Blackwing Lager

Blackwing Lager, straight out the tank!!
POP: Union Craft Brewing, 1700 Union Ave Suite B, Baltimore, MD (Down in Woodberry). Open Saturdays only, 1-4pm.
Price: 64 oz Growler = $17 dollars, $10 refill.
         Union Craft Brewery has been around since 2011, but is still basically unavailable 2.5 miles away from the brewery in Waverly. None of my usual liquor stores carries it. I first got hip to it at W.C. Harlan's, where the Blackwing Lager is sold on draft as "the dark beer". It is always smooth and delicious there, and served in a beautiful icy cold brandy snifter. I had a hard time finding it for home enjoyment until I found out the brewery is open in the afternoons on Saturday. I highly recommend stopping by and trying all the varieties. FREE SAMPLES!
         Blackwing is the motherfucking shit. I love this shit. Coffee, molasses, leather. Medium sized bubbles. Sweet, not hoppy. No bite at the end. Gnarly fish, like smoked bluefish. Oysters. French fries, onion quesadillas. I did have a bit of a headache the next day, but that's probably what you get for not sharing your growler with others.

Reddish in the light

Same dude

MO Pale Ale

MO Pale Ale
Maine Beer Company
POP: Eddie's Liqours
$6.99 plus tax
Lemon, light 'lope taste. Effervescent, subtle hops. Pairings: sautéed flounder, butternut squash soup. Sweet dry sausage and green olives. Another excellent one from this company. Hope it is available in the summer time for CRABS. I imagine this would be excellent in its native habitat with a lobster roll and fries.

Peeper Ale

Price: 5.99
POP: Eddie's Liqours
Maine Beer Company
A peeper is a tiny frog that I thought Maine was too cold for, but I guess not. My experience of Maine as a college student was only from September to May. Most of what I remember was cold and dark. Maine is a great state to not be a Colby student in, though. It is also home to some great beers. I never had this one when I was up there, which is just as well since I had my head pretty far up my ass in those days. Huge head. Bright, subtle citrus. Not overly hopped in any way. An abundance of tiny bubbles. Raw honey, fresh cut pine. Extremely light and refreshing. Extremely light lemon peel aftertaste. Restorative and invigorating. The most delicious beer I've had this winter. Good price, too. A+

Rosie Parks Oyster Stout

Price: IDK, Jess got it for me.
POP: Ditts
Fordham Brewing
This beer is named after a skipjack. I'm down with naming beers after ships, especially local ones. Also satisfies my preference for beer labels with moving water, although the oystering beds. of the Chesapeake wouldn't be my ideal source for brewing water. If the guys on the Rosie Parks drank anything at all (Most watermen are Methodists. In my personal experience with these people, the blood of Christ is Welch's in a plastic dose cup.) it was probably High Life and Lord Calvert, not a fancy stout.
The label claims the beer is brewed with real oysters and oyster shells. Shell fragments (I hope) are visible at the bottom of the bottle. Not much head, quickly dissipates. Beautiful burnt umber color with red and gold highlights. Still maintains a subtle effervesence, pleasant on the tongue. Leather, coffee, faint ocean taste at the end. B+

Twin Lakes Pale Ale

Twin Lakes Pale Ale
POP: Beach Liquors, Fenwick DE

Very handsome can. Beers should always have a body of moving water in the logo. I have never seen this beer in Baltimore, maybe that is outside of the range of the brewery. If that contributes to the freshness of the beer, fine by me.
A beautiful light red-gold, and and a thick buoyant head. A smooth and creamy texture on the tongue. The hops are very subtle and quiet, not overpowering. This is a very well balanced beer. Super clean after taste. It seems extremely fresh. Food pairings: bluefish tacos with peach salsa, nachos, fried shrimp. This is what beer is all about. A+

Shiner Ruby Redbird

Ruby Redbird
Summer Seasonal
USA
POP: Parts unknown
Container: Brown bottle
Price: Some friends left one in the fridge

         I know what you're thinking: "Grapefruit?? Blerggh!! Texas?? Double-Blerggh!!". We all know the old saying "Everything's suckier in Texas", but happily this grapefruit beer is the exception that proves the rule. The label on the bottle is handsome and simple.
         There is no head on this beer at all. A fountain Pepsi from Royal Farms has more head than this. There are a lot of nice bubbles, but they don't hang together. The lack of head doesn't seem to really matter. The color is a very pleasant orange gold.
         When you stick your nose in, you are treated to a lovely and dry grapefruit odor. The flavor is light and crisp. The grapefruit is subtle, not too sweet. A little ginger makes it even more refreshing. The label says that their are malt and hops, but they hardly show up. This doesn't even feel like drinking a beer. It is more like drinking some kind of sophisticated Italian soda.
           Shiner only makes this beer in the summer. I have to say it is very refreshing in the hot weather. Once the temperature dips below sixty, it might seem watery and weak. This would be great with tortilla chips and peach salsa, any salad, and roast fish. This would be an excellent shower beer after summer yard work.
Overall B+

