Friday was a half day for me, so I decided to grab some food to grill and beer to drink. Now naturally being a Pennsylvania boy, I grabbed myself a case of Yuengling Lager.
America's Oldest (and Best) Brewery
Yuengling is a good beer. I enjoy every moment from opening the green bottle, to drinking it's wonderful contents to peeling off the label and re-applying it upside-down. It's a thing I do.
So with that said, I like drinking beer. I also enjoy trying different types of beer. I'll usually pick up a 6-pack of some brew I've never heard of just because the label looks interesting. On Friday, I saw Bigfoot.
The elusive Bigfoot Ale
I was instantly intrigued. Long ago when I was younger, a friend of mine and I were tromping through the woods and disturbed a creature that was in hiding. I don't know what it was, but we never saw it until we almost ran into it. Whatever it was jumped up, shrieked/squealed kind of like a pig and ran away on on two legs. Also, it was covered with a fur that I can only describe as the color of moldy hay. Now, I'm not saying I saw Bigfoot, but I'm pretty sure I saw his son. Whatever that creature was stood about as tall as we did, which at the time wasn't much over 5 feet. Typical bigfoot stories tend to have the creature between 6-8 feet tall. Also, there wasn't the typical smell or pungent odor often associated with bigfoot stories. Well, that has all changed.
Flashback fades out, it's Friday and I'm back at my house on my deck. I decide to try the Bigfoot Ale. Now the website for Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale (
http://www.sierranevada.com/beers/bigfoot.html) says this about it's beer:
Bigfoot Ale is an award-winning example of the traditional barleywine ale style. It boasts a dense, fruity bouquet; an extremely rich, intense palate; and a deep, reddish-brown color. This ale is superbly balanced between an almost overpowering maltiness and a wonderfully bittersweet hoppiness.
“…Bigfoot captures the imagination, and its character is as big as the name implies, with a huge hoppiness in its earthy aroma, a chewy palate, and a great depth of flavor.”
– Michael Jackson,
Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion
It captures the imagination alright. When they named it Bigfoot, I didn't realize it was because they made it from actual sasquatch fluids. I felt like I had run up to one the the mythological creatures and licked it's nether regions. And that was just the first sip.
I wanted to throw the bottle into the woods. It belonged there. I wanted to undiscover Bigfoot.
However, I said to myself, "Self, it can't be that bad, take another drink. It's just a different flavor than you are used to. Also, you spent more on this 6-pack than you did on that wonderful case of Yuengling sitting in there, so at least
pretend to like it!" There is a stigma attached to the behavior of drinking alone, so I decided talking out loud to myself would make it seem like there were more people around.
I tried another sip. I tried to associate the flavor with the description: Earthy aroma, chewy palate... oh, I get it.
Chewy palate. It's a wookie joke.
Finally I decided maybe the problem was that Bigfoot needs to be aired out a little. So I poured it into a beer glass and tried again. That was a mistake. I honestly considered trying to put it back into the bottle. I decided that if Bigfoot tastes this bad cold, I was not waiting around to find out what happens when it starts to warm up! I braced myself, held my nose and chugged the glass. I battled the spits. I felt three new chest hairs grow. I wanted to cry.
Then when everything settled back to normal I decided it was time for more beer. So, I enjoyed three or four Yuengling Lagers, all the while wondering what to do with the remaining five Bigfoot Ale lurking in my fridge.
