Nothing Notable; A Beer for a Florida Sunset

About a block from RC Otters is the Mucky Duck. The Mucky Duck is a restaurant on the beach. It sits at an unlikely angle as if just washed up. Any closer to the beach, and it would need a spinnaker! How this place has survived thirty years of Florida hurricanes and tropical storms is anyone’s guess; but survive it has.

 The Mucky Duck has average food, average beer and average entertainment. If it were located anywhere but the end of Andy Rosse Lane Captiva Island, Florida, it would have gone out of business years ago.

 

That said, you do not come to the Mucky Duck for its food, beer or entertainment. What you come for are the amazing sunsets. Because of location, location, location, the Mucky Duck does a roaring trade. There is always a wait. My recommendation; eat at RC Otters or Key Lime Bistro, then stroll down the lane to the Mucky Duck and order a beer at their bar.  They will put it in a plastic cup, which you can take out and onto the beach.

 

We showed up forty minutes before sunset and finding nothing on the beer menu appealing, I opted to try Kona Fire Rock Pale Ale. Nothing notable comes to mind about this beer, it is not particularly complex or flavorful, no sign of hops or malt. 

 

But what the hell I had two and the sunset was amazing!

 

Cheers!

The Best Damn Grouper Sandwich on the Planet!

OK, so what does a grouper sandwich have to do with Beer? Plenty read on…

My family and I have an annual tradition of going to Captiva Island for a week during the off-season. (Off-season in Florida happens to be in July.) Captiva, a fantastic little island west of Fort Myers, is quaint like Key West prior to its commercialization. There is a random hodgepodge of little houses and cottages mixed in with beautiful mansions. Captiva Island is about a half mile wide and you can walk across it in less than ten minutes. If you are looking for a place that has the feel of Key West without the crazy street drinking, college kids just turned twenty-one on their first legal binge and street bums then Captiva is your place.

Located on Andy Rosse Lane about a block from the gulf, you will find our favorite spot, RC Otter, with a decent selection of beer, favoring wheat and pale ales both of which are good summer beers. Darker beer can also be found on tap.

 During our recent visit, that dark beer happened to be Wolverton Organic Oatmeal Stout. Stouts tend to have too much mouth feel and a strong molasses taste, which I typically do not care for. When I do drink very dark beer, I favour porters that are lighter in body. However, as there was nothing else on the menu that really drew my attention, I went for the stout.

  

 

The beer arrived and here was a surprise: much less body than I had anticipated a little chocolaty which I did expect, but with no bitterness to it at all. I would call it closer to a porter than a stout. In the end, Wolverton Organic Oatmeal was a very quaffable beer for a hot afternoon.

 

 

 

A local favorite, RC Otters has a Crunchy Grouper Reuben Sandwich that is NOT on their menu, you have to ask for it. Fried grouper fillet is served on Rye Bread with Coleslaw and Thousand Island dressing. I add a few drops of Tabasco, which finished it nicely. Having lived in Florida for twenty years and having eaten grouper from the panhandle to Key West, take my word for it that there is no better grouper sandwich in the Sunshine State. It is worth the drive to Captiva for this sandwich alone.

 

 

RC Otters has a final attraction. Bimini Ring game,  a simple, yet highly addicting game, it comprises a steel ring suspended on a piece of rope. There is a hook at exactly the length of ropes distance. You swing the ring and try to catch it onto the hook. Simple, right? The kids will play this game endlessly keeping themselves occupied while the larger kids drink Oatmeal Stout!

Cheers!

What is Craft Beer?

Not too far from where you live a new bar has opened. It’s not like all the other places, seedy little dives where the same four cars sit day after day, week after week.  It is different. There is something subtle about the place that you can’t quite put your finger on. You think you might really like that place.

 

You decide, finally you are going to check out the new place. You gather up your courage and off you go. You walk in, with just the right amount of swagger in your step. Casually,  nonchalantly, yeah I’m cool, you order a Miller Lite.

 

A hushed silence falls over the place. The needle scraps accross the record. The cabin of the aircraft has just lost pressure. The silence says it all, get out. Get out you un-evolved drinker of mass produced beer! Should you leave, run?

