Layoff my Porter

So far this has been a bi-polar week. My professional/real life was rocked on Monday morning when my manager at work left a meeting with me and a couple of other cats and went straight into his manager’s office to get laid off. He’s the guy who hired me a long time ago and has been the only manager I’ve known at my current job. But, on the other hand, I had a fine offer from the good folks at Flying Dog Brewery. In an effort to squelch my squawking about their substandard pale ale, Flying Dog has tried to make things right by sending me some other beer styles from their brewery. After figuring out what I wanted and a Missouri address to send it to (thanks Muddy Mo(KS doesn’t allow alcohol shipments)) I assumed the deal was done.

On Tuesday the rest of the layoffs in the company were set to occur. I can not adequately describe the level of suckitude that this entails. After our manager was laid off on Monday I spent the rest of the day packing my stuff and taking it to my car. If I were to be laid off, I didn’t want to spend any extra time packing my crap. Alas, I did not get laid off. I lost an untold amount of friends, people I’ve yelled at, people who’ve yelled at me, people I’ve cut down with a joke, people who’ve made fun of me, people I’ve went out for a drink with, people who hated me and people I didn’t know well enough. Now my team is struggling to figure out how to dig ourselves out of a hole. On the other hand, Wes and I received the greatest invitation we’ve gotten since Wes started this blog (I’m sure there will be multiple posts on this subject next week).

So I’ve had a bad week at work and an absolutely exceptional week as a beer blogger. Today (it was actually yesterday but Muddy Mo got it to me today) I received my shipment from Flying Dog. Also today I took on half the responsibilities of my ex-manager and a project manager. But, at least today I get to drink a nice beer or two (ok, I drank quite a few beers on Monday and Tuesday at Harry’s and The Brick).

I decided to start my new Flying Dog journey with the Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter. The guy I emailed with from the brewery even pointed me to his favorite Hunter S. Thompson article from a couple of years ago (if you don’t get the connection, quit reading this stupid post and pick up a book, you’re behind the rest of us). As regular readers know, I love a Porter (Darrell was a favorite) and I must say Flying Dog does a porter right. I’m not saying that because they sent me beer, I’m saying it because it’s a damn fine beer.

It weighs in at 7.8% alcohol and pours a fine dark brown color with a quickly dissipating brown head. It has a chocolate malt aroma with some hops aroma thrown in for good measure. The taste is real malty and chocolaty with a nice little bit of smoke flavor and finishes with just a hint of hops flavor.

I couldn’t be more grateful to the fine folks at Flying Dog Brewery for deeming me worthy of some schwag. I also want to thank them for their promptness in delivering my schwag. But most of all, and certainly most importantly I want to thank them for making a damn fine porter that can put a smile on my face after the horrible week I’ve had so far.

Tomorrow I find out who my new boss is. I wish it was the same as the old boss, but I’m sure it won’t be better than the old boss. I also get to get on everybody’s bad side by reassigning the work the laid off folks on our team did. Hopefully tomorrow’s selection from my Flying Dog box o’ good fortune will be able to make me smile again.