Heavy Seas Small Craft Warning

Small Craft Warning
"Über Pils"
USA
POP: Hampden Park Liquors, 3701 Falls Rd Baltimore, MD 21211
Price: Forgotten

          Heavy Seas beers have never really herked my jerk when I'm looking in the fridges of my local purveyors. This is too bad, since the founder of the brewery, Hugh Sisson, is a good guy based on a two-minute Google search of his name. His bar was one of the first two in Maryland to have Guiness on draft and he is responsible for legalizing brewpubs in the state. He also does "Cellar Notes" on WYPR, which this blog is supposed to be the opposite of. I hate Cellar Notes.
          Clipper City brewery started in 1996. Clipper City beers rebranded as Heavy Seas in 2010. They offer 24 different beers under three different "fleets". The label has a cartoon pirate on it. The cartoon pirate is supposed to be more appealing to a national audience than the super-local names that the company used in the past. I think it's just silly. Super local names are silly, too. Beers have to have stupid names to stand out in a crowded fridge, but I think they are annoying.
            I don't know what Über Pils is supposed to mean. Is it a Pilsner that has read Nietzche and feels empowered to annex the Sudetenland? As I noted earlier, the cartoon pirate on the label irritates me. He looks like a refugee from an Op-Ed page. If he looked more like Captain Crunch, one of my earliest enablers, I'm sure I would be in his power.
           The beer pours out much darker than I expected. It is a rich amber color. The head dissipates pretty quickly. The nose, well, it smells like a really good Yuengling basically. This beer seems like it is really the ghost of what Yuengling should be. It has more flavor than you would expect from a Pilsner, much more malt flavor at the end. This beer is really not bad. I would eat pit beef with it, especially with a nice pickle on the side and some fries. I feel like this would also go great with pizza. I wouldn't mind seeing this beer on draft at the Charles Village Pub.
B+
          

Evolution Summer Session Ale

Evolution Summer Session Ale
Ale?
USA
POP: Ocean Odyssey Restaurant, 316 Sunburst Highway/Route 50, Cambridge MD
Draft

          Another summer beer, or so I thought.  A nice pillowy head, with dense, small bubbles. A surprisingly cloudy yellow color. Almost orange-ish. No real smell, just crisp carbonation.
          The beer is smooth, but the flavor doesn't lack complexity. You will not mistake this for Miller Lite. Extremely light hoppiness, a little dry citrus. Nothing over the top. The subtle flavors are so intricately blended, additional research is called for.
       It sounds silly, but you really notice the smallness of the bubbles as it passes over your palate. Dances on the tongue.  It helps that this beer was served ice cold and was extremely fresh.
       I drank this with some oysters on the half shell (Choptank Sweets!) and a soft crab sandwich. It was an excellent foil for both dishes.
      They even gave me a frosted mug. Awesome. Ocean Odyssey has eight craft brews on tap at all times.
A

Starr Pils

Starr Hill Brewery
Pils
USA
POP: Eddie's Liquors, 3109 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD
Container: Brown bottle

Price: $8.71 for six
             The label for Starr Hill's Starr Pils is clean and simple. No funny names or mascots. Plain white with red and gold, they have sublimated a guitar behind their simple crest. This is perhaps to let you know that this beer is not just the square dependable white guy it appears to be. Their escutcheon is a gold star on a red circle wreathed by grain. The whole thing looks pretty Marxist, frankly. This looks like the beer that people would be drinking in Red Dawn instead of Miller Lite. Would that world be a better place, at least for beer?
               Miller Lite and Starr Pils both claim the Pilsner mantle. Does Starr Pils outshine its mass-market rival? Schmaybe. At first blush, there is not much difference between the two. The head produced by the Virginian brew does seem to be a bit more substantial. Perhaps a shook-up keg of Miller Lite might produce a similar spume. The color seems to be exactly the same. The smell of Starr Pils is extremely subtle. You really have to strain to get a whiff, and what you get doesn't seem so different from what they make in Milwaukee.
               The flavor is about the same. However, the queeze-inducing sweetness of most mass-market brews is replaced by a lovely seltzer aftertaste. This beer is not really that different than Miller Lite, but I wouldn't be mad if somebody handed me one after a long July bicycle ride. Starr Hill doesn't make the Pils all year round, it is just for summer. It is a great summer beer. The cicada song is doing that tidal thing as I write this, and I am well content. I would steam crabs with it, could wash down a cook-out with it. It is refreshing. Is it worth the extra scratch? I would say yes, but only because Starr Hill seems like a great brewery and I would like to try their year-round beers. Miller Lite will always be there for you, steady purchases or no. Starr Pils, maybe not.
Overall: B-/C+

