Beers Eye Drunk

In college, I was fortunate to live close to Cooperstown, which sported some awesome beers. I have fond, but very cloudily memories of our trip into the middle of nowhere to a brewery that was more or less a converted barn, which I seem to remember having hay on the ground. We were fortunate enough to load up a keg of the Pride of Milford. I seem to remember sleeping in the afternoon in the middle of my friend's stairwell after undertaking a personal mission to finish the keg myself when only a handful of folks showed up for our “big” party.

I remember this beer being about ten-grades higher in quality, but also hops, than anything I had previously in a keg, and it was strong as hell. Each plastic cup felt like Thor smacking me in the bridge of the nose with his hammer. Unfortunately, I was never able to return to Cooperstown to test the beer for true quality when it would not overshadowed by its quantity.

Upon my recent visit to the Finger Lakes area, I found it difficult to find any regional brews, other than Saranac, whose Pale Ale is still a favorite of mine. After plowing through six of those rich and hoppy amber gems, I was pretty well bored of the remaining offerings. I traveled from liquor store to super-Wal-Mart looking for something new... I found it in the most unexpected place... Aldi's.

For those of you who don't know what Aldi's is, I will elaborate. For those of you who do know what Aldi's is, yes, I'm dead freakin' serious, I found beer... new beer... at Aldi's.

Aldi's is a discount grocery store that cuts overhead costs by being characteristically filthy, leaving the food in crates with price signs someone printed on a dot matrix, charging people a temporary rental fee of 25 cents to use a cart, and offering rejected and strange varieties of existing products, such as the 6oz jar of mayonnaise or the bag of seven frozen, yet pre-sauced, BBQ chicken wings.

Admittedly, this Aldi's looked way better than it did a few years ago. The floor was relatively clean. The checkout girls were not mutants fresh from a toxic breeding pen, and for some reason they were selling things like portables DVD players and boom boxes. I was actually marginally impressed, and only one out of three people working there gave me that look which reminds me of when the people in the gooey cocoons beg to be killed in Aliens. I have to raise my grade of Aldi's from F- to at least a D+.

The beer I found was in a 12 pack that was sealed with clear packaging tape and had dents and scuff marks on it like it had been dragged by rope from a trailer hitch. Because it’s Upstate New York you can’t tell of that’s incidental or occurred after the fact as some kind unfavorable review. All the boxes were like that, so I picked the best looking one.

I had roughly eight hours to drink the twelve beers, and decided that I would only just try each of the four kinds in hopes not to be hung over the next morning for my lovely 6:00am plane back to Austin. Much to my surprise, none of the four brands gave me influenza. In fact, they were all astonishingly good. I won't go so far as to say great, but I'll definitely say they're worth having again. Impressive doesn't cut it, really. It was like David running over Goliath in his H2. This underdog brew came off a pallet on the floor of the discount grocery store and actually turned out to be fairly tasty.

Southern Tier Brewery is somewhere down towards Pennsylvania in an area that I've probably been to, but since it didn't include any less or more cows or rednecks than any other place else upstate, it didn't stand out.

Phin & Matts Extraordinary Ale stood out as the most interesting. There was an almost heavy fruitiness, while retaining a wealth of hops and carbonation. The combination of the hops and the beer’s strong head kept the malty sweet flavors from turning the beer into an un-lively syrup. Though, if you let this beer sit around or get too warm, that's definitely what you ended up with. I could only imagine how good this beer is at its freshest state. No telling how long it was sitting at Aldi's or what truck it fell out of on the way there.

Southern Tier's IPA wasn't bad at all, although I can't say it holds a candle to Saranac. I'm stuck on Saranac, and probably will be for life. With Pale Ales, it's like death metal. Sure it's all loud-ass, uncultured noise, blaring hops for the sake of hopiness... Once you get over the juvenile appeal, if you still like any of them at all, it's the one or two whose particular noise is on your chosen wave-length. I consider my liking of Saranac as akin to my preference of Pantera to Mettallica. We're not talking about picking your favorite symphony orchestra here, just which guys you like yelled at you. Southern Tier made a good IPA, but didn’t win me over.

Another surprise within a surprise was Southern Tier's Tripel, a Belgium style beer made in a place where if you could find Belgium on a map then you'd probably get beaten by the high school football team after school. The Tripel had some of the bells and whistles of the genre, a strong alcohol flavor with a girth of sweetness that's very much like coffee mixed with Jagermeister. Don't ask how I know that. In any event, the Tripel was a nice hail marry pass on fourth and long to say the least. I applauded the effort, but all in all, this beer had very little originally to warrant the gut space. While not a complete flop, it doesn’t stack up to the imports.

Southern Tier also made the obligatory Porter, which was what you might expect; dark, creamy, with aromas/flavors ranging from coffee to chocolate. The porter was so typical that it was almost genius, and a bit of wateriness to the consistency actually kept it from being too heavy. Highly drinkable, without too much to ponder, this is a perfect pub beer, but unfortunately I wasn't at a pub and I was on my parent's couch getting assaulted by their toy beagle who had eaten a large portion of my blanket the night before. However, I do imagine this beer would go over well in large quantities at cold temperatures with good friends. I live in Austin, and if I can get any of those things, let alone all three at once, I'll be happy to drink just about anything.

