Quick Shout to Big Clout

Oh there are so many things to take a man's attention away from his passions: horrible days at work, cars that give you erections, catatonically staring at the computer screen hoping a certain comment writer will read a certain blog post and respond with new and hilarious misspellings.  But once in a while I manage to sneak away and have a night with just me and the lady.  She is my whole world, and she encourages my alcoholism beer love with gusto.  So, even when we're out to a romantic dinner, or having a chill night alone, she never hesitates to let me down a new beer and blabber on about Plato (a unit for measuring the Original Gravity of a beer) or Belgian yeast strains without batting an eyelash.  She even pretends to be into it.  I mean, nothing ruins a sentimental starlit meal like asking the waiter for a Shitstorm IPA or a Dead Racist Oatmeal Stout, but I'll be damned if she doesn't encourage it.  (TRADEMARK!)

The other night we went to one of our guilty pleasures: Stand, right outside Union Square.  The burgers are great, the sides are meh, but the milkshakes.  THE FUCKING MILKSHAKES.  Being boring stay-at-home losers with foodie pretensions means we watch a lot of Food Network.  When Michael Symon said he drank THREE of this place's Toasted Marshmallow milkshakes on Best Thing I Ever Ate, we had to go.  The peanut butter cup milkshake?  Heaven.  The Chocolate Mint Cookie?  Delicious.  Apple Pie?  They BLEND A PIECE OF PIE INTO IT.  But the Toasted Marshmallow milkshake is the kicker.  It is so good that if killing puppies was the only way to make the milkshake come to be, we would be farm-raising the little Fidos for slaughter.

Anyway, they happen to have a nifty beer list too (when they aren't out of everything).  Though they were out of the Captain Lawrence Smoked Porter for the second time (I guess I'm not the only one who thinks it sounds good with a burger), they had Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold.  Captain Lawrence is really gaining lots of steam here, as they are a NY state brewery, but people have been losing their shit over CL with extreme dementia well beyond what I expect.  So, I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Well Captain Lawrence, let me say, Liquid Gold is unbelievably wonderful.  Even with food that it didn't belong in the same room with; even in a glass meant to hold . . . I don't know . . . a lame mojito or something; even when it wasn't my first choice.  This beer kills.  Incredible bursting fruity notes of pineapple and lemon that explode on the tongue with force but without overwhelming the delicate grass and prominent - yet easy to screw up - Belgian yeastiness.  How this all balances, I have no clue.  I've truly never tasted anything like it.  It is so crisp, so bold and refreshing, so addicting . . . it's like drinking one of those yellow smiley faces.  I want one now.  But sadly I have not.

So, even though Captain Lawrence really should have me review his (or uh . . . her, but probably not) beers with a comprehensive hand and a panoramic view of the whole line, I can't.  Because I can almost never find his damn beers.  But suffice it to say that Liquid Gold is a really monumental achievement.  Just fantastic.  Thought you should know.