Alba Scots Pine Ale

AFFORDABILITY: I went into one of the fancy assed Charlottesville beer stores (the one right off soulless 29 where you almost knock down bottles by trying to walk down the aisles) to get something nice for me and the ol' lady to kick it with, but everything was too fucking expensive. They did have a 4-pack of Sammy Smith's Winter Welcome left, so I got that for the ol' lady, and I picked out a pair of single bottles of this bama here, at like $2.30 each, because it looked interesting as hell. I asked the dude if he had a 6-pack and he looked it up in his computerdora systematics and said, "There's 21 so we've got one around here, probably downstairs... I'll check," but I quickly realized 6 x 2much equals way too fucking much, so I just got the two bottles to give it a swig. 2 out of 5, because I was prepared to waste money that time.
DESTROYABILITY: It would seem to me a great white tradition of destruction would be honored by this beer, being it is some Scottish ass shit but a brewing style handed down by the vikings. You would think it would serve both the berserker and cable tosser in my DNA, and I certainly enjoyed the fuck out of the taste. But that pricetag man... it just made it hard to get destroyed. Even if I had bought a six-pack to slam with authority into my bloodstream, I would’ve sobered myself up along the way realizing I blew like $15 on a six-pack. But you can rest assured as we re-enter the world of homebrewing at the Rojonekku Compound in the coming months, some goddamned white trash crazy man heritage pine ale of some sort is a-gonna get bubbled up in the closet underneath the stairs. 1 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: A pine-colored kilt pattern patchwork in the background behind some runic ass looking letters... it all tests well with my blurry eyeballs. You know, by my last name and cursed bloodline heritage, I'm as much Scottish as anything else, so you think I'd know more about the white underclass history of that part of the world. Hell, I don't know shit about my Polish roots (great grandparents on my mom's dad's side both came through Ellis Island) nor my Norwegian ones (maternal grandmother was a midwestern orphaned eurotrash who grew up whatever town the Moose Lodge has for orphaned children). I should look that shit up, especially now that Varg Vikernes is out of jail and wants me to know my proud white roots so strongly. There's a loss of the white underclass traditions of so-called pagan religions, which without sounding all white power, probably needs to be remembered. You have the white overlord system that has used Christianity, notably Catholicism, to control mad shit for centuries, yet there's all these fucked up lost traditions that will stay lost because in 2010 we have such a white guilt thing going on that it seems creepy to research your particular brand of eurotrash heritage. But fuck that man; just because I'm white doesn't mean I come from slaveowners and gold stealers and Muslim eradicators and all that shit. That's probably just more nonsense the overlords use to keep the wretched of the European earth from digging into their historical oppressions and get all angrified about. It's better to pretend that because we are white, we are blessed, thus we equal the oppressors, thus we should feel bad about ourselves and our attached genealogical history. But as far up my crooked ass family tree I can see on both sides, it’s just a bunch of broke asses, misfits, and malcontents. If we were born blessed, somebody fucked that up generations ago. 5 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Allegedly made in Scotland by a brewer trying to use only ingredient indigenous to Scotland, and apparently, it being an old ass ancient brew, there are digestive benefits to the beer and it’s ideally drunk at room temperature after dinner. You see, beer nerds lose all these types of health beneficial tidbits in the process of getting all hopped up. My wife studied a time or two under this dude named Stephen Buhner who has a book called Wild Fermentation, and I’m way wrapped up in an ancient pride spiral the past couple of days for some reason. I should probably be consulting up in them pages for some old school goodness. Nonetheless, whoever the fuck is making this Alba Scots Pine Ale, they are doing something good that is not just like 58 other small breweries are doing, and I endorse such actions. I can’t really afford such a beer, but I can damn sure get the ingredients from the home brew store and conjure up my own batch of Scottish Viking spruce ale in the hallway. And that shit usually comes out about $1.50 per big 22 to 24 ounce bottle, which is all we bottle our homebrews in when we do it, because it’s less bottling, and really, who the fuck only drinks one beer? 5 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: As I convince myself it is now or never for jumping back into making the home brews, being expensive beers are too expensive and give little personal satisfaction, and now watery cheap beers I just can't go back to, like trying to go back to your skinny assed over-exercising wife always power walking with a heart monitor clipped onto her Adidas tank top after hooking up with a buxomy, bouncy, drunkenly Spanish chick one sordid weekend, I have to say the most influential beer on my mind is this Pine Ale. Vikings brought this tradition to Scotland? They use pine tree needles in the brewing process (which is super intriguing)? My long-buried Norse Gods are still up there wanting to smile down on me with their golden hammers of approval, and assuredly will bless my day-to-day life is I'm imbibe heavily of their chosen nectars of neuron destruction. Sweet. And though the Alba Scots Pine Ale is far too expensive for me to ever realistically even consider buying again, because I'd want to buy a batch of it and I can't afford a batch of it, because I am descended from raggedy Vikings and clannish Scots, not European elite with upright noses and easy lifestyles that when they feel they need more freedom from the confines of life, they get their money together, perhaps through parents, through themselves, through stocks and bonds or business opportunities or through whatever. Whether greedy racist or Prius liberal, those who can afford freedom afford it very well, and that's probably who this beer is more likely to be purchased by. But the tradition is mine, and I know how to fill a giant pot up with ingredients and cook it and put it in a five gallon bucket to ferment underneath the steps in the hallway, little fermentation trap "bla-blooop"ing it's way into my heart for a few weeks. And I can bottle it up because we've got a ton of old empties, and we can drink mighty amounts of the kilted berserker brew for less than a dollar a bottle, and we shall do so in my back yard this spring. And if the 1970s speaker on a milk crate covered with a tattered tarp has become too water-damaged from this winter's terrible snowstorms to play another song, I'll drag it's twin from inside the gypsy camper left on my property years ago, and we'll hook that one up, and drink our kilted berserker brews and let the music blare into the skies and watch the dogs run around goofily and the chickens cluck at the monstrous sounds and as it gets dark, the Christmas lights that I left up in the apple trees last summer will get a drop cord run out to them and we'll light the way into the early morning motherfuckers. 12 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 5 STARS!