I can add titles?

Hello Patient Reader. Yes, it has been longer than I expected since my last post. But I have spent the last few days constructing a fool-proof scheduling model. Updates to this blog will be posted a few times a week, unless I am bored or busy, in which case they may be more or less frequent, relatively speaking, based upon the timeline suggested at the beginning of this excessively long sentence. Well then, right into the beer.

Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale – Anchor Brewing Company, San Francisco, California

Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale. That is a mouthful. As is the beer behind the label. Bigger and stronger than your average Mexican wrestler, Old Foghorn is probably the oldest barleywine style ale produced in the United States. I say ‘probably’ for two reasons: 1) Anchor Brewing Company, an instrumental player in the revival of craft brewing in the United States, has been brewing Old Foghorn since the mid 70’s, and 2) I am too lazy to actually look it up.

My first sip impression is “Damn. This is almost too sweet.” But the second sip is better. The third better yet. This pattern continues unabated, so to avoid stumbling out of your house and insulting the neighbors in your underwear, please drink with a friend. Many Western barleywine style ales are hopped pretty heavily. The bitterness of the hops can help balance out the sweetness that results from the use of copious amounts of malt. Not so with Old Foghorn. The thick, malty sweetness is front and center from the second the first sip hits your lips. Initially I found myself wishing for a more pronounced hop character. But with each sip I found a growing appreciation for Old Foghorn’s subtle (by barleywine standards) hop notes.

As you have probably already deduced, I am not a beer expert. I am, however, a beer drinking expert. My expertise leads me to believe that this beer would age well if stored in a cool, dry place for one year. The sweetness would likely mellow a bit and the result would be a bottle of balanced, malty deliciousness. However, my expertise also leads me to believe that the first time I open the fridge and find nothing but rancid milk and PBR, any bottle of ‘aging’ beer would soon be a bottle of ‘drinking’ beer. Not only am I lazy, I’m also impatient.

Initial music pairing – Iron and Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days

Wispy, mellow and sad, one would think this album might not stand up to a beer as powerful as Old Foghorn. But fear not, Dubious Reader, this is not such a bad pairing. Old Foghorn deserves to be sipped, preferably while wearing a tweed smoking jacket and sitting in front of a raging fire. One must drink this beer slowly. A bottle of Old Foghorn needs to be experienced at every temperature between just out of the fridge cold to damn near too warm to drink. And an album like Our Endless Numbered Days offers an appropriately slow, sultry soundtrack. But, as my wife would say, I’m never right the first time.

Revised music pairing – John Coltrane – A Love Supreme

Old Foghorn needs a little more soul than Our Endless Numbered Days can provide. The slow pace and gentle melodies are great, but this is barleywine for Christ’s sake! So as we raise our glasses in honor of Anchor Brewing Company’s imagination and innovation, we shall do so with the rich accompaniment of the equally imaginative and innovative sounds of Mr. Coltrane’s saxophone. Somewhere amidst the third and fourth parts of A Love Supreme, there is an extended bass solo. Do not miss it.

Speaking of love and loneliness (this is a piss-poor segue)…

I once had a pretentious girlfriend. An undergraduate student majoring in some obscure sociological discipline, she fancied herself a member of academia. Her primary sociological focus involved the excessively low social expectations of modern Americans.

One beautiful spring Saturday morning, she decided I would accompany her on a sociological expedition. We were headed to the Oregon coast to observe people observing whales. People often park along the shoulders of US Highway 101 to stand in the rain while looking at the ocean through binoculars. All this just to catch a fleeting glimpse of a whale’s ass. My pretentious girlfriend liked to witness this rare moment of discovery.

This intrepid expedition leader would often wonder aloud, as pretentious academics are prone to do, as to what this little microcosm of American society could teach us about Americans as a whole. Are we so disconnected from the places we live and the people that live around us that we must drive hundreds of miles and spend hours on end searching the vast ocean for a brief glimpse of another solitary being adrift in vacuous loneliness? If whales could walk, would we find them peering into the dirty windows of lonely, internet-porn addicted shut-ins? She often voiced her doubts that humans are really the most intelligent species.

I hated that girl.