506. BrewDog (Columbus, OH) - It’s a Beaut

“We’ve teamed up with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to bring you It’s a Beaut Pecan & Toffee Stout. At 7.5%, this rich and decadent stout combines sweet toffee flavors, roasted cacao and hints of vanilla. It may not be the gift that keeps on giving the whole year, but we can guarantee that your 6-pack won’t arrive meowing. Cheers!”

For a second there, I thought I was pouring used motor oil. This beer is dark as fuck. It’s also very well balanced. Not sure I would have pulled pecan out of the hat if I hadn’t known it was there, but it does have a nutty echo to it—which blends very well with the chocolate malt. The vanilla is very round and smooth on the back end. I’m going to have seek out more of these…way too much going on here to remark on just one of them. But lovely. Still not sure where I stand on BrewDog and their maybe-politics…but these cats can brew some fucking beer, for damn sure.

505. Scarlet Lane Brewing Company (McCordsville, IN) - Claudette

“Northwest Pale Ale featuring Luminosa from Indie Hops of Oregon (bright notes of peach-mango, papaya, and guava) and Strata (melon and passionfruit).”

Bitter finish and muddled flavors at first…dank notes more so than bright notes, I think…but they open up as the beer warms. The bitter finish holds, but gets smoother. Another aggressive yet unimpressive IPA from Scarlet Lane.

504. Stone Brewing (Escondido, CA) - Hazy IPA

“Stone Hazy IPA comes in at an easy 6.7% and less bitter than our other IPAs, but still blooming with bold, juicy flavors. This amazingly hazy IPA features El Dorado and Azacca hops which bring tons of citrus & fruit elements while intense Sabro hops highlight the big, tropical notes of this beer. The result of this unique hop combination is a groovy, juicy citrus bomb with tons of orange, lemon, melon, mango and pineapple flavors & aromas.”

They must have used some kind of mystery hops for the description, because it says nothing about how they ginned up the hyperbole. Do you really want to bring that much different fruit into one beer? You might as well call it a Fruit Cocktail IPA. Not bad, but not remotely interesting.

503. Scarlet Lane Brewing Company (McCordsville, IN) - Sunflowers for Your Grave

“Kölsch with a Wheat Malt Base, Sunflower Seeds, Dill and Sea Salt. This Beer is Representing the Resilient Badass Woman Who Offered Sunflowers to the Russian Soldier; Now a Strong Symbol for the Brave Ukranian People.”

Jackson’s choir schedule this season has precluded us from eating at Scarlet Lane on Sunday afternoons as often as we would like, but I’ve kept up with them on the interwebs, and things have changed a bit since the last time. They seem to have parted ways with Chef Erin Kem, who is now to be found in the kitchen at Landlocked Baking Company, right here in Irvington; and they have changed the menus at both this location and the one at 46th and College to pizza from Beech Grove Pizza Company (whose main website links back to Scarlet Lane’s). I have only anedcotal evidence to support the idea that this was not an amicable split between Erin Kem and Eilise Lane, Scarlet Lane’s owner and head brewer. The food isn’t going to be anywhere near as interesting as it was when Chef Erin was at the helm, and though I really hope that doesn’t change the way I feel about this place (which will always sort of be Cannon Ball to me), I kind of get the feeling that it will.

But enough of the gossip shit. On to the beer. This one was on the menu awhile back, and I really liked the sound of it—but we managed to miss it somehow. It also wasn’t on the website when I checked the menu this morning before we left, so I was very pleasantly surprised to see it on the paper menu when we got there. I don’t keep track of the different flavors I have tried in beers, but I don’t recall ever seeing dill listed in the description of a beer before I saw this one; and I would sort of like to have tasted it, but, alas, none of the flavors stand out. I don’t even taste the saltiness that you sometimes taste in a gose that advertises its salt. There might have been a faint hint of dill on the back end, but it’s just as likely that it was there because I wanted it to be as because it actually was. Not bad, though—it’s one of those beers that you keep sipping because you hope that one of those flavors will finally rear up its ugly head.

502. Black Acre Brewing Company (Indianapolis, IN) - Smoky Kuloski

“Smoked Grodziskie with carmel [sic].”

