Breweries "Visited"

Monday, January 2, 2012

Beer #23: Arcadia Sky High Rye Ale or The End of My World As I Know It

I love R.E.M. and I love Penn State. Both of those worlds came to an end in the past year and I do not feel fine. I've had enough loss in my life this past year and I don't want to deal with any more.

I'm going to focus my maudlin writing on PSU today because I just watched them get handed their asses by Houston. Ugh. Houston. Big East, really?? There were moments of Penn State genius but there were way too many Bolden-induced, cringe-worthy, why-the-fuck-do-I-bother moments as well. And I am fearful that the latter is going to become the norm starting in 2012.

JoePa is out. Tom Bradley is most likely out. Larry Johnson, Galen Hall...seriously everything I know to be true about Penn State football is null and void. I'm losing a significant portion of my identity with these changes and it hurts my soul. Ugh.
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Today I spent some time sampling beers at TJ's Everyday and watching football. TJ's has an amazing selection of beer and I highly recommend it...especially for happy hour when they have "keg kickers" on draft. Great beer at stupid low prices.

I tried Arcadia Ales's Sky High rye ale today. Based solely on the description of rye ale, I expected a dark, porter-esque beverage.  Hmmm....I was totes wrong.  It arrived at the table all apricot in color smelling of hops.  Wow...did I pick wrong.  A good sniff of the glass gave me hops and fruit...perhaps it was my assessment of apricot color that made me think it actually smelled like apricots, but either way I was still disappointed.  It was nicely carbonated and smooth in consistency.  I would give it a medium rating on the hop-scale and it definitely had that hoppy-bitterness.

If you like hoppy beers, it would be a great beer.  I, however, do not and was disappointed.  Kind of goes with the theme of the day, huh?

I read the Beer Advocate notes and it's like we were tasting two different beers.  This is an interesting point because I went to TJ's specifically to try a new beer and then to spend the rest of the day sipping on a Stillwater Stateside Saison.  The Stateside Saison was phenomenal out of the bottle but really disappointed me on draft.  Why?  Why???


1 comment:

  1. Not the greatest day for Penn Staters. Jay even made me cry when he talked about his dad after the game. It's been a rough year; here's to a better 2012.

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