Uinta Tilted Smile Imperial Pilsner isn't as desirable as Joan Holloway

Well, today is my officially my 28th Birthday. The party started Friday with the All-Denim extravaganza, continued Saturday with Beach day Sloshball and followed through with lobster and a partial mash homebrew. I've been celebrating this day three times over before the sun debuted on May 9th 2011. Cookies for lunch and chips and dip for dinner is all I need for birthday celebration. I'll be out all this week and I'll be tasting 7 or 8 breweries this weekend with my parents and David.

Some people would argue that you have to do something for your birthday, or that you shouldn't be alone on your special day. To them, I say that thinking is for the birds. I've been surrounded by great friends enjoying memorable experiences for 72 hours. I think I'll be okay if I take a night off, open up one of my favorite beers as an appetizer before the beer of the day, demolish some guacamole and watch my best show on TV, Man Men.

Next to all the special whiskey we keep in the hard to reach cupboard above the microwave, I keep a bottle of North Coast Pranqster and Drake's Denogginizer Imperial IPA for a special occasion. Tonight is perfect for the Drake's, which has an incredibly rich caramel and Munich malt. It's inspiring enough that I have decided here and now to design my next homebrew to hopefully create a malt of this caliber and richness. It's amazing. 

But the beer of the day hales from Utah and is a strange bedfellow. Almost as strong  as the 9.75% Denogginizer, the wacky Tilted Smile is an Imperial Pilsner. This is our second imperial pilsner, a very odd style but one that some American brewers apparently like to play with.

I immediately taste that it's too malty. On the flip side, David says that it's not hoppy enough. He's right. An imperial malt bill needs an imperial amount of hops to balance it out. Unfortunately, Uinta didn't adjust accordingly for their increase in alcohol. Maybe they kept the same IBU number as they had with their regular pilsner. Either way, it doesn't work. I'm not impressed, ARMAGEDDON rating.

I'm going to climb onto my soapbox for a second here to spout about Imperial Pilsners as a style. To me, increasing alcohol content serves two purposes. Obviously, one is you create a potent beer. In order to make a higher content brew, you have to increase the amount of malt. This allows for a greater complexity of malt to be used - or so I think. As a style, however, Pilsner are brew to be clean and crisp. They are not known for their complexity. I really don't see the need for them. Maybe they're fun to toy with, but I don't understand why you make them.

Drake's Denogganizer Imperial IPA is the beer support I need for a big BBQ

The rain has stopped and the sun broke through the clouds, so I'm cooking up a big BBQ today. Three stacks of ribs, lines of cider-simmered bratwurst with onions and salmon with red-curry coconut sauce. Having a bunch of people over, mostly old friends but a few new ones as well, Heather, Jamie, Brent, Nick G, Beth, Sara, Josh, Lisa, Jake, Matt and Ri.

David's usually the cook but he's out of town, so I'm going to Emeril this shit up and I'm charging hard. I need a big beer to propel me through the day and Drake's comes through once again.

Deliciousness!

I love Drake's and at 9.75%, this beer is big and bad. This is more malt than IPA, but it's a bold malt and an accented bitterness. The beer may be dank but it's finely tuned. Love this and would love to create a home brew inspired by this. THE ROCK rating.


If the Discovery Channel was on hand filming the day, they would have mistook my friends for Jackals because all three racks of ribs were gone within the first half hour. Only a pile of cleanly picked bones were left as evidence of their existence. The Bratwurst and Salmon were met with love by everyone as well, and later we played Jenga while I finished off an Arrogant Bastard. Beautiful Day indeed and except for the war zone that is my kitchen, I'm one happy camper.

To Josh, Heather and Lisa for helping out with the curry sauce and manning the grill whilst I played host and/or boozed, thank you so much for your help!