It Was God's Plan for Me to get Fucked Up on Christmas Eve Eve

I bear absolutely no responsibility for my raging hangover on Christmas Eve.  If you were offended by it, then talk to the big guy upstairs.  "Why would you want to be hungover and borderline ill for your daughter's first Christmas Eve at Grandma's house?".  Because God wanted it that way is my answer.  If God didn't want me to be hungover all day Saturday, then why did he(she....but not he-she, though if that is what it is, then I guess that is cool) insist on me drinking heavy beer in the evening, followed by Islay Scotch all night?  Riddle me that, Batman.  If it is God's plan for the Denver Broncos to go on a 5 game winning streak, for your aunt Penny to meet her soul mate (aka 4th husband) Lenny on match.com, and if it is all part of the Lord's Divine Plan that your kid have spinal bifida, then I guarangoddamntee you that Yahweh drew it up on his X's and O's board that I was to get Native American at a land negotiation drunk on December 23rd.  I would take responsibility for my actions if only I was actually guiding myself through this so-called "life".  But I'm not.  This is God's plan baby, and I'm just along for the ride.  Fuck free will.  Listen, God laid before me a fantastic day of exploring a quaint little town in Central Ohio, and a bar with a highly respectable beer list in said town.  God then guided our sleigh back to my parents' house, where God had the foresight to send me earlier in the morning to a local market to acquire numerous bottles of excellent ale.  God put my young child to slumber and brought to my parents' home excellent friends.  God also placed in the cupboard an excellent bottle of Ardbeg Uigeadail Islay Scotch.  God then ignited a lovely roaring fire in a woodsy setting with a very comfortable sofa on which to lounge.  Now you tell me Johnny Teetotaler....What the fuck was I supposed to do?  Was I to walk up to the man God himself, point at something in the sky with alarm, and then while his attention was diverted upward, swat him as hard as I could in the ball sack with the back of my hand?  Maybe you would bag God, buy I sure as shit am not.  So I did what the Lord intended and got shitfaced.  At least I stumbled--at some point--to bed.  Other players in God's plan for Zach's December 23rd apparently "fell asleep" on the sofa and in a chair, only to be discovered by the matriarch at 3am as Bluegrass was still being broadcast over the stereo from Heaven.  Thankfully for me, God did not want me to have a stiff neck on Christmas Eve.  Only a sour stomach, body-rattling belches, a throbbing skull and constant feeling of being underwater all day. 

I'm Scotch-Irish.  What the fuck do you want from me?   

Tasting Notes: Rockmill Brewery's "Saison"

It was the type of autumn day that a man must live to know that he was there.  He can view it in a Van Gogh painting, the "Wheat Stacks with Reaper", and many of the like.  But he'll never truly understand unless he takes the leather-handled reaper into his own two hands and slashes at field upon endless fields of early autumn wheat.  As I, Jean Luc and my eternal friend, Pierre, retired from the fields on this particular day, having reaped harvest wheat from before sun-up until late in the majestic purple-hued dusk, we stopped at our steady haunt, the Libertine, for sustenance.  By this time the staff at the Libertine knew our order better than ourselves, and within mere seconds there stood at our table a plate of meats, cheeses, baguette and most importantly a tall pot of the only beer capable of standing up to such a day of rich, rewarding labor: Rockmill Brewery's "Saison".  As I took my first deep, long draught of Rockmill's Saison I lived anew my day of laboring in the fields.  It was the autumn day of dreams, with an unbroken sky of breath-stealing blue and warm, though not hot, sun to keep my neck and hands from requiring cover.  As Pierre backhanded the crisp, hoppy froth of Rockmill Saison from his own mouth he reminded me of why we were here, in a backwater village west of Charleville Mezieres, to wile away our days in the fields as hired laborers.  Pierre and I were not born to the fields as all of those noble, crooked-backed villagers we now sought refuge in the company of.  We met at university many years ago, our friendship forged over debates about who was the greatest philosopher, Sartre or Nietzsche, of Dumas's masterpieces, and of the folly of Napoleon attacking the Russian winter.  Those early days were spent with forgettable though affordable beers of the city.  None truly satiated a man's spirit like Rockmill Saison.  Whether it was the misplaced energy of youth or the poorly-crafted beers we consumed like so many empty-headed and silly-hearted coeds (i.e. chicks we banged), Pierre and I found ourselves in soul-crushing positions as government workers, on the pension fast-track.  It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.  Though we seemed to be sailing through life with good friends, comely wenches, and plenty of ales, we knew something was missing.  On a Saturday trip into the countryside to make sport of quail, a local boy served us our first blessed pot of Rockmill Saison.  As the sparse but delicious brew began to course through our veins we felt alive for the first time.  Its golden hops demanded we surrender our trite and meaningless existence, trading it all for the honor and discipline of a life in the sun and the fields.  And so it was that we sold our apartments in the St. Germain/Luxembourg district of Paris and took a loft above a barn in this quintessential northern France farming community.  We require little but air, honest work, the smile of a farm maiden, and of course shitloads of Rockmill Saison.  It is the wellspring from which our spiritual awakening flows.  Without Rockmill Saison it would be as though we never were. 

