LAGUNITAS PILS – WAIT, DON’T CLOSE YOUR BROWSER

With my wife out of town for two nights, we had some serious father/son male bonding outings last weekend, me & my 5-year-old. Naturally if things were going to go well, a big part of the agenda was going to be strongly centered around pizza & beer. Now whomever opined that San Francisco has crap pizza never headed up Potrero Hill & dropped in on GOAT HILL PIZZA for a fat pie and a hearty pint. We sure did. As an unabashed fan of most everything LAGUNITAS BREWING crafts (I’m even coming around to the ubiquitous IPA, the only thing from them I’ve bashed on this site), I figured even the LAGUNITAS PILS might be OK. Tell you what – it was more than OK. It was damn good. Like most of you beer dorks, I shy away from the pils, the pilsner, the yellow thin stuff. Only a MOONLIGHT REALITY CZECK or a GORDON BIERSCH PILSNER really gets me going, yet I’ll cop to barely trying this style over the past few years. Let me tell you about this one. I think you may be interested.

LAGUNITAS PILS is creamy. It is it thick. It is the most ale-like pilsner I’ve ever had. Lightly spicy, it goes down fairly easily, but its thicker, “wet” mouthfeel really puts it outside of the box I – and centuries of brewing tradition - have put around this particular style. The thing about a pilsner is, there’s not that much to talk about. Like a brown ale, it’s either good or it’s not. This one is really good, and it’s well to the left of even most craft brewers’ pilsners. It encouraged me into consuming a shameful five slices of pizza in one sitting, followed by a gluttonous ice cream cone and a before-bedtime viewing of a bunch of Pokemon cartoons back at home. It’s what a hedonistic boys' weekend is all about. 7.5/10.