Chunks O'McCoy

Stella and I went out for a night on the town last night. We saw "Revolutionary Road" at the Rio in downtown Overland Park which was a laugh riot. Then we meandered over to McCoy's for dessert and beer.

Amazingly, we were seated at the accordion table again. I would guess that of the 30 or so times we've been to McCoy's together, we've sat at the accordion table 25 of those times. It was to the point last night we tried to pick out the other places in the restaurant we had sat at and could only locate 2 other places. We didn't count the times that we've been to McCoy's with other people because we obviously couldn't sit at the accordion table on those occasions. I think it may be where they sit the undesirables.

On to the beer. I asked our stoned out of his mind waiter (he was very nice, just stoned) what the seasonals were. He named off 2 that sounded good. A cask conditioned brown (I always go with the cask) and an oak aged porter (the most underrated beer style, the porter). I started with the cask conditioned brown. Stella got a raspberry wheat and a creme brulee cheesecake.

The brown arrived and was pretty good. It was colder than I expected, usually cask beers are cellar temp, this one seemed cooler temp. I wasn't that impressed with it. The brown ale at McCoy's is one of their better beers and I always enjoy them, but this one was decidedly worse than the regular brown ale. I kind of hurried through drinking it because I wanted to get to the oak aged porter. As it turned out I hurried too much because I drank the last little bit which contained a huge amount of sediment. It wasn't a yeasty, grainy sediment either, it was more like little pinky toe toenail clipping sediment. I spit it back in my glass and tried to avoid the temptation to vomit. I told our stoned waiter about it and he said it's just a hazard of an unfiltered beer. Maybe I'm a novice, but I know one thing, I don't ever want chunks of inedibles in my beer. This beer was a fail.

I got the oaked porter and didn't like it much at all. Usually beers that are aged in oak are aged in old bourbon or wine barrels which has softened some of the oak flavors and given the oak a unique flavor. This porter tasted as though they had bought some oak 2x4's from Home Depot and steeped them in the conditioning tanks with the beer. What I'm trying to say is that the porter tasted very similar to licking an oak tree. Although, now that I write that, licking an oak tree seems appealing to me because it was still a drinkable beer. The oak was just overbearing.

All in all, Stella got the best end of the McCoy's deal by getting the creme brulee cheescake which was very good and the raspberry wheat. As for me, I think I may not give McCoy's the benefit of the doubt anymore and asked for a sampler of their seasonals before I get a whole pint.

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