What I’m Drinking – February 26, 2017
A brief summary of some of the drinks I’ve been enjoying recently.
Whisky:
This week I opened a bottle of Lagavulin 8 Year, a limited edition whisky released to celebrate the 200th year anniversary of the Islay distillery. It’s quite good—lots of peat smoke and seaweed. I’ll probably post a review of it sometime soon.
Beer:
I’ve had quite a few interesting beers this week, some good, some not so good.
Black Abbey Metatron has become one of my favorite local bottles. It’s the most sour beer that Black Abbey currently has available. I went through two bottles this week and stopped at the taproom today to get another bottle. While I was there, I sampled a few other interesting barrel-aged beers they have on tap—a barley wine, a red saison, and a sour gruit. They were all good, but the gruit was my favorite. Unfortunately it’s no longer available—I got the last full pour before the keg kicked.
Von Seitz Theoreticales is one of the smallest breweries in Tennessee. This week I was lucky enough to be able to try a bottle of one of their latest releases, Jackie Treehorne. It is a very interesting brew. Imagine finding yourself in an old, damp basement and taking in a deep breath through your nose—that’s pretty much how it tastes, with a touch of clove and cinnamon thrown in. Like I said, interesting. I enjoyed the experience, but probably would not buy it again.
Another interesting beer I tried this week came from the Southern Grist Brewing Company—Pineapple BroCoNut IPA. When I first saw the name of the beer, I thought “BroCoNut” meant it was broccoli and coconut, which sounds… gross. But I was wrong. The “Bro” is just slang, as in “try this coconut beer, Bro.” Yeah, it’s a terrible name, but a surprisingly delicious beer. I tried this completely expecting to hate it (I usually do not care for flavored IPAs). I loved it. It tastes more like a Pina Colada than an IPA, which sounds like a bad idea, but it actually works.
On the other end of the spectrum is Dogfish Head’s Beer for Breakfast, a stout brewed with scrapple, spices, coffee, and maple syrup. Seeing that I’m originally from the Philadelphia area and miss scrapple for breakfast, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try a beer brewed with the classic Philly breakfast meat. Turns out I really should have passed it up. This was one of the worst beers I’ve ever had. Usually when I try a beer I don’t like, I can still find some redeeming quality about it. There was nothing redeeming about this beer. It’s just flat out terrible.
A couple more beers I had this week that were quite good were J.W. Lees Harvest Barley Wine, aged in port casks (thick, sweet, warming, and complex) and New Holland Blue Sunday Sour (sour and oaky). Both are quite tasty, although not too easy to find. If you see a bottle of either, grab one.
And finally right now as I’m watching the Oscars, I’m thoroughly enjoying a bottle of Rivertown Ville de Rivere Geuze. It’s wonderful—the best thing I’ve had all week (although the Blue Sunday Sour was a close second). Rivertown’s aged sours are second to none (their kettle sours, on the other hand, are awful) and well worth seeking out.
I’ve been meaning to pick up a bottle of Metatron. I liked it when it was on tap.