Three tastes

Got a strange line-up for you. A beer, a cider, and -- gasp! -- a flavored vodka.

I got a sample of a beer I hadn't had in quite a while, one I remember quite fondly: Bateman's XXXB. Poured it into my Bateman's pint (frosted glass, got it years ago and keep it deep in the cupboard: not an everyday glass!). Looked good, smelled malty good, with a grassy/earthy push of hops. And as I tasted that first sip, it shocked me with how much it tasted just like I remember it. Bateman's is distinctive. Don't know if it's the Maris Otter malt, or the hops, or (most likely) their yeast, but it's unique. It tastes...hmmm. A bit of that grassy/earthy hit, some meatiness, some grain, some caramel. Mostly, though, it tastes like Bateman's. Get some and find out what I mean.

The cider comes from Sam Smith, an organic cider ("Produced from organically grown apples." Duh...). Not a world-shaker, but again, not overly sweet either. Apple flavor, some light tartness, but it's hardly what you'd call complex. It does note that it contains cane sugar as well as apple juice...which may be why it's so simple. Better than the common run of cider, but not in Farnum Hill territory, not even J.K.'s Scrumpy.

And yes, a flavored vodka: Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka. Angela Traver at Buffalo Trace talked about it so excitedly that I let her send me a bottle (this is the woman that talked me into buying a bottle of Old Charter 101, so she's no flake!). I put it off. A couple months. But tonight it was warm, and green smells of wet earth and new grass floated in the door from out back, and I thought, what the hell, why not? Old-fashioned glass, handful of ice, two fingers of Firefly, topped it up with Brita-water. It tasted like sweet tea with vodka in it, of which I drank quite a bit when I was a much younger man. No nasty after-tastes, no strange chemical tastes. I'm thinking it's going to be an easy thing to drink on hot summer nights, especially with even more ice and cold water...but that's about it. Which is probably all it wants to be. God help me.

Otter Head Ale

I saw Otter Head Ale at the World Beer Festival last fall, and importer Jim Lientz (that's him holding the beers on the right) was very excited to have me try it. I'm not sure why, cuz at 5.8% ABV, it's sure not a session beer, but it was quite nice. We exchanged cards, and he said he'd send me a sample. Which he did, and...I put it in the fridge. That was in December.

When the fridge died two weeks ago and we had to get a new one -- a very nice black one with a fast ice-maker -- I came across that bottle. Whoops. I put it up front to be sure to drink it, and tonight was its turn.

Otter Head is an English strong ale, and it tastes it: it's solid and malty, a mouthful that puts me in mind of Young's Old Nick, a big beer that tastes like it could easily go higher than the ABV it is. I've seen people say it's not very hoppy, but I disagree: it is, but it's not Cascades or Centennial, it's Fuggles and Challenger, hops that a lot of the American geekerie just don't get, or even know how to notice (please, before you make a bunch of "I do too!" comments...I said "a lot," not "all"; assume I was talking about someone else. I probably was. As far as you know.), and they're very, very nice here.

But the malts are the stars, and no surprise: the label says they're using both Maris Otter (natch!) and Golden Promise malts, the favored malts of finicky Brit brewers (or so we've been led to believe). This is finely layered stuff, and the low carbonation really brings it all out. I long to try this on cask, I can only imagine what it must be like alive.

Definitely worth a spin. I don't know why people always talk about all the beers with dogs in the names and on the labels: I'm liking hell out of otter beers lately (tip o' the hat to the Gilded Otter in New Paltz, NY, too: be seeing you guys on my way to the Mondial!).