That’s the description from the menu board in the taproom. I can’t find anything online for it, even on Untappd—possibly because they just tapped it this week, and I don’t recall that they’ve ever brewed this beer before. They’ve done smoked beers on many occasions, but the name Smoky Kuloski doesn’t ring a bell, and I don’t have any smoked beers from Black Acre on my list. This is also my first Grodziskie, which the interwebs tell me is a Polish beer with pronounced smoke flavor and aroma, high carbonation, and low alcohol. The Black Acre version subverts this model somewhat, with low carbonation and moderate alcohol (6.7% ABV)—along with that caramel, though I don’t get any specific flavor of caramel. It does have a very smooth, almost creamy, finish, though, and I suspect that might be what the caramel is bringing to the table. There’s something vaguely fruity up front in the first sip or two—to the point that the first sip of the first one I tried made me think that the bartender had poured their orange hibiscus cream ale by mistake; and the smoky flavor doesn’t jump out at you. But then you get to the second sip…and the third; and that’s when the smoky flavor begins to declare itself. The aforementioned something fruity lingers just a touch on the back end, for what is either balance or misdirection—I can’t decide. This is one of the best new things I have tried at Black Acre in a long time.

501. Big Lug Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Wooden Tooth

“George Washington once said: ‘It’s better to offer no IPA, than a bad one’…well maybe he said excuse and not IPA, but it does the trick. This IPA is hopper [sic][?] with Amarillo, Simcoe, Mosaic, and Cascade providing waves of hop goodness. Much like George, we wouldn’t lie to you about an IPA.”

Um.

Actually, you know what? Are you fucking kidding me? Who the fuck are they getting to do this writing, and why the fuck did they not insist that this person have even the semblance of a rudimentary education? It’s fucking awful when the description of the beer makes you not even want to drink the fucking thing. And of course I’ve already poured the motherfucker. There’s some papaya in there, but just because papaya makes me think of eating fresh papaya that I literally picked off the fucking tree in Honduras three years and change ago doesn’t make me like this literary abortion any more. (Not that beer should be literary; it occurred to me the second I wrote that last sentence that someone might infer such an idea. Beer need not be literary, and neither should the descriptions be; but those descriptions should at least resemble competent writing. That is not the case here.) I’m kind of on the fence here; I still haven’t tried anything from Big Lug that I have really liked, and their Sahm’s restaurants are uninteresting bar-and-grill places I would only recommend to a starving person; but as must be obvious by the fact that I have made it past 500 beers that I have tried, my mind is pretty fucking open. (That’s also the best way to get cured of being a Republican; you open your mind, you let some light in, you try to forget the stupid shit your ignorant, fuck-dumb parents tried to teach you.) And it appears that I am just in a bad fucking mood. On my fucking birthday. And if you don’t believe I actually picked the fucking papaya, then fuck you; but if you still don’t believe it, then here’s a fucking picture.

Airline pilots are afraid to fly into the the airport in Tegus. How ya like them fuckin’ apples?

500. New Belgium Brewing Company (Fort Collins, CO) - Voodoo Ranger Voodoo Vice

“Bursting with neon-bright citrus flavors, Voodoo Vice is vying to be the next Voodoo Ranger rotating IPA.”

This one stuck out to me, and that is not usually the case with the Voodoo Ranger series—which is reminiscent of the Craft Brew Doodle Crew series from Indiana City, only not as good. (Voodoo Ranger is AAA ball, the International League; Craft Brew Doodle Crew is The Show.) I taste a hint of orange up front that reminds me of drinkng orange Kool-Aid when I was a kid (and yes, from time to time as an adult), and that makes this version a little more interesting than some of the others I have tried. (At least at first. When it warms up, that hint of Kool-Aid gives way to a more generalized fruit flavor that could maybe be described as pineapple. This does not inspire nostalgia, but it ain’t bad.)

499. Black Dog Brewing Company (Mooresville, IN) - Copper Beams

“Copper Beams has a bright and fluffy effervescence with a tropical nose that hints at citrus fruit flavors with a bit of spice on the back end.”

Not sure I get the spice at the end, but we shall see how it warms up. It’s definitely (and quite pleasantly) tropical up front, with strong hints of papaya and lighter hints of pineapple. It’s got a lovely haze to it that contributes to the illusion of a thickish mouthfeel that almost makes you think it’s sweet—though it’s not. These cats are basically just down the road, and how the hell have I not had their beer before now? There might be a bit of a citrus shine on the back end when it warms up, but if you can pull that out of the tropical haze, you’re better at this than I am.

