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The Black & Tan is a peculiar thing, if you stop (pounding draught Guinness long enough) to think about it. For one thing, it's the rare beer cocktail -- a booze genre we've been pondering a lot lately. But is pouring a stout on top of an ale really so different from the sloppy, midnight mistake of refilling your pint glass with the wrong beer?

No. No, it's not. It just has a name. So why not mix other beers? What's stopping us from playing with the endless yin-yang possibilities of dark and light beers? Porters and Pils? Imperial Stouts and IPAs?

That's what we asked ourselves this week when our good buds at KCRW's "Good Food" asked us to demonstrate how to pour a Black & Tan to for their pre-Patty's Day episode. Over the years we've celebrated this depraved K-hole of an excuse for a cultural holiday by making Irish-Mexican casseroles, reviewing Irish ales, and fixing an Irish Breakfast. This year we decided to get technical and perfect our pouring technique since we've mastered our barfing methods.

1. Tip the Tan: This insures a lack of head on the first level of beer.
2. Sip the Guinness: This helps prevent aggressive spill-over.
3. Use a spoon: Choose the biggest you got, turn it over, and gently raise it as you pour.

After mastering the basics, we moved on to a more advanced pursuit: the variation. We wanted to make a West Coast-style Black & Tan to prove once and for all that mixing your beers doesn't just work for the Irish tried-and-trues.

After collecting aged bottles of Cali stouts (Stone Imperial Russian Stout, Firestone Robust Porter) and fresh hop buys (Green Flash West Coast IPA, Port's High Tide, Dogfish Head) we started playing to sublimely delicious results, only to stumble upon a fourth and final tip -- OK call it an eternal Irish truth.

4. Always use Guinness.

It's not about taste or tradition. For the home drinker's it's just about carbonation. You might have the freshest, creamiest California made stout, but if it doesn't have a widget in the can to help carbonate it, it's all a lost cause.

Cheers!

Driving shotgun this summer on the sleek roads around the Isle of Mann, we took note of the beautiful, deep-purple gobs of what looked like heather that infiltrate that island. From the roads, the mossy underbrush looked like the lovely lavender buds of wild heather that are Scotland's second most famous grass. (After peet moss, of course, in all its smoky glory.)

Fraoch anniversary ale by Williams Bros Brewing Co. combines these two most sacred weeds to mind-scrambling results: an 11-percent ABV ale brewed with heather tips and matured in sherry casks used to age single-malt Speyside Scotch. This is the 20th anniversary version of their normal Fraoch brew, which reportedly is based on a beer that drove a Gaelic king to throw himself off a cliff after an English lord tortured his son looking for the recipe. Since we didn't make it north to Scotland, this rare, revered and suicide inducing Gruit-style beer would suffice. It was a gift from a chef friend who took a recent business trip to New York. We'd never heard of it before. Famous last words.

This bottle was curious. For on thing, it's green glass, which you don't see in serious beers. And with the recent American fixation with aging our strong ales in bourbon barrels, this seemed so in tune with our modern American desires.

When we slashed its gold-foil cap sleeve with a fish knife we were greeted by a cheap-o plastic cork. As we "uhhhhh'ed" at these incongruent signals of sheer luxury and cost-cutting dereliction, we forgot to let the beer sit to help settle the fairy dust sediment.

We slam-toasted our goblets. "Fraoch (pronounced "frucccccccck" in our slo-mo skulls). Tastes. Gooooood."

Booze up front and lingering behind, the Scotch peetiness was subdued. The cereal malt flavors were crisp and sticky. Stinging nettle, honey, and malted barley clusters. The heather bobbed in our cereal bowls like museli dust. (Is there heather in my teeth?) We were drinking faster now, with places to go later. The crystalized lemon notes quickly melted into a caramel swirl.

Two hours later, in a well-lit art gallery, our brains were throbbing in slow bursts. Gabbing around warm apple cider before taking part in a free-form jazzercise, we felt sluggish. The pain was muted but distinct. Talking became hard. A squishy, wet mushroom seemed to bloom behind our left eyelobes. Time stood still with a snickerdoodle in our hand. Then the exercises started. Yoga mats and a wood floor felt hard and unfriendly. Motown boogies had the group of dancers leading us in sock-hop style movements that tugged on our floppy heads. The lights were shrieking. We could taste herbal bitterness on our breath.

Finally, in a measure of God's love, the moving stopped and the dancers let us stoop to a shavasana floor rest. Lights turned off. We closed our eyes and saw a deep deep purple in the back of our brains, spinning like flowers on the side of the road.

Dairy Pairy: Valentina by La Estrella Creamery: An altitude defying faux-Gruyere.
Soundtrack: Sonic Youth, "Bull in the Heather"

Before a 63-year-old schoolteacher named Annie Taylor went over Niagara Falls in a barrel, nobody believed it could be done. But the hard-ass opportunist outfitted a barrel with a mattress, reinforced it with some steel and had some friends (can they be called friends if they're pushing her down Niagara?) pressurize her coffin once she climbed inside, using a bicycle pump. She lived.

We only bring it up because it sounds remarkably like what Marble Brewing's Reserve Ale tastes like. Hell, Daniel and Ted, head brewers of the Albuquerque brewery might as well have climbed into a wooden death trap themselves, the way this beer tastes. It is strong and sweet and destructive. Even the beer snobs who usually go all goo-goo-eyed over "American strong ales" (Arrtogrant Bastard, Angel's Share etc.) thought it tasted too much like bourbon. It's a 9-percent ale aged in bourbon barrels for the purpose of cellaring. Too much like bourbon? Are you fucking kidding us?

Popped and poured, the beer is placid like a lake of Maker's Mark. Its slightly see-through and tinted deep red with the faintest white clinging to its surface. Swirl it hard and you'll inspire the most meager of foams, more like a white patch on the nose of an angry red mare than the head of any beer we've seen. The nose can only be described as an evil version of that ABV-perfume that wafts off of fragrant ice wines and ruby ports. Cane sugar and danger. Smell it long enough and you detect a Jack Daniel's brand breath spray. Or an Old Overholt deoderant.

Now, it's worth noting that we have flirted with bourbon barrel-aged beers for years but were unaware that the technique could bring us this close to actually drinking bourbon-flavored beer.

Putting your lips to a glass of Marble Reserve tastes like everything that is good about America. Specifically, chopped lumber, bent with fire and scorched for flavor, steeped with bourbon for years, and then used to discolor and flavor a strong beer. Why wouldn't we want to taste this all the time? Sweet and nearly hot with alcohol burn, we imaged putting our faces directly into spitting whiskey mash pots. Or letting a cowboy soak their boots in Old Rip Van Winkle and proceed to grind us in the face.

Do we like that? We're buying more and aging it for our birthdays. What do you think?

Dairy Pairy: Trappe Echourgnac, aged cow's milk washed in walnut liquor
Soundtrack: Las Vegas Club's "Whiskey Flats"