Got Beer? A Beer Impossible to Live Without

If you don’t know who H.P. Lovecraft was, you’re probably not a fan of either science fiction or horror. In the 1920s and ’30s, Howard Philips Lovecraft was a Providence writer who specialized in what was, at the time, known as weird fiction. He wrote for several pulp magazines, publishing stories with a bizarre, alien twist on the traditionally macabre tales told in such magazines. For most of the 20th century, Lovecraft was a literary novelty, garnering (appropriately enough) a strong cult following, especially around his Cthulhu mythos, a series of stories outlining a strange panetheon of beings that are both beyond our comprehension as mere mortals, and mind-bendingly malevolent.

These days, Lovecraft has garnered a significant amount of respect from both the literary community and the public at large. The internet is full of Cthulhu-related humor and imagery, including plush dolls of that titanic horror of an Elder God. While his prose can be very dense and difficult to plod through, his iconic monsters and themes of nameless horror have influenced writers to this very day – including most of the great horror writers of our time, such as Steven King, Clive Barker and directors like John Carpenter and Robert Rodriguez.

Now the revered H.P. Lovecraft has his own beer.

Revival’s head brewmaster and local beer icon Sean Larkin has once again teamed up with Narragansett Brewery to bring us the Lovecraft Honey Ale, thus making this beer about as obscurely Rhode Island as you can get. As a beer writer with a sense of humor, it’s extremely tempting to say things like ‘this brew is indescribably horrible,’ but I just couldn’t live with myself if I so blatantly lied to justify a painfully obvious a joke. I could say it’s so good it will drive you to madness, or that it transcends the outer spheres, but even I can only stretch a humorous metaphor so far, gifted though I may be.

In truth, this beer is, like Lovecraft’s writing, more than a little out of the ordinary. The bittersweet malt notes deliver a very complex flavor that carries hints of roasted malts, a honey-like dryness, but a crisp hint of citrus and floral hops as well. It’s surprisingly light for so complex a brew. The weird flavor of this red-amber brew is matched only by its madness-inducing strength. While it drinks like a session beer, this brew creeps up on you with a 7% ABV, and considering it comes in 16 oz. cans, just a few of these could leave you gibbering incoherently into the night.

The lurking terror here, though, isn’t the strength of the beer, or the indefinite array of flavors. What makes this brew scary is the bizarre, almost addictive nature of the brew. One feels almost as if it’s impossible to live without. It almost changes you, imperceptibly, altering your perceptions but making it feel perfectly normal. After the first two, you’re feeling the potent alcohol bite. After a few more, the wooziness sets in.

Only on the final sip does one fully understand the perfection of the bubbling, baffling brew.

Hang on … why is everyone in the bar chanting ‘Cthulhu F’taghn?’ And why is there a sudden fishy smell?

More investigation is required on this odd topic. I may need to look into this Cthulhu Stout that Revival has made.