Drinking from the refrigerator

Last Tuesday, a couple of friends dropped by with pizza, and we opened my refrigerator to taste as much beer as possible.

I am slowly becoming something of a collector of beer (you may substitute the word pack-rat here), and I was pretty pleased to find I could pull out 12 distinct varieties of beer from the refrigerator. (People are very impressed when you can do that, incidentally.)

Here's what we tasted:



We tasted right to left - so we started with Bell's Two-Hearted, and finished with the Black Oak 10 Bitter Years. (It was only afterward that I realized this was my last bottle - curses!)

The second round, if you will, was also tasted right to left - starting with the Mort Subite, and ending with the Lava Smoked Stout.



Our collective least favorite beer was the Mort Subite. We were sorely tempted to pitch it, but that would have violated the house rules - no beer gets pitched.*

In retrospect, I think the drinking order contributed greatly to how disgusting we found the Mort Subite. It was a major mistake drinking the Mort Subite after the 10 Bitter Years. After the intense hoppiness of the 10 Bitter Years, the Mort Subite couldn't hold up.

I tend to self-identify as a stout/porter drinker, but I found, in this tasting round, I liked my big IPAs the best - the Two-Hearted, the Pliny, the Dogfish Head and the 10 Bitter Years. Who knew? My personal favorite was the 10 Bitter Years, but that's partly tied up with its scarcity.

A fun evening. Work the next day was a bit rough, but life is filled with such trade-offs.

Here's the list.

1. Bell's Two-Hearted Ale. Kalamazoo, Michigan.
2. Otter Creek Copper Ale. Middlebury, Vermont.
3. Short's Brewing Company - Magician Ale. Bellaire, Michigan.
4. Samuel Adams Octoberfest. Boston, Massachusetts.
5. Great Lakes Brewing Company - Eliot Ness. Cleveland, Ohio.
6. Black Oak - 10 Bitter Years. Etobicoke, Ontario.
7. Mort Subite - Mort Subite Kriek. Kobbegem, Belgium.
8. Innis & Gunn - Oak Aged Beer. Edinburgh, Scotland.
9. Dogfish Head - 60 Minute IPA. Milton, Delaware.
10. Russian River Brewing Company - Pliny the Elder. Sonoma, California.
11. Leinenkugel's Big Eddy's Russian Imperial Stout. Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
12. Olvisholt Brugghus - Lava Smoked Imperial Stout. Iceland.


*I don't tend to buy bad beer, so this is seldom a problem. And in my defense, both the Mort Subite and the Innis & Gunn were brought by someone for another house party.