tasty on multiple levels and not vapid like your former college roommate’s blonde girlfriend from years past. I wish this stuff was bottled, but until then I may have to pay the people at Buffalo Wings more visits.

Woman:  “Who is it?”

Voice at door:  “Candygram!”

Woman:  “You’re not that sneaky land shark, are you?”

Voice at door, after a pause:   “No ma’am, I’m just a beer that tastes like Corona.”

Woman:  “Well, all right…    AAAGHHH!      You do taste just like Corona!”

I’m not sure why, in my little scene, the woman has to scream at the end, it just seemed appropriate.  Must be those 12 years of improv classes I have under my belt (and don’t forget 3 years of tap).  Perhaps I’ve grown accustomed to wandering around the limits of what beer flavors a human can withstand, ranging from horrible malt liquors to novelty beers with 18% alcohol content to … shudder … Budweiser and Clamato, but I found this LandShark brew to be pretty much a bland easy-to-chug party beer, with absolutely nothing making it stand out.  Which means the brewers pretty much got it exactly the way they want it, as this beer is part of the Jimmy Buffett Empire and is some sort of promotional tie-in with the Miami Dolphins.  I’m not sure if the Dolphin’s stadium being renamed “Land Shark Stadium” came first, this beer came first, or both are named for some other facet of the Buffett Fiefdom, because the work it would take to find out sounds an awful lot like Research, and that kind of effort just seems against the whole Jimmy Buffet Vibe.

Speaking of Buffett, his concerts would routinely sell out multiple nights in Cincinnati back when I lived there.  Cincinnati?  A beach/island/sun-kissed/laid-back vibe in Cincinnati?  Where you can get bacon-wrapped dental floss?  Never made sense to me — food and beverages in my hometown just don’t fit well with limes.  Then again, Buffett still does look like a doughy uptight suburban midwesterner at a beach-themed barbecue, trying and failing to pull off the Hawaiian shirt, despite all the years of laid-back partying.  Even after decades of Margaritaville, he still would look more appropriate doing accounting in the next cubicle over than playing slide guitar with a beer bottle neck.  Which, come to think of it, is a fairly apt description of this beer — if we could somehow eavesdrop on the various styles of beers conversing with each other, they’d describe that Land Shark dude as the same old doughy suburbanite dressed up in some half-arsed party garb.  This is a beer trying to wear a Hawaiian shirt tucked into his pleated khaki dockers.  Not bad, but I’ve met a million of ‘em before.

Ninkasi Radiant Summer Ale

I have decided that the Ninkasi Brewery is one that I just don’t “get”. The thing is, they seem to have this unhealthy obsession with hops. With the exception of their respectable Oatmeal Stout, every beer I’ve tasted of theirs has been a cheek smashing hop fandango. Without much effort you can imagine what their Summer seasonal was like then. First sip. Decent, if a little hoppy. The problem was those other sips. I started by thinking to myself, eh, 4 rating maybe 3. But with every sip, the score went down. Until finally the rest was undrinkable. Not to mention the face that SwillJockeys wife made when she tried it. Remember those “bitter beer face” commercials? Yeah that.

Full Sail Session Black Lager

I have decided that I just have an affection for “Black” beers. Note the distinction from Porters, Browns and Stouts. Those are awesome too, but there is something special about a 1554, Lompoc Strong Draft or Session Black that just makes them awesome. Perhaps its the manliness of having your beer be more daunting than the wiener with the IPA next to you. Maybe it’s the fact that even though you can’t see through it, its still got that easy drinking feel. Whatever it is, I dig, and Full Sail’s new Session Black is full of it. Its a crisp dark lager, that balances machismo with easy drinking for a nice summer pick. Although I didn’t get to drink it from one of those impy little bottles (a big mention in the Full Sail marketing material), I can report that the draft didn’t disappoint. To use the vernacular of the cool kids, with LTD03 and Session Black, Full Sail is “the hotness” this summer.(do people still say that?)

Chris McGowen Wheat White Wit

We like Chris McGowen. Why? Well apart from him being a nice guy, he’s one of the stable of local Favorite Amatuer Brewmasters that routinely supply me with tasty concoctions. His latest edition is one I affectionately call Wheat White Wit. Cause although to beer snobs there’s a distinction, when I asked Chris what he made, those three words all made it into the descriptive response. But hey, whose counting? Its free beer! Super duper cloudy (Chris spilled grain in the beer..doh!), it was a nice easy drinking wheat/white/wit beer. Perfect for a summer BBQ. If you can get your hands on some, I highly recommend taking his advice and mowing the lawn while chugging it down. There’s something about controlling a 3ooo rpm spinning blade of death and alcohol that just go together.

Ok, if I’m calling a bottle sexy perhaps I’ve had enough beer already. But the point is that currently, Nellie is in the running to unseat Haymaker as the 2009 Summer Easy Drink’r. Its light, its tasty, and has none of the armpit taste that some golden ales seem to have.

If the Pike folks happen to read this before I make it up there tomorrow, make sure your wi-fi is running. Frosty wants some Pike on tap, and as that girl I met on the college road trip can attest to, there is no better way to get me going than to get me a little drunk and put me online.