Taste-Testing a 9-Year-Old Beer
Because who doesn't love a good adventure?
Where do I even start? Perhaps with the fact that this beer bottle is from 2015, which was from my old life. Meaning, how did it get from my married fridge where my ex-jackass frowned upon my consumption of alcohol, then made its way into living either in my car or in one of my storage spots, then moved into an apartment and then another apartment, and then four years in my tiny camper fridge. Is this the Sisterhood of the Traveling Beer Bottle? Is it my Protector? My albatross?
Or I can talk about the fact that on principle I despise 30A and all things related so how did I end up with a Grayton Beer Company Redneck Rye-Viera Double IPA? I've never even been there, nor do I necessarily want to. Unless it's with a boyfriend and we’re going to hop on some beach cruisers and bike to the brewery in our bathing suits and then watch the sunset over the ocean. Or Gulf. Whatever. Same damn difference.
The only thing that does make sense here is that when I have something I deem special, I will hoard squirrel it away until an unspecific time when it’s appropriate to enjoy. So this was once a special beer, I reckon.
Now it's nine years old and a casualty of cleaning my fridge to prepare for the move deeper into the backyard. But I was raised not to waste anything (thanks, Mama!) so now I must drink it and suffer greatly.
This is how most of my Friday nights go, by the way. Alone, peaceful on my front porch, letting my imagination run wild before crawling into bed in anticipation of an early morning long run.
Before consuming said future-food poisoning, I did my due diligence and checked with the beer experts in my life to make sure I was not going to die or get violently ill. They said no, but what are you doing and why and please don’t.
The first sign something is amiss is that the bottle lets out a long carbonation hiss as I crack it open. Apparently because the yeast snacked on the sugar in the beer and now it's a CO2 party in there. Which is funny, because it appears the beer itself lacks carbonation. Appears flat as a pancake.
The initial sip is jarring, invasive, unwelcome. It's bad. Bad bad. This would be the point where normal folks would pour it out and go to the fridge for an actual beer. Alas. On we go.
It tastes bitter? Thick? Like the color rust, but not in a metallic way. Or like a rotting log caked in thick mud. In craft beer terms, it tastes and has the mouthfeel of a barrel-aged beer that wasn't aged correctly. All that hard work for naught. Scientifically, what I'm tasting is the oxidation of the DIPA and my taste buds are recalling similar oxidations of barrel-aged beer. It’s familiar in a bad way.
This is where I should pause and mention that one of my clients is a brewery and I should never be A) drinking bad beer and B) in a situation where I don’t have fresh beer on hand. And yet here I am on a Friday night with nothing to drink beer-wise but this and an old Budweiser I found under my camper from last year.
Half a bottle in. The beer tastes less bad. Hi it’s the beer speaking, this I know. It’s not getting better—I’m getting more numb to it. Perhaps my tongue is rotting away. It also tastes like it has a very strong ABV so I pause to check with my sources to see if extreme aging doubles alcohol content. Negative. It just tastes like mistakes are being made. Which, aren’t they?
Right now, this beer tastes a touch like a Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, only it’s the runner-up to the Kentucky Derby so the liquid is laced with glue. Poor buddy.
I’m interrupted by a commotion to my right. It’s a crow. And an….owl. Fighting each other. Right next to me. Ok so this DIPA either developed hallucinogenic qualities or I’m in the middle of a NatGeo episode. The crow (one of my beloved animals) is attacking the shit out of the owl whooooo’s twice her size. Get it girl fight the patriarchy!
Another sip of beer. It’s getting warmer now, which affects the flavor not one bit. Still the same strange experience. I’m thinking about all the other times I’ve had weird food experiences and documented them—my first Taco Bell trip as a full-grown adult, a Burger King and McDonald’s Whopper Bug Mac throw down, my first pickled pig’s foot in the middle of a 100k. In comparison, this beer is nothing. Child’s play.
Moved inside to cook dinner. Put my beer down…somewhere. Remembered its existence, took another sip, and was instantly transported to Christmas 2017. Christmas Eve (or was it Christmas Eve Eve?) at Trim Tab Brewing with a table full of friends drinking their barrel-aged stout Language of Thunder series. They were tasty, strong, a nice nightcap before being thrust into the upcoming holiday bullshit. When I stood up, however, they hit me like a ton of bricks and I was not not drunk.
So my final verdict is that Redneck Rye-Viera tastes like Trim Tab’s Language of Thunder’s discarded and abused step-sibling. Same daddy, but the rest is an unfortunate “bless your heart you look like you fell from the turnip truck and hit every rock on the way down.”
When all was said and done, the experiment took me four hours. To drink a single beer bottle. Not because it was that bad, but because I kept putting it down and forgetting what I was doing. It was that kind of week, friends. Post-race blues + Mother’s Day grossness = a hefty mix of murderous rage and strong ADHD.
Would I do it again? Of course! In the name of science. I never back down from a challenge. And now I can confidently say that Grayton Beer Company tastes like 30A—like this emoji 😖.
You are no quitter!