James Taylor once penned a tune called Country Road. I’m not exactly sure that it was Taylor’s intention, but when I hear Country Road  I can’t help but imagine myself walking through an apple orchard in the heart of autumn. Perhaps I’m some sort of modern day Johnny Appleseed, walking along a deserted October highway and handing out smartphones to indigent children. “Help us, Techno-Papa, help us! We want to download apps and steal music and message our friends in Vietnam! We’re tired of burning these orange leaves to make smoke-signals! Techno-Papa, we need you!”

And I’ll look at these children, plagued by rickets and smiling their Pepsi-stained smiles, and I’ll deliver. Against the backdrop of autumn, decay and decrepitude as beautiful and wondrous, I’ll hand these diseased scamps the modern-magic they need to survive.

Or, at the very least, to die with smiles on their faces.

Is this what James Taylor thought of when he wrote Country Road? Probably not. But the motherfucker spent so many years on heroin, I wouldn’t rule it out.

Tonight, I’m celebrating dragon-chasin’ pop-song daydreams of autumnal techno-wizardry. It feels good, real good, but it’s parching me out. So it looks like  I’m washing these dope-sick delusions down with a cold can of  Autumnation.

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[cue the music]

There’re moments   in life in which appreciation simply cannot be thwarted, try as Life might.

Today has been the Greater Boston area’s first real taste of fall, a forty-degree recess that seems to cool not just the sweltering landscape, but burning souls as well. That stack of work piling ever higher? Crack open the office window and laugh as the breeze pushes papers across your desk. Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, a nameless worker-bee in the mass exodus from the hive? Take a look beyond the overpass at the trees, all showing off their summer’s-end sunburns of red and yellow and orange. Finally home and having trouble sloughing off the day’s worth of stress?

Just crack open a Harvest Pumpkin Ale.

Autumnal awesomeness will follow.

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My lust for autumnal brews   is absolutely insatiable, transforming me into an ethanol Donkey Kong. Stay out of my way, other beers, or you’re liable to get a barrel thrown off your fucking neck! I’m serious, man! Watch out! The spell has been cast, and only orange-labeled harvest-intoxicants will lubricate my arid braincells properly!

Enjoying a recess from His reaping, the mighty Saturn gazes down into the terrestrial realm. Humans and their dominions, ants and their hills. It’s rustic but aspiring, unrealized but bursting with potential. The brisk breeze cools Saturn’s glistening brow and he smiles upon us in gratitude,   for we raise our glasses in his honor. He raises his chalice, teeming with the syrups and elixirs and sweet ambrosial dreams, and reciprocates.

Gods and Men, united in spirits.

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August is now nothing more than a fleeting memory, a remembrance hoping to save itself by clinging to one of the few synapses that I haven’t killed with television and caffeine.   Some may see this unrelenting march as the temporal equivalent of total warfare, but I welcome the change of seasons. So while September is always a drag for schoolchildren and the Kansas City Royals, I welcome the ninth month of the year with open arms.

C’mon, September, let’s do this! Bring me the end of humidity and sunburns! Bring me pre-season hockey! Bring me the glory that is autumn!

And since you’re offering anyways, feel free to bring me your wonderful slew of Oktoberfest-inspired brews!

So to celebrate the changing of the guard, the graceful acceptance of time’s one-way flow, I’m sipping on Otter Creek’s Oktoberfest.

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Having never been there, I can still say without hesitation that I’m a fan of San Francisco.

How does that work? Well, the Golden Gate City is responsible for producing some straight-up characters, individuals whose accomplishments and antics have tacked layers and layers of quality onto my otherwise free-floating existence. And probably yours, as well! If Frisco’d never been established, we’d be without a legendary metal bassist, our modern conception of the perfect family, the man with no name, and America’s most infamous serial killer.

Amongst others.

In essence, San Francisco has carved a notch into my brain-bone as a city of repute, a community that regularly produces pure wonder. So when I ran into a sixer of the city’s Anchor Porter at my local beer-dealer, I knew that I had to bring it home with me. Hell, leaving it on the shelf would’ve been tantamount to sending it across the bridge to Oakland!