 

Not to be discouraged you ask the question, perhaps even with an arrogant air. ”What beer DO you carry?”  The bar keep smiles, his is a wizened look, a look that says let me elucidate things for you; you don’t even know what “elucidate” means, but his face clearly says it. A moment of panic. If I leave now no-one will notice!  And here comes the menu. Menu, this place doesn’t sell food? Over a hundred beers! “Oh, and the bottled beer is on the back” a hundred more! OH Shit, what do I do now?

 

Sound familiar? Beer gardens specializing in craft beer are popping up every where, this is a good thing. These places sell beer with names like; Arrogant Bastard and Rouge Dead Guy.   Craft beer is beer with flavour, beer with character, beer unafraid to be beer. The variety of craft beer available today is nothing short of amazing. I found this video about craft beer brewers in American and it is inspirational.

 

So don’t be shy, walk into that new place. If you are unfamiliar with craft beer tell them. Tell them you are a ready, ready for emancipation. Tell them you are ready to try something new, ready to shed the shackles of mass produced beer forever.

 

Here is a secret to finding something you like. Don’t read through a hundred beers trying to decipher a beers character.  You will see words like; hoppiness, body, carbonation, malt, sweetness. Just tell the bar keep what you like – even if it is Miller Lite.  They will bring you samples of several beers to try.  Keep trying till you find something you love!

Cheers!

The Pinched Pint Glass

Just to clarify I’m not what you might call a creative writer, but my wife and many of my friends blog and so I too have been thinking about a topic upon which to blog.

Politics or exercise, lifestyles or music reviews, just about everything has been done and frankly much of it requires too much time work and/or effort.  As the father of two and husband of a busy SAHM, I have neither the time nor the inclination to do anything that requires that much thought, and so I continued to mull over ideas.

One afternoon, I realized that there is something I enjoy, requires minimal training (in fact the basic skill set is picked up in the first few years of life), can be shared with friends and family and as a bonus my wife would almost certainly approve. Drinking beer, genius! So this blog is intended to be about beer and about good places to drink beer. It is not intended to be particularly creative, well organized or even accurate for that matter! So if it is creativity, rational thought or  accuracy you crave seek elsewhere. 

I should probably start with a couple of explanations: Why “ThePinchedPintGlass?” Firstly, what it is not; it is not a pint glass that has been squeezed in the middle.

I’m British by birth and American by chance. In the United Kingdom, pinched is a synonym for stealing. Therefore, ThePinchedPintGlass could also be TheStolenPintGlass. Beer and ale in the UK is served in pints and so “TheStolenBeerGlass” might work or even “TheStolenBeerMug”. However, I find the cultural connotation for my chosen title rather appealing and PinchedPint has a nice ring to it.  Thus, “ThePinchedPintGlass.”

This begs a question, why would someone intent on blogging about beer want to write about PinchedPint Glasses? The inspiration stems from my Wife Denise. Denise is an amazing person, she is woman personified, a wife, a mother, a sister, an extrovert, an athlete, a friend, a shoulder. She is also an obsessive compulsive avid blogger and has been building  a strong reputation in the blogosphere. If you care to check out her blog you can find it here.

At first I was reluctant, even hostile, to the idea of her blog. I’ve always been a private person, the thought of Denise  putting the intimate details of our life out there for public consumption was repugnant to my delicate sensibilities. However, in recent months, I have come around. While still not entirely comfortable with the idea, I, like many others, have found her blog to be inspirational.

When I first met Denise, I learned that she had taught in the UK about an hour from where I grew up, moreover, she had has a penchant for pinching collecting interesting pint glasses from the various taverns she frequents. Her first acquisition was from a pub in York, England called the Tap and Spile, a great little place frequented by the University crowd. In fact, we still have that first glass.

One morning I asked Denise to help me brainstorm the idea of a blog name, I knew that I wanted to write about beer, but the names I tried were taken. We quickly went from “HaveBeerWillTravel” through multiple fights iterations and fell finally upon “ThePinchedPintGlass” cheers!