Bourbons and Brown Ales

Beer #335 Gritty's Best Brown Ale / Gritty McDuff's Brewery, Portland, ME

Almost time to launch the countdown of the last 30 beers.  Can't get too far ahead of myself, so I'll worry more about that tomorrow.  Particularly since there are huge things happening at BlogNamedBrew Manor tonight: two bottles of exceptionally rare bourbon have arrived!  A friend and fellow connoisseur put in some rather hard work and managed to score five bottles from Old Van Winkle Distillery, near universally regarded as THE premier bourbon producer out there.  Part of the big deal behind this distillery is the age of their bourbons - I managed to score a 20 year old and a 12 year old bottle, while my friend pulled in the Holy Grail, a 23 year old bottle.

Think about this for a second... the last time the 20 year old bourbon saw the light of day, Bill Clinton hadn't yet been elected, Manuel Noriega was still running the drug cartels, Color Me Badd had the #1 song in the country, and I still was somewhere in high school.  So yeah, this bourbon is OLD.  At some point in the near future, I'll give you a complete run down when these get cracked open and sampled.  But that's another story for another day.

Don't sleep on this Van Winkle

Instead of a world class bourbon, tonight I'm sampling a brown ale from Gritty McDuff's Brewery, out of Portland, Maine.  This beer has a dark amber color with a thin white head.  There's an aroma of malt and honey, and the taste is thin and (unfortunately), soapy.  There's some honey and sweet malt, but too much sweetness.  If you're in the market for a brown ale, you might want to keep moving past this one and find another option.  This beer is greatly lacking, which is unfortunate as I do enjoy a nice brown ale.

Gritty.  But not in a good way.

This beer comes from a brewpub in Portland that first started making beer in 1988.  And there you go.

Thing to Think About Today:

I'm out of steam, and I'm too busy dreaming about bourbon (and going to bed) to be much more creative than to say that if tonight's beer is the (allegedly) "best" brown ale, then we're finishing up tonight by rocking Bobby Brown.  And, because I wasn't very nice to this beer or brewery, then it's time for some Don't Be Cruel.  See you tomorrow, people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd7dCbEfTs4

"You should be giving me your love too...."

Beer 334: Gritty's Best Brown Ale

A bottle of Delsym, box of Mucinex D, a course of prednisone and a small inhaler later, I'm still sick. And tired. Sick and tired. Ha. And I'd love to have the last week of my life back. But thank god for doctors who don't need to see you before prescribing more drugs. I'm happily curled up in my pajamas with the first dose of antibiotics on board!

All this drug consumption is definitely cutting into my drinking time. Suck it, cold. I've got work to do.

At least I didn't waste a good beer on my drug-addled self tonight. I would not recommend Gritty's Best Brown Ale by the Gritty McDuff's Brewing Company out of Portland, Maine.


It poured a reddish mahogany color ale with a tan head. The aroma is rich malts and very buttery. The flavor on the other hand is nonexistent. It's very thin and water like. There's a strange rubbery chemical thing happening. If I think about it really hard, I could make myself taste that buttery malt. But then it disappears and I'm left with a thin, watery blech in my glass.

This is a poor beer. It's so bad that I have to think there's something wrong with it, right? I guess I should be on the look out for other Gritty McDuff beers to see if there are redeeming ones.

Cheers.