Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

North Coast Roadtrip travelog #10
Fort Bragg · Sun, 27 Jul 2025, 5:30pm

After hiking at MacKerricher state park we drove into town in Fort Bragg. One thing I'm always keen to do when I'm here is visit North Coast Brewing.

My plan as we rolled into town was to stop briefly at the brewery's store, across the street from their pub, and just buy a few six-packs of hard-to-find beers instead of stopping to drink a few tastes. But the store is no more! Or rather, the store is now inside the pub. Inside the pub, of course, is also the pub. 🤣 And they're reopened their old-school pub room that was closed when I visited here several years ago in the post-Covid mess. Hawk was good with taking a break from the drive, so I sidled up on a bar stool and ordered a sampler.



This sampler isn't like my first visit to the brewery years ago when they poured a gonzo sampler with 14 beers on it. 😳 They serve four beers at a time, though the glasses are a bit larger than before, 4oz. vs. 2.5.  I started with a pick of 4 then added 2 more since Hawk was good taking a rest from the road.

The six beers I tried today are:

• Blue Star wheat beer. I picked this wheat beer to anchor the light end of the lineup. I've enjoyed it before and rarely see it in stores.


• Acme Beer, an American lager. This style isn't one I normally pick out of a lineup but I was curious here because it's new. And I'm glad I tried it because I was reasonably impressed. It's got a stronger flavor than most American lagers do, and none of the skunky taste or aftertaste that most American lagers have. I liked it at least as much as Blue Star.


• Old No. 38 stout. This is described as a Dublin dry stout. It definitely has a dry, almost woody, character. It's not as creamy Guiness Stout. It tasted kind of like if Guiness was a bloke who got drunk and punched you in the mouth. I mean, it's okay; the punch in the mouth was playful. 🤣 But when I want a stout I'd rather have a Guiness. Or maybe a peanut butter chocolate milk dessert-in-a-glass stout.


• PranQster is one I've always enjoyed at the brewery and bought a few times at the store. It's a Belgian style golden ale with a higher than normal ABV, 7.6%. (Dunno if that's higher than normal for the variety, but it's higher than normal for normal beer, which normally comes in at around 4.5%.)


• Le Merle is another beer I've had before, both at the brewery and through stores around home. As Belgian style farmhouse ale it's very similar to PranQster. When I've tried them back-to-back in the past I've often had a slight preference for Le Merle. Today I struggled to tell them apart. But they're both good, so I'd be happy having more of either one.


• Brother Thelonius is a Belgian style abbey ale that I've always enjoyed. The name is a pun, of course. Abbey ale is traditionally made by monks in an abbey. And Thelonius is a callout to the musician Thelonius Monk. Cheesy name aside, it's a really good beer. Though it did take me a while to warm up to it years ago. At a higher alcohol concentration, 9.4%, twice that of normal beer, and with a strong flavor, it's a beer that's best enjoyed when sipped like wine.

I stopped by the store in the pub on my way out the door to grab some packs for take-home. I would've been willing to buy both PranQster and Le Merle but I figured I can find them easily enough in stores at home. Thus I focused on Blue Star, which is usually out of stock. Except it was out of stock here, at the brewery store, too! I picked up a few four-packs of Brother Thelonius because it was at a good price compared to local stores; plus a six-pack of Acme Beer because it's new and it impressed me and I haven't seen it at retail yet.

North Coast Roadtrip travelog #2
Garberville · Fri, 25 Jul 2025, 10pm

In my previous blog I wrote about our Friday Night Halfway trip to the tiny town of Garberville. I pushed out thats blog as quickly as possible this evening after arriving in Garberville and settling in to the hotel because I wasn't sure how much time I'd have for more. Well, there's a whole lot of nothing to do in this town on a Friday night, so here comes part 2. I'm calling this Postcards From Garberville.



The drive up US 101 this evening was pleasant once we got out of the San Francisco area. Once past the 8- to 10-lane stretches of superhighway— and the loss of lanes in the Novato Narrows as my friend Dave says it's called— 101 is a really pretty road. The photo above comes from somewhere above wine country in Mendocino County. Yeah, the road is narrowing there, too. It's one of the few places in far northern California where 101 isn't a 4-lane highway.

Of course that spot, climbing through the golden hills, isn't the narrowest....



In a few spots in Humboldt County US-101 narrows considerably as it winds through groves of redwood trees. Yes, there are redwood parks up here, including Redwood National Park, but you don't even have to go into a park to see these magnificent trees. They're right on the road. You have to slow down and steer not to hit them.



