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Review: Magic Hat Wooly ESB (with Spruce!)

December 18, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

At the end of October, I let my facial hair free-range feed on my face. I wore my beard proudly, not worried about patchiness or thinning, because I am descended from a long line of bearded greatness.

My great great great grandfather, Graybeard, was a pirate of no small renown and no small beard. My great great great uncle Gisli (the Útlaginn) didn’t even have to wear armor into battle because his beard offered so much natural protection.

I loved it. I was like Samson with a pen; the longer and meatier my beard became, the more I felt like a writer who was joining the esteemed ranks of Plato, Chaucer, and Darwin. I would have grown a beard on top of my beard if such thing were humanly possible, I liked it that much.

My wife, not so much. One night she said, “you try kissing someone with a beard!” I had no witty come back.

Last week, I took blade to face and removed the hairy growth. I had, at that point, a full face-helmet and moustache, bushy and coarse and bright red. I felt stupidly manly with my beard. It made me more confident, in the same way a really nice suit or particularly fancy hat can make a person more confident.

I would stand next to other young men on the metro, silently comparing their beards to mine. “Poor patch-face” I’d think to myself, reveling in the schadenfreude and the safety of my own well built beard. I felt bad for those dudes. They wanted a beard so badly that they subjected themselves to the awkwardness of the proto-beard indefinitely.

I’d also admire a particularly fierce specimen on the rare occasion such a beard came down unto the mortal plane. There was one guy, nay a gentleman, who had a beard down to his nipples, but a completely bald head. If he wasn’t a wizard, then he was some kind of inner-city shaman.

But beards have their downsides too. With a full face of hair comes itching. Itching beyond what you might expect. Itching that erodes your sanity, minute after scratchy-ass minute, until you’re rubbing your face on the corner of a door frame like some rabid bear, just trying to quiet the storm of itches.

They hold moisture and food particles, making them prime for embarrassing outward reminders of what you had for lunch. They also tend to catch on things like bed sheets, necklaces, and jacket collars. Every time a little neck hair gets caught in the link of a braided chain, it feels like someone jabbed you with a cattle prod.

Great for shaking the grog of an especially early morning, not so great for getting through a day without yelping.

Magic Hat seems to get the whole beard thing. They even made a beer with a great big lumberjack on the label! The ESB as a style lends itself to the owners of beards; it is strong but resilient, drinkable at any occasion, during any season. They also added spruce, because nothing says “awesome bearded lumberjack beer” more than adding actual bits of trees to your beer.

After all, you can’t spell “beard” without “beer.” If you add an a. And drop that second e.

8.75 out of 10.

When the world's got you down, grow a beard. Unless you're a lady.

When the world’s got you down, grow a beard. Unless you’re a lady. Then don’t do that because it will probably be really awkward for everyone.

Review: Magic Hat Encore Wheat IPA

December 12, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Doing that podcast with Josh opened my drunkenly glazed-over eyes to a startling truth: I drink and love and appreciate beer, but I know very little about what goes into officially judging the quality of a beer.

To all the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) people: I am so very sorry. I have been living an unintentional lie. I have been a poor herald for the beer drinking community.

But almost any mistake can be rectified and I chalk this one up to poor self-education. I downloaded the “BJCP Style Guidelines” and began scrutinizing it like a graduate student let loose on his favorite author’s magnum opus. I’m amazed at the nuance outlined in this guide. I discovered several new words for describing the taste and presentation of my favorite beers, all of which I will henceforth abuse and overuse all over this blog for a brief period that will probably last until I annoy myself by using them too much.

This guide is also packed with short histories on styles, judge’s comments, and common ingredients. If you haven’t read it, or at least checked out the notes on your favorite style (I found the Marzen section extra fascinating) I highly recommend you do. It’s like a text book, technical guide, beer overview, and flavor bible all in one!

2008 is the latest version I could find. If anyone has a new version, send it my way!

2008 is the latest version I could find. If anyone has a new version, send it my way!

My favorite new term is actually for judging mead (and other wine): Mousiness.

I can’t wait to hold a glass of mead up to a light, tilt it slightly and say, “Almost no mousiness. Nice.” I will then, in a very unprofessional and unrestrained manner, drink the rest of the bottle of delicious honey wine without scrutinizing every sip because I’m lacking quite a few of the qualities that might elevate me from “uncouth” to “refined.”

Other additions to my reviewing vocabulary:

  • Acetification (the process in which wine becomes vinegar)
  • Astringency (the dry, coarse taste often associated with tannins and overly sparged grains)
  • Diacetyl (the “slippery” or buttery taste of alcohol)
  • DMS (or dimethyl sulfide, a corn-like taste/smell found in lagers)
  • Melanoidins (the smell that comes from something that has been “browned” like a malt or a piece of toast)

Time to put this to good use. Here is my official BJCP-guided review of Magic Hat Encore Wheat IPA!

