Seattle Series #4 (2023)

Ladd & Lass-The Pale Project

The nose has hints of pine to it, but it’s not overt.

The flavors though; this is where it is AT. Some understated pine qualities, with a layer of maltiness, leading to some proper finishing bitterness and effervescence. This is a fine ale and I like it quite a bit.

Bizarre brewing-Play It Back wheat pale ale

The nose has elements of citrus, but there’s something else underneath that which almost seems metallic. 

Plus there’s something there, just…not right on the finish. Vegetal and unpleasant, this is not the beer.

The Veil brewing-Deathless Marzen.

The nose is malty but it’s not dominant. It’s faint but not weak; there’s a bready quality and it’s persistent.

Which serves the marzen well, because those malts rise up in the middle, and extend into the finish. However, it’s not just malt sweetness; a roasted element jumps into the mix about 3/4ths of the way in. Plus, a nice effervescence to clean everything away. It’s quite good.

Seattle Series 3 (2023)

Abomination brewing-Ice Cream Sandwiches In Space.

So, I love this can but I had suspicions based off the name that this was going to be a hazy IPA. Certainly the description on the can heavily suggested that.

It’s a little worse: it’s a dessert hazy IPA.

The nose reminds me of the orange/vanilla ice cream cups I’d get as a kid. This is what the flavors reflect as well, until the finish. The finish is where things go askew: there’s an unpleasant, slight vegetal quality. I’m not sure who this is for but I am not that audience.

Sunshine Kolsch from Obelisk brewing.

The nose is a bit more floral than I’d expect. And while the midrange is very clean, this floral quality definitely appears on the end. That’s less than ideal for this beer because it doesn’t finish as cleanly as I’d like.

I have some definite opinions about how a kolsch should taste and this beer is messing with those expectations in a way I don’t like. I want more malt, not more hops character. This isn’t providing enough bready or malty qualities and too much hops for me to really recommend it.

Checking the style guidelines, a floral quality isn’t beyond the style but a malt presence is and without that I think this is missing the mark.

Fast Fashion’s Crop Top Pilsner

Maybe it’s just me, but the nose on this really evokes that old-and by this I mean 70’s old-beer smell. Musty with maybe the tiniest bit of grain under it. The beer itself is OK at best. The bittering hops run away with the finish, and the middle offers me a little lemon, not malt. I’m not convinced to dive deeper into this brewery’s offerings.

The Residency #9

“It’s certified moose free,” the bartender tells me, as I ask for the Moose Mug winter ale from Vice brewing.

Well shit. Now I don’t want it.

Eh. Let’s try it anyway. I’ve already paid.

You know, this is an amber ale that wants to emphasize the toasted malts. It’s billed as a ‘toasted winter ale’ which is a pretty amorphous description. Last time I checked, winter ales were anything that were spiced in such a way that suggests the holiday season so… I mean…knock yourself out?

I don’t pick up much in the way of holiday spices. In the aftermath of the beer, I get a hint of spice that might be from a whisper of cinnamon but I can’t tell. What I can tell is that I like the toasted quality and am enjoying this beer.

So let’s not complain. There’s always complaints, if you want them.

As we move away from the darkest day of the year, I’d just like to wish you a happy holiday-whatever your holiday is. Wherever you are, I hope there’s some respite from your woes, a little salve for your wounds, and a genuine moment of cheer with people who matter.

I’m fortunate enough to say that I’ve got that and I see no reason to deny anyone such a thing.

Seattle Series 2 (2023)

Black Raven-Moon Tower Lager

An incredibly clean beer with a faintly sourdough nose. The two row malt is distinct in the body of the beer, with a bright, clean finish. It reminds me a little of popcorn; not the corn flavor exactly, but the simple flavor that presents very nicely.

Triceratops Brewing-Fresh Swords fresh hop IPA.

It’s November, why did I get a fresh hop beer-ooooooh, I like dinosaurs.

Aaaand it tastes like butterscotch and I hate everything about this. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes it gets you.

