The beers of New River: Argus Brewery's Clyde's Ale ESB

This is one of the beers Hilgar gave me last month. It was brewed in Chicago by Argus brewery, who is set up in the building that was once the stables for Schlitz beer's horse teams. Argus started brewing in '09 to supply a number of house beers for local restaurants, but began producing their own labeled beers soon after. They focus mostly on traditional British styles and the names of their beers tend to have an equine theme due to the former life of their building, such as this one being called "Clyde's ale" (get it? Clydesdale), though this is not an absolute rule as they also produce a beer with Walter Payton's son Jarret Payton called Jarrett Payton All-American Wheat Ale. They currently produce at 2,500 US barrels a year, at 31 gal/ US barrel that's 77,500 gallons of beer. considering the average American only drinks about 21 gallons of beer a year it would take a single person over 3,600 years to drink all of the beer this brewery I've never heard of is producing.

The bottle has this to say about it's contents beer: "Clyde's ale is made for those who work hard and require a bold brew to relax at the end of a long day. No lightweight beer is going to cut it. ESB is a type of strong ale rooted in British tradition. Argus Brewery has created this ale using primarily British malts, hopps & classic British style yeast culture. Expect a deep copper color, full malt flavors & a robust hopp character. It truly is an Extra Special Bitter. But honestly, if it's good enough for Clyde, it's good enough for you." it's 5.5% abv, which is the lowest abv I've ever seen in and extra special bitter. It has a Clydesdale on the label, and the Argus brewery symbol, which I think is gorgeous. But enough talk, let's pop this sucker open and check out that nose.

Nose from the bottle is hoppy, not overwhelmingly though. It has a little bit of malt scent.Not much else to say on that, time to pour it into the super traditional Orion mug.

It does have the deep copper color, and a little life inside the mug, not a great deal though. It had some white fluffy head, but that rather quickly dissipated. Nose from the mug is the same as from the bottle. It's certainly hoppy, I don't really taste the malts. It's all just grassy hopps. Mouthfeel is sort of straight medium bodied with some acidity.It's kind of unremarkable. you could have called this one an IPA and nobody would have noticed. I know ESB is very similar to IPA but I would expect enough difference in a beer for even an amateur like me to tell the difference in a blind taste test. It's not bad, but it's nothing special. Maybe that's why it's not listed on their site? I'll let it warm up a bit and see if there is a change.

So my longtime friend, coworker and roommate Kingsley is out of the Marine Corps now. I have the room completely to myself, but for the first time I'm not really happy about that. While I can play Ska music at all hours of the night now (a fact that I am currently taking advantage of at this moment), not even awesome 3rd wave covers can fill the hole left in my life. This isn't the first time I've been separated from a good friend, but this time it has an odd sense of permanence. I suppose Kingsley represented the last connection to the old shop, and now I'm just a sad relic of a group that doesn't really exist anymore. It's time for me to go, there's nothing left for me here now. At first I was apprehensive about going to Japan, I actually wanted to avoid going, now I just want out of here and Japans a means to that end. They say you don't know the good old days until they're gone. I don't think that's always true. We knew back then, and I think we made the most of it, we all knew it wouldn't last. Now is no time to live in the past, now is the time to acknowledge that they were good times and to look forward to the good times in the future. I suppose that's all I can really do. Damn, I need a girlfriend or something.

Nothing really changed when the beer warmed up. It was OK, I wouldn't bother picking it up again if other things were available.