Autumn Ale ESB

Autumn Ale ESB
Short's Brewing Co.
Elk Rapids, Michigan

It makes sense that a bargain hunter such as myself would be drinking this beer out of season simply to get more beer for the buck. Hell, I'd even buy them opened if it could be re-carbonated without losing its original flavor and body in the process. Since it can't be done I'll keep buying singles on the relative cheap over the inflated cost of a 6 pack that I would only drink just to consume. If only I could find a bum with a penchant for the sublime in both beer, sentiment and egalitarian brotherhood then perhaps I could have a blogging and drinking partner.

Beer blogging is a little bit more than a public forum for me, it's actually a bit of a reflex action. I've always typed since I can remember getting a typewriter when I was 4 or 5 years old. It would interest me enough for hours on end that I would produce a newspaper mainly of sports scores which my mammy and paps would pretend to read to mollify me. When I didn't have a typewriter I wrote in notebooks. Always writing away like a possessed imbecile.

It came as an odd revelation to me when I started hearing that many authors wrote with an audience in mind. To me that's like being married and we all know how successful that sort of relationship is. Anyhow, to save you the boredom of a poetic credo I came to understand that people do enjoy being told what they already know. Which is why I just usually say whatever comes to mind and half the time don't even know what the fark I'm talking about.

Now that my emo moment has passed I will tell you about the suds. The annexing of the Extra Special Bitter monogram into an autumnal ale both physically and textually causes quite a stirring in my cranium. Mainly because it's troublesome to separate, examine and dissect the expectant parts and thus I won't. It starts out surprisingly sour like something you'd expect from the Jolly Pumpkin line of ales and then morphs into many parts goodness. The main corpus is a thick hop zing that tingles your tongue like a happy herpes sore and languidly evolves into a dark malt and dull powdered chocolate affect. Not in a bad way at all because it lingers there like hot chocolate does after you've long finished it off and puts you into a sort of coma of self-indulgent relaxation. While there's some toastiness on the periphery it comes across more as a remnant of some burnt chocolate pudding crust and makes you go "nom nom nom" before you fall flat on your face into the couch cushions and die slow and happily only to be resurrected a few hours later.

-Wörtwurst