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I am a veritable man-slave to Lady Beer.

I live to wait on her hand and foot, making sure that her every desire is met. But how could I ever be expected to resist her? Is there a more breathtaking image than the gentle pulsating of Lady Beer’s bosom as she inhales and exhales alcoholic vapors? Could anyone ever assuage my workweek anxieties better than Madam Methanol? Hardly. She’s a goddamn beaut.

Sure, she can be bitter as all hell. And I’d be a liar to deny that entertaining her is a   fatiguing endeavor. After a few hours with Lady Beer, I’m ready to sleep indefinitely, awoken only by oppressive sunbeams and inebriation-induced teeth-grindin’. But it’s worth it, because her handsome hops and courageous carbonation are wonders that elevate existence from better than non-existence to the rare opportunity to join the universe as an active participant.

Wowzers.

But as I’m realizing tonight, I’ve been slightly negligent to my mistress. Lady Beer, love of my life though she is, has largely been ignored this summer. It wasn’t a conscious decision. Truly. However, the fact of the matter is that I’ve been spending an exorbitant amount of my drankin’-time with Ms. Apple Cider Bottom. She’s fruity and bubbly and making herself more available than she’s ever been.

Hell, I’m only man, damnit!

Tonight, I’m sipping on Honey Crisp.

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Behold the glory that is the FRIDAY BREW REVIEW! There ain’t no damn laws against drinkin’ and writin’, so today’s edition of of FBR is coming to you just as the alcohol hits my bloodstream. Hell, if it worked for a titan like Hemingway, there’s no way it could befoul the prose of a dilettante such as myself.

Right?

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What do the Mega Powers, the G.I. Joe episode The Greatest Evil, and today’s brew have in common?

Well, dummy-pants, they are all the product of unlikely – but wonderful – collaborations!

At the beer-market today, a delivery-dude saw me scouring the shelves for the perfect inebriator. “Hey kid,” he said, “give this a try. It’s a team-up between Sierra and Dogfish.” He then handed me a bottle of Life and Limb and dispersed into an ethereal gray, drifting into a nether-realm, awaiting the next opportunity to help a beer-drinker in need.

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Historically, I probably would’ve said that my all-time favorite Crispin would have to be Glover.

Ya know, the dude that played George McFly and then went fucking apeshit.

But after today, I’m afraid that Willard no longer owns quite as much real estate in my heart as he once did. Sorry dude – I didn’t actually expect this to happen. But the fact of the matter is that I’ve now tried Lansdowne by the folks at Crispin Cider and I’m impressed.

Fuck that, I’m blown away.

I snagged Lansdowne from the shelves of my local beer-dealer because I was lured in by its appearance. I ain’t no liar, and I can admit when visual aesthetics win me over. There’s something elegant, mayhaps even classy, about the 22-ounce container. Maybe it’s the black label or the little tree logo or the use of simple typography – whites and golds, print and script. But if I had to toss money on it, I’d say that it’s the interrelationships, the gropings and moanings in a darkened room bathed in auditory-lubrication, between all of the above that sold me. Looking at the bottle, it looks urbane as hell.

I’ll be damned if I can’t imagine Don Draper taking a rip from a bottle of Lansdowne.

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It’s my pleasure to inform the faithful OL readership that the FRIDAY BREW REVIEW has been generating a lot more traffic lately. Some of these new visitors may be arriving via word-of-mouth, the pleasant words you share about a weekly-drunkard’s semi-coherent review acting as safe passage. Others are being transported here by means of Internetdimensional-portals, such as that provided by the (fabulous) Reddit beer community. And still others, well, I suspect they’re here because it was the closest place they could find after escaping that hitchhiker who promised a blowjob but offered only a knife-wound. How rude.

No matter how you’ve arrived – welcome.

Before we go any further, baby, allow me to offer a warning to the uninitiated: what follows is certainly a beer review. But the Friday Brew Review is also part diatribe, short story, philosophical meandering, science fiction journey, and drunken affirmation.

Please proceed without caution.

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