Not Knocking Things Off Pedestals

Yesterday brought with it two singular excitements: Tony and I undertook Boozy Milkshake Day Part II and George, an esteemed dT alum, popped over to my house for a bit. What with this being the beer blog and with the spirits blog being a whole separate blog, I’m going to leave the story of boozy milkshakes to Tony. The George-bit has more to do beer, so therein we find our subject. B.G. on George: he left our ranks a little over a year ago for UCLA law school; in town again for a wedding, he called us up for a bit of a reunion, “bearing gifts from the left coast.”

Which gift turned out to be two bottles of Pliny the Elder for Tony and I. Never heard of Pliny? You must never been to BeerAdvocate; the BA’s over there hold the DIPA in the same esteem winos hold Caymus or Dom. It’s damn near impossible to find anybody with even lukewarm reviews, nevermind critical. Like anything else hoisted up on a pedestal of such great heights, I’m immediately skeptical, so to actually drink this like-mythical brew doubled as both a drinking pleasure and an intellectual experiment. Of course, as mentioned above, it was Boozy Milkshake Day (the sequel). The scales obviously tipped a little toward the former. I just drank the bastard, frankly. Here, in retrospect, I’ll try to even it out a bit.

And it’s good. It’s very good. Anybody following along these past couple months probably caught wind of my frustration re: American IPA’s going for that over-the-top hop quality (rhymes!); the coolest thing about the Pliny is that even though it’s a double IPA (doubles usually equating to double everything - hops, alcohol, etc.), it manages to seat itself in balance. It doesn’t pull you one way or the other, doesn’t rip your tongue free of your cheeks in an effort to impress. Actually it drinks more like a pale ale, in terms of bite and slice.

As much as I love to knock things off their pedestals, I just can’t bring myself to do so in this case. If you can get your hands on it, I’d highly suggest not blinking, just buying. Pliny’s brewed by Russian River, out in California. Nothing gets shipped out to us in the east. Why am I writing about a beer we can’t get? Well… I don’t know, really. You can’t buy it here. But it is beer, and we deal with beer. So, if you ever find yourself Cali-ways, find a pint, find a bottle; tell ‘em dT sent you.

Tags: American beer, craft beer, DIPA
Category: The Beer Blog | Comments (0)