Crux - Tough Love

Tough indeed. The wax dip on this bottle was thick but tidy—reassuring compared to New Glarus' thin, melt-prone paste and Three Floyd's flamboyant, un-trimmed  hanging wax strands. It seems designed impervious to oxygen, knives, and small arms fire. I check my hands after finally removing enough to get at the cap. Amazingly I am not bleeding, though I would consider this packaging a safety hazard. I try several bottle openers before I find one which can get in between the cap and the rest of the wax, and after a couple of yanks, I remove it to reveal...

A fucking cork. The way this has been sealed, I can only assume it's designed for Sam Calagione's distant descendants to excavate, send to a lab, and attempt to re-create at some craft brewery a thousand years in the future. I don't even have a corkscrew (apparently neither does my roommate, which explains why his bottles of wine haven't been opened), but for some reason I have a 'vintage cork extractor' which is basically a couple of sharp, pointy shivs (my sensitive hands are not out of the woods yet, it seems, and I fear bloodshed) which are designed to remove a cork otherwise in danger of disintegrating by... evidently annihilating it, because it's pretty torn up once I finally get it out. By this point, I could really use a drink, of which this vessel fortunately contains several.

It's still a little hot (and fresh; I should've realized from the packaging that this one was designed to be aged for the long haul). It tastes a bit Scotchy, which it should from the barrel-aging, along with some astringent leather, soy sauce, anise, and chocolate. I wish I had cellared this one longer, but I was celebrating finishing a project, and my storage conditions aren't ideal. For the price (around $1/oz), I probably won't buy another to lay down, though it's definitely good.

Founders - Big Lushious (sic)

Yes, the implication is that the imbiber of this sweet, quaffable libation might be a lush.

Founder's certainly has a way with raspberries, from Blushing Monk to its little cousin, the difficult-to-type-on-a-standard-keyboard Rübæus. They are also no stranger to porters (dark, rich, and sexy), or to imperial stouts (of which they make several, all good).

I scored this in a growler which was procured for me by the Growler King at Whole Foods in Richmond.

It smells just like a raspberry-filled milk chocolate bar. This is a lot like what it tastes like, too. This beer is not a triumph of complexity, but of successful experimentation: capturing a flavor profile deftly. Definitely a step up from Double Naked Fish, for instance, though more expensive as well.

All in all, I'm glad that Clinton at Market Street Wine Shop (in Charlottesville) has put my name on a bottle. The West Coast is gonna want to taste this...

Pike Hive Five

I bought this at Salish Lodge (better known to me as the exterior of the Great Northern Lodge in Twin Peaks). The exact nature of this collaboration (contract brew) is unclear... no I take it back, evidently Salish has their own bees, and this is made with their honey.

Well anyway, the beer for the most part tastes like an adjunct lager. It isn't one; I mean it clearly says 'ale' on the label. And it also says hopped (which I'm sure it is, as most beers are), but don't be afraid—it is by no means 'hoppy' (but it's not sweet either). Initially, it smells kinda bready, but once the head has receded, it does smell kinda like honey. And it's there in the taste, too.

If I had to guess, I'd say that for this project, they wanted to showcase honey from this specific apiary, so they started with a clean blonde base and added the honey... but being so small, I'm guessing they didn't have a whole hell of a lot of honey to put in there. I might've guessed that some of the malt bill was cut with corn, but there's no mention of this on the label, so that's probably my imagination.

Beer Camp in Twin Peaks

I realize I'm going to drive right past Twin Peaks, so I stop by for a slice of pie and a room at the Great Northern. It turns out to be out of my price range so I book a room at a motel instead and head down to the grocery store. I'm still pretending I'm a rich person on vacation, so I get smoked salmon for breakfast tomorrow and notice 12-packs of Sierra Nevada Beer Camp available. I had been ignorant as to what this actually was, expecting a variety of abrasive, hoppy northwest styles, but it turns out it's a pack of 12 different beers, each a collaboration with a different brewery. Some clearly brewed on the collaborator's system, because the packaging differs (this year's included two cans in with the bottles). Must be incredibly labor intensive to collate and package.

Anyway, I was out of room and didn't really want to buy 12 beers, but then I remembered that the aim here was to be as gamey as possible, so next minute I'm booking it around the corner with the thing under my arm.

