Dear New Belgium,

For some time now, skylark and I have had an argument. He has claimed that you were unimaginative. He claimed that all your beers tasted the same. He claimed you weren’t the awesome microbrew heroes you claimed to be.

And all this time I defended you. I said “No, 1554 is original!”. “New Belgium is awesome”. “They GET it.” I believed it in my heart… and then I saw this.

There you were, nestled up next to the Pabst Blue Ribbon. And me, standing there mouth agape. How could I face skylark now? It’s like I was the guy angrily defending the fidelity of his best girl…while she bangs some guy under the bleachers at the monster truck rally.

Good bye New Belgium. You can keep the singing fish plaque and the Garth Brooks CD. You’ll need it where you’re going.

- Frosty

    We’ve come to a decent point for reflection in our quest to rate the worst beers on the planet, a place to set up camp and stop for the night, as it were.  A place to look back, survey the wide forests of malt liquor and beer+seafood combinations we’ve hiked through, and ponder.  A place to stop for the night and rest our shoulders, which strain under the weight of this hiking metaphor.  But let’s be serious and systematic about this — we all know that most of the beers I review are bad, but which ones are REALLY bad?  If you’re in a spot in your life where you absolutely had to drink one of these, which would it be?

    Not only am I going to get serious and systematic, I’m going full-blown Nerd on this.  I’m going to get out my taped-in-the-center glasses, put aside my rock tumbler, and present a plot of data taken so far that should illustrate which beers are the cream of this awful crop.  It boils down to this — a beer that is bad should be cheap, right?  So which beers give you the best bang in quality for the least buck (and I do mean a buck, or maybe upwards of $1.40 for the more expensive malt liquors)?  Let’s take a look at the price of beers rated so far (in cents per ounce) versus the quality I gave it (the rating, out of six).  I took the liberty of futzing with the rating dimension a bit, but you’ll forgive me, right?  Here are the results:

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    Well, there you have it folks.  Beers in the upper left corner are the ones you should aim for, being passable in quality and easy on the wallet.  Beers down in the lower right corner have the nerve to be more expensive than other beers of better quality.  Let’s put aside the Bud / Clamato abomination as an outlier obviously concocted by forces of evil.  Within the standard, non-clam-based beers, you’ll want to avoid Mickey’s and Schlitz, and instead opt to crack open a screw-top of King Cobra, Steel Reserve, or better yet Natural Ice.  The Natural Ice price is skewed a bit low since you can buy it in 24-packs, so I’d bet the little Natty Ice dot would move closer to the pack if you could buy it in 40 oz bottles.  Which would be nice, since I can’t be hauling around a 24-pack of cans to the bus station…

Where do you get your hair cut? Supercuts? Great Clips? Berts Barber Shop down the Street? Suck-cut? The same place you get your nails done? I graduated from Supercuts in college, moved up to Bishop’s (the original Rock ‘n Roll Barbershop) and then on to Hair M. The full-service, man-focused, hottie-populated hair do has become non-optional. I think it was the 5-minute crop I got from Great Clips for $5 (not worth a nickel) that did it. It was like bad prison sex (or what I imagine bad prison sex is like… Carlos keep your mouth shut, I have friends on the inside).

Ever since being violated with a pair of scissors at Great Clips, I have taken great care in selecting my hair care professional. I’ve started going to Chopperz and have found it to be an awesome place. I’ve written about them before but I’ll do it again. I seem to be recycling beer reviews but there is a good reason. If you need a reason to stop getting your hair butchered/raped at Supersucks or Rape Clips, this is it: BEER. Go to Bishop’s, Hair M, or Chopperz and you’re going to get beer. At Chopperz, you’re going to get more than just the standard Hef, Guiness, or High Life (Bishop’s, totally perfect). At Chopperz they’ve got their own brews. I’ve written about them before but they just happen to have some new ones. I made a special trip after work so I could have a sample.