Porkslap Pale Ale

Porkslap Pale Ale

The label says, “Pale Ale” and then right underneath that it says, “Farmhouse Ale”

USA

POP:  Wishing Well Liqours, 786 Idlewild Avenue  Easton, MD 21601

Container: Aluminum can

Price: I lost the receipt.

This beer comes in a can, which I think is cool. I’m not the only one, of course. Lots of fancy beers come in cans these days. It’s greener, and keeps light out of the beer. This beer also comes with a recyclable plastic six pack holder, instead of that old-fashioned fish-choker kind that you have to cut up with scissors.

On the front of the can, two hogs are slapping bellies, hence the name. I think this is kind of corny. If you are on a first date and you order this at a bar, your date will not confuse you with James Bond. The name Porkslap seems vaguely misogynistic or politically incorrect in some way. Like “donkeypunch”.  As I mentioned above, the can claims that what’s inside is simultaneously pale ale and farmhouse ale. I don’t really know what farmhouse ale means. It also says “all malt”. Sounds good to me.

The head on this beer is really magnificent. I highly recommend pouring this beer into glass just to see this head. It looks like a cappuccino.  The beer is a clear and beautiful copper red. It smells great, too. Flowers and citrus.  This is probably due to freshness. The beer I had was canned on May 22. Pretty impressive to get a beer to the Eastern Shore from New York that fast. Again, no light getting in through the can helps a lot.

The taste is great. Not overly hopped at all (is that what all malt means?) I bet in England they drink ale like this at close to room temp. Not too sweet, but lots of the flowery and citrusy notes promised by the smell. Really smooth, no yeastiness. A light and complex flavor that would go great with porkchops (duh) or grilled chicken. I would even drink this with a BLT instead of the traditional iced tea. If you could get this and a real sausage at a late season baseball game or early season football game, you would be a pig in shit. Get it?? Fresh heirloom apples and brie also comes to mind.

I think the name is silly, but at the end of the day this is really a terrific beer. The can and the recyclable holder are really positive ways to go.  You could take this camping and cool it in a mountain stream like in those old Busch commercials from the eighties. I really think you could drink this at around 50 degrees and it would be fine.
Overall: A

National Premium
Pale Dry Beer
USA
POP: Eddie's Liqours, 3109 St. Paul St, Baltimore, MD
Container: Brown bottle
Price: $8.71 for the six-pack.
       
           I think you are supposed to call this Natty Prem or Natty Proh, I'm not sure. It is supposed to be a revival of the upscale companion to Natty Boh that they stopped making in the 70's. It has a mascot called Mr. Pilsener. He looks kind of like a Bavarian count or something. He only has one eye, like Mr. Boh, but he has a monocle over it. He wears like, a lederhosen tux or something. He could be a young Colonel Klink before the stress of war took its toll.  The label is purple, the color of royalty, and also the Ravens (smart thinking, dudes).  The logo has a crown and looks like it should be on Harry Potter's jacket. FAWNCY.
            This beer has a nice, clear, yellow color.  It looks like how a beer that you want in the summer time should look. The head is very thin. When you stick your nose in this beer, it smells awesome. It smells exactly how you want a beer to smell. This may have to do with how fresh it is. The label says it was bottle on June 11th, I'm writing this on July 16th. This is a pretty new beer, so of course it's fresh. If they can keep it this fresh all the time, this beer will be a winner.
            My favorite thing about this beer is its restraint. I feel like too many fancy pants beers punch you in the face with over-the-top hoppiness or yeastiness, or some weird oyster juice or berries or something. This beer definitely does taste better than Natty Boh, but it's smooth and subtle. Very dry, but not bitter. A touch of maltiness. I think you could drink six of these at a cook-out very easily. I would love to steam crabs with this along with some fresh pepper and rosemary. I think it would pair well with rockfish or cheeseburgers as well. I would love to drink this with some oysters, preferably Choptank Sweets.
           I didn't want to like this beer, mainly because I thought it was all about branding and nostalgia. But I have to say it's a great alternative to overly-produced craft beers. I don't know what the hangover is like yet. I have definitely drank a lot of beer where I know as it's going down that I will be hungover as shit. This doesn't seem to be one of them, but I will let you know.
Overall: B+