We pulled off Highway 101 into Garberville just before sunset Friday evening. You can actually see most of the town in this photo if you squint. 😅 That's our motel with the "MOTEL" sign just down the hill.



In a town this small you don't expect your motel to be the Waldorf Astoria... or even the Hampton Inn. We stayed at a no-name motel that was strictly basic accommodations. A bed, a roof, a shower... and, since it's not 2005 anymore, a mini fridge, a microwave, and wifi. This room ran us about $100. That's kind of the ante nowadays for basic accommodations. We could've stayed at the Best Western Plus down the street, with a pool and a hot tub, for $200+.

Speaking of the mini fridge, I'd packed some drinks and breakfast food from home in a cooler bag to store in the room. I brought a bottle of beer to enjoy this evening... but just one bottle. One was all I had cold in my mega fridge at home, and I didn't feel like going down to the cellar to pull up more. 😅 No problem, I figured; I could check one of the stores nearby in town and buy more beer.



At a gas station convenience store down the hill I was all set to buy a six-pack from a north coast microbrew I rarely see carried in stores around home. Then I noticed something I've never seen before, in any store. Red Tail Ale.

Once upon a time Red Tail Ale was my favorite beer, hands down. I discovered it when I moved to Calfiornia back in the 1990s. Then around 2010 or so the brewery, Mendocino Brewing Company, was acquired by a Japanese conglomerate that started fiddling with the recipe and ruined it. The company folded up in 2018.

No, these aren't 7 year old cans of beer from before the company dissolved. They're also not 15 year old cans from before the foreign buyer fucked it up. They're a new beer, made by a new local brewery, that found the original recipe for Red Tail Ale and got access to the name and beautiful artwork. You know I had to give it a try!



Back at our motel room, there wasn't much of a place for me to enjoy my beer. Just two chairs around a small table under the TV. So I did like I noticed several of our neighbors doing.... I dragged a chair out to the breezeway and set up on a railing overlooking the parking lot. It seemed like such a trailer park thing when I first saw it— and yes, there's a trailer park across the street, complete with crying kids walking around in diapers and yapping dogs—but then I figured, "When in Rome...."

And yes, the Red Tail Ale is good. It reminds me of the beer I fell in love with twenty-some years ago. Is it just as good as the original? I'm not sure. It's hard to compare to something from that long ago. But now I know to start looking for this in stores near home.

Yesterday I wrote about trying shit beer just because it's well reviewed in a Buzzfeed listicle. Well, there was another beer on one of those shit lists that I was keeping in the back of my mind. Not because it's actually shit but because I've had it before and— at the time at least— didn't think it was shit. I mean, how could this beer be shit when it didn't just impress 10 random bartenders surveyed for a 2020s Buzzfeed listicle but inspired a blockbuster movie franchise in the 1970s and 1980s?

That's right, this beer inspired a movie.

I'm talking about Smokey and the Bandit.

And it wasn't just a touchstone of American cinema from 1977 but it also launched the career of movie star Burt Reynolds.

And the beer? I'm talking, of course, about Coors Banquet.



"Wait," you might be thinking, "Isn't Smokey and the Bandit about Burt Reynolds exuding ``country cool'' while outfoxing a bunch of incompetent Southern sheriffs who are trying to write him speeding tickets?"

Yes, it is about all that. But the driving motive of the story, the thing that kicks off all the action, is beer. And not just any beer, but specifically Coors Banquet.

It's part of American folklore that Coors, based in Golden, Colorado, didn't distribute its beer west of the Mississippi River until 1986. For decades people who traveled across the US found that this really tasty beer that was available in Western states wasn't available in the rest of the country. Among beer aficionados it became notorious. Travelers would bring cases home with them. Coors is even reputed to have been carried aboard Air Force One multiple times, as presidents Eisenhower and Ford were fans of it. Thus the MacGuffin for Smokey and the Bandit in 1977: a wealthy gambler in Atlanta challenges a truck driving team to bring him a shipment of 400 cases of Coors Banquet— illegally— in time to show off to his peers at a racing event. They have to drive from Georgia to Texas to fetch it, then back in record time to deliver it.

So, after that wind-up, how does it taste?

It's... not shit.

Unlike other "shit" beers I've tried— unlike pretty much all other traditional mass-produced US beers— it doesn't have a nasty taste. It doesn't have a nasty taste at the beginning that fades away, it doesn't taste nasty at the end. It doesn't taste nasty on its own, it doesn't tasty nasty with food. It just tastes... decent. Like mass-produced US beer if it... wasn't shit. 😳

Mind you, it's not a richly flavorful beer. It's basic beer. But it's decent basic beer. Like, I could set this alongside any of countless basic European beers and it'd fit right in.

