Frosty Goodness » 1/6

Lompoc Heaven’s Helles. Ow, the memories.

Frosty — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 02:50:39 +0000

I love Lompoc Brewery. But even those we love disappoint us once in a while. Heaven’s Helles tastes as close to college Coors Light days as I ever want to get. Not. A. Fan.

When Lompoc comes a calling, stick to the LSD.

Hell or High Watermelon: It’s a tougher choice than you think.

Frosty — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:47:23 +0000

Before I begin, an appeal: Brewers of the world, can you please, please, stop putting watermelon in beer. It just doesn’t belong. Like Jar Jar in a Star Wars movie (geez I’m a nerd), you are just going to go and ruin a good thing. I have now “officially” reviewed 3 watermelon beers, and they have all been unabashedly terrible (SPOILER!). People will try them, because they are funny. But no one actually likes them enough to buy more. And if they do, they probably have no taste buds and eat junk like mayo-and-relish sandwiches and pork rinds (hi Wayne!).

But let’s begin. Let me introduce today’s entry. This is Hell or High Watermelon from 21st Amendment Brewery. It comes in a can. It’s brewed with watermelon juice. And it tastes awful.

There is no bitterness to the flavor at all, but I actually think that is a bad thing here. If it had any other characteristics, even cheek smash, I would have had something more clever to say than “it tastes awful”. But I don’t. The best way to describe the experience of drinking this, is to give you a play by play:

Pour. Its kind of foamy, but not obnoxious. Typical light beer type pour.
Smell. Not bad. Vaguely watermelon-y. Even though I knew this was going to be a tough swallow, I had an actual glimmer of hope at this point.
Taste
1. Light. Not much to it. Hardly more substantial than water.
2. Ok there is a hint of the watermelon, but…
3. What is that … fish? ugh…watermelon ala’ fish scales.
4. (At this point my face kind of scrunched up, and I drank some Tabasco to get the flavor out of my mouth)
Pour in the sink. Sorry about that sink.

It’s not the worst beer I’ve ever had. I didn’t cringe, spit it out or want to vomit. But it is really bad. It’s just sort of the definition of what “this tastes bad”, is supposed to taste like.

Believe it or not, I really don’t like giving bad reviews. I love craft brewers, and encourage them to experiment with awesome beers to make us dance and cheer. But since this is clear violation of Frosty Edict #4 – “Enough With The Watermelon”, the voice of the people needed to be heard. So thanks Billy. Thanks for dropping off something on my desk that was as terrible as expected, packaged in BPA lined cans, and nearly ruined my egg sandwich.

See what I have to go through for free beer?

HG Hurricane Lager — “HG” stands for “Hic! Gahhhh…”

Walt Liquor — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 06:09:51 +0000

Ah! A new malt liquor I haven’t tried! Here I am, sitting down in front of the TV, drinking from a tall can of HG Hurricane High Gravity Lager and some Sour Cream N’ Onion Pringles. Otherwise known as a Cincinnati wedding reception banquet. If the TV had been stacked on top of a milk crate on top of a spool, then we’d have a Fairfield OH thanksgiving dinner. And if that TV had been tuned to one of them lumberjack competitions, we’d have Date Night at the Walt Liquor household.

This particular brew looked like, from the artwork, one of those brews that combine caffeine and beer, but I think it’s just simulacrum put out by Busch to grab a few bucks from the low end of the market. It’s perched right in that no-mans-land in between good malt liquor and bad regular beer, an awkward spot in beer space that seems like it should be the best of both worlds yet appeals to no one. It’s the equivalent of the robotics world’s “uncanny valley” — they’d do much better if they just committed fully to making crappy cheap malt liquor, or retreat back behind the mediocre-beer defense walls and continue making Bud Light. I’ve seen references to Hurricane Ice, which must be marketed to an even smaller demographic, namely people who want to go straight to jail, tonight. It’s not bad, actually seems to have a bit of fruity orange flavor to it, but it’s just oddly awkward. When you drink from a can this big, you instinctively cringe with each gulp as you learned from drinking malt liquor. At least I did, using the patented take-giant-swigs-of-ice-cold-crap-beer-so-you-minimize-the-tasting technique honed over the years. When I didn’t get the usual sour soapy proto-malty aftertaste, I was strangely relieved that it wasn’t malt liquor, followed a second or so later by disappontment that it isn’t even a bad regular beer. For some reason I kept doing this same pattern for at least 10 minutes, probably because the malt-liquor cringe is a hard habit to break when you drink from a can the size of a scuba tank. After a while, though, the 8% alcohol content catches up with you, and lo and behold, you’re unexpectedly drunk on a Tuesday night. And coincidentally, “Unexpectedly drunk on a Tuesday Night” was my wedding song back in Fairfield. Sung by the wedding band, “Sour Cream N’ High Gravity Pringles”…

Hitachino Nest Espresso Stout. Coffee + Beer = Sink.

Frosty — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:17:41 +0000

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you poured cold coffee in beer? Well wonder no longer. Hitachino Nest has answered that question by brewing up their Espresso Stout. A “Japanese dark beer brewed with coffee beans”. A beer, best described as tasting like rancidity and sadness. Now, I’m no fan of coffee in general, but everyone else who tried this also gave it a resounding “yuck”.

In an effort to brew something that satisfied both the night before and the morning after, they instead created what is officially the worst beer I’ve ever tasted.

