Raspberry Russian Imperial Stout

Fruit beers have a reputation for being frou-frou. Not so this raspberry Russian imperial stout by Widmer Brothers. It's about as serious as they come. When I looked at the label, I thought, what an odd pairing--I'm used to fruit beers being light affairs, whether they are berry beers or apricot beers, they all seem to emphasize blonde ales. So I was immediately intrigued. I also thought, raspberry is Tracy's favorite fruit and she asked me to pick up something special for her. I did suspect it might be too strong, but I also thought it was worth a try, something different and definitely special.

As counter-intuitive as it seemed when I looked at the label when I tasted it the combination was, of course, perfectly natural. Like raspberry and dark chocolate. Very dark chocolate, like 80% cocoa dark, with some coffee to make a very dark mocha flavor. Plus 9.3% alcohol and some fortifying hops. The flavor is very strong, and you wouldn't think that the hint of raspberries from the aroma would be able to hold up against them, but it does, creating a striking flavor that really works in every one of its facets.

Alas, Tracy did not like it--it was too strong. To be fair, she doesn't like 80% cocoa chocolate (truthfully, I don't tend to, either, but with hops & alcohol, I can go with it). But I really did. Highly recommended. An image of the beer itself. It doesn't do justice to the head--it's Tracy's portion poured back in the bottle to wait until I could enjoy it and it had gotten more than a little flat. Remarkably, it's still tasty that way. It's very dark, but if you hold it up to the light and tilt the glass to get a view through the thinnest portion, there's some purple there. Highly recommended!

Books and Beers Pt. 1

So, earlier this week, for reasons too complicated to go into right now, I was forced to listen to an hour or longer lecture by a policeman. No, the lecture wasn't directed at me, but it might as well have been for all the good it did the kid. Now, policemen might be good at a lot of things, but if this guy was any indication, they are shitty counselors. Instead of droning on for better than an hour, he coulda just said this:

Things don't always go according to plan, so don't burn any bridges, kid.

And then left. The kid might've gotten it or he might not, but at least he would've known what the message was. And it probably would've been just as relevant as whatever the hell he was trying to say to the kid, which I could hardly figure out and I'm not sure what it was except maybe, "If you do bad stuff, people will blather at you for hours on end. So be good, and don't make me come down here and blather at you some more."

So, anyway, speaking of plans, my plans for this evening went pretty fubar pretty quickly, but I didn't burn any bridges, and may have even built one at the Mutiny Now! Bookstore^1 in anticipation of May 1 Day of Resistance. (We'll see how that goes!) I'll revisit my plan and try to bring it to fruition for part 2.

But in the meantime, the best part of this evening was the part that actually went sort of according to plan--getting down to enjoy Double IPApril at The Rackhouse with the guy(s). Well, one guy made it, anyway. A little late, but that's okay, I don't mind drinking alone, and I technically wasn't alone, I was with The Wizard of Lemuria (the one on the right). And how is said wizard? Hilarious! He reads like Kevin^2.So, anyway, Clint gets there after a while and I say "Sorry, Wiz, but I gotta go." And Clint and I start talking about all manner of things personal and professional, mostly professional because we have worked together and continue to work together off and on. It was good to listen to his problems and realize that for all the crap I have to deal with, the best I might be able to hope for is trading SSDD for SSDP. The Sheriff's got his problems, too, right?^3

And it was also good to just drink some beers again. I've been sick for the past few days and an involuntary teetotaler, and I gotta tell you, I am not a Bear Who Could Leave It Alone. So when I got to The Rackhouse, with the smell of whiskey-in-the-making filling my nostrils, I jumped right in with the Palate Wrecker from Green Flash. Now that is good stuff. If you like hops. Very, very hoppy, but a good kind of hop flavor. Intense, but smooth and rich, not like, for example, the Hopbomination, which just made me think of eating a big bag of grass clippings.

Then I enjoyed Lawyers, Guns, and Money from Crazy Mountain, also very hoppy, but to my mind not as tasty. Also, it seemed like the flavor took a turn to the right in my mouth at the tail end. The guy next to me was trying a taste of it at the same time seemed to know a bit about beer, so I asked him about what the taste was doing at the end. "It gets bitter at the end," he says to me. (Thank you, Mr. Beer Man, for that insight--a double IPA that gets bitter at the end, who'd'a thunk it?)

So then I wanted to have some of the Hypothesis from River North. I'd had this before and enjoyed it and wanted to see how a Belgian stacked up against the normal double IPAs, and it didn't fare too well, just a little off for my taste.

And I finished off with an old standard the 7 Seas from Dry Dock. The color of the pour didn't look like what I normally recognize from the bottles, but it matches what's on the brewery's handy menu, so I expect she didn't pour me from the wrong tap while I wasn't looking. By this point my palate was pretty wrecked (it could be my fault), so I don't think I could've testified one way or another, but it was definitely in the same vein and held its own against the others, so I was happy.

And I left happy and Clint and I shared the requisite extra 20 minutes in the parking lot on those 1 or 2 conversation topics that didn't get brought up yet, and I came home. So, not according to plan, but not bad, either.

1--Formerly Ichabod's "Yeah, like seven years ago!" according to the manager. "Welcome back!" he also said in a very un-Denver-like fashion. But he's a good guy. Repaired the binding on the Wiz, knocked a buck off the price, and gave me my 25 cent cheapie for free on top of that. So he'll probably be back in Part 2. Mutiny was so much not a part of the plan, it's represented here by the fragment of a sign reading "Clean Used Books."
2--If you know what this means, it likely inspires either hope or horror, according to your humors. If you don't know what this means, consider this exemplary dialogue: "They'll reward you all right--by feeding your heart to the slith! Know you not that the daotar of the guards, the noble Barand Thon, is the oldest friend of the father of the man you slew?" I knew that! And I bet many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the slor that day, I can tell you!
3--Which I know because the cop just couldn't help but sprinkle them liberally through his diatribe!