Mormons are forbidden from drinking. I guess you could still recommend it to her, though.

I like SN Celebration, too. It is not a spiced ale, of course.

Baxter Brewing's new Autumn Ale is an example of a spiced beer that works, to my mind. The effects of the spices are subtle and interesting. Harpoon's Winter Warmer, which positively reeks of cinnamon and sugar, strikes me as a disastrous mess.

Brown Shugga is far and away my favorite of Lagunutas' brews.

Yes, I'd say the Sierra Nevada Porter more than holds its own against Fuller's and Anchor's examples of the style.

I like Stone's smoked porter, but it represents an unusual porter substyle; it's a bit silly to pit the SN brew against it.

SN's porter is also at the top of its class. I don't know if there's a better commercially available example of the style out there. Mercury's Ipswich Porter, maybe.

Sierra Nevada is your beer of last resort, eh?

Trader Joe's sells a "Josephsbrau" line of beers at $5.99 a six-pack. They're made by Gordon Biersch. The lineup includes a pilsner, marzen, pale bock and -- my favorite, though I wish the malt base were drier -- a dark wheat. I deem these beers efficient but unexciting examples of their respective styles. They're free of rice and corn, and the price is obviously good.

The Boston Beer Company also makes one. It's not a hybrid I'm crazy about.

I'm with you on...well, all of that.

Ipswich Oatmeal Stout is my favorite New England beer, if not my favorite beer full stop.

The Anchor Bock is tasty, I agree. If I sampled it blind, I'd never dream it was a bock, but the brew is agreeable on the palate.

Magic Hat has at least one IPA, their Blind Faith. I'm not familiar with the Otter Creek lineup.

Dark lagers are also a tradition in Czechoslovakia.

I don't know of any brewer of black IPAs (I prefer the term India Dark Ale; it's more concise and less contradictory) who does not also produce IPA.

I've never tried that pairing, but my instinct would be to go with a stout.

I had my coffee "awakening" at the Harvard Square Coffee Connection in the mid-80s.

There were a couple editions of CA in the 90s whose hop presence seemed to me, after diverse samples, a tad soft. But generally speaking, the brew is remarkably consistent.
The ale may have started out with a slightly lower gravity than the 1068 it has long maintained. One of Jackson's books ascribed an OG of 1060 to it.

Alright, just so long as you remind the youngsters to wear their glasses on the other sides of their heads.

I actually rooted for Guy when he was a competitor on "The Next Food Network Star." But he has become -- no doubt with encouragement from FN higher-ups -- a cross between a clown and a cartoon.

And the way he eats -- taking freakishly huge mouthfuls of the item, then taking another monstrous mouthful before he has chewed the first, smearing cheese and grease all over his facial hair and skin -- is disgusting. And then, worst of all, he starts babbling with his mouth full. If you want to accuse me of snobbery in objecting to all this, first ask yourself if you encourage children to develop these sorts of habits.

Finally, much of Guy's expressions of praise for dishes -- e.g., "That's off the hook!" or "That's on-point!" -- don't really make sense.

Try Blanchard's. I saw Samichlaus last night in the Brockton store.

Yes, the ostrich egg omelette (cooked for a seeming eternity directly on ash) was in the same episode (Namibia?) as the warthog rectum. They ate beetles in the show as well, which AB seemed to genuinely prefer to the aforementioned delectables.

Bourdain claimed the warthog part was the worst meal of his life, though he's said that about various things.

Is this another contest? "Most Annoying FN Personality," perhaps?

Not just ticks but deer ticks. Bourdain has mentioned them -- and his fear of finding them engorged on his scrotum -- twice, in an African episode and an Italian one. The references stood out for me because I've had unpleasant encounters with the nasty parasites.

I could do without the scatological references, but it's not as if Bourdain makes them constantly. I remember his claim in the San Francisco episode that he had come to the farmer's market at the Ferry Building prepared to deposit a "sizable and snarktastic Cleveland Steamer" on the scene -- but that the quality of the free food samples and the general niceness of the people changed his mind.

Don't I recall that he strongly disliked the warthog rectum and ate it just to avoid being rude?

I agree with you; I can't stand him. It seems to me that when his and Symon's judgments clash, Symon tends to prevail.

Bigfoot is a fantastic barleywine, with, as you say, lots of great malt and hop character. Last year's edition was good as ever.

Were they still tinkering with the beer at the time of that post, I wonder? Every bottle of Torpedo I've seen listed the ABV as 7.2%, while the website says the brew has 65 IBUs.

I had always taken the "Extra IPA" subtitle as an allusion to the beer's additional hopping process.

Acme IPA, which I used to encounter on the west coast, had 7.2% ABV, precisely the same alcohol content as the Torpedo, and no one familiar with this brew ever suggested it was anything other than an IPA. (The brewers of Acme IPA have since brought the ABV down a touch.)

I had my first sample of the '11 Celebration Ale last night. It was perfectly good.

Generally speaking, and in spite of the annual pronouncements of the beer's downfall, I think CA has been very consistent in recent years.

Yes, that's just how the porter was. Very chocolatey, and with a touch of smoked malt.

I remember the Grant's beers vividly because they were among the first that I explored upon discovering the world of flavorful beer -- and I continued to drink them as long as they were around. The Imperial Stout never had more than 6% ABV from my first sample of it in '88 or so -- but research convinced me it had previously come in higher ABV versions. It was my favorite in the Grant's family.

The Celtic Ale was in the 4% ABV ballpark, as I recall -- as was the tasty "Perfect Porter" which appeared relatively late, in '94the or so.