I really don't know if the above story is true.  Once when I was in college a guy named Lucien from one of the Baltic republics, sinister looking little scamp with a waxed moustache and greasy trousers, saw me coming out of the library early of a Friday evening on a holiday weekend.  He asked me if "You want we make go to discotheque?".  After politely refusing, he then recommended I take this small piece of paper with a Degas painting on it upon my tongue.  Given that I am not the type of person who turns someone down twice, I placed the small square on my tongue and bid Lucien g'day.  I had to run back into the library before it closed to retrieve the keys I left on a study table.  That is the last thing I remember.  When building security found me on Tuesday morning I was in the French Literature section lying upon a pile of books saturated with urine.  I could quote entire Moliere plays and I was wearing a beret fashioned from Friday's copy of the school newspaper.  But that is neither here nor there my friends.  The point is that I recently drank my bottle of Rockmill Brewery Saison.  I must divulge the following before I continue: I really don't care that much for Saisons.  I don't dislike them, but they are certainly not my favorite.  That being said, this Saison is kicking ass and taking names.  It is refreshing, it is delicious, and chicks dig it.  I don't possess the requisite bullshit to discuss beer in all the preferred beer-nerd nomenclature and I'm not sure I understand how to quaff shit.  As stated Saisons are not my thing per se, but this one is "right", and I know enough to acknowledge that.  I would liken it to your first french kiss.  You may not know what you are doing or what you are looking for, and you soon realize you are licking a soppy sponge that may or may not taste like cigarettes and Jolly Ranchers.....but yet it is still right.  You know enough to know that.  If this Saison is enough to make my mouth ecstatic, then I'm confident it will taste ball-rattlingly good to seasoned Saison fans.     

If you take nothing else from these tasting notes, you should take the following: Cheese-eating surrender monkey French everywhere should be quaking in their stockings.  Queue up the Toby fucking Keith, because Rockmill gives us reason anew "to be prowwwd ta be an Meriken..."  You frolicking little frogs cannot even out-Saison us anymore.  This could be the 1976 Judgment of Paris all over again, only this time an outfit from southeast Ohio is going to take home the gold.  You heard me right fuckers, "southeast Ohio".  At least when you are losing to California you can take solace in the fact that California is pretty fucking cool, and Jerry Lewis probably hangs out there.  Not so much with Ohio.  And this isn't Cleveland, Cincinnati, or even Columbus.  This is Lancaster, Jack.  If this Saison wants to come and storm the beach at Normandy, it will.  Fair warning. 

Tasting Notes: Rockmill Brewery's "Tripel"

I discovered Rockmill Brewery through the blog of my esteemed colleague Nicole: "A Local Choice". It can be found on my profile under Blogs I Follow. Nicole is fastidiously researching people in the Central Ohio area who are adhering to olde timey food production principles such as "not scientifically enhancing complete foods with utter fucking bullshit" and "refusing to process the beejeezus out of food thus turning it into slow poison". Her blog provides a thorough review of those producers she likes and their wares. To paraphrase the great Peter Hurricane McNeely, "If you don't respect what she's doing, then you have a giant dump in your pants". Unfortunately, given today's climate of lazy bovine American eating choices and fear of all things natural which might cost $0.79 more than the ConAgra engineered bullshit (even though you need to eat far less of the natural, eventually making the price difference come out in the wash) that gives people the 5 minute euphoric high accompanying their bodies turning simple sugars into diabetes-cradling fat, I don't expect many people to start picking up what NP is throwing down. But she is doing yeoman's work, and Crom bless her for that.

