Hogwild IPA - Aviator Brewing Company

    Hogwild IPA is an American India Pale Ale created by Aviator Brewing Company which is located in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. After writing my previous beer review (Caged Alpha Monkey), I've come to fear beers with psychotic animals and lots of hops flowers on the label. You might say that I'm once bitten by a rabid hops animal, twice shy.

    I received this beer as part of my beer club's all cans month. I have mentioned before that I really like canned beers.

    The IPA pours a light golden orange with a large, thick head. I very lightly poured the beer and still ended up with the head nearly overflowing the glass.

    The beer smells like sweet citrus fruits, mainly grapefruit. Light malts can also be smelled.

    Hogwild is medium-light bodied with a medium-high level of carbonation. I was expecting there to be even more carbonation the way the beer exploded in my cup, so this is somewhat of a relief. There is no alcohol harshness to the beer which has an alcohol content of 6.7% ABV.

I've never really thought of pigs as "wild"...

    Aviator's IPA is actually quite well balanced. Sweet malts keep the piney bitterness from becoming unpleasant. While I would have liked more of a flowery hops profile to the beer, I have to admit that the more classic IPA flavors are very well done in this beer.

    Apparently when you feed hops flowers to pigs they become muscly ex-military slavering beasts! I can't believe that this isn't taught to us at an earlier age. I mean, imagine how easily a farmer could plant his hops near to his pig sty. All it would take would be one loose gate screw and BAM! ARMY OF CRAZED WILD HOGS! Terrifying.

    I was very relieved to find that this IPA was much better balanced than my previous experience. I have to keep in mind that I am rating this beer as itself, rather than rating it in comparison to other beers. Hogwild is a well done IPA, but doesn't add anything to the tried and true formula.

Amulets and Ale Rating:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Xbox 360

     Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a First-Person Shooter developed by Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer games. It is published by Activision, and released in 2011 on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, and Wii. Not only is this the third installment of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare storyline, it is also around the 15th or so Call of Duty game to be released since the original Call of Duty hit PCs back in 2003. Chances are, you're familiar with the series if you have been gaming for any length of time.

Caged Alpha Monkey - CB's Brewing Company

    Caged Alpha Monkey is an American India Pale Ale brewed by CB's Brewing Company which is located in Honeoye Falls New York. The bottle's tagline reads that this is a "bold, East Coast animal that throws hops at you!" This beer was donated the Amulets and Ale by Emily Hohman.

    The American IPA pours somewhat hazy, bright copper color with around a finger of white head. The head leaves a slight lacing down the glass as the beer is consumed.

    Caged Alpha Monkey smells very hoppy with noticeable malt undertones. The hops aroma contains a mix of citrus and flowery tropical fruit with a little bit of pine resin.

    The beer is medium bodied and moderately carbonated. The beer finishes mostly dry with a little bit of oily resin left coasting the mouth. At 6.5% ABV, there is no noticeable alcohol character.

There are much worse things than hops that the monkey
could throw at you...

    Caged Alpha Monkey is very bitter. From the beer's aroma, I was hoping that there would be great, fruity, flowery hops flavors in the beer. Instead, there is solely overpowering, piney bitterness. The malt profile is almost non-existent, so the bitter hops are free to run wild amongst your taste buds. What is worse than the overpowering bitterness is the bitter and sour aftertaste that stays in your mouth long after swallowing the beer.

    The image I came up with for this beer has me thinking. Why don't we have beer zoos? Or even better, maybe we could get a bunch of different people drunk and lock them in cages while we watch what they do. You know, an interesting thing that I have noticed about humans is that generally we are okay with (joking about) doing weird things like this to each other, but if I were to even mention for a second that we get monkeys, rhinos, and giraffes drunk; PETA or some other organization would jump down my throat. For some reason, people tend to outwardly care more about animals than our own brothers and sisters. I'm not really up to the task of figuring out this bit of human psychology at the moment, but it's definitely an interesting issue to think on.

    As anyone familiar with this blog knows, I am a huge fan of hoppy beers. Unfortunately, Caged Alpha Monkey falls into a category of IPAs which I have called "novelty" IPAs. These beers seek only to compete on a bitterness level. Breweries attempt to see just how much heavy hitting hops bitterness they can pack into a normal beer for some sort of non-existent "beer cred". Nobody wins with beers like this. They are horribly unbalanced, they are off-putting, and nobody would ever buy them more than once for any reason other than "hey Billy, try this!" and then laughing at his face when he tastes it. It isn't just the "odd" breweries doing this either. Even some of my most respected breweries have at least one beer which falls into this novelty category. I really wish that they would just stop.

Amulets and Ale Rating:

Bell's Best Brown Ale - Bell's Brewery Inc.

    Bell's Best Brown Ale is a Brown Ale created by Bell's Brewery Inc. which is located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. This specific beer was donated to Amulets and Ale by Cale Nearing.

    The beer pours a dark garnet-brown with a large brown head that leaves a good amount of lacing on the glass.

    The Brown Ale smells like toasty malts as well as an almost metallic smell.

    The ale is medium bodied with a medium level of carbonation. The beer is very smooth and creamy.

    The Brown Ale's flavor is mainly sweet. Toasty malts and cocoa flavors predominate, with a slight hops bitterness to balance the sweetness. There is a sweet, almost caramel flavor to the beer as well. There is no alcohol warmth or flavor to the ale, which at 5.8 ABV is not surprising.

    I find the label choice for this beer interesting. Anyone who has ever seen an owl knows that their eyes are open WAY too wide to have consumed any alcohol. From strictly scientific observation of my friends while they drink, I have learned that eyes become more and more squinty as alcohol is consumed. If anything, owls are addicted to coffee. I mean, they're nocturnal, right? Up all night chasing (small woodland creature) tail, eyes wide and extremely alert. You can't tell me that these things aren't hopped up on caffeine. I would also like to comment on the fact that the owl on the bottle is looking at you somewhat condescendingly. He even has one eyebrow raised, as if to say, you're going to drink My beer? I don't know about you, but I don't really like elitist, caffeine addicted owls.

    Bell's Best Brown Ale is not at all a bad beer. In fact, I've never had a Bell's beer that wasn't serviceable. Unfortunately, I find this beer to be a very average Brown Ale, which is fine for a night of drinking, but if I were to look for a tasty treat of a Brown Ale, this would not be it.

Amulets and Ale Rating:

Skies of Arcadia: Legends - Nintendo Gamecube

    Skies of Arcadia: Legends is a Japanese style Role Playing Game released in 2002 for the Nintendo Gamecube. Originally developed by Overworks and released in 2000 on the Sega Dreamcast, Skies of Arcadia was ported to the Gamecube as an enhanced edition. I'm incredibly thankful for this port as I never owned the "so-far-ahead-of-its-time-that-it-failed" Dreamcast, and as such, would never have gotten the chance to experience such a great game.
 
    The Gamecube port includes a graphical upgrade as well as all of the extra content that the Dreamcast version got via downloads. Some quests and the game structure have changed between versions, though the Gamecube version is still, at its core, the same game that was seen on the Dreamcast.