Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Colnel Fraser- Finbar and Eddie Furey MP3

Pigeon On The Gate- Finbar and Eddie Furey MP3

3/17/11

beeradvocate.com- A-

Victory Storm King Imperial Stout- Euro Market, 31 St. Astoria, NY- 12 oz. Bottle into Pub Glass- 9.1% ABV- Poured pitch black into a pub glass with a two finger caramel colored head. Receded at a medium pace with little lacing left on the glass. I smell coffee, hops and malts. Tasting this beer I actually feel like it has a very hoppy character as opposed to the more common burnt malt character of a stout. This stout has an exceptional mouth feel one that I have been looking for for awhile without success. I feel like a stout should have a medium to heavy mouthfeel with a distinct creamieness. Alot of the stouts I have sampled lately have been medium to light bodied and lacking in the smooth texture I have come to assume a stout should have. This is a pretty complex beer and has a bitter quality to it. I don't know if I would enjoy drinking more than one or two in a sitting but if I was planning on drinking one or tWo stouts this could be a good stout to pick up BASED on the mouthfeel and ABV.


I don't normally do the food and beer pairing thing but in this case I felt it was appropriate to include a photo of my homemade corn beef sandwich.

On the turntable in honor of St. Patrick's Day is Hornpipes, Airs and Reels- Finbar and Eddie Furey- Recorded in 1974 for Nonesuch Records- Not to much to say about the players on this album because I don't know to much about them. I don't have many Irish music LP's but I have this one which I found a few years ago sealed in a dollar bin! This is a wonderful bare bones example of Irish music with pipes, flute and guitar augmented with what sounds like a bass drum on a few tracks. Irish music raises the hair on my arms whenever I hear it especially in a bar. To my ears it shares alot of the modal qualities consistent with music from India and the Middle East. The guitar on these tracks gets a bit overpowered by the pipes and its role in Irish music is often overlooked. However, based on experience, I have spent some time learning guitar from an Irish songbook and let me tell you, rhythmically, it is quite demanding. It shares sensibilities with bluegrass music but often has more complex chord changes and a brisker pace. It also requires a strong fretting hand to keep up with chord changes and compete with often louder instrumentation.

Long John Baldry Farmhouse Blues

Up Above My Head- Long John Baldry MP3


beeradvocate.com- B+

Smuttynose Farmhouse Ale- Whole Foods Houston St., NYC- 22oz. Bottle into Belgian Beer Glass- 9.3% ABV- My first Farmhouse Ale/Saison and this beer was bottle conditioned in 2010. I think I have only had one bottle conditioned beer before but in theory I am already a fan of the style. Bottle conditioning, simply put, is when the beer is bottled without a filtering process. This leaves yeast sediment in the bottle which continues the fermentation process of the beer or ale while it is in the bottle. As you can see, with this bottle in the photo I included, the ale appears very cloudy which is the result of the yeast sediment left in the bottle.


A Farmhouse Ale/ Saison style,according to Wikipedia, was first brewed in a french speaking part of Belgium and were typically low alcohol, pale ales brewed in the winter to be enjoyed in the summer and could often have some type of fruity component. The idea of a "Saison" never appealed to me but when I went beer shopping this week I just decided to try one. Though it is a bit early for a summer style brew today is the first day in months I have been able to go outside in only a sweatshirt and be comfortable. This beer poured with about a fingers worth of fluffy head. The head receded pretty quickly and has barely left a bit of lacing on the glass. The ale itself is a lovely pale orange color. The aroma has a lemony quality. Light bodied in the mouth. This ale has a bitter, sour taste to it but not in an unpleasant way. I could see this as a really nice ale for a summer day. Lively, small bubbles of carbonation. This beer measures in at 9.3% ABV but you wouldn't know it! Barely any alcohol in the taste or smell, which could be dangerous if you weren't aware of the ABV to begin with. This is a damn smooth beer. Not silky smooth, but goes down easy. I expected something hoppier, with more citrus but this is a good ale I would like to try again . Although I'm not an expert this might be a good beer to try from a cask rather than a keg.

