Dinosaur Bear

A Blog about Stuff and Things

Beer Blurb 9/13/14 (Cambridge Queen’s Head)

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If you are wondering what the heck “Cambridge Queen’s Head” is, then you are in a good company. Until today I had literally no idea this place existed. In fact, I’m not even sure how I stumbled across it, but I did.

To answer the question, its a pub, or some people would say a college bar. Its affiliated with Harvard, and by affiliated with Harvard I mean Harvard owns it (Harvard owns more than one pub, interestingly). Not only that, but you have to be a Harvard affiliate just to get in, or at least be an affiliate of a Harvard affiliate who is going in with you. Confused? Nah didn’t think.

Anyways, this place is in the middle of the action, but is pretty much out of sight. That is because its underground, or in a basement rather. Its under the Memorial Hall, which looks like a giant church and is actually a building built in honor of Harvardians who died fighting on both sides of the American Civil War, so its a fairly old building. It does not look like the kind of place that would have a pub under it, but it does.

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(The rather inconspicuous spot above is the entrance)

SB and I decided to try it and it was a bit of a mixed bag.

First off, when we got there (which was harder than than it should have been since 1/2 of their doors were locked and said they were closed), their menu was pretty much just a few appetizers, nothing else. We were told that this is because they had just opened three days prior after their long summer-season hiatus and also that pretty much their entire staff was brand new. Ok, fair enough, but it would have been nice if you advertised that fact on your website. However, since we were hungry we decided to stay, since the appetizers were advertised as being half price from 5 to 7 on Fridays. Nope. Apparently when appetizers are their entire menu that doesn’t apply. Strike two.

Fortunately that was the last of the strikes. The Cambridge Queen’s Head redeemed itself enough to warrant another visit (after some time has passed, of course) simply because they had a good selection of beer and the beer was cheap (for the area). Interestingly enough, they only have beer and wine, no liquor. They only serve liquor if you rent the place out for events. I am fine with this, but I found it interesting. They also have a really cool “Don’t Tip” policy, I read they pay their servers more to compensate, no idea how that works out on the whole, but for me its a good thing. Anyways, the two drinks we tried with out appetizers/dinner were:

1. Harpoon Brewery – Harvard 1636 Ale
2. Harpoon Brewery – Craft Cider

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Ok, so two things. First, yes I get that the Cider isn’t a beer, SB got that one. Second, because its not a beer I had to link “Rate Beer” rather than “Beer Advocate” which I generally don’t like doing since Beer Advocate is vastly superior in my opinion.

Anyways, the Harvard 1636 is actually an exclusive beer for the Queen’s Head. Harpoon brews is just for them and just on tap. It’s the official unofficial beer of Harvard (since a University having an official beer might not be the best PR). Its called 1636 for a reason, any idea why? [Hint: Its pretty obvious] Its a Dark Wheat Ale and I have to say that it stood up to the “Dark Wheat” motif. It was very stout, in fact one of the more stout wheat ale’s that I’ve had. But it was quite good and the price was definitely right. I also found my pinky raising itself while I was drinking it. SB’s Cider was well, cider. Harpoon is a solid brewery, and its not because they are in Boston, I liked them long before I even knew where the heck they were at.

[Ok weird side note, there must be some huge ship coming up the Charles River because I just head an epic foghorn]

Anyways, Harpoon is good, so both drinks were good. My preference is soundly with the 1636 Ale, but the cider wasn’t bad by any means, it was just more “middle-of-the-road” in that it tasted a lot like most standard ciders do. I’m not sure what the “Craft” was supposed to reference.

So all in all a good Friday evening from a drink and price perspective. The food was just ok and it was pretty limited, they also didn’t honor their half price stuff. Like I said, we’ll go back to give it another chance, if only because of price, but we’re going to give it several weeks before we do.

We did get cool cow wristbands to show that we were 21 though, that was awesome.

