Karate: Unsolved

It was about 15 the first time I properly fell in love. Till then, I thought I’d been in love, but it was just a very strong liking. Then, in the back of an Oldsmobile, on a boring Friday night it hit me, the opening guitar solo to a song that’d infect my brain forever. My buddy had been flipping through the radio and stopped on a song none of us had heard before, but that cutting tone from the guitar caused the dial to stop instantly. The DJ rattled off what felt like 50 band names and I hoped I was able to figure out what I just heard.

“Karate.”

There were three of us in the car, but I was the only one of us that cared about that song and I was determined to find it.

I was a junior in High School in the year 2000, and I was certain Led Zeppelin was the best band of all time, with maybe Jane’s Addiction being a close second. Napster existed, but with my 56k dial-up modem I wasn’t really able to get very far. So to the record store I went, and in the year 2000, in the greater Boston area that meant one place, Newbury Comics in Harvard Square.

Mind you, I had no idea if this was even the correct band, or what album this song was from. But as I was sifting through the Karate CDs I had no idea what album this unnamed song came from. So it was a guessing game. I guessed wrong, and ended up with the Bed is in the Ocean, their previous album. For the record it was an amazing album, but after going back and trying one more time I got it right, newly released. Unsolved! You could smell that freshly molded CD when you unwrapped that cellophane.

I’m not going to plod over every track on this album, I’ve meandered enough as it is. Unsolved starts slowly, with two tracks right of the back that are almost a slow crawl, poetic and with wonderful guitar between even better bass and drum interplay. Then, after a small pause, that guitar solo that I’d been looking for blasts through the stereo.

Sometimes a guitar tone sticks out in my head. Steve Albini & D. Boon’s guitar tone will always be present in my mind. It’s the same with Geoff Farina, and never more so than in Sever. It’s a buzz saw in my brain, and I’ll dream of laying down a guitar track with that much substance with such little effort.

The Rest of the album is completely seamless to me, from The Roots and the Ruins with its amazing combination of a bouncy guitar, perfect backing bass and drums, with lyrics about a decaying system and trying to keep yourself afloat.  One Less Blues and Halo of the Strange have some of Geoff’s best vocal inflections, with Halo of the Strange having the 2^nd best guitar solo after Sever. This Day Next Year might be the most relaxing last song on any album I’ve ever heard, with a building guitar line that sits on top of some excellent drumming that ebbs and flows as the song reaches it’s climax, and then it’s over.

To me, this was one of the first perfect albums I’ve ever listened to. There have been many after, but this one really did it for me. It was the anthem of a summer of playing NHL on my Super Nintendo till 3am before I realized I had to go to school the next morning. Now it’s work, and it’s like 10pm, but it’s still wonderful.  

Ugh, Shiner Bock too.

I've been gone for almost a month from writing this, and even still I'm somewhat at a blank for what I'm supposed to write. How Gary Dzen from the Globe or Karen Cinpinski from the Dig churn out stuff every week is amazing to me. It's not like I haven't had some delicious beers, new stuff keeps churning out and new beers come rolling into Massachusetts, with Yuengling II, Shiner Bock, announcing they'd be coming to the state in late July.  Much like Yuengling I am sure it'll come in with a bang, being placed on taps throughout the city and the state only to slow up and hopefully get replaced by something tastier and local. Massachusetts is booming with new local breweries and while the allure of a much too sweet lager is tempting, there are so many better options for us to be drinking out there. Yes, Shiner Bock is better than Budweiser, much like Yuengling is, but being better than garbage shouldn't be an acceptable achievement. The sweet remembrance of getting wasted in College drinking this crap doesn't have to drive your wallet now. Life's not over, go drink new beers and make new nostalgia, and find a brewery nearby and get a growler filled there every few weeks and enjoy it. Oh, and request your favorite beers on draft at your favorite bar.

Smuttynose Brewing: Bouncy House IPA

Smuttynose Finestkind IPA was one of the first IPAs I ever grew to love. The first sniff of it on draft at Redbones in Somerville was a thing of beauty. Dank and weedlike, it was a bitter beast and I loved it. This was very early in the craft beer revolution for me, I was just 21 and beyond Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada, I didn't know much about beer. But this beer was excellent, and readily available at the bar I ended up at almost every night whether I liked it or not.
Recently Smuttynose pulled up their roots and moved down Route 1A to Hampton from Portsmouth, NH. Along with moving they made changes to their year round beers for the first time in, removing their Belgian Pale, Star Island Single, and replaced it with a session IPA, Bouncy House. First off, I just hate this label. There's something about the colors and unleveled people floating that just make me hate looking at it. But labels don't make good or bad beer, so that's not terribly important at the moment.
What matters is the beer, and this is a lovely beer. Session IPAs are everywhere now, but most of them lack one important thing for me. Bitterness, and Smutty has never been shy about inserting some bitterness into a beer. Bouncy House is no different, with a nice blast of pine and grass with some lemony citrus cut in the back over a cracker like malt profile. But it has a bite, and it really does an excellent job of balancing the bright and vibrant hops with the bitter acids in the finish. Now if they could just tone down the label we'd be all set here.

