Love Is A Joke With No Punchline.

See what happens when I make up a title before I write a post? I end up with something that sounds like I stole it from a fortune cookie. But I did not steal it from a fortune cookie. It would be a pretty crappy fortune. But yet it seems to ring true. I am a friggin genius.

But I did steal it. So I am not the genius. Someone else is. But if you do not know where I stole it from - then forget I said that. I did not steal it, I made it up on my own.

I need some new Iguana Music. I have a few song candidates but have not decided on anything.

But this not what I wanted to type about. I wanted to type about....BEER! Yes beer. I went back to Hops for dinner. I went there years ago when the place at The Falls first opened. Anyway the place sucked. The steak was good, but the beer was shitty. It had this "bleach" like taste to it. But the worst of all was my fork. There was crap stuck to it. So I asked for another one. They brought me another fork with crap stuck to it. What the hell? The place had been open for like 2 days! And did the server bother to look at the other fork? NO! They did not even do the "scrape the shit off the fork out of view and pretend it is a new clean fork" thing. So I scraped the fork off myself.

But this was a long time ago. This time I did not get a fork with mystery stuff dried onto it. And the beer was good. I had their "Alligator Porter" and their "Hammerhead Red". The Hammerhead was my favorite of the two. Their light beer tastes like Miller Lite. The food was pretty good too. I had some meatloaf stuff with peppercorn sauce. It was good. So I may have to change my opinion of the place. I like the beer at Titanic better, but the food at Hops is better. So that means I like Titanic better.

At Sanibel there are not any chain supermarkets. In fact, the island bans chains. There is a chain drug store, some chain gas stations, a 7-11 that never gets robbed, and a Dairy Queen. But that is it. There are two supermarkets - Jerry's and Baileys. Baileys had a pretty decent beer selection. So the day I left I bought four 6 packs. Full Sail IPA, Left Hand Brewery "Sawtooth Ale", Dale's Pale Ale (comes in cans!!!) and Harpoon IPA.

I bought a 6 pack of the Full Sail on Saturday. And it was good. So I drank it all. And I bought more because of its IPA goodness. But IPA is not really a hot weather kind of beer. It is fairly "heavy". It usually has a higher than average alcohol content, and a lot of hops bitterness. On a hot summer day out in the boat I want something lighter and more refreshing. Like a Sam Adams Summer Ale or something. Anyhow the Full Sail is good shit.

The Dale's Pale Ale comes in cans. I had one. It is strange. It is not the typical beer in a can. I would not call it an IPA, but I guess it is a pale ale. What the hell is the difference? Well a long time ago the British had a problem. How do you ship beer to India without it going bad? Well the popular beer of that era was the pale ale. So brewers took the pale ale and added more hops. A lot more hops. The alpha acids in the hops act as a natural preservative. And make the beer "bitter". And so the India Pale Ale was born.

Now this Dale's stuff is something else. It has the color I am used to. And there is some hops kick to it. But the beer is more "malty" than hoppy - yet it is not too sweet. I do not know if I like it or not. I have to drink more to figure that out. So far I am leaning towards liking it. Even if it is in a can.

The Harpoon IPA has a lighter color than most IPAs I have consumed. And it seems to have a "lighter"character as well. The hops flavor is there. It is pretty good. In fact, by using the lighter malt they can use less hops to give it that kick. This means it has the character of what I would call a lighter, refreshing beer and yet the hops bitterness is still there. If I could find more of this stuff I would try it out on the boat and possibly have a new summertime boat beer!