Aroma: Powerful up front hop character hits you like a prize-fighter’s right jab; grassy smells follow, after the beer has sat in the glass for a bit. Memories of being a child running through Floridian orange groves follow. Subtle wafts of wheat oscillate in the background between the hops and alcohol.

Appearance: Freshly minted penny meets Crayola orange. Cloudy but not completely opaque, probably a result of the wheat. The thin, brilliant white head persists for several minutes and crowns the beer like a laurel of foam. Probably a 15-16 on the SRM scale.

Flavor: Similar to other IPAs until the back end, when the wheat sneaks up and bites your tongue. Complex hop flavors come from the Simcoe and Amarillo fighting each other. Strong citrus flavor finishes off each sip.

Mouthfeel: Medium body, nice tingle from the carbonation, but no burn. Relatively smooth, enjoyable to drink.

Overall Impression: A serviceable and drinkable IPA. Don’t see how the wheat really helped things, but it didn’t hurt things either. Would buy again, maybe in Spring/Summer instead of Fall/Winter.

8.25 out of 10.

I feel like I should use monosyllabic expressions of my feeling when writing a formal review. Hrm. Yes. Quite. Mmph.

I feel like I should use monosyllabic expressions of my feeling when writing a formal review. Hrm. Yes. Quite. Mmph.

Review: Magic Hat Heart of Darkness Stout

December 3, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

I don’t normally care about label art, as it seems superfluous to the enjoyment of the stuff inside the bottle. But those guys over at Magic Hat have their collective metaphorical shit together, it seems. All of the labels, down to the “thumb-print fly-maze” of their mainstay “#9” are really well designed, and make me stop to appreciate them, just before I appreciate the beer.

Just look at that eye. Creepy as hell, in the best kind of way.

I’m a literature guy, but I’ve never read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I thought it was about a tiger who ate some guy, but I think I was actually remembering that Michael Douglas movie (that also had Iceman from Top Gun in it) where he shoots some poor lions who were just trying to get some dinner because he’s a jerk. Either that, or I confused it with The Most Dangerous Game. My apologies for mixing up my turn-of-the-century post-colonial American-British-African Lit.

I discovered this little gem in the Magic Hat Winter Sampler (which also included #9 x3, Encore Wheat IPA x3, and Wooly ESB x3 – reviews coming soon!*) It was labeled as “a smooth, round palate with a dreamlike undercurrent of bittersweet chocolate.”

An undercurrent is an understatement. This thing tasted like a chocolate bock made with unsweetened baking chocolate and cocktail sours.

But if that sounds unpalatable, I apologize. My palate is quite bizarre (I like to eat raw garlic). This Joseph Conrad nod is really enjoyable, especially as a winter seasonal. It is appropriately heavy with only a mild hint of malty sugar, making for something that feels like it belongs in a snifter, in your left hand, while you read the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe with your right. And you should probably be in front of a slowly dying fire. Probably.

If you hold it up to a light and let the rays shine through just the lightly laced periphery of the beer, it almost looks purple. Purple beer is a first for me.

But unlike creamy counterparts, this stout is almost effervescent. Its finish is deceptively crisp, given the coffee black color and undeniable roasted aroma. I expected a finish like Young’s Oatmeal Stout, but I found my lips tingling a little bit the more I sipped. The texture reminds me of Sierra Nevada Stout; it’s still got all the rights ingredients, but the brewers seemed to remember that carbonation isn’t always a bad thing when it comes to dark beer.

Whether you’re hunkered down on a steamboat dodging a storm of arrows from Congo-natives, or you’re hiding from whatever lurks in the cold, dark of winter nights (it’s probably a tiger) crack open a Heart of Darkness so that the last thing on your lips can be something tasty.

8.75 out of 10.

*I have already “reviewed” #9, so Encore and Wooly are up next!

020

NaNoWriMo 2012: 28 Days Later

November 28, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Phew. I was just writing, and this is crazy, but if I write ~3500 words by Friday, I might hit 50,000 maybe.

I can’t believe I just did that. I’m so sorry, everyone everywhere.

I’d prefer to have this thing all nicely packaged and bundled into 50,000 words of finished product, but  time and responsibility have a tendency to gang up on my good intentions and leave them broken and bloody in some dirty alley. Looks like I’ll be writing all the way up to and across the finish line this year.

Lessons learned this week:

1. Transcribe, transpose: I found a hidden cache of words that I had been hoarding in my little brown notebook, almost subconsciously. I had been scribbling notes, scenes, dialogue, ideas, and other literary detritus whenever I was away from my computer, and when I sat down to type it all up, I found I had nearly 4800 words in there! Sure, they were an incoherent mess of the very rawest of my brain oozlings, but they were words. Words in pursuit of the novel. And those count.

