Over the years I had heard different people mention a gnar-gnar brewery in Northern California (the real middle-of-nowhere Norcal, not the Bay Area) called Anderson Valley. When I found myself in a place with varied and rare beers here on the east coast I would occasionally look for AVBC but never found it. A couple of months ago the NYTimes travel section did a piece on the winerias in the region and included some stuff about Anderson Valley and my curiosity was renewed. I was on a quest to find their beer in general, but in particular the Hop Ottin IPA, which in my understanding is the hot shit as far as AVBC goes. A few weeks ago I came across it, completely by accident, in a store I had never been to before and added it to my shopping cart. I was pretty stoked to finally have found this beer and eager to give it a try. So imagine my bum-0ut level when I got to a get-together at my friend's house, cracked my first AVBC brew-dog, took a sip that didn't taste very IPA-ish at all, and looked down to find I was holding their Amber Ale instead. I checked the rest of the sixer, thinking maybe I had grabbed a sampler pack, and found that someone (to be fair I have no idea if it was a mistake on the part of the brewery, the distro, or the store) had slid 6 Amber Ales into the slots of the Hop Ottin' box. It wound up not being too bad because A) the Amber Ale was pretty good and B) I noticed the label has a bear... with fucking antlers!!! which is hesh in an awesome way.
Fast forward to last Wednesday... I decide to try again. At the same store I found the IPA, checked each and every bottle in the sixer to make sure, and eagerly made my way to the cash register... where I paid $14 for a six pack. The beer itself was pretty good. Very strong IPA which I dig, with a distinctive dryness. One of the better IPAs I've had for sure, but probably not $14 level tight.
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