I will start off by saying that with the buttload of beers available at the 2008 Brewfest, I’d halfway expect to find an overly hopped keg of something brewed with Charlton Heston’s Soylent corpse amongst the offerings.  If I was to name it, it might be called “SOYLENT NRA IPA”.  This would be a good thing, even though I probably wouldn’t be inclined to swill a glass of anything brewed containing Martha Stewart’s Soylent corpse in payment for stealing her catch phrase.   That would be wrong in oh so many ways.

Wrong in oh so many ways was the sheer glut of people at the Brewfest early in the day on Saturday.  Frosty and I were somewhat surprised by the enormity of the crowds and the lines for beer.    These things in isolation may not have been horrible, but with the site arrayed as it was, you couldn’t navigate through the crush of people to find where the beer lines ended and where the slothful masses of Portland decided to park their beer swilling asses.   Even so, I did manage to try four offerings and was increasingly disappointed as each foul, but temptingly named, brew assaulted my gasping taste buds.   I was ready to put the poor things out of their misery after taste #3, but tried one more swill hoping to salvage what few remained.

Next year I think I may offer up my services as a ‘Beer Logistician’ and try to inject a little bit of sanity and order into the festivities that have clearly outgrown this outdated setup.  Maybe then I can make better beer choices too.

The one bright spot of the hour or two spent in this roiling sea of humanity was the short trip to the “Beer Chips” tent to pick up a snack and a eye full of the gold lame wrapped models selling $1 bags of chips.   Both the chips and the models were things of beauty.  Alas, only one of the two were we allowed to shove in our mouths and that ended up being the chips.

We tried two of their three varieties.  The baseline “Beer” flavored offering was fantastic.  Salty, slightly sweet, and faintly beery.  A fantastic chip all around.  The Spicy Bloody Mary chips weren’t spicy and only very faintly “bloody” by tasting vaguely of ketchup.   Not a fantastic chip, but still very edible.  I was hoping for something different and didn’t get it with the Bloody Mary chips.  My reviews are often tainted with the disappointment of crushed expectations.   Can’t win them all.

Assuming that I’m willing to man-up and attempt another Brewfest run next year, it’ll definitely be the plan to show up right at opening on any of the four days of the run.  Any later than that and beer loses its appeal when you have to grind up against humanity in order to sample the questionable Brewfest offerings.   Till next year……

I was lucky enough to have another homebrew delivered to my desk this afternoon. Jonathan Edwards dropped off his latest concoction, Hit ‘n Run IPA. The story goes that on the way home from the brew shop he was actually involved in a hit and run. Something about two meth crazed old ladies who sides-swiped him. Man, the burbs ain’t as same as they used to be!

First off, as we all know I am a sucker for labels. For a homebrew, this one has got a great one. An oregon license plate “Hit n Run” with the alchohol level (just a guess or the real valu?) and IPA as the registration stickers. Nice. Well done.

Beyond the label, it proved to be a very easy drinking IPA. Mr. Edwards apologized ahead of time that it was a little weak. But in a world where IPAs and IIPAs seem to overcompensate for art with more hops, I found it enjoyable. I love a hoppy beer, but it can definitely be taken too far. I could say that Hit ‘n Run needs more hops but I won’t. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Just do what the big microbrewers do (ahem, Fat Tire), just name it something different! If it tastes kinda like an IPA but is easy drinking, just call it Easy Rider IPA or something and put something about how you were trying to capture the drinkability of a lager and the hop-roots of an IPA. Viola!

Writing reviews on Frosty Goodness doesn’t pay well. In fact, it doesn’t pay at all. And when Frosty is on my ass for not writing a post in like, forever, it is hard to get motivated. HOWEVER, a perk has begun to surface. It seems that there are some people who actually read Frosty Goodness. People who are not the same people who write it. We’re not talking thousands or even hundreds, but a couple people have tuned in now and then. These people have also started to BRING US BEER!!

