Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘fruit beer’

Magic Hat #9

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on July 6, 2011 | 3 Comments »

ATTN KANSANS: MAGIC HAT #9 IS NOW IN YOUR LIQUOR STORES. GO BUY SOME.
IT LOOKS LIKE THIS:

The other beers you can kind of see are Dieu du Ciel!’s* Rosée d’Hibiscus and Schlafly’s Helles Summer Lager. It was the Fourth of July – we were beering while waiting on our dinner to finish cooking itself.

Basic Info:
Name: #9
Origin: Magic Hat Brewing Company, VT
Style: Pale Ale/Fruit Beer**
ABV: 5.10%
IBU: 20
I drank this: on tap all over the East Coast, from a bottle all over the East Coast *and* during a work meeting *and* at home, etc. For those who are interested, I’ll update where I’ve found it in Kansas as I trip over it.

Consider this something of a welcome post to Magic Hat: they just expanded their distribution into my home state. I’m quite thrilled about it. When I moved back to Kansas and realized we didn’t have it here, I was honestly surprised: #9 was one of those beers I saw so frequently while living in Pennsylvania that it became part of the background – it was always there, reliable, easy to drink. It’s flipping lovely to have it within easy drinking distance again.***

So, for those of you who’ve never had it before, #9 is an Apricot Pale Ale. It is not, however, an overly fruity, sticky sweet beer, nor is it a massively hoppy West Coast-style Pale Ale – it essentially splits the difference between an apricot beer and an English Pale Ale. If that description makes sense, that’s really all you need to know. Happy drinking.

For everyone else, #9 has a sweetly fruity, almost honeyed pale malt nose with a touch of citrusy top note. It’s a relatively light-bodied beer with great carbonation and a low enough alcohol level that it’s safe to drink a few of them without worries of headaches and hangovers the next day.

Flavor-wise, it has a light, apricot-y sweetness that blends with the malts (mostly caramelly, biscuity malt flavors) and a light dose of hops. The hops are citrus/grapefruit rather than pine or grass in flavor, cause a light bite on the tongue, and then blend into the overall flavor quite well. The aftertaste is short and subtle – for this reason, it’s a good food beer.

To sum up: if you’re looking for big malt flavor, huge hops and bitterness, tons of alcohol or any other Extreme Beer Experience, this is *not* the beer you want. If, however, you want a beer to enjoy for hours while flopped on a porch in the sunshine, this is exactly what you should be looking for. It’s pretty much compulsively drinkable.

_______________________________________________________________________________________
*That right there is some tortured punctuation, even if I think it’s technically correct. Sorry about that.
**The brewery refers to this as a “Not Quite Pale Ale.” Beer Advocate calls it a fruit/veggie beer. I’m more or less splitting the difference because, much as I love the brewery, I can’t quite get myself to quote someone else’s ad copy when it comes to beer styles.
***As a note to Founders, Bells, Russian River, Great Lakes, Southern Tier and Stone (among others): FOLLOW SUIT PLEASE. (I’d love Dogfish Head as well, but I have realistic expectations on that.)

Read Full Post »

New Belgium Somersault

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on April 13, 2011 | 1 Comment »

How is this for kickass? I was at work yesterday when a local rep from New Belgium and a rep from the local distributor came by, chatted for a while, and then popped open a bottle of New Belgium’s brand-spankin’ new Summer Seasonal. So! I have notes for you. Here’s what to expect.

Basic Info:
Name: Somersault
Origin: New Belgium Brewing Co., Fort Collins, CO
Style: American Blonde Ale
ABV: 5.2%
IBU: not sure – forgot to ask, and this beer isn’t even listed on NB’s website yet. It is, however, already on Beeradvocate, but they have quite a bit less coding to do to add a new beer, so.
I drank this: bottle pour from a local visiting NB rep (Adam, I think – I kinda suck at names) 

I got a beer-geek appropriate set of notes before I tried it, which I will pass on so that the other beer geeks get an idea of what’s going on. Then we’ll go to the taste (i.e., the important part). The beer is brewed with Centennial hops, and they’ve thrown a small amount of oats into the malt to smoothe the texture out. The yeast is American Hefeweizen, which lends a small amount of fruity ester to the mix. There’s also a tiny amount of apricot and ginger. That’s the summation I was given, so we’ll move on to what I thought.

I heard apricot and immediately wondered if they were doing a Magic Hat #9 type deal, so I asked. Answer: no, they’re not. The apricot is nowhere near that pronounced. Well, alright, I thought, and plunged in.

