Month: November 2018

This beer is a damned tramp.  It calls itself an Irish Pale Ale (IPA, get it?) and uses Cascade hops to get a floral smell and flavor that pretty much just yanks your pants down.  It has a reddish tint because, well, it’s a redhead and it won’t let you forget that.  The perfume of it is all softness and comfort and promises of the best night of your life.  If you happen to have the strength to pull yourself out of the pub and walk down the street, you still smell that perfume.  Then you pop into another pub because maybe you hear some lively music coming from inside and, hey, the night is still young, right?  When you walk in, there she is hanging out with the band.  They’re singing “Galway Girl” to her and you can’t resist the seduction and that perfume, like a Siren’s song, pulls you back to her.

There are those who will insist that the Galway Hooker is the fishing ship that the brewery is named for, but we know better.  Anyone who has spent a music-fueled, sensual, flower perfumed, beautiful night of bliss with her knows that this beer is just a tramp.

Sorry, but as a blog post there’s not really anything left to say about Guinness that hasn’t been said a thousand times before by better writers than myself.  They started making this here in 1759 and it has been sheer perfection ever since.  Gorgeous to watch being poured, beautiful to look at in the glass, not fizzy with carbon dioxide, but creamy smooth with nitrogen bubbles, and enough stout flavor to be satisfyingly substantial, but not so much that you wonder if you can handle a second pint.  While loads of other (fantastic) beers enjoy tremendous popularity across Ireland, there isn’t a pub that doesn’t have a row of Guinness lined up for those ordering the famous two-part-pour beer.

Like U2 or Elvis or Levi’s, there will always be detractors who loathe something so universally loved.  They’ll say the brewery has been bought out by a global corporation (it has), or that it’s only for tourists (it’s not), or that it’s fattening (it is), or any number of reasons to take away your joy.  Pay them no mind.  Stare into the molten chocolate depths of this cave-dark brew, taste the history of this recipe, listen to the rain on the window and the singing of the Irish band in the corner booth, and let yourself get lost in the beauty of a 250 year tradition in beer.  Your IPA can wait.

Walsh distillery was, I think, working feverishly in their castle laboratory on this one for an eternity of stormy nights.  Their wiry white hair being flung by the wind whipping in through the stone window openings, flashes of lightning like strobe lights across the oak casks and the orange glow of the copper still.  In their maniacal quest for something so easy to drink that it would drive countless authors to madness (or brilliance, or simply death) they must never have rested.  Then, one fateful night, they finally brought this recipe to their lips, slowly smiled, and threw their arms wide, screaming their victorious howl at the night sky.

I have a special place in my heart for whiskeys because they are the quintessential sipping experience.  Beer is for drinking, but whiskey is for the small sips and the joy of the afterglow.  The flavors roll in sequence across your tongue and then (if the whiskey is a good one) there is a slow spreading warmth from your belly outward.  A whiskey this easy to drink, this mellow, sweet, and seemingly harmless, is the femme fatale of the breed.  Smoky voiced with the smell of caramel and vanilla, it puts a warm hand on your thigh and reassures you that it is here for you.  Whatever you want, it promises.  If you’re not able to enjoy it for a moment and then set it aside, it will gut you and laugh.