Ow my Mouth! Bayern Dragon’s Breath

Frosty — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:38:00 +0000

My local beer swiller has a “bargain bin”. Sometimes, I find some real gems in there. Like the Mendecino Black Hawk Stout. Other times however, what I find there truly deserves its shelf location. I should have known better when I saw the full six pack sitting there, instead of the usual single bottles.

I won’t labor on the review too much other than to say “ew’. Like “omg ew”. Like, what were they thinking? Its labeled a “Dark Heff”, but I’m not sure what that even is supposed to mean. It is an assault on the tastebuds the like of which I haven’t had in awhile. The flavor was so all over the place, its almost like something I would recommend everyone try, just so I could watch the look on your face when you drink it. Its the beer equivalent to “Hey dude, this reeks….come smell it”.

When you think about it, they did warn me a little by naming it Dragon’s Breath. That being the case, I’ll finish out this little review with an unintentional review from dear Gollum: “[Dragon's Breath] It burns! It burns us!”

Set adrift in nasty. Widmer Drifter Pale Ale.

Frosty — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:41:29 +0000

An hour or so ago, I made a Twitter entry that proclaimed my intention to drink this, given that I had nothing else in the fridge. “In the land of the thirsty, the one starred beer is king” it proclaimed. Well, it turns out that the land of the thirsty is a lawless place. Not even my desire for a beer could get me choke down this swill.

Hoppy where you don’t want it, tart in the rest, its just some kind of beer experiment gone wrong. Like, the flavors so bad that they decided to overcompensate by adding citrus “flavors”. “Needs more dog” as the saying goes.

You know, the bottle has this tagline on it. “Brewers of Quality Beers”. Really? My sink doesn’t agree. Don’t get me started on Widmer, whose business lobby makes you pay for little things like tatoos and stickers. Somewhere along the way, local Oregon brewery turned into cash obsessed money machine. And the taste of the beer seems to gone along with it.

Lost Coast Raspberry Brown – Fruit gone wrong.

Frosty — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:51:48 +0000

Fruity beers can go one of two ways. An awesome brew of fruity flavor, ala Stumptown Tart, or a nasty, syrup tinged nightmare like Lost Coast Raspberry Brown. I mean this stuff is terrible. What would possess them to make something that tastes like Raspberry Syrup poured into Brown Ale is beyond me. I assume there is a Brown Ale in there somewhere, but its hard to tell past the pucker.

Because Lost Coast’s Downtown Brown is so good, I will chalk this one up to the brewers having too many evenings over in “herbal” Aracata. Now that i think about it, I guess that explains the wrappers.

Blech … Jubelale 2008.

Frosty — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:31:24 +0000

I’m not going to spend too much effort on this, other to say that the 2006 version of Jubelale was nasty. 2007 was gross as well. In this regard, the 2008 version does not disappoint. Just as cheek smashy, just as odd tasting, just as quickly down the sink. This year, even the wrapper was bad.

At least I didn’t have to pay for it. Except in watching the Charger game with the buddy who brought it over. But I’m not bitter, really. Jubelale on the other hand …

Hibernation Ale: Like Bad Anesthesia

Frosty — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:39:59 +0000

Ever had one of those beers where it feels like the flavor wraps around your teeth? Like its originating in your molars, wandering your bicuspids, then slowly slithering its way into that part of your pallete that makes you shudder. The kind where it’s a liquid, but you feel the urge to chew, and chew. HArd enough to kill whatever it was that was assaulting your mouth.

So goes Hibernation Ale by Great Divide. Someone in the brewery said, lets give it more flavor! And out came the funk dropper. The label says “Robust”. But what they really mean is “Really f*@$!ing Rubust”. Rubust like a sweaty sumo wrestler. And tasting the same too.

Budweiser and Clamato — My Stomach Wants a Divorce

Walt Liquor — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:17:09 +0000

This has been a bad week for my stomach. First, we went to the county fair, where I had — you better sit down for this — 1) a deep-fried twinkie, 2) deep-fried oreos, 3) deep-fried Spam, and best of all, 4) a deep-fried WHITE CASTLE BURGER. I believe these are coincidentally the forms that the four horsemen of the apocalypse will take when they reappear on earth. Fortunately for us all, I neutralized them with my stomach. Then, I found this beverage. It was a moment that will forever live in infamy, a moment that will have entire chapters devoted to it in my children’s high school history textbooks, a moment that as we speak is forming the foundations of new religions. The moment that I found… Budweiser and Clamato. Yeah, that’s right — Budweiser, a perfectly normal, profitable company, has put out a product that consists of a can, a can that contains beer, tomato sauce, and clam juice. The resulting concotion is salmon-colored, cloudy, and carbonated. And it looked just as disgusting as it sloshed down the kitchen sink drain as it did sitting on the shelf in the store.

Clamato, as I read in wikipedia, is a mix of reconstituted tomato juice concentrate, reconstituted dried clam broth, and high fructose corn syrup. Oh, and MSG. Who the hell decided they needed to add beer to the mix? It’s apparently very popular, particularly in Canada, but it is easily THE WORST BEER I’VE EVER TASTED. And keep in mind, I’m the guy who actually finished forty-ounce bottles of Schlitz, King Cobra, and something called “Country Club”. I managed two sips of this abomination before I had to eat a mop to get rid of the flavor. It takes quite a lot to disgust me, and the fine folks at Budweiser have done it. I raise a glass of Tums to you in salute.

Sadly, I had poured it all down the drain before I realized I had not maximized the potential of this drink — clearly, what it’s meant for is dipping sauce for deep-fried White Castles. Maybe next year, unless I wise up before then. If I could give this drink a negative six, I could, but let’s just say that my digestive system will never be the same…