The Malty Falcon

In the early 1990’s I was fresh out of college, looking for a job, ready to take on the world and living at my parents’ house. Rather than spending time in job interviews I often found myself with my friends at a place called City Pub in Redwood City. These were the early days of so-called microbrews and City Pub sold several on tap. My favorite was a beer from Canada called McNally’s Extra Ale. In the world of wine there are fruit bombs - McNally’s was a malt bomb. The heavy use of malts made it almost sweet. For some reason it disappeared from bars and restaurants in California in the mid-90’s, although the brewery and beer still exist.

The trend in craft beer now is India Pale Ale (aka IPA) with each brewery in an apparent competition to see who can squeeze more hops into each bottle. I appreciate the bitter grapefruit taste of hops and have enjoyed this trend but I’m getting burned out on these over hopped beers. I want to move forward and go back to the past with a nice malty beer but they seem to be hard to find.

However, the Mendocino brewing company produces a thick beer ca

lled Eye of the Hawk that is a salute to the salad days of malty beers. A bit hefty at 8% alcohol, it’s readily available at Trader Joe’s. It’s not as sweet as McNally’s but it’s a ‘classic’ malt-oriented beer and reminds me of the good old days when I made no money, had no girlfriend and drove a 25 year old car with a mashed in front.