This beer is a slightly peachy blonde color, a white head that is still hanging around the edges of the glass by the end, and some lovely carbonation. The scent is pale malts and a few touches of something slightly fruity – without knowing, I don’t know that I would have come up with apricot, or with any specific fruit at all. I probably would have decided the fruit scent was entirely due to the yeast – it’s that faint.

The flavor is mostly citrusy hops with a *slight* touch of apricot. The malts are pale and give the other flavors a good background for showing off. There’s also a hint of yeast, a touch of bite on the tongue from the hopes, and a hint of warmth from the ginger.

The fruit shows up most strongly at the swallow. It’s still not strong by any means – still not up to the level of fruit in a @9, much less the amount of fruit in a Pyramid Apricot. But it’s there, sweetly apricot, with a few hits of spice.

This beer would be ideal for flopping on the porch while the grill is going – it’s light enough to work in the summer heat, but manages *not* to be the things I hate about Summer Seasonals (i.e., too light, too fruity, too sweet, or totally flavorless). I like it, and I’m glad I got to try some. I look forward to having more.

Read Full Post »

Wild Blue Blueberry Lager

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on January 18, 2011 | 2 Comments »

“It’s cherry limeade!” – Marcia
“This is like Jonestown” – Tony
“I like my blueberry wine better.” – Mom
“I need to go shave my tongue.” – also Tony
“This beer would corrupt children.” – Ben
“Why must you always kill the happy?” – Alan
*bemused look* – Dad


Basic Info:
Name: Wild Blue Blueberry Lager
Origin: Anheuser-Busch
Style: Blueberry Lager, obviously. Otherwise, Fruit Beer.
ABV: 8.0% (!!!)
IBU: Um, no.
I drank this: at home, split amongst friends and family. My sample went into a tumbler.
Please note: I chose this particular picture because you can sort of see Dad’s reaction to the beer in the background, crinkled eyebrows and everything. It made me laugh.

The reason I decided, upon its recommendation, to go ahead and try this beer was because unlike the flavored Michelob Ultra creations sent from hell by Satan himself, this beer actually resembles something with blueberry in it. Like, color-wise, it’s roughly what I’d expect for something containing blueberry juice. Plus, you know, 8% ABV. And it’s Anheuser-Busch. I HAD TO KNOW.

And now I do. It smells like blueberry and some sort of pale malt, the kind of malt I associate with Pilsners. I’m not personally a fan of this sort of malt, but it’s not a warning sign per se. At first taste, it even tastes like blueberry, or at the very least like some sort of wild not-blue berry. It’s… surprisingly not bad, even for an avowed hater of 92% of all fruit beers on the market.

Here’s the thing, though: NEVER SWALLOW THIS BEER. EVER. The aftertaste is, according to my notes, “mold.” It’s horrid. Horrid. MOLDY HORRID. Make-it-stop-painful-horrid-give-me-more-Sambuca*-please-so-I-can-kill-the-taste-dead horrid.

Overall, it’s not anywhere near as bad as I thought it might be. I could even see where people could like it, assuming their taste buds do different things to the aftertaste than mind did – I don’t see how anyone could survive the aftertaste I experienced and still enjoy the beer. The upshot is that if you like fruit beers and you’re feeling adventurous, try some.

If nothing else, it’s way better than a Sam Adams Cherry Wheat.

_____________________________________________________________
*Sambuca is an Italian after dinner drink with a syrupy texture that tastes like licorice. It’s not my favorite flavor in the world, but it’s magic. To experience the magic, have a snifter of some after a huge meal, while you’re in the middle of that OMG NEVER EATING AGAIN phase. The Sambuca will cure your overstuffed, bloated feeling. It’s MAGIC, seriously. And why we always try to keep Sambuca around.

Read Full Post »

Sam Adams Cherry Wheat Review 2.0

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , , , on October 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I figured it out. This is the Twilight of beers: seems like a fun idea, initially appealing if you like that sort of thing, but with a core of something deeply, deeply wrong.

Basic Info:
PAIN, THY NAME IS Sam Adams Cherry Wheat
Origin: Boston Beer Company (Sam Adams)
Style: Fruit Beer
ABV: 5.4%
IBU: not given
I drank this: on tap at Old Chicago, Overland Park
Calories: 176 in a 12 oz bottle, meaning that (pending my calculator still works) I had to work off approximately 234 calories from drinking this.

Clearly and obviously, I do not like this beer. I’d had it once before, back when I was roughly 21/22 or so and trying everything I could get my hands on. I’d had a raspberry wheat and liked it (I forget if it was from 75th Street or Free State), so I figured the Sam Adams Cherry Wheat would be good too. I mean, the assumption makes sense is what I’m saying.                                