The double plus mega awesome advantage of transcribing notes from one medium to another is that you get a chance to do quick edits and fill out points you missed in your hasty penning. I even came up with a whole new idea for another story, just from some random thing I had drawn (it was like a mushroom-tiger-dragon-monstrosity-thing)!

2. Get up, get out: No joke, 16 of my 20 original short story ideas came to me while I was out wandering the world, experiencing the electromagnetic spectrum, interacting with other beings, living and inanimate. One came from noticing how a meeting presenter kept walking in front of the projector and the text from the PowerPoint slide looked like a tattoo on his forehead. Another came from watching some obscenely large rats run from cover to cover scavenging for food at the fountain in Dupont Circle. One even came from a late-night session of Borderlands 2 (who said video games never taught us anything).

It can be hard to come up with vivid, living ideas in the vacuum of your writing cave, so don’t make it any harder on yourself. Get out there. Check shit out. Ask questions. Drive across that bridge. Take note when something or someone or some concept bothers you. Take a picture of that weird flower or bush that totally looks like the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But don’t sit around in your pajamas trying to force the creativity to spontaneously explode inside your skull. Go get stimulated by some stimuli.

3. The word count doesn’t really matter, the ideas do: One of the reasons I’ve managed to keep up this month is because I’m masochistic and uber-competitive (even with myself). If I commit to something, the idea of failing to do that thing is worse than any other situation I can imagine, thus I tend to get it done, somehow someway. It’s either totally awesome and effective or terrible and unhealthy.

But really, it doesn’t matter if I or you or anyone makes the word count. It’s not like someone busts into our homes on December 1 and confiscates all of our computers and notebooks and pens and tiny scraps of pencil lead that could possibly be used to write. The ideas, thoughts, introspection, and other mine-able literary gold is what makes this month so great. It’s an opportunity for you to expand your brain, learn about some stuff you’d never even heard of, and hopefully learn about yourself as a result. It’s a chance to commit to something bigger than the right now, and work towards a real, tangible goal. It’s a chance to break the monotony of the perfunctory and think about exciting worlds where anything can happen, and heroes are real. It’s a chance to wring some satisfaction out of life, and remind yourself that you are creative and hardworking and really freakin’ love words.

So if you didn’t make 50,000, no big deal. If you came up with some great ideas, or even one pretty good idea, I’d say that’s a NaNoWriMo well spent. You’ve got plenty of time to write it all down, unless you are currently on fire or being chased by an ornery velociraptor. Take what you’ve learned this month about how and when and what and why you write, and store that in your database under “stuff that will make me a better writer.”

Writing drink of choice this week: Magic Hat Heart of Darkness Stout

This is a weird but compelling beer. It almost looks purple in the glass, just on the edges where light pierces the blackness of the body. It tastes choclately and heavy, sort of what you’d expect people from a SteamPunk novel would drink out of gas-powered beer steins or something. It lingers on your tongue for a while, making it a great “I’m in a pensive mood tonight” beer.

Is that weather vane a dragon or a fish or a fishdragon?

 

Review: Magic Hat #9

August 13, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

(To any new readers: my beer “reviews” often aren’t reviews at all. Most of the time I just feature the beer in some story or other context. Maybe I’ll call them “Beertures” from now on.)

Magic Hat #9 was growing up fast. He was starting to fill out his can, his orange color was developing nicely, and his hop flavor was starting to mature. He thought himself a man, even though he was still in high school, and was far from being an adult bottle.

He was confident and bold. His flavors were different than those of his friends, which made him special and popular. All of the girl beers wanted to be with him; all of the guy beers wanted to be him.

This popularity came at a price. He grew arrogant and selfish. Some less savory beers took a liking to 9, and started inviting him to questionable parties. 9’s father, having experienced a hard childhood on the streets of South Burlington, Vermont, knew that this would only lead to trouble. One night, after pale ale school, dad 9 sat down with son 9 to have a father-son style lay-it-all-out-there talk.

Look, son…

Dad 9: “I know you’re enjoying your freedom being a high school student and learning about the world, but I’m worried about you…”
Son 9: “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m 18 years old, dad. I think I can handle myself.”
Dad 9: “That’s exactly what I’m worried about. I heard that you were hanging out with those Natty Boh Boys. They’re bad news. I know from experience.”

Dad 9 rolled back his label. Underneath was a large scar, roughly the size and shape of a bottle opener.

Son 9: “I’m not you! Those guys are my friends. When I’m with them, I’m finally cool. You’d never understand that.”
Dad 9: “I pay a lot of money to send you to pale ale school so that you can get a real brewing experience. Learn from the other ales there, spend time with a smarter, higher caliber kind of beer.”

Son 9 rolled his eyes, dismissing his father’s warning as casually as one might crack open a beer on a hot day.