On the turntable is Long John's Blues- Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men- Mono LP Reissue on United Artists 1971- Originally recorded in 1964 and 1966 at I.B.C. Studios in London, England- This one of the records I bought last weekend on a road trip to the Princeton Record Exchange. It was a good trip with two friends and yielded some pretty good records. The only drawback was the cost of the train ticket which almost equaled what I spent in the store. Additionally I found that the price tags they use were really hard to remove and damaged a couple of the LP covers which was disappointing. I hate price tags on my records and they should think about using another type of sticker but I guess no one complains. Its a small gripe on an overall good experience but its like their branding their records...not cool. This LP turned up in the bins beneath the "good stuff" and I have always been curious about LJB and this seemed like a good opportunity to take a chance on him. As an original singer associated with the British blues movement in the early sixties he had an huge influence over younger musicians. Unfortunately you don't really hear to much about him these days. LJP had a major impact on the British music both musically and as an openly gay male when it was completely socially unacceptable. This is a good LP although a bit different than I expected. I was initially expecting something more in the vein of the Yardbirds or early Rolling Stones. But this has a way more boogie-woogie/ jump blues feel to it, which wasn't an unpleasant suprise. The musicians are pretty accomplished and arrangements on some of the songs are fairly sophisticated for the time. After I listened to the LP I decided LJB's voice actually reminded me of David Lee Roth's a la "Just A Gigolo". I mentioned this to my friend who went to the record store with me and he actually agreed with me. There are some spirited renditions of Muddy Waters, Johnny Lee Hooker and Joe Turner tunes. There are also two original Baldry compositions which are nice but fairly unremarkable blues knock-offs. The stand out track for me is a duet with a young Rod Stewart on a Sister Rosetta Tharpe song called Up Above My Head. I have included a MP3 file above of this track.. This song is really great and goes far in illustrating Rod Stewart's affinity for Sam Cooke. Not only that but the pairing of both LJB and Rod Stewart, in a duo setting, display an uncanny resemblance to an imaginary pairing of Sam Cooke and Ray Charles.

Coming Down Again- The Rolling Stones MP3

3/4/11

beeradvocate.com- B+

Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout- Euro Market, 31 St. Astoria, NY- Bomber into Belgian Beer Glass- 8.8% ABV- This Imperial Stout poured as the name implies a coffee color and when held up let a bit of light through the edges. The tan head was about a finger thick and receded fairly quickly. Immediate aroma of coffee and or cappuccino with some caramel like qualities. Imagine a fancy Starbucks coffee. Also a bit of booze in the nose but underneath the other aromas. Nice medium body with creamy feel. Medium carbonation. A bit more than I would have liked with this beer, I have never had a coffee stout before but have read about them. This is good but I could have gone for a fuller mouth feel but this is close to what to what I would expect for a stout. Don't know if I would order this at a bar because the rich coffee tones would make it a bit rich for me to drink over an evening but a bomber of this is perfect.

LP Insert

Dust Jacket- Session Musician Photos



On the turntable is Goats Head Soup- The Rolling Stones- Recorded in 1973, Dynamic Sound Studios, Kingston, Jamaica- I am closing in on the last third of Keith Richards autobiography Life and have been listening to quite a bit of Stones lately. Goats Head Soup is a bit of a transitional album for the Stones. Following in the wake of Exile On Main St.this album has been accused of being composed of cast-offs. In my opinion this record is a pretty solid affair. Never my favorite Stones LP but one which reaps rewards after repeated efforts. Some of the tracks like Dancing With Mr. D and Coming Down Again remind me of classic era Sticky Fingers. While other tunes like 100 Years Ago and Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) shift to a funkier approach which remind me more of their late seventies material. This was the Stones first exposure to Jamaica and would later become a sanctuary for Keef. Jamaica would later have greater impact on their actual music but at the time of this album elements of Jamaican music are most notable in the percussion work. I included the MP3 of Coming Down Again, written and sung by Keef himself. A melancholy little ditty with some nice wah-wah guitar and backup vocals by Mick Jagger.