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.
For me brother, and I love that you have a beer blog, how fuckin cool is that, but there is and always be one beer for me, and that's Yuengling. And if they dont serve it there, I will take a Rolling Rock. I gotta tell you, I have drank Sam Adams in Boston, IC in the Burgh, and several other cities with their celebrity beers, and I'm telling you, Yuengling is still KING. but, I did try a couple green Belgians from Sharp Image on Route 19, and they were pretty good. We oughta go there on day if you're really into beer all like that.
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