Editor's note: I didn't drink these all in one night. I'm not that kind of hedo-masochist.

Myron's Walk: Fizzy and yellow with a big head and a smell like sourdough bread. Taste is kinda bitter, but with Belgian yeast and some tropical fruit flavor. Coriander too. Not sure if I ethically approve of the 'Belgian IPA', but this instance is tasty enough. Apparently brewed with Allagash.

Torpedo Pilsner is a balanced, light treat that tastes better than it smells, and it doesn't smell bad. The finish is hoppy, but not overall bitter. This one begs to be paired with food. Brewed with Firestone Walker.

Tater Ridge is delicious, smelling like autumnal malts and with a taste that is also malt-forward, but definitely reflects the sweet potatoes. Not overly sweet, and the malt counters the yamminess in a way that makes this even more palatable than sweet potatoes alone. Of course, it is also beer. That could be why I enjoy it more than sweet potatoes.

Electric Ray is a tasty, citrusy IPL, really leveraging that clean yeast flavor profile to make something that tastes like an herbal, hoppy lemonade. Almost exactly the kind of beer I don't like, and I like it.

Double Latte is a big bold coffee stout, a little bitter (though tempered for being a milk stout), but otherwise kinda similar to a Terrapin WNB.

Canfusion Rye Bock could be a hopped-up bock, I guess, but maybe the spicy bitterness on the finish is the rye.

Yonder Bock is strange in that it is a maibock with a little somethin' extra going on... I'd say passionfruit (the yogurt I ate this morning should make me an expert on that flavor) which I'm guessing came from a specific hop varietal. Strange in that lagers (maibocks included) tend to have very clean flavor profiles and taste of (if anything) faint applejuice. Maybe the point is that the clean base shows off the extra flavor. Smells fun too; I would not recommend drinking straight out of the can as I did. A brief glance at the back of the can tells me I'm mostly right, but the tropical medley is coming from three hop strains, one of which doesn't even have a name yet.

Chico King is the Three Floyds collab. Thick foamy head and a smell that might be yeast. Taste is pretty hop-forward with maybe coriander, though that doesn't really make sense. A balanced pale though, for sure. Kinda steely aftertaste.

Maillard's Odyssey boasts a thick texture and a massive leathery flavor that I didn't quite expect. I'm trying to remember what Black Note tastes like (it's a Bell's collaboration, so that's why it came to mind) to draw comparison. Kinda high IBU balanced with massive malt and a hint of smoke on the first sip. Maybe like a more hopped Hair of the Dog Adam? Reminds me of something, but it's kind of hard to pin down. Easy to like, though.

Yvan the Great is the Russian River offering, and it comes out pretty crisp due to a healthy dose of coriander. Not quite a coriander bomb, but it's very much there in the smell and taste. Beyond that, it's light, heavily carbonated, and a decent blonde.

Alt Route is a solid alt, true to the style, which makes sense as the Victory collab, because their German styles are very authentic. Dryish and with a clean flavor profile. Reasonably hopped, and with a smooth body that tastes kinda like caramel.

There and Back claims to refer to the relative distance between New Glarus (the collaborator) and Sierra Nevada's California and North Carolina facilities, but I'm almost positive it's a Hobbit reference. The beer itself is good, making me wish I'd actually visited New Glarus instead of just passing through town. As appropriate for an English bitter, it's not very bitter even at 40 IBU. Mild English hops linger on the finish, which is pretty clean and otherwise a bit nutty.

You think you can do what I do?

As far as my associates know, I've spent the last three weeks traveling cross-country on the Oregon Trail, in search of a new life in the off-world colonies. And not, as might also be supposed, living in my car and working out of a studio somewhere in West Virginia, Photoshopping myself into various national monuments and writing inane blog posts about beer and cheap motels.

Without confirming or denying these allegations on either side, if this sort of adventure appeals to you, here's a brief guide to your options in how to get from point A to point B when those points are over 3000 miles apart.

1. Decide the nature of your trip. This will by necessity be the product of your circumstances, to some extent. For instance, if you have a full-time 'job,' three weeks of vacation may not be feasible. If your employment is flexible, you may choose as I did to work 'from the road.' If you have sufficient liquid capital saved, you may choose to forgo employment and treat your 'slow travel adventure' as a vacation.

