Quick Shots - Going Yard

Quick shot here to get us started on some actual pseudo-journalism - Fishtown brewery Yards Brewing Company is expected to add about 8,000 barrels of beer to its rotation next year according to this story in the Philadelphia Business Journal. My friends, that is roughly 252,000 gallons of beer, coming from two new tanks they are installing next year.

(h/t to PW)

New Features, New Drinks, Same Drunkenness

Well hello there. Welcome to the new and improved Responsible Drunk. It has indeed been awhile since we sort of died off over a year ago but now we're back with a new, sustainable (to the point of liver failure) model. We've got a slate of new writers, and not a teetotaler among them! The updated manifesto is something like this:

The RD will maintain its bread and butter (or shall I say yeast and sugar?) mentality of a reviews-oriented approach to alco-journalism, but we are expanding beyond the great wall of beer to include reviews of cocktails, cordials, liqours, liquors, booze, grains, shines and basically anything that "will get you drunk". Review process will remain the same (as will our 10.0 scale we ganked from Pitchfork), reviewed drinks will be co-tasted and rated with the stronger opinioned of the two raters taking up the review. The new expansion will include semi-regular commentary from a new slate of writers as well as your EIC. Who knows, we may even branch out into visual or aural media via podcasts or YouTube. In any event, there's going to be a whole lot more writing. I will allow our new writers to introduce themselves, but below I've provided their names/probable column descriptions:

Seth Finck "Drinking on the TeeVee" - This may just end up as a Mad Men review column, who knows!
Brad Pearson "Drinking Games" - This post will get you drunk.
Anthony DePaul "Cheap Ass Beer of the Week" - Classin' up the joint.
Andy Beers "F•ck That Vodka" - Not for children, but most definitely for the ladies.
Harry Cleveland "Samurai Malt Whiskey" - Writings from the land of the falling down drunk.
Chris Morse "All Ginned up for a Fight" - Because gin leads to fights every time.
Jim Ryan, EIC - I'll be covering miscellany including fancy new cocktails, bar reviews, continuing our RD Night Out segment, interviews, in addition to managing reviews and other content.

So that is our plan. Fire up those google readers and as always, drink responsibly.

Responsible Drunk 2: The Drunkening

Well, well, well, it has been some time hasn't it? Well, be prepared because in the near future we are relaunching this thing in a bigger and badder fashion. We've got new writers, new reviews, and we are gonna diversify our bonds by dipping into the vast ocean of liqour. A more comprehensive preview is in the works, but this is so you fire up your RSS feeds that have gone long dormant.

Black Wattle Original Ale

Rating: 6.1
Brewery: Barons Brewing Company (Sydney, AU)
Glass: Pint
ABV: 5.8%
Seller: Blue Dog Tavern (Chalfont, PA)
When Enjoyed: 17 April 2009

What the hell is a wattle seed? This is bound to be the first question on your mind when you approach this beer in your local cooler. Indeed I was driven to Wikipedia to better understand what I might expect from this peculiar Australian brew. Unfortunately, there is no tasteapedia yet, and I've never had the opportunity to chew on an acacia plant. Nonetheless, I boldly approached Baron's attempt to re-define the Australian word for beer.

The Black Wattle Ale pours smooth with a decent head that is retained poorly. It's got a rich amber color that previews the heavy roasted barley flavor to come. And that is in fact my main beef with this beer, afterward I was left with more questions than I had answers. Not only was I still asking myself 'what is a wattle seed again?' I was also asking 'where was the wattle seed?' (perhaps if I drank this whilst watching Lost I would also be asking, 'when is the wattle seed?). Barons packed this beer with so much powerful barley that it is really the only discernible taste. The hop quotient is almost non-existent and I imagine the barley has overpowered the wattle seed flavor to a significant degree. Now, I'm willing to imagine that since this seed is used to make bush bread that it might taste something like roasted barley. If that is the case, then why add roasted barley at all, why not go full wattle on me and knock me out?

To be fair, this is not all that bad a beer. Its a solid amber ale, and if you like roasted barely the way I do, you'd order this beer frequently. If Barons became Australian for beer, I would be pleased. But false advertising is false advertising and there are penalties for that in my book. On top of that it shows that the Australian microbrew tradition still has a ways to go to catch up with the American one. I can just imagine what Sam Calagione and Dogfish Head could do with an ingredient like wattle seed. For the native continent of this assuredly alluring ingredient to be so timid about its presence in this beer is dissapointing.

Extra ESB - 471 Small Batch

Rating: 7.1
Brewery: Breckenridge Brewery (Breckenridge, CO)
Glass: Pint
ABV: 7.8%
Seller: Blue Dog Tavern (Chalfont, PA)
When Enjoyed: 15 April 2009

The ESB, or Extra Special Bitter, is definitely a style that is getting harder to find in the tanks of American Microbreweries. The style in many ways is the non-colonial version of the IPA, medium-high bitterness with a stiff malty backbone with a blend of session-y working man attitude. In my opinion it tends to stick in between the IPA and other session beers, like Red Ales or French variants like Saison or Biere de Garde. This limited run offering from Breckenridge Brewery though has a distinct American character.

For starters the hop blend in this ESB leans a little heavier on the crisper American varieties (like chinook) than the British ones (like fuggles). Furthermore, they amped up the ABV a bit thus making it an "Extra Special" ESB. While the ABV comes as a surprise, certainly pegged it lower than that in a tasting (and 7.8% is still not too terribly high, just higher than than the style usually comports).

The pour comes out dissapointingly flat, however and the head is not very thick, though it has decent retention. Which brings me to the paradox of this beer, for an ESB its got plenty of bitter, but not much that is 'extra' or 'special'. The only surprising thing about this beer is the ABV, and even that isn't close to jaw dropping. While a solid beer by any measure, stacked up against similar quality beers in its session or IPA cousins, I'd choose the other beers.