Barley Prose

Well, so far, 2020 has been a real punch to the anus.

Not gonna sugar coat it.  Barley Prose isn’t exempt, either, as we’ve managed just four sad posts for the entire calendar year to date.  On behalf of the entire team, I’m sorry we haven’t generated more witty and urbane commentary to help you with the anal-punch-osity of 2020.

While I’ve been doing my part as a local beer consumer, buying growlers from all of my favorite local joints to keep them in the black best I can, cracking open big jugs of beer and not having anyone to share them with does take some of the fun out of it.

So what’s the thing that finally gets my juices flowing?  Enough to write a blog post?

It’s this.  I’ve learned something important this year. As Ralphie said, “Oh, rarely had the words poured from my penny pencil with such feverish fluidity.”

Belgian beer is fucking disgusting.

I like a wide variety of beers.  I’ve written about them here in many columns.  I enjoy stouts, and porters, and sour beers, and New England IPAs, and, really, any IPA.  Brown and red ales too.  I’m partial to just about everything except beers that taste like the beer I used to drink in the 1980s and 1990s to get drunk, before I was making any effort to find delicious beer to drink.

And in my time drinking with the intent of writing content for this fine site, I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone and tried a lot of new, different things.  And so I can say, authoritatively, that Belgium must be the saddest, off-spiced, nasty place in the world, if it can be judged based on the beers it produces.

Today’s representative offering is the Victory Brewery’s “Golden Monkey” Belgian tripel ale.  Tripel being, I assume, the Belgian word for “run through a homeless man’s shoe and/or a dead hooker’s asshole.”

I bought a variety pack of beers from Victory this past week and all of the other beer varieties in the pack were of a type I’ve been known to drink and enjoy. There were three each of a sour beer, a low calorie IPA, a regular IPA and a hazy style NE IPA. And three of these Golden Monkey beers, which might actually be apple juice that was anally raped and left in an alley to die a justifiably painful expiration.  I figured, well, at 9.5% ABV, I’ll at least give one a go.

Note that this beer, ITBMCBB*, has been infused with “exotic spice from the East.” Oh, good. I was hoping my beer would taste like a tuna casserole! How many warm summer nights did I crack open a cold one and think, “oh, man, this thing could use some fucking cardamom!” Oh, wait, that’s never happened, sorry. Only a jerk would think that.

Look, I’m not saying that all Belgian beers are as gross as this one. My co-bloggers may (and have) come to the defense of this style beer in a more general sense. I’ve had Stella Artois beers before, and Duvels, at least, and one or two others that I added to a Wegmans’ “Craft Your Own Six Pack.” And I can’t recall a single time that I thought it tasted better than any IPA I might have otherwise grabbed nearby.

So, to sum up, the next time you find yourself in Antwerp, and you have a thirst to quench, I’d suggest you give the bidet a try.

I am fortunate enough to have a job that affords me some travel opportunities.  To date, those trips have all been domestic ones, but, finally, an opportunity arose for me to travel to Dublin for a week, all on the company dime.  And while there was much work to be done, there was also enough time for me to go out “on the gargle” a bit (i.e., out for some beers).

As someone who has already written specifically on the perfect nature of the Guinness, well, this was a wonderful opportunity to go to the source of this magic stuff.  And while I didn’t do the factory tour, I did sample quite a bit of it in Ireland, as well as some other common/popular beers there.

First, let’s start with “a pint of the black stuff.”  (I will be throwing the Dublin-specific jargon around in this blog post, in quotes, as one of the folks I was working with there was kind enough to teach me some drinking lingo.  This is in fact how they often order it over there, I can attest).

I had heard, from other folks in my workplace, that the Guinness in fact tastes different in Dublin. I will attest to that, but, also, that I only noticed it on the first Guinness I drank there. After that, they all just tasted like Guinness. Which is a fine, fine thing, of course.

I drank Guinness at just about every stop along my trip over the course of the week. It’s a good “foundation beer,” the base layer in a beer pyramid that I was assembling in my gut.

But there were many other fine choices that I enjoyed.

This is a Smithwick’s Irish Red Ale.  I learned, three days in, that despite the spelling, the locals pronounce it as “Smithick’s.”  It’s probably the second most commonly served Irish beer I saw on tap there (not counting “imports,” as there was Coors Light on tap there everywhere, and Carlsberg’s, and Heinekens, etc.).

This was maybe the beer I drank the second most of in my time there. They go down easy, have just 150 calories per 12 oz. serving, but with a smooth and easy to drink flavor. I bought a six pack of these at my local food jobber when I got back and they are equally good in a bottled format (just $9, too, another plus).

Another fine choice for when you’re out “in your cups,” as they say.

My enjoyment of the Smithwick’s led me to this tasty choice.  My hotel was within walking distance of a quaint little Irish pub, just far enough out of the city proper to feel like I had found some more authentic Dublin than the tourists might be frequenting.  A very punchy and funny bartender suggested that I might enjoy this one based on the fact that I was partaking of the Smithwick’s.  And then a fine local wanted to buy my wife and I a beer and so I ended up with a pair of these.  I ended up being not just “out” but in fact “out out” drinking, on that night.

It was certainly a tasty choice.  I don’t know that i enjoyed it more than the Smithwick’s, thought it was certainly a beer I’d drink again.  Also a red ale, but a bit thicker and stronger.

That same night, I partook in one of these.

At that point, though, I was deep enough “in my scoops” that I can’t recall whether or not I particularly liked it.

For an American drinker, used to a wide variety of beers, styles and flavors  locally, I think the range of beers I drank there was less diverse.  The folks at Guinness have taken a shot at making a lager-style beer, and this “Hop House 13” beer is also served all over town, from what I saw.

Lagers, to me, just aren’t interesting enough for me to want to drink them. This was a “one and done” beer for me.

The last beer from my tour was this one. I had this just once, on my last night in town. It was in fact the last beer I had in Ireland.

My punchy bartender friend, when I told him I was looking for something a bit more “beer flavored,” came out with this one.  This was the most IPA-style beer I had there and it was delicious.  Probably after the Guinness, it was the most memorable of the beers i had there.  I hope to find some of these in the states, but no luck as of yet.

I’d say, from the beer lover’s perspective, go to Dublin and drink a bunch of beers.  It’s a magical place, whether you get deep “in your scoops” or you’re just there “acting the maggot” (which means dicking around and not really trying very hard to drink correctly).