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.