Marlowe-Up Until Now kolsch

The nose is too clean-I get some hops but not much on the scent. This is actually my criticism of the entire beer; I expect kolschs to spotlight the malt a lot more than this one is doing.

It’s not bad by any measure: it’s incredibly clean and very refreshing. It just feels a little miscategorized as a kolsch, and more as a lager.

E9 Ghost Within IPA

This is a very good example of what you can do with the New Zealand family of hops: I wouldn’t consider this beer to be a hazy, but maybe that’s a me problem. The Ghost Within doesn’t taste like grapefruit pith or a orange shake and the texture is consistent with a beer.

But there are notes of orange and peach, with a pretty strong finishing bitterness. I’m a little impressed.

Seattle Series 1 (2023)

My last adventure to Seattle brought with it the opportunity to try new beers! Here’s my thoughts on 2023’s batch.

Aslan brewing’s Evil IPA
Nose has a lot of kiwi, tropical fruit qualities. I do appreciate the ABV hitting 6.66%.

The flavors are good thought. It’s not so bitter on the finish that I’m feeling some kind of astringency in my mouth, and the fruitiness is at a point where this could provide some nice contrasts to say a salad with strong flavors, or even a sweeter dessert.

I don’t know that it’s a hophead delight but it’s still pretty good.

Anchorage Brewing Don’t Think About It DIPA
They do not say it’s a hazy. It is a hazy. Fuck this*.

*which is a shame because it’s a pretty decent hazy. I’m actually enjoying it, as the beer is reasonably well balanced. It’s a hazy in the vein of Sierra Nevada’s Li’l Sumthin, which I like. But they charged me $7.25 for this beer and did not properly represent what it was, so fuck them.

Stemma brewing’s Festbier
The nose is pleasant; strong representation of the malt here. That is a through line in the beer; a strong, bready quality that spotlights the malts in an excellent way, into the finish.

The Residency #8

Filed under: Ya gotta do what ya gotta do; the only place for me to sit down and write is outside. And it is cold out, so I do not like having to sit outside. My concession to being outside; mulled wine tonight.

It’s too fucking hot. How am I supposed to drink that? This is why I don’t drink coffee; that shit burns. I am outside and having to blow on my drink in order to warm up on a chilly night.

Existence, clearly, is pain, people.

But at least I’m not as stupid as Jeffrey Goldberg is. I don’t make the accusation lightly, but when people talk about how the media elites are fucking things up, Goldberg is a prime example of that, and his detachment from reality is pretty clear in this clip.

After justifying his dedication to an entire issue of Trump coverage, in order to ‘warn us what is coming’ he just goes full derp at 4:40 saying “we’re not the resistance. The resistance is there to lie about their side-“ and it stops mattering what he says from here because he’s just full stupid.

For some reason, the man who has just spent an entire issue of a magazine gathering writers to warn Americans of the rising tide of fascism apparently does not understand what he’s doing or actually warning us against. He certainly does not understand who the resistance is.

Because if he truly wants to tell the truth, then given what fascists are all about, he is in the resistance.

If he truly wants to raise the red flag, so he can tell the next generation that he did what he could to warn everyone, he is in the resistance.

Hell, when one of the writers in the magazine he just published warns everyone about the media’s role in the last Trump administration, it’s like Goldberg doesn’t understand that he is the media.

Now I’m taking it at face value that the person who is wanting to tell the truth as a journalist, and wants to warn people of the truly frightening power that could be elected in 2024, is being honest about his intentions. Perhaps I’m the fool, believing this.

But I’ll tell you this much: I certainly know when I’m in a ghost story, and this fucking idiot apparently does not.

The mulled wine, unlike my temper, has finally cooled enough to sip. It’s pleasant, with strong overtures of clove and cinnamon. There’s a little citrus in there too-orange peel I think-and as something to keep my belly warm while I sit outside, I’d definitely have another, sometime.

The Past Kinda Sucked

Whiskey used to be this and…well now it isn’t.