Mind you #2, this is not Coors Light. The "Silver Bullet" is a hugely selling beer, propelled by the sales and marketing behind its lower calorie formulation. It's lower in calories and also way lighter in taste. Coors Banquet is the original Coors and has a richer taste.

So, pop open a gold label Coors and watch country-cool Burt Reynolds outfox a bunch of dim-witted Southern sheriffs trying to write him a speeding ticket.

Italy Travelog #26
Chia, Sardinia - Friday, 30 May 2025, 5pm

Yesterday afternoon it was relaxing to spend time at the resort's hot tubs—or almost hot tubs, as I noted yesterday, so we decided to do it again this afternoon after a relaxing morning at the beach today. As we figured out yesterady which were worth using and which were not— two of them have pumps are connected backwards, Buttoh!— we spent our time today mostly in this hot tub that looks like a cross between a pool and a maze for kids in the newspaper's puzzles page.



I think this pool is kind of is meant to be a maze. As you walk around the curve at the bottom of the photo, pairs of jets at different depths massage your calves, knees, thighs, and sides. I alternated between the deepest and shallowest jets, maneuvering around in front of them, to loosen my ankles and my back. My ankles are still sore from all that walking we did in Rome a few days ago!

After a good, long soak we're back at our room now, stretched out on the chaise lounges on our private patio. Dinner's not until 7pm, the earliest reservation available as that's when the restaurant opens, so we're pre-gaming with potato chips and beer here on the patio.



This photo's actually from yesterday with lunch at the pool, but it's the same beer. I mean, not the same bottle of beer 😂 but the same brand, Ichnusa. It's the local beer made in Sardinia. The one I bought yesterday at the pool-side cafe was, like, €10 or something ridiculous like that. At the beach-side cafe it was "only" €6. After coming back from the beach I bought a few bottles at the convenience store across the street for €2 apiece to enjoy here in our room. Other beers, all of which have to be imported by ship, are more expensive. Fortunately Ichnusa is a fairly standard European lager with a mild, but not too-mild flavor. It's good for drinking with made-for-Americans Italian food or enjoying by itself on a warm afternoon.

Recently I picked up a beer I wasn't expecting. When I went beer-shopping last week I had a number of items on my list. One of them was Sudwerk Amber Ale, which I wrote about yesterday. Finally the store had it after being sold out on numerous visits! But this time there were other items on my list they didn't have in stock. As I was scanning the shelves I spotted DAB (Dortmunder Actien Brauerei) German lager. It was in a package similar to another DAB variety I like but it was even cheaper: $6 for a 4-pack of 500mL cans. That made it practically the cheapest beer in the whole store! I figured I'd try it.

Ordinarily the designation "the cheapest beer in the store" would scare me off. Except this is a German beer. Germany has strict laws regulating brewing. There are definitely German beers I don't particularly care for, but none of them are objectively bad. I mean, not unless you let them get skunked or something. Fresh from the tap or can they're going to be at least okay. Thus I was willing to take a flyer on this beer, even as is it's in a style (German lager) I don't particularly care for. I figured for $1.50 per half-liter can it was worth a try. 😅

A Little DAB'll Do Ya?

DAB lager is very much a beer that's... a beer. It pours in a light gold color, just like a classic lager beer. It has a light, beer-scented aroma. And it has a light, beer-y flavor. It's just a smidge bready, a smidge sour, a smidge sweet, and very... beer-y.

Imagine there's a beer that does nothing wrong. The color's not weird. It's neither too dark nor too light. Nothing's offensive or off-putting in the aroma. Nothing's surprising in the flavors. It's not too strong, it's not too light. There's no surprising flavor element to it. No fruit flavor, no spice, no sweetness. It tastes just like... generic beer.

Now, that's not a very interesting beer, is it? I mean, while there's nothing wrong with it, there's also nothing that recommends it, no notable characteristic that differentiates it from the rest. In matters of taste, a thing has to do more than do nothing wrong to be appealing.

So that's what DAB lager is: probably the most boring beer I've had. If it were a color it'd be beige. Or maybe off-white.

As I planned, this has been a taking-it-easy weekend. I started (kinda) with a soak in the hot tub Friday afternoon before finishing up work for the day. And I finished it up Sunday (kinda) with another soak in the hot tub.