Dad 9: “I know I can’t forbid you from seeing them, but I’m warning you; hanging with that Baltimore crowd will only bring you trouble. You’re from a long line of strong, tasty ales. Don’t throw that away just to be ‘cool’.”

Son 9 stormed out, leaving his father in the fading twilight of the summer evening. Dad 9 could do little else but watch his son descend into the emotional mires of maturity, halfway between a man and a boy, but lacking the wisdom or innocence of either.

The Natty Boh Boys have notoriously bad taste.

9 was soon skipping school three or four times a week. He’d made fast friends with the leader of the Natty Boh Boys; a witty and mean brew who fancied himself a pilsner, because he had a long lost elder cousin who came from Munich.

He lured 9 in with promises of glory. With chances to break the rules, and live life at the figurative edge of societal acceptance. 9 wasn’t sure why he craved the danger and exhilaration of a life outside of the confines of law, but the more he spent time with the Natty Boh’s the bolder and colder he grew.

They were ready to accept 9 into their gang officially, but he needed to prove his worth. The Natty Boh’s wouldn’t just take any one, especially not some snotty ale from the suburbs. They needed to test his loyalty, and his conviction.

When they picked him up for his last day as an unaffiliated beer, they handed him a gun and a head scarf, as if he was magically supposed to know what to do with them.

In the psuedo-charismatic way that only a gang leader can, the lead Natty Boh explained that The Beasts (a rival gang that called Wisconsin its home) had recently moved into the area and were putting the squeeze on the Boh Boy’s black market malt trade. It was 9’s job to confront The Beasts about it and get them to give up their stash of malts and hop.

By any means necessary.

9’s throat tightened as they got out of the car and moved towards the blue cans wearing red scarves. His experience so far had been indirect and safe; smoking cigarettes, petty shoplifting, and minor bar brawls. This was the first time he’d actually felt legitimate fear. The cold steel of the gun beneath his label only made it worse.

The cans looked tough, but they were no older than he was. He could see tainted childhoods reflecting in their eyes; the pain of missing fathers and drug addicted siblings. The pain that forces a child to walk a path of death and uncertainly, as life has given him no other options.

9 and two fellow Boh Boys moved cautiously towards their rivals, constantly checking for weapons or backup, hiding just behind a nearby wall.

Hands to the sky, motha effers!

As they got close enough to see the details of The Beast’s faces, the adolescent stubble, the careworn brows, 9 started to feel his fear manifest. It boiled to the surface of his throat like an angry pot of soup left too long on the stove. If it wouldn’t have completely ruined his reputation, he would have run behind some trashcans and puked until he fell asleep.

With all the confidence he could muster, 9 yelled out to The Beasts:

9: “You’re in our spot!”

The lead Beast stepped forward from the center of his crowd. His eyes were piercing and he wore a cruel smile.

Beast: “Who said this was your spot? We been here all day.”
9: “This area belongs to the Boh Boys. We know you’ve been trying to sell your shitty malt here. Find somewhere else before we make you.”
Beast: “You sound pretty smart for some ‘Balmer Boh. What you say we teach this misfit how we do it in Milwaukee?”

Several of The Beasts moved behind their leader, producing bats and knives from seemingly nowhere. The tension mounted like a cowboy prepping for his first rodeo. Knuckles turned to white as they gripped dirty pipes and splintered two by fours.

That’s when 9 saw the gun.

The three or four seconds that passed as he aimed and pulled the trigger felt like birth of a universe. His finger on the trigger was the hand of god, the bullets burning out of the barrel the proverbial big bang. The muzzle flash exploded into a thousand dying suns, and the kick back of the pistol in his hand felt like Chicxulub reenacted.

One shot was all it took.

One bullet, one empty can.

Before the echo of the gunshot stopped ringing through the alley, everyone but 9 and his victim was gone.

He dropped the pistol and leaned down to check his foe’s breathing. It was too late. The bullet had been well placed; the Beast’s life-beer was all but spent, spilled onto and soaking into the dirty concrete.

Guns don’t kill people, beers kill beers.

9 began to cry tears of hops and malted barley. His desire for acceptance and belonging had brought him to this point. He’d taken another beer’s life in a split second, without thinking, without knowing. One tiny choice. A whole lifetime of regret.

He wiped the handle of the pistol, like he’d seen in so many police dramas. He knelt next to the mangled can and said a prayer to the Old Trappist gods, and sent an apology to the beer and his mother into the humid night air.

Then he ran. As his aluminium legs beat the sidewalk, he thought of his father. All he’d ever wanted was for 9 to live up to his potential. Now he was a fugitive, his future all but forfeit. He’d learned his lessons the hardest way possible.

Guilty by association. Never hang out with bad beers.

As sirens shattered the stillness of the Maryland evening, two lives ended. One in the dirty innards of some bar back alley, the other with a rough tackle from a police officer and a set of shining handcuffs.

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