AaronS

better question is whether either is acceptable, there’s no need to rank them.

trotter makes perfect sense, flay seems like an ironic choice but my only experience of him is eating next to him at uncle boons and thinking that his very beautiful wife seemed miserable and then seeing they got divorced shortly thereafter. I guess I can see why they would want to show their versions of what’s in child’s books.

it does seem really odd to me. I was wondering if anyone here could opine about mesa grill. eta: apparently it closed in 2013, I assume whatever excellence they’re celebrating was long gone by then. charlie trotter died in 2014, and his restaurant closed the same year mesa grill did.

as well as julia child and charlie trotter.

so many things in that contemporary america feel that way to me. apparently he's just mentally ill.

brouwerij de molen hel & verdoemenis ale bottled 20 jun 2017 - 10% abv. this is another one I found when organizing my beer collection, I had another bottle not so long ago but don't remember when. I remember not liking it that much, but this is starting to a little bit the same way that the barleywine I had the other day was and the slightly sour finish really goes well with the peaty smokiness and this is pleasant enough. my mildest recommendation.

suarez sensate smoky helles - 4.9% abv. the commercial description tells us that a lot of the smoked character comes from the use of the yeast from their stands to reason, which is a lot smokier than this. this is as good as the usual suarez lager - there’s some smoke, the perfect amount of malt sweetness, and a little bit of noble hops in the finish. this is nothing like the german smoked lagers I’ve had - the primary flavor is still malt sweetness and there’s almost as much noble hop citrus as smoke. suarez is excellent, my taste is excellent, excellence is transitive, blah blah blah. really strongly recommended.

I fucking love parkman!

allagash snow report winter ale festive honey golden - 8.6% abv. this is one of the few beers allagash currently sends to new york, it's got halleratau and saaz hops, wildflower honey, and imperial saison yeast. this exactly the kind of yeast forward beer you'd expect from allagash, the commercial description of melon, green apple and honey is dead on, but it's also a lot like their wit bier, only with more pear and noble hop up front and more grain in the finish. this isn't nearly as enjoyable as way I remember their brett beers, but I know where to buy this and so on. mildly recommended.

sierra nevada bigfoot barleywine - style ale 2022 bottled 12/1/21 - 9.6% abv. the same reorganization that reminded me of the bottle above brought this one to my attention. I'm building a bigfoot vertical and it turns out I had a seventh bottle of this, which as I post about every year is the much larger version of the celebration ale that I always drink so much of this time of year. this has always been one of my favorite example of american style barley wine, a well delineated style that's a lot harder to find than it used to be. they changed the recipe for this one about twenty years ago, and while I remember preferring the higher abv version this is great and you can still buy it, unlike rogue's old crustacean, anchor's old foghorn, victory's old horizontal, hair of the dog's doggie claws, brooklyn's monster, stone's old guardian, mikkeller's big worse series, to øl's mine is bigger than yours, north coast's old stock ale, and who knows how many others. this is a lot lighter than the george gale one and is still pretty carbonated and while it's not really hoppy anymore it's still pretty bitter and there's some orange and mint underneath the toffee malt notes. this is a little bit more bitter than a jw lees would be, and the malt notes are a little smaller, but if the way I remember the jw lees ones is correct the distinction between english and american styles is a lot smaller than I would have guessed and so on and on. recommended. sneak - that's funny. you'll have to tell me where the beer table of ridgewood is.

george gale & co ltd prize old ale brewed in 2003 - 9.2% abv. I bought this at beer witch about a year ago and came across it while I was organizing my barley wine collection. is there a difference between old ale and barley-wine, you say? I think of them as interchangeable terms, but there is some stuff you can find on google that claims there is a distinction, but it also says that barley-wine is not a well defined style, which hasn't been true for at least the twenty or so years I've been drinking beer. anyways - this is in pretty good condition for something it's age - the cork came out cleanly and there's no particulate matter in my glass, although the shoulders of the 275ml bottle this was in may have helped there. this is a deep brown color that takes on a purple hue in the light and isn't carbonated any more. I've never had a george gale that I liked as much as a jw lees or north coast's old stock ale, and it's hard not to think the lower abv can't stand up to aging the way those other beers can. this is mostly the mixture of dried fruit (mostly fig) and toffee that you expect from the style, but it's much less sweet than typical examples of the style and the finish is thin. this is actually holding up pretty well - this has the simplicity that good examples of old beer do, but there's not much depth and it doesn't have the huge orange and toffee notes that the jw lees ones do. there's a little bit of vinegar in the finish, which brings this closer to wine in a way that's not really characteristic of very old examples of the style. I don't know if that's a sign that this is starting to go or not, look for a post about my other bottle of this is in late 2028.

he doesn't say what the meal costs, and the only price you can see on resy or their website is $395 a head for thanksgiving, which is hopefully more than a friday night. it's also unclear whether the meal he got is one of the three formats mentioned on their website, although I guess it's the longer 4-8 course "we just cook for you" with more choice than that phrase implies.

three floyd’s alpha klauss christmas porter - 7.3% abv. this is the holiday version of alpha king, one of their older beers. the malt bill is a lot darker in this version, and they add some english chocolate malt and mexican sugar, but the important thing is this shows up a lot fresher than most of the rest their beer does. this has a great combination of roasted malt and bitterness that gives way to a mixture of orange marmalade and resin with some herbal undertones. this is exactly what I love about old style american brewing - you get the well done malt notes that you’d get in an actual porter, but it’s also really hoppy and is well put together. it’s also more than a little bit frustrating that this is clean and well made the way I remember their beer being way back when, which is no longer true of most of their beer that ends up here. strongly recommended.

alesmith brewing company ipa west coast-style india pale ale - 7.25% abv. the old version of this was one of my all time favorite west coast ipas, and I'm always happy to find this relatively fresh at the grocery store. (would finding equally fresh versions of union jack or torpedo be even more exciting? I wish I could tell you.) this isn't at all the way it was - the previous c-hop (amarillo and simcoe start with c for these purposes) hop bill has been replaced with columbus and citra, the latter of which is a c-hop in name only... this is a lot lighter than torpedo is, and tastes a lot more like citra, but it's less delicate and the hops have that weird apple juice flavor you get with lesser examples of older beer. this is the kind of thing I really wanted to like more, blah blah blah.

oxbow brewing northern lager classic lager brewed for oxbow brewing co. by zero gravity craft brewing, burlington, vt - 4.5% abv. I forgot this was contract brewed when I picked it up, and while I generally like zero gravity’s stuff I don’t remember what their lagers are like so I have no idea if this arrangement is a good idea or not. this is exactly what it claims to be - a classic lager. it’s clean, is entirely beer flavored, and the small amounts of sweet malt and hints of bitterness are pretty pleasant. this has a fair amount of flavor for the abv and is extremely quaffable. recommended to anyone looking for a classic lager.