RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Monday, January 4

St. Peter's Cream Stout


AFFORDABILITY: The St. Peters Cream Stout was not cheap, but it came in a stubby limey beer bottle, in a limey color even, and looked like the type of thing that would make for a good homemade vinegar jar, so my wife was all convincing me to get it up inside the fancy assed Wegman's in northern Virginia. I drank that bitch that night, once we finally got home from Hell. 2 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: I don't know, with such a great shaped bottle and odd limey color, I guess I expected more. Gennessee Cream Ale also sets a high and cheap bar for Cream beers, and I don't think I fully wrapped my head around the word combination of "cream" and "stoudt". It didn't work well, and I felt like I was drinking out of a balsamic vinegar bottle to boot. 1 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: The bottle with label looks a lot like some sort of nice vinaigrette. I don’t like vinaigrettes really. My favorite thing lately is taking the frying pan, a big old black Wagner one, not some pussy aluminum teflon cancer zone bullshit Wal-Mart thing, and cooking down a ton of garlic in olive oil, and then throwing in two bags of fresh spinach, stirring it all up, cutting the heat off and throwing a lid on top of the pan. Except it’s an old ass frying pan so there are no fitted lids, so I take a big metal lid from some sort of thrift store pot or dutch oven from some point in my ramshackle life, and put it on upside down, with the handle poking into the pan, because it’s too big and won’t seal the food up right side up. Let that sit there for a five minutes, make yourself some basmati or jasmine rice well beforehand, man that’s my shit right now. Hook up some boneless chicken thighs with a little hot sauce, hell yeah bitch. But the St. Peter’s Cream Stout doesn’t jibe with all that. 2 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: I can't find the vinegar bottle so I looked inside the interwebs about St. Peters Brewery, and they were just built at some point in the 1990s, in some rural English bullshit, using well water for their beer, and talked up some good-sounding jive about brewing in the old ways, making fruit beers in the summer and spice beers in the winter, to keep it real. Near us is a place called The Frontier Culture Museum, a living history joint with old world houses bought, torn down, and put back up at this place, plus a couple of different American era houses, and their building up an African mudhouse spot as we speak. Often times we go there as we have a family membership... in fact, we went a couple Christmas Eves in a row but had to avoid it this year because of weather, the girls all wearing old fashioned clothes, and last year I wore some white shirt that looked like a pirate colonist shirt of some sort that I'm not sure where came from into my house, with some overalls. Often times when at this Frontier Culture Museum, I wish me and my wife could sneak in, build a fire in the old English house, drink homemade beer and have crazy sex, traditional style. The fact someone involved with St. Peters probably is a perv like that too makes me feel better, I guess because if you are a degenerate and a stain upon society's fine upstanding front facade, it's nice to have some strength in numbers. But honestly, if we went to Staunton to sneak into the Frontier Culture Museum after hours, more likely we'd go up the hill beside it to the giant abandoned hospital that looks and feels like it was probably some sort of mental institution since it has metal grates over the outside of the balconies and all. I have wanted to break into that place at night for years, and get really high, and wait for ghosts to freak me out, but none come, so you just get freaked out anyways because it's an old ass building and all dark and unelectrified and your already tweaked out by environment so drugs just compound your personal interest. 5 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: For such an impressive looking bottle that said "Cream Stout" this turned out to be a letdown. Hell, hanging out in Wegman's trying to decide which of their 7000 beers I've never had was the highest point for this St. Peters beer. I guess for me the entire cream genre is angled by Gennessee Cream Ale, abundantly packed in batches of 30 inside of crude heavy handled boxes that can be toted around to put behind the passenger seat of the truck to go somewhere else and take it out to go inside their house and drink some more of it and then have plenty of left for the drive home and the end of the night wind-down and the next afternoon as well. This stupid goofy bottle of St. Peters Cream Stout is no match for such a memorable experience, and is doomed as nothing better than second fiddle, but probably second violin, with its pretentious ass bullshit. 0 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 2 STARS!

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