I Had Pliny The Younger In Fresno and It Was Special

Pliny The Younger on the board of your beer bar is a good day

I am sorry for being a douche here but I had Pliny The Younger today. And it was as perfect as it ever was.

Totally was not expecting to have it. I knew it was in town but I wasn’t in the mood to wait in line then not get any, so I didn’t put it on my radar.

But, so, I met a friend at Out Of The Barrel to exchange some beers. He was on his way to meet friend at another local beer bar, Goldstein’s, to see if he could get some Younger.

I said “oh geeez, okay, what the hell, I go with you!” Thinking it will be pointless but at least I can say I tried.

To my surprise, I walked right in, went to the bar, immediately got someone over to ask what I wanted. I was feeling embarrassed because surely they no longer had the Younger since they tapped the keg an hour ago, but I asked anyway

Me “You don’t happen to still have any Pliny the Younger do you?”

Bartender “Yes, we do!”

Me (Slightly shocked and excited) ”Oh my gosh… um I will have one please.”

And so it came to be. I politely and unceremoniously walked into a Fresno bar and had one of the most sought after beers in the world.

Pliny The Younger at Goldstein’s Bar in Fresno, CA

It was amazing as always. The aroma brought back all the great times I have had with beer. I am very thankful to have had it in my town. I hope all beer lovers get to have it one day.

There Is Nothing Worse Than An Empty Can Of Beer

Pizza Port’s “Open Itinerary” IPA was there for me this time

Are you like me, when in a drinking session? Still desiring beer but knowing you only have one more beer left you can drink, and you try pouring some beer into your empty glass and find out the can is already empty?

It’s terrifying.

Well just now I had that situation except there was ACTUALLY beer in the can still! What I win.

Today’s lesson: Not everything sucks all the time.

I Had A “Cold IPA“ And…

Last week I made fun of Beer Cruncher seemingly being the only one out there trying to make “Cold IPAs” happen. Then I ran across my first one in the wild.

A colab between Central California’s Alvarado Street and Figueroa Mountain Brewing called “Acapulco Cold”.

It is actually pretty good. I enjoyed it.

If I am to use this one example of the style, I do think there is a slight difference between this beer and an India Pale Lager style beer. Small, but there. The Lager side is very hidden, but still present.

Good if I don’t want the Lager feel, bad if I do.

Is it enough of a difference to give it its own style name like Cold IPA? Well, if I didn’t care about the marketing side I would say this is a sub-genre of IPL – definitely in the IPL family but enough of a difference to acknowledge it.

You can’t blame them for trying to attach it to the Ale side instead of the Lager side, but they are cheating a bit.

Hey, this particular CIPA is a nice beer. If they want to keep trying to make this style work, go for it – I definitely recommend trying one out if you see one, especially if you’re into a hoppy Lager. Honestly, I would have rather had this beer with Ale yeast though. ??

Too Stupid To Judge Galaxy Beers Then

Machine Learning HDIPA from Bottle Logic Brewing

Beer Twitter regularly bashes Untappd for everything, especially the people that don’t like the style of a beer and rate it poorly.

While I agree if you REALLY don’t understand the style you are drinking you should refrain from rating it and just leave some comments to your future self like “Don’t drink this again, ya dummy!”

BUT. Untappd is whatever you (and I will die on this virtual hill), whatever you want to use it for. If I want to rate beers on how it actually tastes to me and not what a Cicerone trained geek thinks of it, then I will. I paid zero cents for the app just like you, I’ll do what I want and that doesn’t make me better or worse than Beer Geek Twitter.

While we are here, where does this want for Untappd ratings to be 100% accurate end?

The beer pictured at the top, Bottle Logic “Machine Learning” was a total label-buy. Love the label. Love IPAs and usually Hazzies. The beer? Not really. I won’t get it again.

This is my rating:

Basically if I rate something under a 3.75, I was not into it. Nobody is going to grill me for the mediocre rating. But maybe I don’t know what the hell a HDIPA featuring Galaxy, Idaho 7 & El Dorado is supposed to taste like.

Should I have NOT rated it? Of course not. So leave Untappd ratings alone, yo. Make it how you want. ✌️?