I tried the Smoke Porter and man, was it a surprise. Winter time drives me away from Hef and lager towards Porters, Stouts, and Ales. There is something about a good IPA or Nitro Stout that makes the winter months more enjoyable. Anyway, I found the Smoke Porter had just the right amount of burnt-chocolaty flavor but didn’t try too hard. It was easy to drink like a lager. Unlike most of my winter time beers, which are best enjoyed with well spaced sips, the Smoke urged me to have another drink.

So, next time your at Supercraps, ask them for a beer. When they look at you sideways, think about upgrading your hair care professionals. Of course, chances are your ex-prison barber will reach under the counter and hand you an Old E. Trust me, that isn’t a goog thing.

When you first take a look at the picture on the left here, you’ll say, “hey Frosty, isnt that just Full Moon?” Well, not if you believe the label. Take a closer look, and you will see the quality labeling job done at the bottler (bottled by Coors, natch). It’s not Full Moon, its nooW 77nL, that classic l33t speaky winter ale. mmmm pwn4ge.

I wrote a post a while back about an awesome tour I got from a brewman at Bridgeport. I recently sampled Bridgeport’s Hopfest (I think that is what is was called). Double hoppiness is just right for a hop lover like me. However, something about it was familiar. The extreme hoppiness seemed familiar to me.

When we sampled the IPA right out of the settling tanks we attributed the extra hoppiness to the fact that we were drinking really fresh beer. But I think this is the beer we sampled on the tour! Our sly brewman didn’t clue us in, but I think we got a little preview of this limited run ale.

Pretty cool.

Last week I took a friend from Dallas, TX out for a night in Portland. The beer selection in Dallas is limited but they do get Bridgeport IPA and Blue Heron as well as Widmer Hefeweizen. His favorite is Bridgeport so we headed to NW Portland to visit Bridgeport’s brewery. After a couple beers each we headed South to get some food at Paragon. On our way out we passed a couple brewman stirring a vat of hops. We stopped to enjoy the smell of hops and brewing beer and one of the brewman invited us over to take a closer look. After explaining that what we were looking at was a “Hop-back,” a way to reintroduce hops in to the brew after boiling to give the beer that hoppiness we like.

Here is where is gets really cool. The brewman we were talking to invited us back to take a tour of the brewery. Now, I know anyone can take a tour. Brewery tours are a part of all brewerys. This one was different. It was only the two of us and a brewman, not some tour guide or PR person. I don’t think we got to see anything more than anyone else does. However, delivery matters. And the perspective we got from our guide Tom was straight from the pits of Bridgeport’s 80 barrel brewing system.

We went from boiling tank to fermentation, to settling tanks, and then to the lab. We drank straight from the settling tanks (well, poured in to a glass), took in the sweet smell of hops in the hop fridge, and tasted some old beer in the lab to see what makes a skunky beer. Along the way we were educated on the finer points of beer brewing and drinking beer with the snarky, cynical delivery that only Tom could supply.

When you love beer like we do, you start to wonder why you love it so much. Of course, some would say it has to do with the alcohol in it. You know, the old Pavlovovian response to stimulus. But I’d like to believe it something more than just a chemical response to alcohol. Brewman like Tom are an inspiring beacon to all of us beer lovers. I learned something about where my beer comes from and why it tastes so good. I learned about the way lagers are brewed as opposed to an IPA or ale and why I like each differently.

So hats off, or better yet raise one up for Tom. His humble attitude and hard work is what makes great beer.

I apologize for this not being a review (its been a sick household…not time for beer), but in keeping with DB’s haiku of last week, I wanted to share a joke, both funny and true.

A coors drinker, a bud drinker and a Guinness drinker all meet a bar for happy hour. After sitting down, the coors drinker orders a coors, the bud drinker orders a bud and and the Guinness guy orders a glass of milk. Noticing the third guys order, the first two say “hey, whats with the milk?”. And the Guinness guy replies “If you two aren’t going to order beer, then neither am I”.

Frosty Goodness, Yum!

Cold bottle in my right hand

Beer farts for everyone!