Of all the beers I’ve ever had, this beer stands out. The memory of drinking it has stuck with me because it reminded me of nothing more closely than Robitussin. The entire time I was drinking the beer, I was forcibly reminded of having a sinus infection. As this is not why I drink beer, I refrained from ever ordering another and relegated it to my shortlist of beers to warn people about.

That particular Cherry Wheat was bottled. This time, it was on tap. I figured that, being on tap, maybe it would be better. Because beer is always better on tap.

So, to review. Looks-wise, this is a cloudy light amber with a soft pink tinge. It has a foamy finger or so of head. It gives off a scent of cherry Kool-Aid and popsicles: nice, sweet, fun, like childhood. Up to this point, I love it, because it reminds me of sunny summer days spent stuffing myself full of sugar, and those are good memories. Because SUGARRRRRR.

When I had this beer last Friday, I was with (among others) my brother. I had gotten through the scent in my reviewing notes when I watched him take a drink. He gagged almost immediately and summed up the experience by saying, once he’d caught his breath, “that has between three and five different tastes, all of which are bad.”

He’s not wrong. I came up with three:
1) dark cherry (YUM)
2) sour wheat (um)
3) aspartame evil (Blerg. I’m sure there’s no aspartame (i.e., Nutra Sweet) in this beer. It’s a mark of its innate terribleness that I noticed aspartame as a note. It’s in the aftertaste, mostly.)
So picture those three – four if you’d prefer to separate evil into its own category - flavors combined together, pleasantly fizzy and with a foamy, slightly sharp mouthfeel. And you have Sam Adams Cherry Wheat. Or, to put it another way, it tastes like someone dumped the liquid contents of one of those cherry freezer popsicle things onto a loaf of moldy bread and then allowed it to ferment.

Warning: for the love of the deity of your choice, DO NOT DRINK WATER AFTER DRINKING THIS BEER. It only spreads the taste around and makes it worse.

The best thing I’ve heard anyone (in this case, my brother again) say about this beer is that it’s the liquid equivalent of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, snarky commentary provided by the friends people watching you drink it. (If they were true friends, they wouldn’t let you order this beer.)

So Sam Adams, I feel betrayed. But I promise I will review something excellent of yours soon, because you do brew some excellent beer. Just. Just not this.

To sum up:

Know Your Meme, bitches

Read Full Post »

Sam Adams Cherry Wheat

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , on October 15, 2010 | 4 Comments »

Read Full Post »

Free State Crimson Berry

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , on October 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

In which I show that it’s not that I hate fruit beers in general, but that I hate *bad* fruit beers. I thought I’d review a good one for once.

Basic Info:
Name: Crimson Berry
Origin: Free State Brewing Co., Lawrence, KS
Style: Fruit Beer
ABV: not given, per usual Free State Style
IBU: 18
I drank this: on tap at the brewery

For those of you unfamiliar with the University of Kansas and surrounding lore, the school colors are *not* red and blue. They’re crimson and blue. This beer, the Crimson Berry, it referring to that.

Next important thing: these aren’t sweet berries. The berries in this beer are cranberry, raspberry and blueberry. One of my main issues with a lot of fruit beers is that they’re so sweet that they seem like they’re trying to be something other than beer. The great thing about the Crimson Berry is that it’s slightly sweet, but also sour and bright and tingly. It’s a fall seasonal rather than a spring or summer, which is uncommon for fruit beers. But this beer lets the cranberry play, and I think that’s uncommon in fruit beers as well.

Onto the actual beer: this came out as a cloudy wheat-colored beer with a slightly pinkish hue. The smell was a front hit of wheat on a backdrop of juicy berries.

Taste-wise, this is one of those beers that needs to be broken down into the moment-by-moment experience of drinking it. It begins all berry, a very tart berry that sort of explodes. It’s replaced immediately by a very strong wheat flavor, the type of wheat that tastes exactly the way baking bread smells. That gets replaced immediately by a hit of very, very light malts. If you let the beer hang out on your tongue, the berry flavor will return in about a second and a half. The berry flavor also returns on the swallow, and lingers in a berry-wheat aftertaste.

I like this beer because the berries taste like actual berries the whole way through. They don’t turn into stale Bazooka Joe or cough syrup or Essence of Strawberry Shortcake Doll or anything else. They’re just berries. Like you could eat in a muffin. Or a scone (this beer reminds me of nothing so strongly as a cranberry scone). It’s well done. If you’re in the area, want a fall fruit beer, but are sick to death of pumpkin ales (or just in the mood for something different), this is absolutely the way to go. Excellent stuff.

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

%d bloggers like this: