629. Big Lug Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Gatekeeper

The descriptions are all over the place, so instead we’re just going to shoot from the hip on this one. It’s possibly the richest coffee stout I have ever tasted. The coffee flavor hits up front, and then lingers into the dry finish on the back end. The can says 6.66% ABV (which I can totally appreciate), and it sort of feels like it. Everything smooths out as it warms, and it remains one of the best stouts I have ever had—and easily the best Big Lug joint I have ever had.

560. Big Lug Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Baewatch

“Good running on beach, good in a bathing suit, good from your dinner table. Classic Hefeweizen with a heaping amount of passionfruit to livin’ [sic] up your mood and get you in a beachier state of mind.”

Um. So the writing is obviously fucking terrible, and if this is what passionfruit tastes like, then I don’t ever need to taste it again. There’s a sort of sour flavor going on that obscures whatever there might be in the way of Hefeweizen flavors, though that sort of moderates a little bit as it warms. I’m going to go ahead and follow my initial inclination to dislike it—partly because it doesn’t taste at all like a Hefeweizen, but mostly because that is maybe the worst fucking name for a beer ever.

514. Big Lug Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Hans Grubeer

“Everyone’s favorite Christmas movie villain now has a Christmas beer. A heavily hopped COLD IPA, basically a hoppy lager, that focuses on letting the hop flavors shine. Yummy Ki-yay. Yeah, we said it, not ashamed.”

Amy suggested Half Liter BBQ for lunch today, and if not for that suggestion, I might never have known of the existence of this beer. The name alone was enough to make me try it, and the one I had at the restaurant was okay—mild melon and papaya flavor up front and a pleasantly bitter finish (more like a straight-up IPA than a Cold IPA). Good, but not interesting.

Then I got a four-pack so I could try them at home, and just looking at the label on the can made me glad I had made the purchase. The Christmas tree on the can has the beer’s name in what looks like the font from the one-sheet for A Christmas Story, and it also has ornaments of Hans Gruber himself, as well as Nakatomi Plaza (pre-C4 and “Take this under advisement, jerkweed!”), John McClane’s lighter, and Karl’s chainsaw.

But wait! If you act now, you can double your pleasure and double your fun by turning the can over to look at what they stamped on the label just above the production date—it’s “Yippy Ki-Yay MF.”

And how do the one in the cans taste? A little bit different, actually. More like mixed fruit and vanilla up front, with a smooth finish that leaves a vague, lingering dryness on the back of the throat. Much more interesting than the one I had at the restaurant. I haven’t tried enough Cold IPAs yet to have an opinion, but if this is the kind of thing that can be done with them, then I’m on board.

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?

305. Big Lug Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Ragged Company

“Hazy, low bitterness with high hop flavor and aroma. ‘Juicy’ character, with notes of tropical fruit.”

I can’t quite make out which fruit flavor that is, but it’s huge up front, and almost cloyingly sweet. Could be vaguely tropical, I suppose…so I’m going with papaya. Perhaps a little bit of citrus shine on the back end. I had three of these yesterday, and I thought they all had that cloying sweetness I mentioned earlier; but it’s much less pronounced in the one I poured today, and the fruit flavor isn’t as big up front. It’s still a little too round and sweet overall, but really not bad.

205. Big Lug Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Honest Weight

No description apart from “West Coast IPA” on what remains of the website they have gelded to capitulate to the demands of our new master, the coronavirus. The can says “American IPA,” which I’m sure means something to people who know more about beer than I do (but which sounds fucking ridiculous to me), as well as “Resin,” “Zest,” and “Balanced.” Mostly what I get is caramel cookie, with an impressively bitter finish—and maybe a little bit of that zest as it warms up. Not sure I like it, but it’s definitely interesting.