But to the task at hand. While in Ohio over Memorial Day weekend, one of my mother's work chums was so kind as to retrieve for me 1 bottle each of Rockmill's Tripel, Dubbel and Saison. A brief background, and please refer to the aforementioned blog which provides more thorough and actually "researched" information on Rockmill: Rockmill was apparently purchased by some guy who quit doing whatever it was he was doing so he could make beer in southeastern Ohio. He has discovered the water which runs through his land is the same mineral makeup as Wallonia, Belgium, in the heart of arguably the world's richest beer region. The brewery is located in Lancaster, Ohio. No, not Lancaster Pennsylvania where all the Yammies (slang for Amish) live. Given the Amish don't have Internet access on their electricless farms, I'm sure no one will be offended. If you haven't heard of Lancaster, Ohio, you are not stupid. Not much happens there. Yonks ago it turned out one of America's true badasses, William Tecumseh Sherman. But since the "White Tecumseh" took Ulysses Grant's whiskey-fueled rant about "teaching the South a goddamned lesson about respect" and torching the absolute fuck out of Atlanta and other racist redneck hotspots, not much has come out of Lancaster. And if you've been to Lancaster frequently, such as I have, then you will agree with me that this guy might be off his fucking tits to have opened a Belgian brewery there. Absolutely no market for it. But you have to admire his balls for having done so. Last night I had the distinct pleasure of trying the first of the three beers I brought back to Ohio, the Tripel. This is, without a doubt, the best Tripel I have ever had. It makes the Tripels I frequently drink from Belgium taste like when a guy is the last person to leave the office on Friday night and forgets to flush the toilet, and the piss sits there until Monday morning. The color is a rich, dense, unfiltered apricot-gold with a respectable but not intrusive head. The nose is reminiscent of the aroma of the freshly-washed hair of the chick you made out with in the hallway at the 8th grade dance. The one who blossomed earlier than the other girls. The one who put out because her mom brought home a litany of dudes with hair band t-shirts, several of whom had serious boundary issues. When the most recent beaux and her mom passed out after their last bong rip prior to the dance, our mistress helped herself most generously to the remnants of their fifth of George Dickel whiskey. This is why she allowed you most freely up her shirt during this make out sesh. After basking in the scent of the potion it is time to taste. The first sip dances on the palette like the closet homosexual who tries MDMA for the first time and wanders into a gay dance club, only to hear Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" erupt from the DJ booth. From this point the brew storms into your mouth and demands that you pay taxes and kiss its ring. It is like your sense of taste is a large slave plantation in rural Georgia, and W.T. Sherman himself, with his gang of union ass kickers, has stormed onto the property and ordered you off the land and into the woods like common savages, lest you go up in flame with the hay and the chickens. The finish is long and lingering, and recalls notes of subtle spiciness and the time you were coming off those really good shrooms and took a bong rip, then threw in Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" and you sort of just melted into the sofa while that weird chick down the hall with the dragon tats danced by herself in the dark, slowly and disjointedly. And at 9.0% abv, there is no danger that sobriety will rear its ugly head and shit in the punch bowl. Suffice it to say, I count myself a fan of this delicious offering from Rockmill. I cannot wait to try the other large formats in the near future.

PS--I decided to delete Nicole's last name from this review. She probably doesn't need this popping up when potential employers Google search her name. Though she should be aware she is only as good as the company she keeps, this including her husband's asshole frat bros.

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout is the Bombtrack

Your first sip of Goose Island's seasonal release is like God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost all ascended from Cloudland and put their nuts directly in your mouth. Its that good....A tea-bagging from the Holy Trinity. At 13% ABV you are also in no danger of sobriety rearing its ugly head. If you don't go out and buy some stat, you're a dick.

I don't typically like Goose Island beers. They are supposed to be "The Chicago Brewery", but I think the majority of their beers are sub-par at best. Honkers Ale is lame. 312 is queerer than a 5-wheeled wagon. The new Green Line pale ale is a piss-poor representation of the pale ale genre. With local breweries such as Revolution Brewing, Half Acre and my personal fave Piece absofuckinglutely dominating, I don't understand why people waste money on GI's regular mediocre lineup. Oh wait, because people love mediocrity. Why else would Navy Pier exist and GW Bush get a second term? That being said, this beer is decadence in a glass. I just had my first of the season last night, and here are some tasting notes:

-The nose was that of a fireplace lounge at a country club, full of wealth and opulence and rich mahogany. It won't allow any of the servants to look it in the eyes.

-The first taste has the essence of a long Allman Brothers instrumental in a green field at a humidity-free 75 degrees, on mushrooms.

-The palette is dominated thereafter by very strong, powerful, quick thrusts of Metallica Garage Days leading into an extended instrumental version of Metallica's "One". The palette of the Bourbon Country Stout ends with "Darkness....imprisoning me....all that I see.....". At some point a hole is torn in the sun.

-The finish has not-so-subtle notes of a virgin's honeypot on prom night.

Or you could always just go pick up a 6er of Bud Light and drink low-alcohol, ice-cold piss. That's a popular choice.