Be advised that the most economical way to relocate yourself and your belongings is undoubtedly to liquidate as many of your possessions as feasible and fly. You will soon realize that to purchase a physical object is not only to buy the object, but also to pay to get it to your home, to pay for the space to store it (as a fraction of your lease or mortgage), to pay to maintain, insure, and protect it, and to pay to relocate it if you move.

If you are not concerned with economy, or if you are attached to possessions, you can drive. A car can hold much more densely packed smaller objects than you would think, and it is only items of extreme dimensional weight (mattresses, large/assembled furniture, etc.) which pose an issue. I cannot recommend non-weatherproof roof storage unless you can exert control over the weather or are prepared to frequently install and remove it.

Your cost of living will increase on the road by a factor of maybe threefold, which is important to bear in mind. Unless you increase your income threefold and still to make progress, you will lose money doing this. Undeterred? Read on.

Oregon Trail - Part 9 - No good deed

I've been living hotel to motel for weeks, and I'm currently parked in a discount motel in Portland. The internet is intermittent, but otherwise it's as decent as it's possible for it to be. I go from apartment to apartment, one of which looks like a halfway house and requires the occupant to go down the hall and through the kitchen to reach the bathroom. In a way, I miss the road.

I get groceries and bring a plastic bag to re-use. I get offered a paper one, the clerk saying, "You want to use that? Shameful plastic!" Of course I realize later that plastic shopping bags are banned in the city, but really I'm following the spirit of the rule if not the letter, huh? What do you want from me? The ban goes on to recommend you line your garbage can with newspaper and wash it out regularly instead, which brings to mind: that sounds pretty unsanitary, who has the space/sink/time to wash out a garbage can, what the fuck kind of environmental activist still reads the news on paper? Paper bags are great, sure, and biodegrade easily, and in a city where it rains 96% of the time, maybe biodegrades even before you reach your car bike or mass transit.

While waiting outside one of those apartments, I go for a walk (it is not the first time my knock has gone unanswered), and find a wallet. I phone the police, unsure of whom else to defer to, since there's not obvious contact info and the license is from Washington. I wait with it for an officer for another half hour, but then call back and explain politely that I need to leave, to finally go look at this apartment, and nobody's been dispatched to pick this thing up. I offer to take it to a mailbox (USPS apparently mails wallets back to owners for free), but the dispatcher recommends against it. I try to explain that the only other option is for me to leave it there, because what the hell am I going to do, take it? Even if I dropped it off at the nearest precinct, that's across the river, and I'm trying to be a good Samaritan, not a civil saint.

Anyway, while touring the apartment, I get a call from an officer who's come to pick it up, and whom I can see out the window and play a sort of "you're getting warmer" game with him from my vantage point while he no doubt scans for a red laser bead and wonders just who the hell this 'grassy knoll' guy on the phone is. He finds it, I hang up, and eventually make it down the block to introduce myself, and evidently give my name and date of birth for his report, though why he didn't ask on the phone, who knows. I sympathize; clearly the PD is busy that day and I'm wasting time with a not-actual-crime, other than that there's no cash in the wallet, for which I am now undoubtedly the number one suspect, and this poor guy has to fill out a report for some citizen from another state who couldn't bother to keep his wallet in his pants.

I head back to the motel to simultaneously dry out and not dry out, as I make my way through the Sierra Nevada Beer Camp. I promise myself to publish my musings on it, as well as the Lessons from the Road which I have learned.

Oregon Trail - Twin Peaks - Part 8 or something

I can't afford a room at the Great Northern, so the North Bend Motel will have to do. It's nice, clean, and though the rates are not published, it costs pretty much what it ought to. The woman in the room next to mine is smoking in her doorway, and behind her I see a bicycle and a harp, and in front of her I see no car in the parking lot, and I am wondering what that story may be, wondering whether she can carry this massive harp on a bicycle, wondering if she smokes cigarettes while riding the bicycle.

I go to the store and get a package of smoked salmon for breakfast and a box of Sierra Nevada Beer Camp beers, because hey, the mission here is to be as gamey as possible.

I wake up to the sound of lovely harp music, and as I pack my car, the harpist comes out and warns me that a little bird she's befriended is hiding under my car, and that I should coax him out before I pull away. By the time I leave, the bird is long gone.