All in all, the beers got above average marks from me. I am typically very critical of microbrews since there's so damn many of them and they're so distracting from a wealth of high quality imports. It's just too damn easy to get dinged with a sixer of absolute uninspired crap, either a muddy, gritty excuse for a porter or an unbearably dry hop-tastify of an IPA. Very seldom do you see a domestic brewery that's bold enough to put a Tripel in a sampler pack and take respectable swings at both IPA and Porter without failure.

If you're ever in Western New York or Northwestern Pennsylvania or far upstate at a discount grocery store, definitely give Southern Tier a try. It's an experience that will be worth the 25 cents it takes to rent a shopping cart at Aldis...

It is highly unlikely that I will find a beer to review this week while in central New York visiting the family. I did have a Saranac Pale Ale that was left in the fridge from my last visit. It was actually okay, but I threw it out since it probably had the plague growing in it.

The electricity is in the air. Today it even haled. And while it has very little to do with the tournament, you can expect similarly powerful and elegant elemental forces to collide on their collision courses as they violently complete thier paths right into one another followed by a sudden stop of some kind. And it will sound like "pow" only with more bubbles.

In the first round, in what is being dubbed as The Journey to the Darkside, fiesty black microbrew, Independence Bootlegger Brown Ale launches an assault on murky, smooth Mackeson Triple X Stout. Mackeson will try to rely on its rich flavor and milky consistency to slide ahead into the second round. Independence Brown Ale bares the distinct honor of being the only domestic microbrew to pre-qualify for the tournament. Will Indie bring the dark chocolaty pain down on Mackeson in the name of the good ole US of A? This is one match I'll be sitting down for, but perhaps on the very edge of my seat.

Also set to collide in a first round battle of dark beers, Xingu and Baltika will represent Russia and Brazil inverse-respectively. Now there is a very good chance that Xingu, being a fairly difficult beer to allocate, will decline the prestigious honor of a spot in the tournament. If this is the case, than the winner of a slug-fest between McEwan's and Belhaven will take it's place, if there's anything left of either one after those rough Scotts get completely pounded. Xingu vs Baltika is being haled as The Heart of Darkness in which the deep spicy jungles of Brazil unleash their near unholy onslaught of taste upon the powerful black alchol overtones of perhaps the most aggressive porter in the world.

Class meets Grass, when pristine pub ale Old Growler tries to take a bite out of St. Peter's Organic English Ale in a first round battle for the Briton Heavy-weight Championship. Either one of these beers is a shoe-in to win the entire tournament. And this first round clash of true titons is definitely the marquee match of round one. Old Growler is smooth, warm, articulate and still gruff and dank enough to put up a good fight in your mouth. Ounce for ounce, it could be the best beer on the market. And then there's St. Peter's Organic Ale, which boasts a peculiar color, smell, and bottle. But beneath those flashy entrapments there's a real unique style, with an earthy richness that's nothing short of devine. They've both got heart and talent, but only one will advance to round two. The other will become but a burp and a memory.

Old Speckled Hen is another favorite to go far in the tournament; a creamy reddish ale with a flawless drinkability. Though don't count out Hofbrau Maibock, the May brew with German engineering and an undeniable sweet and floral finish. Their colors may be similar in hue, but I'd expect something reddish to be spilled before this one's over. The Speckled One could get upset early by the Maibock, especially now that we're in May giving Hofbrau the home field advantage.

Konig Ludwig is the cinderella story of the beer blog to date. Picked up on sale with very little in the way of expectations, this supposed Hefeweizen turned a lot of heads with its uniquely European taste. Mostly it just titled head slightly backwards, but the impact was no less powerful. But the very first beer review by the blog, Erdinger wants to lay claim to being the best Hefe discovery of the passed three months. Konig Ludwig already has some successful parties and tastings under his belt, while little has been heard of Erdinger since the initial review several months ago. Ludwig's riding high on momentum, but will absense make the heart grow fonder of Erdinger?

Blanche De Chambly was the amazing Canadian upstart, cloudy sweet and perhaps unbeatable. Bischofshof 1649 was a nice, fresh and energetic brew, but it's a tall order for any tall and frosty beer to send the Chambly into a first round defeat. Unibroue's Canadian Crusher is likely to put the beat down on Bischofshof, unless 1649 can become a memorable year for extreme whoop-ass.

And of course, there are still four open slots in the tournament, which are likely to be filled with walk-ons. That could make for some dangers for our known players since there's still a lot of great beer out there yet to be reviewed by the blog. And it's very likely the best beer out there has yet to be tasted. A deadly new-comer could easily sweep the contest and go on to future glory and guzzling.

Here are the brackets for the tournament so far. There are four open spaces, a lot of hopeful beers out there and a lot of drunks who are already clamoring to participate. Click the picture and expand it to full size to see where we're at. If your favorite reviewed beer isn't here... well, that's because it sucked.