Hello and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe’s Ongoing Segment, Adventures in Alcohol, which is basically just one man’s tasting notes from tastings he arranges himself. So the ultimate in pedantic Pacific Northwest taste-making. And since I’m a bearded liberal whose brother works in a brewery, this really is something close to my ultimate form.

Anywho, today’s post is a LITTLE weird, due to scheduling missteps. See, I actually did the tasting for this post back in July, shortly after our last Adventure in Alcohol. But then I did two theme months for August and September, and in trying to tackle those topics, I forgot all about it. (Also, I was, under the advice of a doctor, avoiding alcohol for most of September, so it would have been a little irritating to do alcohol based posts. It also hilariously means I pre-empted by brother’s invitation to partake in “Sober October”, since I’d JUST finished a “Sober September”)

Technically, it was a Sober “Last week of August until the Third Week of September”, and that’s because that damn Mushroom Pie drove me to drink.
(Actually, it was because I ended up on Painkillers for the last week of August, so I couldn’t drink ANYWAY, so I said “Hey, may as well start my month of no-alcohol now!”)

Thus, some of this information may not be very useful to you, as there are a couple seasonal beers mentioned, and the season for them is LONG over. (Well, I mean, Summer only ended like, a week and a half ago, but I presume they moved on in Mid-september.) Not that it’s going to be super useful for many people anyway, since it’s a return to Cash Brewing, a local brewery and long-time family favorite spot.

Before you click that link, I will warn you that adventure happened in March of 2017, so you WILL get to see me be optimistic about my father’s recent hospitalization, because it was literally like, 5 days before his cancer diagnosis. So if that’s something that will bother you…too bad, because we definitely will direct you to go read the post later on, so just buckle in for some dramatic irony, folks.

Because the OTHER important change between the O’Guin household of March of 2017 and October of 2019 is that NATHAN is here, so we were able to force him to try the beers and give us opinions about them. Now, Cash Brewing is constantly trying out new beers, so we actually have 7 “new” beers. I marked it with air quotes because…well, you’ll see. So let’s stop dawdling and start modeling malts (I’m sorry, I just really wanted a rhyme.) as we tackle another suite of beers.

As always, this is not the verbatim transcript of the discussion, but it’s close.

Corey’s Golden Straw Ale

I was about to say they missed a great chance for “Rapunz-ale”, until I remembered that Golden Straw is the OTHER R-Z fairy tale character. So I guess it’s “Rumplest-ale-stkin”?

ABV 5.6%  IBU 22

Nate: this is like someone mixed an IPA- No, an AMBER, with Coors Light, and just said “fuck it”.

Mom: I like it!

Jon: This is a fine beer. I don’t disagree with Nate’s characterization of it, but I don’t say it with nearly as much disgust as he does.

Smooth Sailing IPA

Mixing Beer and Sailing hasn’t gone smoothly since we stopped using Grog as a ration.

ABV 6.5%, IBU’s 56

Mom immediately flinches after drinking the beer.

Nate: I don’t like Tropical IPAs, but I do like this.

Mom: This is Tropical?

Nate/Jon: Yes.

Mom: Don’t act like I should know that. I didn’t read the menu.

Nate: But you TASTED the beer, and that should have told you.

Mom: What am I supposed to taste.

Nate: Tropical. (a half-beat) Fruit.

Mom: I just taste Hops.

Nate: Well, it tastes like Grapefruit.

Mom: Grapefruit isn’t tropical!

Nate: It’s a CITRUS. THOSE are Tropical!

Jon: Mostly.

Nate: Didn’t you read Jon’s post?

Mom: I don’t THINK of them as tropical.

Nate, after a moment: Yeah, that’s fair, I guess.

Jon: They’re a little more bitter than the more tropical kinds.

Mom: Like, an orange, I get tropical . Limes, I get. Pineapple.

Jon: Pineapple aren’t citrus.

Mom: I’m gonna smack you.

Jon, moving on to avoid violence: this is pretty light for an IPA, and fairly…let’s agree “fruity” at least. I don’t like IPAs in general and I’d say it’s pretty good.

Board Track Belgian Dubbel

Under the Board Track
We’ll be out of the sun
Under the Board Track

ABV 8.7% IBU 20

Mom: This one’s Good!

Nate: Mmhm. I don’t like this type of beer. (Nate, for a former brewery worker, really doesn’t like most beers.)  but it’s…well, not GOOD, but it is what it is.

Jon drinks the beer, and spasms away from it like he’s been possessed, or got shocked by the beer.

Jon: Ugh, I get a…like a weird nail-polish taste. Kinda like you get in cheap sake.

Mom: I don’t drink cheap sake.

Note: it is at THIS point that I realized I was basically already doing an Adventure in Alcohol, so I popped up my phone and began furiously typing what had already been said, delaying my tasting of the next beer, and the next bit of comments.

Huckus Carcass Winter Ale

I’ve never hunted Huckus before, so I have no idea if this is much like its carcass.

9.5% IBU 15

Nate: In the time it took you to write everything down, I’ve forgotten what this beer tasted like entirely. But I know I don’t want to try it again. Tell the people that, so they may understand me better.

Jon: It’s certainly not hugely impactful. I get a LITTLE bit of that nail polish thing again, but it’s not as in-my-face as the last beer, so it’s okay.

