Flying Fish: Exit 16

Holy $%*&. Sometimes a beer comes completely out of nowhere and BAM!, it just lingers on the tongue like bliss. Everyone’s probably got a beer like this, a beer that just shows up in your fridge (this one was included in a beer trade) and after a week or so you finally pull it out and crack it open. Starring me in the face this whole time was a beer made so perfect. That beer was Flying Fish Exit 16 IPA. Exit 16 is made with 5 different hop varietals, and Rice! Fucking rice? What is this, Bud Light? Seriously though, when I pulled this guy out of the fridge I was intrigued, Wild Rice. I looked at it with stern face before I realized I had to drink it to find out what it tastes like.

Just by opening the bottle I could smell blasts of citrusy hops escaping from inside the beast. Immediately I knew I had a gem. I poured it hard into the glass and got even more grapefruit and tropical citrus wafting up. First sip and it was over. This beer was outstanding, with a lovely sweetness on the tongue and a massive wave of hops right on the tongue, and a super crisp finish with nice bite on the back of the tongue. The rice wasn’t so much a taste as it was a suppressor of sweetness to let the hops ride out in the open, and it was amazing. The art of double IPA’s has just had a bar raising moment for me. Might be the only reason I’ll go through Jersey the next time I have to drive to Virginia.  

Minor League Beer #1

So I love beer, and I love sports, especially minors league anything. Just watching people who love the sport playing it the best they can is worth spending two hours watching. And I'm pretty sure the first time a piece of wood struck a sphere, baseball and beer have been fused together. There really is no better Sunday afternoon spent than with a beer in your hand and a baseball game in the background. I’m always pumped to take a road trip and luckily there are plenty of minor league ballparks within a few hours of Boston. Now craft beers always had a tough time getting into concession stands with the big three running payola with free kegs and massive amounts of advertising money to keep there beers in the best positions of the concourse.

The Pawsox’s concessions menu says absolutely nothing about some good local beer, so looks like my mission comes with no assistance. After getting to the ballpark and grabbing a hot dog, there was nothing but Budweiser and Coors Light to be found so I sat in my seat to watch Ruby de la Rosa throw 99 MPH fastballs right down the middle of the plate. Eventually I wandered into the bleacher section and buried in the corner, next to the stairs was finally what I was looking for, the craft beer stand. Local beer, made in Rhode Island, by Rhode Islanders, and it’s a shame it gets buried.

I expected them to have Narragansett, which they did, but was very pleased to find Grey Sail, Foolproof, and Revival Brewing Company all on tap, all beers that are very hard to find in Mass, Revival still being RI only. The Lady wanted a Foolproof IPA, but on a hot day in the sun, I wanted something light and refreshing, Revival Belgo Saison was absolutely perfect.

In the beautiful Sunday sunshine, Revival Saison was nice and spicy, light malty goodness with a totally dry finish, with some straw and lemony tartness. And what few sips I was allowed, the Foolproof IPA was just as amazing, with wonderful aromatic hops and good bitter bite in the finish. If it was 80 degrees out I might’ve gotten one for myself, but it was going to be another saison couple saisons for me. If you’re looking for good beer at a Pawsox game, you can find it, it just takes some exploring, but that’s why I drink beer anyways. 

Red Hook Black Lobstah Lager

Trying new beers can sometimes be a detriment to my personality. Sometimes I’m just not happy sitting back and drinking another of the same beer. It’s a quirk in my makeup that’s both extremely frustrating and incredibly fulfilling. A lot of customers at the store scoff at the idea of drinking a beer with flowers in them like Dieu du Ciel Rosee D'Hibiscus, or the briny but smooth Marooned on Hog Island by 21^st Amendment, made with fresh oyster shells. But me, I loved them both, and even when I have a beer that doesn’t hit the mark with wacky ingredients, I’m happier to have loved and lost than to have never drank at all.

That leads to the newest beer that’s peaked my interest, Red Hook’s 6^th beer in their Backyard series for the New England Market, Black Lobstah Lager. Lame Boston accent joke aside, this beer is black as night and has red crustacean blood running through its veins. The beer pours a purely black hole of a beer, with little to no head off the top. I was expecting more brine in this beer, but it fell short of the lobster flavor. Tastes like the roasted malts you’d find in most stouts, but a much thinner feel while drinking, making it a nice sipper on a cool summer evening that’s surprisingly easy to drink and finished nice and clean. This beer just didn’t live up to what I was hoping for, but if you packaged it as a nice drinkable Cascadian it’d probably be a pretty nice beer. 

Sly Fox 360˚ Cans: Helles Lager

Crown Brand-Building Packaging recently debuted a can that, in my humble opinion, blows Sam Adams new can out of the water. At a recent Craft Brewers Conference in Washington D.C. Sly Fox released it's 9th canned beer, Helles Golden Lager, housed in the brand new 360˚ can where you take the entire lid off. As far as drinking out of a can, there are plenty of conveniences of the can that we all know about. Now though, you can really get your entire nose into the can and get the full aromas of everything. I suggest giving it a quick swirl to get some head up to really let it breath.

I stole this image. Sorry Mom. 

Sly Fox's Helles are what American beer should've been. Every American Pale Lager made these days is just layers of sweetness on touch of some faint semblance of hops. Sly Fox Helles is a crisp punch of deliciousness, with a taste of nice pilsner malt and some hints of woody straw, and finished with some lemony crispness from excellent noble hops. I don't get much Sly Fox up here in Boston, and I really wish that would change, cause the limited chances I've had to drink it have been excellent, and I hope I can get my hands on more.

White Whale: Part 2 Pliny the Elder

“Who’s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?” Moby Dick

Sometimes you meet someone that is just immediately likeable, whom you can tell would give you the shirt off this back and the food off his dinner plate without a second thought. Hopefully I’m that person to any of my friends, but someone I met recently is one of them. He’s made me dinner without asking, and I’ve met his lovely family. And in an act of pure beer karma, he brought me back a bottle of Russian River Pliny the Elder, a beer with a perfect score on RateBeer and currently the 2^nd highest rated beer on Beer Advocate.

IN THE YEAR 2000!!!!! Russian River brewing was invited to brew a special beer for friend Vic Kraji’s double IPA festival, and the rest is history. Pliny the Elder is considered the immortalizer of Lupus Salicarius, or better known to all of us, Hops.

Pliny the Elder died rescuing people during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, but his nephew Pliny the Younger (Who’s beer I’ll eventually try later) immortalized his uncle as a hero.

After that, Russian River Brewing has immortalized Pliny the Elder with a double IPA that will be on the tongues of beer loving nerds for a long time. It’s very rare that a beer is so perfectly made, and this is a beer that lives up to the hype. 4 Hops blended into a well-balanced beer that’s equal parts citrus, pine, sweetness and finished with intense bitterness. Really just excellent, and I’m a happier man to have had it, and can’t wait till I can get it again, but till then, I’ll just hope the hops can linger on my tongue for as long as possible, but I’ll be dragged back and doomed in the end.