#692 - 694

Naked.

That is your word for the day. Yup, naked.

Have you ever thought about all the ways it is used? Take the sentences below, for example. All are valid uses of the word, but are, by no means, the only uses:
- He spoke the naked truth. In this case, it suggests a bluntness or honestly.
- The trees were suddenly naked of leaves. It suggest bare or destitute.
- It was the naked reality of the situation. Suggests plain and simple.

So, please hang in there while I roll some of these into my thoughts about a beer I had last night:

Buck Naked (#692) , a lager from the Big Buck Brewery, is junk. To my eye (yes, my naked eye), I could tell this beer was not going to cut it. Pale straw in color, any sense of carbonation was minimal. It was limited to the pitiful, little bubbles along the edge only- no head of any kind. On the subject of "no", there was no taste, no body, no finish, no character, life, pizazz, spunk, or any other adjective that might suggest "good" or even "tolerable". Realistically, it is difficult to say why it is bad because there was nothing there to be bad. So, if a lack of characteristics in beer is a bad thing (and it is....) then this beer is total junk. How anyone could even ponder drinking this drool is beyond me. 1 out of 5. If my scale went lower, this would anchor it.


Ah, but all was not lost. As you can see from the pic above, (showcasing my fancy-shmancy slate cheese serving plate) it was a beer and cheese night. Smoked Gouda, Gruyere, and Goat Cheese got the call. The second and third samples were much better. Red Bird Ale (#693) was a spectacularly average ale with a pretty standard profile - caramel tones, ruby red color (makes sense with the name, huh?) but the malty aspect was a bit off. Of course, this was heaven compared to that naked junk in the previous glass. The Steelhead Scotch Style Porter (#694) from the Mad River Brewing Company was, hands down, the best beer of the evening. Smooth and dark, it was a pretty solid beer. Unfortunately, the alcohol tones were a bit much in the both the aroma and body. It was bit distracting. Plus, the finish was a bit off, too. 3 out of 5, but it goes good with gouda.

So, three sampled beers brought me three steps closer to beer #700. Two were fair while one was naked in just about every sense of the word.

There it is. The naked truth. You heard it here.....