Saturday, December 27, 2008

Ol Red Cease And Desist


Erie Brewing a few years back presented us with "Red Ryder BIG BEER," this brew did fairly well until served with not 1 but count 'em 2 cease and desist letters from Red Ryder Enterprises (remember a Christmas Story?  "You'll shoot your eye out, you'll shoot your eye out!")

Anyway, after that fiasco Erie decided to have a little fun and gave this beer the official title of...
"Erie Brewing's Ol Red Cease And Desist, Inspired By The Long Arm Of The Law"

A mouthful am I right?

I first picked this up on the way to a friends house to go play some games at a small distributor in Imperial PA called the Essex beer distributor.  For those of you not familiar with the PA state liquor laws, a beer distributor sells cases of beer (malt beverages, wine coolers ect..) and kegs, nothing less no six-packs no singles or the likes.  I saw the box and thought "Oh well you only live twice." Went out to my car and on my way.

I get to my friend's place chill myself a pilsner glass and give it a nice vigorous pour.  I get a nice inch and a half head on it and I'm greeted with a really sweet aroma.  I sit down at the table and give it a sip, nice and sweet with something like a carmel brown sugar kinda flavor, something reminiscent of burnt sugar, but in a good way.  The after taste was very strong full of alcohol.  Unique for me at the time, I truly understood what they meant by the term Scotch Ale it made me imagine someone dropping a shot of scotch in a nice red ale.  I must say it took me quite a while to finish my first glass. But I was very pleased with the experience.  Over the next few weeks I was able to drink it more and more quickly until one day I was able to finish 4 of them and I was about to crack my fifth and realized... I was drunk.  This is odd for me I have a very strong tolerance for alcohol after all when you are drinking 8% ABV beers on a regular basis you kinda get used to it.  So when I say after four beers I was drunk I would like you to know how surprised I was.

I looked at that fifth bottle squinted a little and saw that nice small print saying 10.1% ABV

Explains a lot.

I have to say I'm rather glad to make my first review on a local, and I plan to do it fairly often, and I also plan on doing several Belgian reviews, and a few fun beer facts as well.

First and foremost

Hello there, my name is Brad and I've been pressured into writing down just about everything I know about beer for posterity sake, and so my friends don't have to hear me drone on and on about it.

I suppose a bit about my tastes first, I am a big fan of Belgians, just about any variety though I prefer anything with a strong flavor, nice and dark or light and hoppy.  I've been drinking a lot of Mad Elf (tis the season) Grimbergen and Old Red Cease and Desist.

This brings me to my first review...