I was out at Beer Night of our little church group in Manchester last night at one of those places which has a beer menu that runs into the dozens. I ordered Blithering Idiot because well, I felt obligated. It's an English barleywine, which I am not familiar with. It is found in the upper-left area of this chart of beer types, so you'll know who its relatives are. Sweet and dark, not what I usually have. I don't think I will be gravitating to this style, but I wouldn't mind it occasionally. It is fun to read the reviews of beers. Perhaps they know what they are tasting, perhaps they are posers - I don't know, but it seems a rather harmless hobby.
It did put me in mind of Dave Barry's discussion of a California wine tour of about a decade ago, which included the wine-reviewing phrase "nuances of toast" that entered our family's stock of in-jokes.
On my road trip, I learned that Columbus Ohio has gone all-in on local craft breweries, enough that it would take one quite a while to take them all in. Columbus has recently passed Cincinnati and Cleveland as the largest city in the state and is growing/spreading, not shrinking like the others. I was surprised at the number of small airports until it occurred to me how much easier they would be to build in Ohio, in contrast to, say, Goffstown, NH.
My wife and I took a spirits (alcohol, not ethereal) tour with my son and his SO about a year ago in Columbus. In addition to a craft brewery it included mead, hard cider (my wife approved) and a distillery. I enjoyed most of it though the beer flavors were a little 'out there' for my taste, which tends to stick with American IPAs and the occasional light lager to cool off after mowing the lawn.
ReplyDelete"Truffles and underbrush," my husband used to say about pretentious wine bouquets.
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