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Until next time,
-Taco

 

Beer Blurb 9/5/14 (The Thirsty Scholar)

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Alright, so this Beer Blurb is actually being written about two days after the fact (I’m writing this on 9/7). What can I say, I’m a law student, I’m busy.

Anyways, for this past Friday night out SB and I went to a nearby pub called “The Thirsty Scholar.” It was slightly above our price range, but not terribly so, and it was the end of the first week of classes so we treated ourselves. The food was pretty good, SB had an “Irish” BLT which was pretty much a Ham Lettuce Tomato and I got a Sweet Potato Black Bean burger with ham and split pea soup. We enjoyed both dinners. But this isn’t about the food, its about the beer. We had three different beers, two new, one relatively new.

1. Sea Dog Brewery –  Sunfish Ale

2. Allagash Brewing Company – Allagash White

3. Boddington’s Brewery – Boddington’s Pub Ale

You’ll notice the Beer Advocate link for Sunfish Ale doesn’t actually link to the standard page, but rather an announcement page. I’m not sure what is up with that, maybe its sort of fallen through the cracks. Either way, you can at least read about it.

Beer Blurb 9-5

Above you can see Allagash White and Sunfish, I don’t think its too hard to figure out which is which. Boddington’s is not pictured, obviously.

Our beer selection started off interestingly. I asked about Sunfish Ale and the server pretty much told us it sucks. She gave us a sample (before checking our IDs, which she only did after serving us alcohol, haha) and it did not suck. It tasted a lot like Leinenkugel’s Orange Shandy, which is a good thing. SB ended up getting the Sunfish, I went with the Allagash. I had actually had it before, at least I think I have, somewhere since we’ve moved. I can’t recall where though. Anyways, both the Sunfish Ale and the Allagash White were good. The Sunfish was very much on the line between ale and shandy, and not necessarily in a bad way. The Allagash looked like it would be light and refreshing, especially with the lemon, but it was actually a very hearty wheat bear. Overall, we were impressed with both of them.

No so with the Boddington’s. I had been wanting to try it for some time, but it was oddly expensive for coming in a can. Now that I’ve had it, I wholly agree with “The Bros” (founders) from Beer Advocate, its awful. It was a weird pungent, creamy sort of ale, and yeah, I can’t say I’d get it again. It was interesting though, for possibly the first time ever SB liked a beer more than I did (the other notable instance of this is Blue Moon). She didn’t seem to think it was as bad as I did. Regardless, I finished it, because it was a sin not to. I spent the next couple of hours feeling pretty good since I was very much on an empty stomach when I downed the Allagash, so the Boddington just exacerbated things.

Still, two out of three ain’t bad.

Until next time,
-Taco

Beer Blurb – 8/27/14 (Narragansett)

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So, I only have one beer to talk about this time around, Narragansett. I’ve never had this beer before. I’ve heard of it, but never tried it. I actually didn’t even pick it out. I’m in the middle of law school orientation (as I write this, not necessarily when it gets posted) and I requested that SB get me some beer while she was out. Its not that orientation is overly stressful, but its not really fun either. Anyways, my only stipulation was that it was A: Cheap and B: Light enough for her to carry home alongside the soda. She was probably going to get me another Yuengling Light but they were out. So she went with Narragansett.

1. Narragansett Brewing Co. – Narragansett Lager

Narragansett

You’ll notice its in cans, see instruction A. My initial reaction to the beer was a bit lukewarm. It wasn’t bad, but boy it was not unique at all. I have to admit though, its grown on me as I start drinking the second one, but that is arguably true for most beers. To be fair though, I only poured the second one into a glass, the first was from the can, so that is a very probable issue. Anyways, Narragansett seems to be named after Narragansett, Rhode Island, which is itself named after the Narragansett Native Americans. They aren’t really forthcoming with this information for whatever reason. The brewery has a bit of a “fallen from grace” vibe, in that since its founding in 1890 it seen a rise to the top of the New England beers (a region of fierce competition) to a descent into a narrow market sector. Its slogan is “Made on Honor, Sold On Merit” not sure what the story is behind that, but they definitely didn’t take merit as payment.

