My Second Entry - Breckenridge Brewery 471 Small Batch IPA

I'm back.

This is actually kind of surprising.  With two entries now, I have written more about myself in a single forum than I have since senior English in high school (Lewisville 1981).

Although I write for a living - and by most objective measures, I have been really good at writing - I have never considered myself a "writer."

This was not for lack of desire for the title.  I always wanted to be a writer, but there was always something missing.  It was simply that I did not have the need to write.

In my twenties, I was at a book reading (I think it was John Irving, but I can't be sure), and someone asked the author the question I had been asking myself: what makes someone a writer? In two words, this author punctured all of my pretensions about being a writer.  He said, "Writers write."

I didn't write, so I wasn't a writer.  Q.E.D.

This was a heavy realization for me at a young age.  Although I thought I had the stuff to be a good writer, I knew I was missing that X factor that makes it a vocation.

I'm not saying that I completely turned my back on the craft, however.  Over the years, I have written pieces for fun or scratch money.  I wrote a couple of humor pieces for the Houston Lawyer, including the before-its-time classic "Objection! and Other Legal Classics."  My friend Ed P. sent me assignments for a magazine he worked on called Private Clubs (sounds sexy, but it was a glossy house magazine for ClubCorp), which paid a dollar a word, pretty good work.  I entered the State Bar's short story contest a couple of times, but didn't win.

As my retirement nears, I have begun to entertain idea of writing professionally as one of my second-career options.  I'm not sure, however, if that train hasn't already sailed (nice mixed metaphor!)  I guess that's why I'm working this blog -- to see if this is the kind of thing that I would want to do in my dotage.

So far, it's been fun.  We'll see where it goes.

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A quick note in my own defense.  When I started this blog, I assumed that this idea was entirely original.  Fifty beers for fifty years - who would have thought of writing a blog about drinking fifty different beers in my fiftieth year?

Someone else, it turns out.

Here's how I found out.  A few days after my first entry, I checked the page hits on my blog and discovered that I had several page views.  This was before I started telling select friends about the blog, so I was a little shocked.  Was I going to acquire a following so quickly, especially with so little to say about beer?

The next day, I tested the hypothetical.  I ran "Fifty Beers for Fifty Years" on Google to see where my blog scored.  And there it was: Fifty Beers for Fifty Years, except it wasn't my Fifty Beers for Fifty Years.  The premise was the same: guy gets fifty beers from friends for his fiftieth birthday, and decides to write about it.  He even captioned each entry more or less the same as I did.

You may reasonably think I lifted the idea of this blog wholesale from that guy.  But I didn't - it was a total coincidence, and proof that in this wide world of ours, original ideas are rarer than you could imagine.

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This week's brew is the Breckenridge Brewery 471 Small Batch IPA.  Hand-selected from the refrigerator by my son, Josh, who was home alone with me tonight while Lisa and Sarah were at work. I asked him why he picked this one, and he told me that he was attracted by the "small batch" aspect and thought I'd enjoy it.

This should tell you something about my son.  He has a good heart (he could have tortured me with the jalapeño beer) and he is a designer-label kind of kid.  He also took this picture.

 

© jdurfee99

First thoughts: Here's another hoppy drink.  To be honest, I am having second thoughts about the idea of drinking all of the IPAs first.  They're flavor-forward, aggressive ales, but not what I would call relaxing.

As I drink, the hops dominate as you would expect, but there is less of a back-of-the-throat aftertaste than the Karbach Hoppadillo, and less of a metallic finish.  In the glass, I smell stone fruit, something like apricot, which is interesting because the color of the IPA is similar, making me wonder if I'm being influenced to some small degree by the appearance of the drink.  Into my second and third sips, I'm now weirdly catching a very light black pepper flavor.

Better than last week's Hopadillo?  Yep, and I would hope so, given its pedigree, according to the website:

471 is a small batch, limited edition ale that was created by our Brewmaster to separate the weak from the strong. 471 is a double IPA, that combines Pale, Munich, Caramel-30, Carapils and Torrified Wheat malts, with Chinook, Centennial, Simcoe and Fuggles hops. It has a big sweet mouthfeel, followed by more hoppiness than you've ever had at one time. 

Accordingly, we have a new champion, albeit by decision, not knockout.  I liked the 471, but I am already getting tired of the IPAs.  Next week, let's try something a little lighter.

See you then.