So whenever someone wants to go back to the “good ol’ days” I think it’s worth asking; which good ol’ days?

Intermission

I’ve bought a Sticky Toffee Stout on nitro from Away Days for a friend.

I steal a taste of the stout and it’s absolutely delightful. THIS is why we do nitro beers: it’s smooth and velvety on the palate, offering a sensory experience that actually enhances this style, instead of blunting it’s qualities. I want the stout to sit on my tongue so I can really absorb the coffee, roasted, chocolate and sweet flavors. It’s toffee, honestly and I can pay it little higher compliment than; It is precisely what you hope it would be.

I’m here because my friend got some bad news about her job today, and I’ve come to meet her for a drink at Proper Pint. There isn’t much I can do, but this is one of them. If that means the blog zigs when it should zag, well that’s just who I want to be.

Despite everything else in the world, with the right people, joy shared is joy bloomed, and sorrows shared are sorrows shrunk.

Common Ales: Elysian’s Space Dust IPA

Purchased as part of the collection of IPAs my friend brought to Thanksgiving, I thought this would be an excellent time to review a more commercial ale.

What’s notably odd is that the Space Dust is remarkable lack of nose. Even after I agitate the liquid, I can’t pick up anything. Poor hop use or a unlucky match between what I can smell and the hops they used?

And this beer is all finish. The bitterness is evident, but Space Dust just doesn’t have anything else going on. The malt doesn’t stand up in the middle, so there’s just carbonation and bitterness left for my experience. The beer isn’t well balanced. I don’t hate it, but I can’t recommend it either: Space Dust is just too one-dimensional to enjoy.

The Residency #7

I feel bad trying to evaluate the Fort George-Spruce Budd ale, because they’ve got some mulled wine steaming nearby and while the smell is wonderful, it’s also shutting down my ability to detect other scents.

So what I’ll say, in the interest in giving this beer a fair shake, is that the spruce qualities are there on the finish, that the malt supports the beer, and that all in all I’m enjoying this beverage.

Which is the opposite of the reaction I had from reading people responding to this story about homelessness in cities.

I’ve said it before but damn there is no faster way to see ‘final solution’ assholes come out of the woodwork than to have a story on the homeless. Because the solutions to the homeless-building more housing, a massive investment in anti-poverty programs, healthcare for all (because one-third of the bankruptcy cases in America come from healthcare costs), and taxing the fuck out of rich people-aren’t as easy as just sweeping them away and insisting they just ‘go be poor somewhere else’.

And I get it: people want to have safe streets. They want to walk around without having to worry about needles in their shoes, fentanyl freaks accosting them, or the unnerving element of someone without pants just shouting into the sky. I don’t think these are unreasonable things to want.

I absolutely think that the wrong way to go about that is to destroy the lives of the most vulnerable among us. They need shelter, money, on-ramps to get out of shitty situations and addiction. And fuck knows what else that I haven’t thought of but someone has.

But all these people can do is insist ‘we’ve tried destroying them and nothing worked!’ Instead of identifying the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into (obligatory Fuck You, Ronald Reagan) and saying: Hey, let’s do something different.

And I got $20 that says that all of these people would insist that the drug war should be stopped-failed policy, right?? Waste of money, right?? Could do so much more with that instead of this, right?

If you’re on the street, though, well, “I don’t want to see that”. So let’s just lean into the destructive part.

Except the poor will always be with us. It’s like trying to destroy the sun.

At the rail a houseless person sits next to me telling his daily adventure to the barkeepeer. She has given him an apple, which he demolishes like Godzilla going through Tokyo, and a mug of tea. He’s clearly trying to get his shit together but apparently this access to SNAP has been suspended and…like, why are we denying anyone food, especially someone on SNAP?

Sigh. There are real people who suffer real consequences from the decision to enforce this cruelty and some days, it’s just as challenging to stay committed to being compassionate as it is to not start yelling at the motherfuckers who look at this system and insist ‘everything is fine’.