Good, Better, Weird.

So I've managed to find a few haunts for really interesting beer. Cambridge Wine & Spirits will even sell me a single, which is great because sometimes I want to try an interesting beer I've heard about (ahem, Dogfish Head Punkin'') but am thrilled not to have the other five sitting in my fridge for the rest of eternity. I also get a chance to find a large variety, ranging from things I've ogled on menus or old favorites I'm always happy to see again.

It's great to find Young's Double Chocolate Stout in a bottle. Usually, I'm accustomed to seeing this in cans, but bottles hold more. I'm already a huge fan of this beer. It's dark and well-roasted, with hints of malt sweetness and a deep, velvety creaminess.
The chocolate flavor came out a lot more in the bottle than in the can, and it's joined by sweet vanilla, raisin, and a curious smoothness (think Guinness, but with a lot more depth). I was reminded of a tootsie roll, and if it weren't getting so cold outside, this might go well with a scoop of vanilla ice cream floated in it.

Mussels, bread, cheese, and beer

Even better was the Ommegang Abbey Ale. We tried this with a giant pot of mussels steamed in white wine and aromatic vegetables. It's delicious, with beautiful depth of fruit, caramel, and a bit of citrus. Ommegang is a seriously strong beer (8.5% ABV), but it's a perfect bottle shared between two. The flavor is unrepentantly alcoholic, but there are a lot of additional layers on top as well: great yeast, malt, plum, and caramel round out a very rich and enjoyable glass. It's pretty aggressively carbonated, which has the effect of drying out each sip to a refreshing finish despite what was surprisingly sugary start to each sip. Ommegang is wonderfully complex, with a healthy buzz to boot. We found it to have gone really well with the celery and parsley notes of the mussels, as well as with the salty and buttery steaming liquid. It was also delicious with sauteed mushrooms and brie slathered on slices of baguette, but was rather wretched with olives. Just so's you know.

Werewolf Beer. Not good, but not bad. Lobster Lovers, to the right, is bad.

Finally, the weird. Werewolf is an offering from Lithuanian brewery Rinkuškiu Alaus Darykla. And it is, along with its sister beer, Lobster Lovers, a total gimmick beer. But given how totally crappy Lobster Lover was, I was really surprised how not-totally-crappy this was. Good really isn't a word for this beer: it's still pretty off. But unlike Lobster Lover, which was basically a 9.5% ABV combination of PBR and vodka (somebody get marketing on the phone!), Werewolf was dark, had an interesting malt flavor and some bitterness as well. It's tough to drink a whole bottle of this (the bottle had an extra neck-hanger advertisement with "8.2%!" emblazoned upon it) but it was surprisingly not crappy. Surprise food pairing: Lipton onion soup dip made with sour cream - the bitterness in the Werewolf cuts through the creaminess of the dip, while the malt accentuates the artificial caramelized sweetness of the onions. I totally bought the Lobster Lover for its ridiculous label (why yes, I read Above The Law), and now this. A quick (and haphazard) perusal of their English website mentions neither of these abominations: apparently they are for idiot Americans only.

I should mention, incidentally, The Daily Beast's list of the 50 least fattening beers. None of these beers is worth drinking. Ever. Ew.