Beer Wars Pre-Movie Beer Drinkin'

Not gonna say much about the movie other than I could have easily slept through the whole thing, but we did have some fun sharing beers before the movie. I got tickets for myself and my buddies Steve, Loren, Adam, and Pete the Greek "A-14."

I started out with a quick beer when I got home from work before we planned to head over to our friend Adam's house. The beer of choice was Green Flash Le Freak. I've only ever had a small taster of this beer at last year's Stone Anniversary party, and it was the dregs of the very last bottle Green Flash had no less. I figured I better get back to it with JRhode going on and on about it all the time. This beer blew me away last night. Perfect marks to Le Freak for aroma and taste. It's so complex and unique and works so well together. The Belgian yeast character is abundant, mostly with those phenolic compounds, but every so often I feel like I get banana and other fruits too. Course, the hops may contribute a bit to that, there's definitely a citrusy component that rides in the front seat along with those yeast products. I much prefer this to the Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel. That one has just way too much earthiness in it for me, maybe due to some of the hops they use, I dunno. I really like Stone's Cali-Belgique IPA and now Le Freak takes the top notch by far in terms of Belgian/American IPA fusions for me. It's all about using American hops in this style of beer.

When we got to Adam's we started drinking the beers I brought over, as well as his very first homebrew from his Mr. Beer kit. I was pretty shocked because I just recently got him into beer in the last year and he went ahead and brewed this batch without telling me. It was a Witbier of sorts, from how he described it. He said there was wheat (I guess a wheat extract), and he added lemon peel, vanilla, and I can't think of what else. He then bottled it in 2L coke bottles. It was actually a very good attempt for a first brew, especially for a Mr. Beer kit. I was pretty impressed.

I also brought some of my homebrew, my Wit and the Belgian Strong Golden that I brewed with the Baltimore Beer Guy back in January. I've already expressed my love for this Wit, but the Belgian Strong Golden (which seems to have turned out a bit closer to a Tripel due to the blend of yeasts we used) is fuckin amazing (and I'm probably my biggest beer critic). My friend Pete said his only criticism he could offer of it is that there might have been "too much flavor" in it. Yeah the yeast was ridiculously active. I'll take that as a great compliment. I only wish I had more than a couple 6-packs of it left.

Another big hit was the Brewer's Art Ozzy, Belgian Style Pale Ale that Baltimore Beer Guy sent me for Christmas. I loved this beer when I tried it back in the fall. It's very spicy/peppery. That's Petey fillin' himself up, he finally worse the Arrogant Bastard shirt that Steve bought for him last year. Wearing an Arrogant Bastard shirt to a Beer Wars movie.... isn't that like wearing the t-shirt of the band you're going to see in concert? I told him not to be that guy.

The last beer we went for was the barrel aged imperial coffee stout, Alpine Boris, generously given to me by the JRhode and the SD Booze Reviews crew. It was generous that they let me feed it to our sink drain rather than theirs. Just kidding fellas, thanks for giving us the opportunity to at least try this beer. This was an undrinkable stout, up there with a bad batch of Stone IRS 2004 I had last year. And it had the same exact taste. One word: Tangy. There was coffee in the nose and some astringent sourness/tanginess in the body. Just not good at all. However, I told Pete to chug his glass and he had no problem doing it, giving the thumbs up (not for the taste) when he was done.

We then headed to the movie and I was not entertained right from the start. But one thing I will say is that in the theater crowd of about 20 people, like half of them were douches. I haven't heard so many comments, just straight out shouting during a movie. It was like some people felt the need to express their beer geek knowledge supremacy while the movie was running. The first comment was kinda funny. The 2nd through 5oth wasn't so much.

Anyway, about the only entertaining thing I noticed all night was during a commercial before the movie started. They had this dude dressed up as Abe Lincoln and I had this ridiculous deja-vu.