Mom: Does this have Huckleberry in it? (Nate and Jon both shrug) It has a kind of Berry taste.

At this point, the food had arrived, so we had started eating, which may have influenced our taste buds. The drinks are also warming, since drinking, discussing, and writing take a while, so we’re probably getting more/different flavors than you get if you just go to town.

ALSO at this point, Tommy Cash, the Cash of Cash Brewing, arrives at the table. A long-time friend of Mom and Nate from when the brewery was in Port Orchard, he chats them up. He and I are NOT long-time friends, as I was at college when the brewery was in town, so he and I are still getting to know each other somewhat.  In an attempt to break the ice, I jokingly accuse our server of neglecting us. I realize immediately this was not a great idea, as if it gets back to her, I will likely suffer in some capacity. I resolve to flee the brewery as soon as possible.

Just a couple drinks for the road…

Our next Beer is the 9 Ball Citra, which, as it turns out, isn’t really a “new beer”, so much as a seasonal beer they decided to put on the menu more reliably. And it was seasonal…back in March 2017. A point we did not realize, so we gave it a full, if very brief review

Nate/Jon/Mom: This is pretty good.

It’s a Citra Pale Ale, so it’s like a low-power IPA.

Another reason this review is short is, as Tommy and I are not well-acquainted, I felt weird asking to record our impressions of his beers since I am a social coward. So I refrained from typing notes as much as possible while he was present. Luckily, I was given a window to type, as her discovered that our server said that they were out of the seasonal beers, a statement he does not believe to be true, that he will correct for us, his good friends. I worry even more deeply about my earlier joke regarding our server’s neglect. He returns with the seasonal beers, both Trippels. (I’ll explain the pattern of Dubbel and Trippel ales another time, but in short, it means it is a Belgian style ale with a certain type of malt used.)

Cash Money Trippel

With beer names like Cash Money, they’re openly INVITING the Wu-Tang References.

ABV 9.7%  IBU 30

This is Mom’s preference of the two.

Nate liked them both. (Again, I have moved to summarizing rather than directly quoting, because the owner is standing right here asking our opinions.)

I realize that I think the banana-like quality of Belgian yeasts is what was really hit me with the Dubbel earlier, as there’s notes of that same force here, but it’s much more enjoyable now. Whether that’s because the Trippel is lighter, or because I’m several drinks deeper in, remains a mystery.

Highway to Tripel

Trip-Hell is just Hell, but clumsier.

ABV 7.6%  IBU 28

This is my preference of the two.  Thumbs up.

Nate: I don’t really like Belgians, (he repeated, for Tommy’s sake) and I’d be fine with either one of these.

Tommy, pleased the seasonals appealed to us, departs, so that I can resume writing.

We begin the second flight, which consists mostly of beers we’ve already had, except MAYBE the hefeweizen? I didn’t use the name in my notes, so I don’t know if it’s the Scarves Up..Oh, wait.

I doubt they have many Hefeweizens with “s Up” in the title.

Okay, so it IS, and we did cover it. Anywho, here’s what we thought today.

Mom: I had this before he brought the trippels, and I liked it. Now that I’ve had the trippels, I don’t like it.

Nate: Well, I don’t really like hefes in general (seriously, it’s basically just IPAs and some reds. Maybe a stout or two.) so I wouldn’t order it, but if it were put in front of me? I’d drink it.

Jon: This is fine.

Our tasting excursion is interrupted, as the day is not just any day at Cash Brewing, but they’re currently hosting Wild Tonic, a purveyor of Hard Kombuchas, a drink I’m going to have to eventually discuss on this site, I suppose. They had Blueberry Basil, Raspberry Rose, and Mango Ginger varieties. The blueberry Basil was surprisingly good (my family do not, in general, drink many kombuchas, so it was a surprise to us.)  In order, we agreed that BB was the best, then  MG, and finally RR.

We covered the rest of the beers in our previous post, but we’ll quickly add Nate’s opinions.

Home Run Red: This is a perfectly fine red. I like my reds a little maltier, but this is fine.

Pot Bunker Pale ale: I’m getting some banana on this one. (I feel like a quarter of our opinions on beers is “this tastes like bananas”)

Touchdown Brown: Touchdown Brown is one of my favorite beers.

You can’t hear it in writing, but his cadence there was almost exactly like Shepard endorsing every shop on the Citadel for cheaper goods.

Top Spin: (nate’s opinion not noted)

This is apparently our Server’s favorite beer (or so she said, after poisoning it to get her revenge). And mom thinks it was one Dad liked.

Jon: Maybe it’s the alcohol talking, but I like this one. Let’s check last time’s notes. What did Past Jon think? Huh. Didn’t like it. Well, it was his first beer, so maybe I don’t like it sober.

Nate: you know, Touchdown Brown was the beer they used in that great butternut squash soup at that beer dinner they put on, right mom?

At this point, Nate wasn’t talking about the right beers anymore, I was contradicting Past me, and it was time to go. We hope you enjoyed this tour of beers available in July at a local brewery. Check out Cash brewing if you’re in Silverdale. We recommend the Dry Rub Wings as an appetizer.  I’m really tired now. Good night.

MONDAY: THAT SOUNDS LIKE A SUNDAY JON PROBLEM.

THURSDAY: OH, MAN. LET ME TELL YOU HOW LITTLE I’VE PLANNED.