Lest you think all I did this weekend was visit the hot tub, know that I also ran a few errands... including shopping for beer! 😂 Yes, I've been wanting to try Kona Big Wave, the beer shown in the hot tub photo above, for quite some time now. It's the third beer in the Summer Beer Showdown I started writing about almost two months ago. Yeah, I don't shop for booze as often as I used to.

How was Kona Big Wave compared to the other summer-style beers I tried? Possibly my least favorite of the three. Understand that some of that is down to beer style. Big Wave is an American Pale Ale. I tend not to like Pale Ales, especially the India Pale Ale (IPA) style that's been all the rage the past several years. It's too tart. Imagine feeling a pucker factor like eating a lemon. Except instead of lemon flavor it's Pine Sol. 🤢 Well, APAs are less of that than IPAs, but they still fall somewhere short of refreshing.

I made the mistake of buying a whole case (24) of this beer, though, so I figured I should give it a second chance. BTW, why buy a whole case? Because it's economical! The best way to save money is to buy MORE beer at the same time! Seriously, a 6-pack prices out to almost $2 a can or bottle, while this 24-pack came in at just $1.

The second chance I gave this beer was with dinner. I had a light dinner, a roast beef cold-cut sandwich, and figured this otherwise lightly flavored beer would go well with it. It did! The piney flavor of the APA drops quickly into the background when paired with food. I gave it not just a second chance but a third chance, too (i.e., I opened a third can 😅), when I had a bit of dessert after dinner. Surprisingly this beer goes well with small, sweet desserts.

Would I buy Kona Big Wave again? Uh... no. From my previous taste test I like Maui Bikini Blonde Lager way better. But at least this one's good enough that I'm no longer considering pouring it out.

Recently I got to try two Mexican dark beers head-to-head. Modelo Negra has been one of my mainstays for years and is widely distributed in the US. The challenger this round, Bohemia Oscura, is, well, pretty obscure in the US. Its more common sister, Bohemia Original, is available in most stores though not as widely in restaurants as Modelo. I have a few bottles of Bohemia Oscura that I bought in Mexico a few weeks ago and hand-carried home via Phoenix Let's see how they compare!



These two beers represent the same style. They are both dark lagers. The style is also known as Munich lager (based on where the style is popular) or Vienna lager (based on the one of the varieties of hops used in their brewing).

The beers look virtually identical in the glass. The Bohemia, on the left in the photo above, looks a touch lighter than the Modelo, but that's more an artifact of the lighting than the beers themselves.

The beers taste nearly the same, too. Tasting them forward and back without food, I was hard pressed to find a difference between them. They both have the rich, sweet taste, but not overpoweringly so, that's made Modelo Negra one of my go-tos for years. I'd say the Bohemia had a slightly sweeter flavor, but the difference was barely there. I'm not sure I could tell one from the other in a blind test.

Enjoying these beers with food, their similarity continued. It was hard to tell them apart. That also means it was hard to call one better than the other. As much as I've like Modelo Negra for many years, I think the Bohemia is a hair better because of its ever-so slightly sweeter taste. Though because they are so close I wouldn't go out of my way to find Bohemia Oscura when Modelo Negra is available. ...Which means I'll be sticking with Modelo once I finish my last few bottles of Bohemia Oscura because Oscura isn't sold anywhere around here.

I'm still working on my beer tasting project. Yes, this is the one I originally called my 2022 beer tasting project. I didn't think I'd be at it this long when I started. The 43 beers I've tasted spread across 40 blogs— 41 as of this entry— in addition to stretching 24 months across 3 years on the calendar. And this is the first time in 6 months I've posted on the topic.

Why so slow? Well, aside from being sick for several weeks and not really wanting to drink, I've gotten older. I'm not in my early 20s anymore. I remember my senior year in college I made an effort to try lots of beers. In just 9 months I think I'd tried about 43 beers at home. I remember that visually because I kept one bottle (empty and washed) from every variety I drank that year. I lined those bottles up on a shelf in my bedroom, sorted from left to right in order of preference. I looked at that shelf several times a day and generally added at least one bottle to it every week.

I can't do anything about not being 20 anymore, but at least now I'm over those darn colds— well, not over-over them, but feeling well enough to try a drink or two with dinner again. So, what's on the table this time? I decided to go "red" with red lager and a red ale, both newcomers to this competition.



Abita Amber Lager comes from Abita Brewing in Louisiana. I've had several of their varieties before, dating back years to shortly after they first distributed out of state. I've actually had their amber lager before. It was on tap at various restaurants in New Orleans when I visited last spring. I figured I'd give it a try again here in the bottle.