Anyways, I had their Lager, the standard for the brewery. Its technically an American Adjunct Lager, which is a fancy way of saying its a light bodied beer, resembling piss, that came about after the American prohibition (which f*cked up our beer in a lot of ways, thanks conservatives). While I normally tend to be a bit more “nice” than Beer Advocate, this is one of the times where I don’t find myself agreeing with their relatively lofty (for a macro) ratings. Its not that Narragansett is bad for an American Adjunct, its just not special. I think if you put this and a PBR next to each other, you’d be hard pressed to tell a huge difference (its there, just not huge).

I’m not even sure how widely available Narragansett, but I’d probably have to recommend at least trying it for the price. This is especially true if you are a Red Sox fan, since this was apparently their official beer for 30 years. I looked but I couldn’t find their current official beer, though my guess is Sam Adams simply because that makes sense on a lot of levels.

Worth checking out, but not too memorable. Cool name though, even though they don’t seem to formally acknowledge its etymology.

Until next time,
-Taco

Beer Blurb – 8/24/14 (Samuel Adams Rye Märzen & Yuengling Light)

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Time for another beer blurb, this time we are checking out an extra special beer that I can all but guarantee you have not had, and may never get a chance to. We’ll also examine Yuengling Light, which is far less exceptional.

Without further ado, the beers.

1. Samuel Adams – Rye Märzen
2. Yuengling Brewery – Yeungling Light

You’ll notice that I did not link to Beer Advocate for the Sam Adams, that is because it doesn’t have a page. Why? Its an experimental beer, which means it does not exist outside of the walls of the Boston Brewery, well, except for the people who have bought growlers. The second beer is slightly more standard, but it was still my first time having it.

As I mentioned in this post, SB and I visited Sam Adams’ oldest brewery. After the (free) tour you have a chance to purchase some of the beers that they either have on tap or are experimenting with. I naturally chose the experimental beers and went with the Rye Märzen. A Märzen is a pale lager, which literally means “March Beer” in German. These are traditionally strong beers, but lately its more of a flavor style as opposed to being a strictly strong beer. Sam Adams took a Rye spin on things.

Rye Märzen

[Big Side note: Want to know what makes a good beer glass anatomy? The Samuel Adams glass above is actually a good example. A good beer glass will have the following. 1.) It will either have a narrow base with thicker glass, or it will have a handle. This keeps your hand from warming the beer. 2.) It will have a wide mouth to allow the beer to aerate and to release more aroma. 3.) It will have an imperfection in the base of the glass (often laser etched) to allow a build up of carbonation that keeps the beer active and fizzy. 4.) The top most portion of the glass will flare outwards, this delivers the beer to the proper place on your tongue (the front, where you perceive the sweetness of the malt) rather than the back of your tongue, which is where you perceive bitter flavors. 5.) There will be a tiny lip around the rim that creates turbulence to release more flavor and aroma as you are drinking the beer. Believe it or not your glass does matter, beer is no different from wine in that regard. Sorry college people with your red plastic cups.]

It wasn’t quite as strong as I was expecting, but it had a nice smooth flavor. Even SB enjoyed it and she isn’t a huge Sam Adams fan. Since the growler doesn’t last long anyways, especially once opened, we went through the whole thing in one night. It turned out to be around 5.5 beers in all, which at a price of 9.95$ I absolutely cannot complain. I really hope this one passes the tests and gets distributed, though I’m sure it will never taste as good as it did fresh from brewery.

Next up is Yuengling Light.

