Re: ARROGANT BASTARD
When I first discovered Arrogant Bastard... I wrote a note to the company founder in San Diego. Several months later he wrote back. And I think his response give a great indication of the character of the company... in short, awesome!
Original Message to Stone Brewery:
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 5:21 PM
To: email
Subject: You are not Worthy!
So you think you are a worthy beer? Just because
you managed to bottle some battery acid with a 7.2 percent alc. content?
How can you be a real beer? You don't have a computer-generated glacier train or a couple of stables full of prancing inbred Clydesdales or spotty dogs?
I don't see some buxom blonde "Poster-girl for the
Master Race" holding a double armful of mugs of Arrogant Bastard at some ersatz Oktoberfest-beer-hall-putsch-in- waiting... or a dutch porcelin cap that would ratify you to the beer-drinking cogniscinti as a real quality euro-trash
beer. And where is the washed-up major- league sports dweezil hawking your malted beverage as he expects a front row seat?
If you were a worthy beer, wouldn't you have been
consumed in the Rose Garden during the recent White House Oppressed Harvard Professor-meet profiling Officer Summit (more important than SALT II, apparently)? Hey guys, Bud
Light was worthy there!
If you were a worthy beer, how come you don't have your
own freaking blimp? Even Duff Beer has a blimp!!! How come you don't have an Arrogant Bastard Bowl pitting cute little bottles of Arrogant Bastard against cute little bottles of Arrogant Bitch Light facing off between wardrobe malfuctions during the half-time show?
Where are your Arrogant Bastard Iguana commercials or
your "Wassup?" ads that instantly become part of the national psyche, repeated again and again over the water cooler by Samsonite-briefcase-toting, Seiko-wearing, soon-to-be-laid-off-poster-boys- for-the-Peter-Principle Fortune 1000 lower-middle-managers?
How can you be worthy if you don't have a label that changes color when your beer reaches tepidity?
Oh... and San Diego? WTF... how does that qualify you for
a superior status? Is your brewery protected by Simon and Simon? Did you pass BUDS and make it through hellweek over at NSWC Coronado? Does the jetwash at Aladdin's Parking Garage somehow make your hops more potent? Or do you add some secret ingredient from the Naked Mole Rat rodentia exhibit at the San Diego Zoo that increases your Ale's Pucker Factor faster than the French Army running from the Wermacht??
Well, I am here to say that your unbelieveable arrogance
is... completely deserved...
this is the most superlative beer I have had in
years. Love it. Enjoying it now, which is how I managed to type big words. Keep up the good work.
You probably have to look up the words tepidity, rodentia
and superlative.
Cheers,
XXX XXXXXXXX
Quidvis recte factum quamvis humile praeclarum
*****Response from Stone Brewing Company*****
Greetings,
Mr. XXXX
I presume that, by now, you have given up your epic missive as having been lost at cyber-sea. While imitation is conventionally considered to be the sincerest
form of flattery, I think you have set the bar higher in that regard, having poured your talents and acerbically delicious pronouncements into what was a very enjoyable read for us.
Please forgive the tardy reply—we’ve simply been trying to figure out how to best acknowledge such impassioned correspondences from our fans in a way that does them justice.
That said, while we can’t yet post such writings as a company sponsored blog (seems the higher ups can be a bit squeamish when it comes to calling specific brands out on the carpet for
their charlatanry), we’re keeping this little essay of yours around.
If we were to post it somewhere, do we have your permission to do so (albeit with a few edits here and there)?
Let us know and keep up the good fight.
Yours
in Arrogance,
ken
Ken Wright
Brewery Tours & Promotion
[email protected]
Stone Brewing Co.
1999 Citracado Parkway
Escondido, CA 92029
760.471.4999 x1622
My apologies in advance to those 'Hiders in San Diego. You clearly do make good beer.
Cheers,
Sirhr