498. Sun King (Indianapolis, IN) - Electric Reindeer

“Electric Reindeer is a Brown Ale brewed with ginger and molasses for Newfields’ Winterlights.”

Gingerbread in a glass, even if the glass has already hosted two different kinds of IPAs today. Can’t decide where I am on these cats, but at least they got the comma for Newfields in the right place. (And if you didn’t already know, the only thing you can do with a bachelor’s in English is criticize the bad writing of other people. You give credit where credit is due, but most of the time it’s not warranted; most of the time these monkeys keep their phones pressed to their elephant ears while they cross three lanes of traffic to turn left while running the yellow light at the last fucking second without bothering to signal to the drivers they’re pissing off behind them. And you’re not even off Emerson Avenue yet. You hope they die in a fire three blocks away, but it almost never happens.) And it’s excellent gingerbread in a glass.

497. Black Acre Brewing Company (Indianapolis, IN) - Pumpkin Thief

“This pumpkin ale is brewed with 60 lbs of pumpkin per 3 barrel batch and plenty of pumpkin pie spice. Hooray fall!”

I’ve tried this on more than one occasion, but have apparently not remarked upon it; and seems like this is the year for remarking upon it, since I seem to have developed a taste for pumpkin beers just in the last couple of months. I had quite the shitty day at work yesterday—we lost power at 2:30, and it still had not come back on when we finally called it a day and left at 7:30—and thought about stopping at Black Acre on my way home; but I also thought about just going home, crawling under the covers, and going the fuck to sleep. In the end, though, I decided to stop for two beers and an hour of writing. (Had it not been November, however—National Novel Writing Month—I might well have skipped it and just gone home and to sleep.) I’m glad I didn’t, and not just because I got about 1300 words while I was sitting there; I also got a pint of Pumpkin Thief that tasted almost exactly like pumpkin pie in a glass. It had the perfect balance of spice and pumpkin flavors, and a very smooth (but not sweet) finish. They’ve had Pumpkin Thief on the board for a couple of weeks now, and this was not the first time I tried it this season; but this was the best pint of it I’ve had so far this year.

496. Black Acre Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - The Hottest Day

The best I can come up with for a description of this collaboration with Guggman Haus Brewing Co. is that it’s an “imperial cold IPA.” They’ve had it on the board for a while at Black Acre, but it clocks in at 9.4% ABV, and I’m not big on beers that are that big when I have to drive home—even when it ain’t far. On the other hand, it’s only an eight-ounce pour, and the writing was going surprisingly well the other night, so I decided to splurge, if you will. “Cold IPA” is still new to me, so I don’t know exactly what to expect. Some quick perusing of the interwebs makes it sound like this is a style that uses lager-brewing techniques to craft an ale that has the hop-forward flavor and high alcohol you’d expect with an IPA, but in an easier-drinking format. This one did seem to be oddly drinkable, despite the fact that it’s 9.4%, and that the alcohol is very noticeable up front. Once you get past that initial hit of booze, though, you wind up with very nice hints of vanilla bean and herbal, fresh cut grass on the back end. You can’t smoke inside anymore, but, since the Loft is open again, this would be a great beer to linger over there—sipping it out of snifters and discussing it over cigars.

495. Black Circle Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - The Stranger

“Sweet, vanilla, herbal, silky.”

Also noted as a “sasparilla porter” on the website. Amy and I stopped by the Black Circle artisan market this past Sunday by sheer dumb luck. We had a little bit of time to kill before we picked up Jackson from choir practice at Butler, we had stopped at the Meijer at 56th and Keystone for some groceries, and we had just turned down Erie Street for 49th Street when I saw the tent awnings set up in Beer Creek. It turned out to be auspicious on multiple levels: Amy found a hippie-ish dress she could wear to school for Halloween; I talked to one of the head honchos at Black Circle and found out that their former head brewer, who used to work at the theatre, is now working at Amelia’s in Fletcher Place and is doing well; and I got to try a beer that is apparently a collaboration between the former brewer and the new brewer. This is another one that tastes to me like it lands somewhere between a brown ale and a porter: dark color, light mouthfeel, and just a hint of sasparilla flavor. Didn’t bowl me over in any way, but it wasn’t bad.