This is incredible. I mean, they just drop beer by my desk! Sweet! I need to start reviewing video games, exotic cars, and HDTVs! Recently, my friend Ben brought his brother’s homebrew by my desk. I was surprised, and quite frankly a bit scared when I heard this was his brother’s attempt at a coconut curry beer. Yes, coconut curry. What in the hell? I agreed to drink and review the beer on the condition that he be prepared to have it totally lambasted.

That weekend I had my in-laws over for a BBQ and finally got the courage up to try it. I opened the bottle and took a whiff. Yup… definitely coconut. Definitely curry. He wasn’t joking. Still beer though. I closed my eyes, clenched my stomach and took a swig.

Hmm. Not too shabby! Although the flavors were unconventional, they blended together for a taste that seemed to fit. Unlike other flavored beers, like Old Market Pub’s Chili Pepper beer, it didn’t taste like some pilsner or IPA that someone haphazardly dumped some Mrs. Dash in to. It tasted complete. I gave my in-laws a sip.

Sideways glances and skeptically furrowed brows gave way to smiles. My father-in-law thought it would make a great marinade. My mother-in-law and I are big Indian and Thai snobs and both thought it would make a great addition to some Massuman Curry or Pad Prik. We both agreed that an entire 6 pack might be too much, but it would definitely make a great companion to good curry-based cuisine.

So, Ben’s Brother (sorry, I lost the mail with your name)… keep up the good work! You might even want to consider marketing this as an Indian beer. I would buy it at my favorite local Indian restaurant.

“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.

The only thing “spring release-y” about this stuff was the hopefully upcoming release of it a few hours later from my bladder.   Even then, it would probably be the same pitiful trickle that my first, and last, taste was.   I tried, I really tried to like it.  Honest.

I took a 6-pack of this camping along with Frosty and our families last weekend and figured that a nice cream ale would be a good choice for camping festivities.  This choice was Siriusly wrong.

Lagunitas appears to have taken this beer way too seriously and made something too “sirius” to be drinkable.   It’s a concoction that’s loosely  musty, hoppy,  and overly spiced.   My wife says it tastes like grapefruit and she willingly, YES WILLINGLY, agreed to drink the rest of this vile swill.

I’m only going to give it a 2 because previously I really have tasted worse and probably will again.  I’m saving my ONES for gag reflex inducing future Swillfests.   My faith in the American brewer has been tainted once again.

Only the “reserve beers” (Alaskan Summer Ale, Stumptown Tart, Fat Tire, etc) from the home stash saved the weekend from being a total Swill Ride.

This has to be the fiercest beer found in “regular-folks” circulation at grocery stores — you of course can get much odder, harsher beers at specialty stores and Trader Joe’s, but this is as far as you can go into dark cheek-biting beers that are stocked next to the baloney at Ralph’s. So I suspect that this beer is to potent stout beers as Avril Lavigne is to punk rock.  This beer is also the next in my Macarthur-Genius-Award winning series on Beers Whose Artwork Can Kick Your Ass.  And in this case, steal your soul and possibly lead to a communist revolution in your very home.  For those keeping track, this is Part 6 in the series, which includes four malt liquors, a viking, and now an indestructible quasi-priest with a serious beard.

And, I might add, serious cheek bite.  Holy mouth burn, does this beer bite!   You may want to go over your tongue with a pumice stone for a few minutes before drinking, just to warm up.  Certainly it’s not the biggest offender out there — specialty store stouts could bite your cheek twice as hard, I’m sure.  Somewhere, somebody is probably brewing some prototype Nuclear Stout that contains so much hops that not even light can escape, a beer that will blast your cheeks into next October, where they will suddenly reappear after you’ve learned to cope without them, reattach to your face and hurt like hell for the next twenty years.  But as far as beers that you can readily find during a trip to buy diapers, this is pretty sharp.  Not a bad taste, though — I do like stouts quite a bit (Guinness being my all-time favorite beer) and so it was definitely a good diversion from the usual horse pee I drink for entertainment’s sake on this site.  But I must ashamedly admit I bought it more for the label, once again suckered in by soul-less commercialism.  Isn’t that how Rasputin would have wanted it?

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…