Yuengling Light

Now, with Sam Adams the night before, why would I get a beer like this? Because it was cheap. Believe it or not I’d never had a Yuengling until we moved to Boston, let alone a Yuengling Light. Now, Yuengling is apparently America’s oldest continuously operating brewery, having been producing beer without pause since 1829. If you are wondering how they made it through prohibition, they produced “near beers” which were beers with very low (0.5% or less) alcohol content. Since they are located in Pennsylvania and an entirely American owned brewery (like Sam Adams) I had to give them a try. I had previously had the regular Yuengling and it was just ok. Now that I’ve had Yuengling Light, I have to say, its just ok. I’m not sure its as bad as the 66 its garnered on Beer Advocate, but its not really memorable. It kind of tastes like Budwesier, which is pretty much the same way the standard Yuengling tasted. I’ll certainly have it again, but likely because of price rather than taste.

So, between the two beers the Sam Adams wins by a huge margin, lets just hope it doesn’t vanish from the face of the Earth. Yuengling Light, meanwhile, will be a nice go-to cheap beer.

Until next time,
-Taco

Beer Blurb – 8/15/14 (The Druid + More)

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For this Beer Blurb I’ll be discussing our recent outing to a nearby Irish Pub by the name of The Druid. More specifically, I’ll also talk about the three different kinds of beer we had, in addition to some beer I just got tonight.

First up, The Druid.

When SB and I were walking to the nearest Post Office a bit ago (to deliver a package to Meem) we walked by a cool looking pub called The Druid. Being in the 21st century we immediately went home and Googled it. We found out that it was an Irish Pub, with food, rotating taps, trivia, and live music. Obviously we decided we had to go. So last night (as of writing this post) we went down there. We didn’t get food as we’d already eaten at home, but we did have a few beers. We were fortunate to actually find seating at the bar as the place was fairly busy. The bartender was actually Irish, full blown. Which is always bonus points for a, you know, Irish Pub.

The beers we had were:

1. Cisco Brewers Inc. – Whale’s Tale Pale Ale
2. Cambridge Brewing Company – Cambridge Amber
3. Harpoon Brewery – UFO White

First off, for full disclosure, we aren’t entirely sure if the CBC beer was actually the Cambridge Amber. All SB knows is that it was an Amber Ale. Looking at CBC’s current roster, it seems most likely that it was the Cambridge Amber, so that is what we’ll go with. All three beers were good, but UFO (Unfiltered Offering) from Harpoon was probably my favorite of three, complete with its required orange slice. I’ve never had any of these beers before, though I had had the Harpoon IPA. (Its definitely good, a solid IPA). Tdhough I never knew it was brewed in Massachusetts, but it turns out that beer is kind of a big deal out here, so I’m not surprised. The Whale’s Tale was a fairly standard Pale Ale, though it had nice hints of Caramel flavor. The CBC was good as well, with a nice maltiness. I favored it over the Whale’s Tale overall, I think. Lastly came the UFO. This was my second beer, so that probably created a bias. It was a very interesting witbier, especially for a white. Very crisp and clean, and the orange finished it nicely.

So all three were good beers, I’d like to have to Whale’s Tale again, since I was going back and forth between it and the CBC which might have messed up my palate.

UFO White

The Druid was also nice, definitely popular though. By the time we left the floor was pretty much packed, no seating left at all. We’d like to try the food sometime as well.

Then, after our outing today I picked up a six pack of beer which was on closeout at a nearby market. It was a Summer Wheat and since beer is like department stores and the season changes about 2 months early, they were trying to move it in favor of the fall stock.

4. Southern Tier Brewing Company – Hop Sun Summer Wheat Beer

It was 7.99$ for a six pack, which might seem high but its actually really good for around here (where alcohol > gold). This was an interesting beer. Its highly rated, but I found it rather odd for a wheat beer. It has strong floral and citrus hints, but is patently more similar to a Summer Ale, rather than  a Pale Wheat Ale. In fact, if I was tasting it blind, the first 90% of the taste is purely Summer Pale, with the last 10% being mildly wheat like. It’s odd for what it is, but not necessarily in a bad way!

Hop Sun Summer Wheat Beer

Until next time,
-Taco

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