Thursday, June 6, 2013

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 2nd 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. 

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