Karl Strauss Red Trolley Ale is from a small, independent brewery in San Diego, California. I've been meaning to pick up a six pack of this one for years but never got around to it. There was always something else I was interested in more or was on sale. Similarly, I've wanted to visit their brewpub on my many trips to San Diego (10-20 years ago I was there at least once a month on business) but there was always something else to do instead. Finally the Red Trolley's time came.

Pouring them into glasses you can see there's a slight color difference. The amber lager looks... well, amber, while the red also is... red. 😂 The lager pours with more of a head. Neither of these make a difference to me, though I know some beer afficionados seem to put a lot of significance on them.

Tasting them alone, without food, the Abita drinks more easily than the Red Trolley. Abita Amber Lager has a rich flavor with an easy drinking character. That said, it's a touch too sweet. The Red Trolley has a rich, deep flavor, but it's almost buried under an overpowering strength. If Red Trolley were a wine I'd quip, "I can taste more wood than fruit." On the drinking-without-food test the Abita wins hands-down.

Tasting them with dinner I expected the Red Trolley Ale to fare better. Its strength could help it complement the food. Alas, Red Trolley was like a bull in a china shop. It strength is so overpowering I still couldn't find much flavor to it even with a light-to-medium meal of hot dogs. The Abita Amber worked well with this meal, losing none of its own flavor. It's still too sweet, so it's not the beer I'd pick given an adequately wide selection, but the Red Trolley seems like one of the last beers I'd want. It's just too overpowering. Maybe, like a red wine with very high tannins, it would go well with a big steak dinner, but for anything short of that: no, thanks.

I've fallen a bit behind on blogging about my Beer Tasting project. Yes, I'm still trying new beers to continue exploring the range of styles and variety within them. It's just that it's (a) not fast; I only drink beer a few times a week and a lot of the time it's one of my known go-tos. And (b) I've fallen a few weeks behind in writing about news beers I've tried.

This blog isn't about strictly new beers but rather a second opinion on two I've already tried. Well, one of them is mostly new. I'm still on my first six-pack of Four Sixes. Recently I put it head-to-head with Anchor Steam in a comparison that proved surprisingly on-point.



Anchor Steam is a beer I tasted early in this beer tasting project after not having had it for probably umpteen years. It occupies an odd spot in beer varieties as being neither fish nor fowl, as it combines lager yeast with ale-style brewing. When I tried it over a year ago I dismissed it as fair but not good, let alone great. I tried it again recently because with news that Anchor Brewing is going out of business and being liquidated by its owner, I snapped up a few six-packs when I saw them at a local store. I figured it was time for a second opinion.

This head-to-head was also an opportunity for a second opinion on Four Sixes, a newcomer (to this area) I saw for the first time at a store a few weeks ago. I tried a can on its own and praised it as an amber lager, especially for reminding me of Killian's Irish Red, a college favorite I can't find in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

So I put these two together for second opinion, and something surprising happened. The Anchor Steam I'd previously damned with faint praise? It beat the Four Sixes I'd previously praised so effusively!

What happened in this second opinion? Well, Four Sixes still had all the rich taste I noted in my first opinion, but compared to Anchor Steam it tasted like it was just trying too hard. It's like the Four Sixes pumped it full of taste additives and went too far, making it taste artificially rich. Anchor Steam, meanwhile, was like, "Yo, here I am. I'm straight-up beer, same for over 100 years. No pretenses, no apologies."

Now I wish I'd snapped up more of Anchor Steam when I saw the last brewery run hit the store!

When Anchor Brewing Company's overseas corporate parent announced the brewery's liquidation a few weeks ago, I thought that was it for Anchor Steam beer and other varieties they produce. Indeed the next day I took a quick look on the apps for two big liquor store chains, TotalWine and BevMo, and both listed it as sold out at all area locations. It even came up in an online discussion forum I follow that's totally not related to beer. People reported snapping up the last few six-packs they were lucky to find.

It was a surprise, then, that I found a whole pallet of Anchor beer at a local TotalWine when I stopped by last night.



I didn't buy the whole pallet, of course; just two six-packs. Though I did wonder if maybe I should buy more since this could well be the last production run, ever. (I heard in the news late last week that the factory had completed its last production run and loaded it onto trucks.) The problem is, one, beer doesn't last forever in bottles or cans, generally less than one year; and two, I don't even super-like Anchor Steam. It's just... okay. Though along with a six-pack of Steam I also bought a sixer of their porter. I haven't had it in a long time but I do remember enjoying it. Now I've got some for a future round of my Beer Tasting project!