Stone: Sprocket Bier

When I was around fifteen I discovered public transportation. After school I'd walk to Medford Square and catch the 96 (or 94, which took way too long) to Davis Square in Somerville where I discovered all sorts of new things. Guacamole!  Indian food! What the hell is this stuff and why didn't anyone in my family ever eat this? The other discovery for me were Aero chocolate bars, first given to me by a long lost British friend. Aero chocolate bars are amazing, with nice semi sweet chocolate that were incredibly light on the tongue, unlike anything we hand out on Halloween or I could find at grandma's house.
The first sip of Stone Brewing's Sprocket Bier reminded me of my first experience with an Aero bar. It pours a deeply dense looking beer, with a nice layer of fluffy white head that quickly settles. However, in true Kolsch style, the first sip is smooth and creamy loaded with notes of roasted coffee, chocolate and smoke. The rye settles in the finish to add a nice spiceyness to the smoke that lingers in the finish. You should seek this beer out for two reasons, one, it's unique, being one of the only black ryes I've ever seen, and two because it's incredibly drinkable and full of some pretty unique flavors and textures. And really, it should be drank because new things should always be sought out to be enjoyed, consumed, and appreciated. Who knows, maybe my Mom will get Indian food with me one of these days.

Hill Farmstead: Birth of Tragedy

Check out my sweet theme park.

I think the best thing about loving beer is having friends to drink it with. The other day I picked up a copy of a new board game I wanted, Steam Park. It's a ridiculous game about building a theme park for robots, and with a couple of phone calls I've got friends over each with bottles of beer in hand. This is usually how I end up with some of the best beers I've ever had. Case in point, my buddy Patrick brings over Hill Farmstead's Birth of Tragedy, an imperial porter brewed with honey and coffee. If you're unaware that Hill Farmstead makes amazing beers, then you really need to make the trip to Greensboro Bend, VT, it's worth hours of driving for both the beer and a beautiful Vermont countryside. So after opening a few other bottles we got to the highlight of the evening.
I could probably wax poetically about the taste of this beer for hours, but really, it's just bliss. Roasted coffee with a creamy and smooth mouthfeel, and a nice bourbon burn in the finish. This is the mouthfeel that every porter should strive to achieve, and it has the perfect balance of bourbon without overpowering it.
All tastes aside, this is what beer should be about, sharing it with friends while they earn more money from their robots than you do. I lost both games of Steam Park I played, but I got to drink Birth of Tragedy, so I'm doing just fine.

Everybody Saison!

Saisons might be my absolute favorite style of beer. They can be low in ABV and refreshing, drunk all day in the hot sun while BBQing in the backyard, they can be hopped forward for a lovely citrus or piney bite, they can be funky and tart with the right ingredient added, and they can just be Saison DuPont. No matter what, I typically love them. So I was thrilled when new saisons came in the same week. Just so I don't repeat myself, these beers all have very similar qualities, with nice sweetness mixed with some pepper, banana and clove. Saisons are all about the balance, so left take a look at three new ones. 

First up is Allagash Saison. Allagash has been making belgian style beers since 1995. I was 12 at the time. It's been a long and good road and they've just finally brewed a saison that will become their next year round beer. Everything about it screams orange, with a solid orange package, solid orange label, I think my brain even thinks it has an orange hue in the glass. I'm freaking out man!!! More citrus in the nose with pepper and clove at a minimum in the background, with little to no bitterness in the finish. 

Next up is Stone's venture into the world of saisons. They only make one year round belgian style, their Belgian IPA, but they recently made a smoked saison in tribute to a fallen co-worker, so there was probably some yeast laying around the brewery they needed to use up, bam! Stone Saison was born. Stone's reputation at first gets in the way of this beer for me. I was expecting hops. Stone has made its reputation on hop forward beers, so when I sunk my nose into it and it just had a slight banana bread smell, I was shocked. It's a very strait forward saison, painted by numbers, bottled and here it is. It's delicious, don't get me wrong, but I just built it up to be something different. 
Last one of the night was from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. La Ferme farmhouse. Much darker than the others, this farmhouse ale was made with half the farm, including oats, rye and some spelt thrown in for good measure. While it's fairly different from the others, this was actually my favorite of the three. It was packed with a nice creamy sweetness, balanced with both pepper and some of that rye spice and good musty hops in the backend. It's complex with flavors coming from all over the place. It's not really a traditional saison, but it nails all the other flavors so well. I'm kind of surprised by the result, but I guess this is why we drink them. 

Rising Tide: Zephyr

My biggest complaint in recent beer drinking history for me has been breweries that release their beer in 22oz bombers, and nothing else. And while some breweries manage to make bombers affordable, like the Tap in Haverhill, others consistently have their beers littering shelves and collecting dust because they're just priced too high for the average beer drinkers price point. Not every liquor store can pump through $8 buck bottles of Zephyr before they start fading into oblivion, and then when they have to close out cases because it didn't sell, they don't feel the same need to reorder and the brewery stops getting shelf space.
That was why I was so glad when I found out Rising Tide was switching to 4 pack bottles for their every day beers. (Yet 16oz cans of Maine Island Trail Ale will be only available in Maine this summer) As soon as I could buy a fresh 4 pack of Zephyr, it was in my fridge and just started calling my name. Easter Sunday, after a long day of driving around my brothers kids, and abstaining from drinking, I sat on my couch and cracked open a bottle.
Zephyr pours a beautiful hazy gold with a head that pops with pine and citrus. The taste has a nice sharpness to it that balances sweetness with those hop aromas, and finishes with a nice bitterness on the back of the tongue. Overall, it's a great IPA I can add to my rotation of easily available IPAs that I know will now be fresh, and importantly, pretty local.