skinny girls & mayonnaise

I like to do beer reviews from time to time, especially when I discover a new beer that sets my heart a flutter.

Such was the case recently when I was out to lunch at a beer chain place called Yard House with my father and brothers. I was looking over the comprehensive list of beers on tap, including plenty of favorites and plenty I’d never heard of, when I spotted a chalk board with some special selections. I picked one whose name I liked, and which was local — Ballast Point Sculpin IPA from San Diego. And imagine my surprise when here, in my glass, was one of the best beers I’d ever tasted!

It must’ve been a zeitgeist kind of thing, because suddenly I was noticing Sculpin references everywhere — the way when your heart is broken every sad song you hear is speaking directly to you. My pal Nat showed up at my house one evening with a couple of bottles; I went to a party, and there they were; and perhaps most significantly, strolling the beer aisle of my local supermarket, they practically leapt out at me from the top shelf. I’ve had some in my fridge ever since.

It wasn’t with that first beer — or two — at lunch at the Yard House that day, but rather as I shared Nat’s beers and enjoyed the ones in my fridge, that I had an epiphany. This beer tasted very much like one of my other most favorite beers, the ridiculously impossible-to-get Pliny the Elder. For months, I’d hunted Pliny all over the city and written about it in a three-part series on my blog before scoring a cherished six bottles (which I still haven’t drank, by the way). I’d felt foolish, sitting at a traffic light in some remote part of the metropolis, en route to a potential Pliny source, certain everyone in all the cars around me were laughing and pointing.

Like Pliny, the defining characteristics of Sculpin are a fresh, piney happiness that is up front but not overwhelming, a gentle tingly carbonation, and a light sweetness that lingers on the palate.

I googled “Ballast Point Sculpin + Pliny the Elder” and found that I was not the first to notice a similarity — the web was already alight with comparisons. One beverage blogger and his mates did a blind tasting, and discovered that to-a-man, they all preferred the Sculpin. Since I had a couple bottles of Pliny in the cupboard, and a couple Sculpins in the fridge, maybe I’d do a taste test myself.

Not that it really mattered much. I didn’t need to pick a favorite, I loved both beers. But besides costing considerably less, Sculpin had one great advantage over Pliny. I could buy it at the grocery store 10 minutes from my house.

Take that, Pliny.