Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Redhook Saturnalia Double Red (2008) 8.0% ABV


It had been quite a spell since my last trip to Redhook. Oh the days of abbreviating a work day, planting one's ass in a booth and quaffing half a half dozen IPAs. Just enough to make things vibrate on the walk to the bathroom and forget the day's tedium. The tedium of the days of a storied time. A time when a man could drive a golf ball with a putter inside an office without regard for his coworker's safety. A time when a man could destroy window blinds with a thrown banana and blame it on the confluence of an open window and a pigeon. What a time that was.

How I longed for a taste of that wonderful IPA once more on Sunday, which brought us belly up to the great gilded copper beer holdy thing, and squarely into the radar of two patrons simmering with lust for Saturnalia. Having personally never heard of it, these folks insisted I try some, having assessed my hop expectation requirement/percentage enjoyment (HERPE) to be higher than average. Well, toddler size portion in-hand, I savored and sampled this allegedly sought after libation. At a minimum it couldn't suck that bad because little plastic hops adorned the tap handle.

At first, good! Hoppitty hop hop here we go. And not the rugged finish I expected; very abrupt finish compared to other heavily hopped creations I've had. But this icky awful sweetness. BLECK. This lingering sweetness ruined it for me. As soon as the Saturnalia junkies left the establishment, I put out a code red on a Long Hammer and barely had the self control to snap this picture before literally eating it with a carnal lust known only to serial killers and Cheeto junkies.

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