Friday, March 18, 2011

#961 - Not A Pot 'O Gold

I hate St. Patrick's Day.  Sorry, folks, but you're not Irish.  At least most you aren't.  Parading around in your green t-shirt from 1986 is gross, the little shamrock antennae are pretty silly lookin', and starting to drink jugs of crappy green beer at 7AM  so you can be drunk by 9AM is just another step down a bad road.

So, in the spirit of my high school days, I rebelled against the colors of the masses with the ultimate color (or actually lack of color) - black.  

In a sense, it it like high school.  Remember Spirit Week?  Dumb. Who cares.  Spirit Week so often meant "support your sports team". Why.  They didn't support me during a chemistry test, did they? No.  During the day I was supposed to wear my school colors, I wore black. Head to toe. Take that, school spirit!

So, what did I do last night? After attending a cancer fund-raising dinner-auction-thingy, I retreated to my digs for a relaxing evening. My friend suggested that I should have had an Irish beer.  Well, I didn't have any on hand. 

But I sorta did.

The O'FAllon Brewery is based just outside of St. Louis.  Okay, that is the extent of the Irish thing  O'Fallon! Get it? So, a quick tour of the town's website turned up an interesting fact - the first settler was a German!  As the town moved along in size, they named it after John O'Fallon.  Presumably an Irish fellow, huh?

Anyhow, the Black Hemp (#961) was really not to my liking.  A pot of gold, it was not.  Black? Sure was.  On the nose, the aroma was certainly malty, but an almost earth-like tone was there, too. On top of that? Add a bit of pepper. I am thinking that was the hemp seeds.  Sadly, on the tongue, the peppery-hoppy tones really started to cut.  Not good.  It is too bad really, because the texture of the beer was smoooooooooth and silky. The foamy lace looked great too.  Some serious components were missing - like good taste.  2 out of 5.


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