2016 Gameday Beer-o-the-week - Utah Edition

Each week throughout the football season I'm going to suggest a good beer for the ubiquitous pre-game tailgate. Let's be honest, with tailgates it's not always top quality that you're looking for. To steal a phrase from the heinous beer terrorists at Budweiser, you want "drinkability." (or what a real beer connoisseur calls "a session beer") So, be warned, these may not be "the best" beers around. But, in the words of Dave Chappelle as Samuel L. Jackson "IT'LL GET YOU DRUNK!"

It's Ute week, so the honorary beer selection is Polygamy Porter from Wasatch Brewery. Indeed, why have just one?

The actual beer pick, however, comes to us from Darien, IL.  The little burg, not far from my Thanksgiving festivities in the Western Suburbs of Chicago, is home to a feisty little brewery making some hay after just two years of existence: Miskatonic Brewing Company.  Their session rye, called Catchpenny, is this week's gameday beer-o-the-week.

From: twitter

The name Miskatonic, of course, is a head fake in the direction of Lovecraftian horror, which typically deals with the end of the world by cataclysmic means.  As I feel that Colorado appearing in the Pac-12 title game would be just the latest confirmation this year that Doomsday is quickly approaching, I feel any brewery steeped in this mythos is appropriate to the hour.  The term 'catchpenny' refers to using cheap sensationalism to draw in the reader, which ties right back into what I just did there by invoking End Times.  See, it's like poetry; they rhyme.

Anyways, the beer itself is an interesting attempt at the vogue rye styles that are flitting around these days.  It's very drinkable, light, and malty.  Not overly hopped, it's far from bitter, and well positioned to fill your glass time and time again.  My only knock on it would be that I just didn't get enough of the rye character that I would normally expect -- a spicy, acerbic kick.  That said, one thing I've noticed about breweries in Illinois, particularly as opposed to their counterparts out west, is that their products are often rather understated.  The result of a different beer culture, I guess, the flavors just aren't as big and in your face.  In the end, it's an interesting change of pace.

So, something quirky and weird for the end of the season, which seems to go with the out-of-place nature of 2016.  You'll have to travel to sample this (or find it online through a large distributor), but half the fun of beer culture is trying new things.  If it's not Catchpenny, please do look to expand your horizons.  When you travel for the holidays, grab whatever is brewed nearby.  Ask your aunt or uncle what they drink.  Try... anything new.  Colorado may be the king of craft, but it's not the sole possessor of the ideology, after all.


Happy Friday!  Go Buffs, beat Utah!