This week’s beer quest is a little more complicated than usual. First up, there’s
Samuel Smith’s Organically Produced Ale. [alternatives: Butte Creek Organic Ale, Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Pale Ale, Bass Pale Ale]
Beer #2 is actually TWO beers:
North Coast Brewing’s Old Plowshare Stout (available through Whole Foods) and/or Old No. 38 stout. Ideally, both stouts are the way to go, though the Old Old Plowshare is the “official” beer #2.[alternatives: Three Floyds Black Sun Stout, Shipyard's Blue Fin Stout, and--if you insist--Guinness]
I won’t be coy, the theme is organic beers. So if a local brewery does an organic pale ale and/or an organic stout, that’s plan A.
Hey you crazy SOB!!! – I just now got the beers for the previous episode’s drink along! All I have to do is listen in, and I still can’t keep up!?! To make matters worse, I drank my last Old No. 38 last week, and now I have to figure out where I bought it again!!!!
OK – My bad for getting behind, and sorry for the excessive punctuation. I will seek these beers out with extreme prejudice. And without further gratuitous punctuation. Or emoticons. Heck.
????
!!!!
So, who knew Whole Foods would be so useful. My local store doesn’t have much, but it’s all “interesting”. I scored both these beers on the first attempt (I suppose the orgainic connection didn’t hurt).
I also caught up last show’s beers and did my precious taste along. Maybe it was because I let my Czar warm up for 20 minutes or so before pouring, but unlike yours, it turned out to be a gusher. It was all fun – the almost scientific analysis of the Cult of Guinness was particularly cool.
There’s no way you would know, but this drink along thing can be freakishly surreal. I mean, to be sitting at home, staring at, sniffing, and tasting the exact same things as someone else is describing it, at arbitrary offsets in time and space, it feels like a sort of virtual reality. Like those scratch and sniff cards they passed out for the movie “Pink Flamingos” when it first came out.
Whole foods is one of my go-to stops for inspiration. You’re right, the selection isn’t freakishly huge, but it’s pretty dense. It’s not uncommon for me to get my “show beers” there, so keep that in mind in the future.
Thanks for the feedback on the drink-along experience. I wish another beercast would copy me so that I can have the experience as well (plus that’d make me feel all influential and stuff…). I’ve tried drinking along to my own show, but the “discovery” aspect just isn’t the same. Oh, small correction: the “scratch n’ sniff” John Waters movie was “Polyester”. Still, point well made.
IMDB agrees with you. I must have seen them both in the same screening. Heck – It was 25 years ago and I couldn’t summarize either plot to save my life, but I remember the on screen prompts and thinking that all the spots smelled about the same.