Visiting an Old Friend

It’s been far too long since my last excursion to Vine & Barley, a travesty which I finally corrected yesterday after at least two dry months. For shame! After an afternoon out and about with Mom, I hit home to check on pictures I was printing then loaded up and hit the road for a date with beervana.

Mark was there in his usual cheery form to meet, greet, hugs, and kisses. I addled up to the bar and made cozy for the rest of the evening, and soon had two glasses of brew sitting pretty in front of my eager and thirst lips. First in line was the Hop Star from Sierra Nevada, a delicious IPA which exuded fresh hop cones, hop resins, and pine bark while next to her was a snifter of Cigar City Brewing Espresso Cubano Maduro Brown Ale. A brew such as the Cubano is best enjoyed at a warmer temperature than the unavoidable arctic chill all beer suffers from when dispensed from a CO2 draft line. The smart drinker, aka the one who thinks ahead, will often order a beer that is rich and complex a glass or two in advance so that it has more enough time to achieve optimum supping temperature. I couldn’t remember if I had tasted this particular Cubano from CCB or not, so to be on the safe side I scribbled tasting notes anyway. I had never had the Sierra Nevada Hop Star so tasting notes aplenty were lavished on that lil beauty of an IPA. Nummers!

The evening wiled away faster than expected, though I hung around late enough to run into Tim who was passing through on his way home. With a few beers in the belly, I ordered a cheese and meat platter which I promptly annihilated. Apparently I was hungry; pretzel nibblies are all well and good but amount to a whole lot of nothing when the need for real grub hits. I didn’t feel like ordering anything from West End Grill which is on the opposite end of the building which Vine & Barley calls home. In retrospect, that probably would have been the wiser option of the two since I was hungry, but it’s all good. In fact, the smoked Gouda, creamy brie, blue cheese, thinly sliced pastrami, grapes, caramelized pecans, banana peppers, and platter of crackers were fanfreakingtastic. Yummy in my tummy.

A few special beers were cracked open during the course of the evening, one of which lingered the longest and definitely not in a good way. Feast of Fools was its name and Magic Hat the brewery. A raspberry holiday stout in supposition, she was anything but a raspberry holiday stout. Dry, chalky, and altogether nasty, I immediately cleansed my palate with a nice long glass of Lindeman’s Framboise. Now that’s real raspberry. Delightfully delicious, too. The other special bottle was Unearthly from Southern Tier brewing. Southern Tier out of Lakewood, New York brews fantastic beers and as much as I love that they are now distributed in Florida, it irks me that Anheuser-Busch/InBev is their distributor. Grrr! Evil distributor dictatorship aside, my love for beer is still ultimately about the beer and Southern Tier brews good beer. Unless they do something really stupid to offend me, I’ll happily carry, sell, and drink their beers all the live long day.

I wrapped up my visit around 11pm and drove home to a much welcome bed. I was exhausted. The head cold I am finally kicking out has done its fair job of sapping my strength which I am now working on getting back. As always, my visit to Vine & Barley was warm, fuzzy, and filled with good beer, good friends, and good times. I missed out on the Brooklyn Brewmasters Reserve Cookie Jar Porter (dangit!), but BLAST! is back on draft and the next Brewmasters Reserve is the coveted Dark Matter. Rich Nowak, our local Brooklyn Brewery rep generously shared some of this luxurious bourbonrific Dark Matter with me over a year ago and that beer still lives on in vivid recall. These tastebuds will never forget the sweet love made to them that night nor will my nose ever forget the heavenly aromas which seduced them. Gorgeous! It will be most interesting to see how the kegged Dark Matter will differ (if at all) from that tasting experience long ago.

It’s a hard job but someone’s got to do it, drinking good beer that is. I’ve been far too lax in my Vine & Barley visits. If nothing else, I owe it to myself. I am worth it. As Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head fame would say, think global and drink local, and I’m lucky enough to have a local to drink at. Prosit!

(an original written work by Kristyn Lier. plagiarism is not tolerated)