Staropramen Czech Pilsner at the Amsterdam Cafe

I'm taking a break from my studies in San Francisco to check out a bar that I'm sure will become one of my favorites. Only 2 blocks away, the Amsterdam Cafe has over 20 beers on rotating taps with another 350 bottles in the refrigerators behind the bar. It's a sight to behold. There's a few beers that are $3 on Mondays and I take the only one I haven't tried yet, a Czech Pilsner.

The Staropramen is a fine drinking beer, although you get a bit of that sour malt that accompanies many of the cheaper foreign beers who brave the atlantic cross, but it's a dry and relatively crisp drinking beer that's perfectly fine for rolling solo to a bar during a the Monday Night Football game. THE ISLAND rating.

Bruery Run B.M.C. at the Eat Real craft beer festival

With LA supposedly in Carmageddon deadlock, I'm biking down to Culver City for the Eat Real festival. They have two beer gardens pouring all you can drink beers from Stone, Ballast Point, Hanger 24, Firestone, Eagle Rock and Bruery. They will also have a ton of food trucks, live music, and cooking demos. Ain't having no car gonna stop me from having a good time.

Sarah and I bike down and no one is there when we arrive at noon, but by 2pm the place is packed and getting rowdy. David is fortuitously going down to The Bruery with Karl today and I grab my beer of the day early, The Bruery's brand new Imperial Pilsner, Run B.M.C.

Beer in a mason jar! I'm good to go

The tenth one-time release from their Provisions line of beers, the Run B.M.C. is a 7% Imperial Pilsner and one of the few lagers the Bruery has made. It has also been quadruple hopped and cold fermented, which is really unusual for the style. This is the 3rd Imperial Pilsner tasted this year and my 9th Provisions beer ( 9 out of 10). The first two Imperial Pils resulted in very mixed feelings about this unconventional style, and I believe that if someone can make a deliciously unconventional beer, it would be the Bruery.

Run B.M.C. is an incredibly summery beer, with lots of citrus and pineapple flavors thanks to the hops and it's very sweet - probably too sweet. There is a hop bite towards the end but overall the hops are there to add to the flavor profile. I think it's great drinking it under the sun at a festival, but I'm not sure I'll purchase a bottle during my next Bruery run. Imperial Pilsners are odd creatures; lagering creates clean and crisp beers, and it's hard to create a beer with body enough to handle high alcohol and flavor. This was a noble effort though. 

Sarah gets her art walk on

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.

Sudwerk 20th Anniversary Imperial Pilsner is on steroids

Today we cashed in our groupon to go paint-balling out in Canyon Country and IT WAS AWESOME! I'm bloody and bruised (my ankle is swollen from diving head first into bunkers) and I'm walking like a geriatric patient, but what a freaking day. None of us have played in years and we lost the first two games, but otherwise we pretty much dominated the other teams like we were the Harlem Globetrotters and they were the Washington Generals. It's the closest I'll ever get to experiencing actual Call of Duty and as a total nerd, I thought it was Sweeeet! What a rush. I'm coming back here again soon, and I'm bringing an infinite amount of paint. I'll be the guy with the codename WARLOCK.

Who's the idiot with a gun in his mouth? Oh

We're pouring Sudwerk's Imperial Pilsner, which is essentially a German Pilsner that started taking Viagra. In fact, let's go as far as saying this was me while drinking it:

It tastes excellent. I can tell it's an imperial because its body is beefier than typical pilsners in order to accommodate the increase in alcohol (7%). There is a citrus smell and a slightly sweet body, a noticeably American addition. It has that clean pilsner finish and the alcohol presence is felt but doesn't distract. It's an all around great beer. THE ROCK rating.

Afterwords, I joined Tiff at Angels Piano Bar where a New Orleans style Jazz Sextet was playing to celebrate Mardi Gras. I had a Sazerac for the first time, which is rye whiskey and absinthe, and loved it. The band thumped out a bunch of classics and a few off the b-side.

Oyo como va...

Allgauer Teutsch Pilsner is the base for a Hollywood night

In Westwood with Jamie pre-partying for a bus ride in the cold rain to Hollywood for a going away party. Gonna be interesting, gonna be great!

This pilsner isn't that clear, it's a little bitter and over all it's not that great. But it was cheap, what did I expect? TRANSFORMERS 2 rating, don't waste your time - there are much better pilsners out there. 


...A quote from later on...The bus driver told us, "didn't know stars rode his bus." Ha totally, he's so right. How did he know I was famous Lesson learned, wear a sport coat and you'll get compliments on buses.

Victory Prima Pilsner is weird but in a good way, like going to the gym drunk

I actually picked my Ibanez up today after 8 months of collecting dust because one of my New Year's resolutions is to play the acoustic and electric guitar more. Now, I rarely make resolutions but for 2011 I have several, including using the apartment complex hot tub at least once (we've lived here 18 months and never used it), cooking dinner more (I takeout mucho), and learn to pair some of the beer I'm trying with food (and journal the experience to gain insight). It's the little things that make a new year better, not big ideas like gaining 30 pounds to make myself eligible for the Lap-Band.

The best and also the simplest explanation I can provide for the Prima Pilsner is to label it as a "hoppy pilsner," which is going against the type for pilsners. So If you like bitter beers, it's a peculiar but tasty treat. Otherwise, your tongue will ask why you let a Czech cross-dresser into your mouth. TRANSFORMERS rating.

Napa Valley Wedding Day 2 - Napa Smith Pilsner

Sunrise Napa Valley. Riddle me this, had I just woken up or was I just making it to sleep?

So I met with a gaggle of friends including Katie M, Billy D, Emily S, Katie B and Farbod, who needs no last initial (He's like Plato, Seal, McLovin or Sting. Especially like Sting) and forwent the expensive breakfast buffet for a rumored small cafe. Not only was the meal tasty and cheap but to my delight, I came across another Napa Smith brew, the Pilsner. Breakfast beer, yessssss.

Katie B's floating head. What a mug!

Whilst my Huevos Rancheros con extra salsa was just what the doctor ordered, the Pilsner was not. Pilsner is tough to make and I will Napa Smith credit, they made grape beer taste good. However, this fellow is a fairly ubiquitous pilsner and there's not much more to say, other than it lacked taste and goodness and it's hard to compete with the Germans in wine country. TRANSFORMERS 2 rating.

We went wine tasting in the afternoon and then onto the main event, Lauren and Chris's wedding!

Wedding on a golf course, b-e-a-utiful

Port Brewing Panzer Imperial Pilsner

A +1 and a -1 going for this beer. Positive because "imperial pilsner" sounds really interesting. Negative because there's a cartoon picture of a tank on the label.

First sip. Isn't this an IPA? Second sip. No, wow, I can definitely see what they mean by IMPERIAL pilsner. You can taste the Pils, but everything is on steroids. The hops are no longer subtle. The alcohol is no longer light. It's 9.5% and you can taste it, it's peppery and unmasked. But the malt is still light, strangely. An incredibly unique beer, though not perfect. I will buy this again so I can have a pair and see what else is left to discover. Impressed, and glad that my anticipation was rewarded.

This beer is R2-D2. Pilsners always seem to be the baby brother of specialty beers, the weak and vulnerable alternative to a American style definitely-shitty light beer. R2-D2 was, for a robot, The Man. He was always the rogue player in a situation, and didn't wouldn't care if the alcohol was too high or the hops to dank. R2-D2 partied. If I could type an R2 "beep, boop, whatever", I would.