One Card Down, 99 Bottles of Beer to Go

Just under a month ago I completed my first 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall Card at Santa Cruz's most prolific beer establishment, which happens to go by the same name. Go figure. I would like to point out that this feat was completed in just under two months. This makes me an official Ninety-Niner. Also, an alcoholic. I skipped out on the Coors, the Millers, the Buds, the non-alcoholic ginger ales, and the fruity ones I passed onto my friends to indulge in on my behalf, but I still tried a shit-ton of beer. This, yes, is the official terminology for the quantity consumed. Well, I tried several of them enough to have a pretty firm grasp on their flavor profiles and various tidbits about the breweries, etc., but it has become clear that a vague understanding stashed away in my noggin is insufficient. Therefore, with my second card (which has 15 stamps so far) I will attempt to document each pint, bottle, flute, can, and taster consumed.

Here's the thing about 99 Bottles: once you finish your first card, you don't have to drink all of the beers again to get the assigned number stamped. You simply drink and drink and drink and the stamps flow in. What I'm saying is, if I drank 99 Old Rasputins, pronounced rasshhh-pyewtin (if you're me), which believe me I have in my 22 years, I could fill a card based on its creamy, malty, boozey goodness alone. However, I will try to continue to branch out.

Given that I am 15 beers into this card, I will try to play a little catch-up.

First, a lesson on beer types (from a super amateur with a lot of help from wikipedia and what my barfly buddies have told me):

1. Stouts - Oh, there are so many stouts, where to begin? First of all, know that a stout is typically dark. These babies look like 16 espresso shots pulled into one big pint glass. Some heads (the foamy top of a beer) are creamy, some are bubbly. You have your imperial stout (my favorite), like an Old Rashhhpyewtin, which pretty much means it's an incredibly boozey beer (9%+). Then there are the oatmeal stouts, made from, you guessed it, oats, amongst the typical ingredients of malts and whatnot. They can be kind of bitter, but also the added fattiness of the lipids and proteins of the oats can make them quite smooth. A stout in general is a kind of porter, which is pretty much a dark beer. I generally think of porters as less creamy than stouts, but a stout is a porter, a porter is a stout - it is actually kind of confusing. Anyway, the list goes on and on and you've got chocolate stouts, coffee porters, and, something I have never tried, an oyster stout. Yuck.

2. IPAs - IPA stands for Indian Pale Ale. Basically a pale ale is a beer brewed from pale malts, which is funny because when you think IPA you think HOPS. The modifier "Indian" relates back to the shipment of beer during the time of the East India Company, when English breweries would ship heavily hopped beers to India as an export and this is how we get our modern understanding of IPAs. They are hoppy, some more than others, often times floral or citrusy, carbonated and light to deep gold, and most of the time boooooozeeyyyy. A double IPA is an even boooooziiieeerrrr IPA that my barfly buddy David tells me comes from a second fermentation process, this time adding malts. I don't know if this is necessarily the case across the board, but they seem to be full-bodied, hoppy, and boozey. That's all you need to know.

3. Amber Ales - Okay, so most of the beers to come are some variation of a pale ale, which again uses pale malts. Amber ales use crystal malts and/or other colored malts to add the distinctive color. They don't tend to be hoppy and are, in my opinion, pretty middle of the road, with flavor varying depending on the brewery. Some are fantastic, like Anderson Valley Boont, and other are, just, you know, whatever.

4. Belgians - Well if there aren't a plethora of beer varieties under this umbrella, too. When you say Belgian, you could be talking about a fruit-puree beer like a lambic, or a dark ale like an abbey ale, or a golden ale, which is what I typically think of when considering the term belgian, or wheats or saison or reds or OH MY GOD SO MANY. I pretty much consider them light, often floral, sometimes sweet and fruity. I dunno what to tell you it's just too crazy to give you a definition.

5. Pilsners - Light.

And I think that pretty much covers the basics.

Stay tuned for a recap of the Russian River Brewing Company and the latest from Green Flash and Flying Dog.