“Who is more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?”
-Benjamin Kenobi

Juan de la Cueva may have been a loon. For some reason in 1575 he wrote about some dish that combined Jalapenos and ale. Crazy? Maybe. But the real fools in this instance are the guys at Rogue Brewery who decided that this obscure story would make for a great beer.

Have you ever tasted a shoe? No? Well, I’m not sure I ever have either, but immediately after taking a sip of this beer I was convinced it tasted like one. Then the shoe flavor left, and the real horror crept in. Repeat after me: Peppers do not belong in beer.

The aftertaste was so wrong, completely awful on so many levels, that I was convinced I couldn’t really have tasted that. I tried again. I had Grandpa Goodbeer try it. All to no avail. This beer is gross. As soon as the otherwise odd flavor goes away, Rogue Chipotle Ale attacks you with the nuclear bomb of all Aftertaste Attacks. Dry, tangy, salty, throat scratchy, gross old jalapeno flavor. Its actually much worse than it sounds, if you can believe that.

On the other hand…

I did have to give it a 2. It worked pretty awesome as a marinade for Tilapia.

I applaud Rogue for trying new things, I really do. But much like that random hallucinogen I tried in college, not all experiments are a good idea.

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…

I present his here to you as a cautionary tale.

Grandpa Goodness was in town, and we shared some of the yummy Hitachino Nest, both coming away with what we thought was a new appreciation for Japanese beer. Sadly, one day while I was away at the salt mines, Grandpa, flush from the success of the previous evening, decided to go to the local beer pusher and pick up something new from Japan to try.

And so begets what is about the worst beer I’ve tried in the 60+ reviews on this site. It’s been a long time since I’ve had those college mainstays Keystone and Natural Light, but if my memory for nausea serves me right, they have a Japanese equivalent. Light like urine, rancid tang like urine (wait, how would I know that?) this stuff was … less than stellar.

There are quite a few things I like to recall from college, but what the frat party beer tasted like isn’t one of them.

This beer made me so sad. Up to this point, Alaska Brewing had been batting 100, scoring with the Amber, Stout, and Summer. Endlessly long winters however, seem to have taken their toll on the brewmasters. This beer advertises itself as being brewed with spruce tips..which should be your first warning. When I think of good beer flavor, somehow trees just don’t come to mind. But I was feeling adventurous.

How this beer really tastes is indescribable, since it assaults you with so many flavors you can’t really decide what it tastes like. Except for gross. On the upside, the overly powerful taste worked great for a marinade. Saved from a 1 by the mighty spruce.

I really wanted to give this a “1″. But I figured I would be fair since I really don’t like beer that tastes like this. Sorta IPA meets bitter beer face . Ok never mind, it’s a 1. It was a real effort to keep my teeth from jumping out of my mouth the second I drank it. I give it a label of “one swish sinker”. Meaning all it took was one swish for the rest to be poured down the sink.

I don’t like IPA’s or Pale Ales in general because of that “why would anyone drink this” hop flavor. But, this beer’s main offense isn’t so much tasting like that, as much as not letting me know it was going to. Prohibition? They should have called it “Prohibitive Ale” instead.