May 2007

What sold me on this beer was the label, which reads: “A deep mahogany ale brewed with Belgian beet sugars, green raisins, and a sense of purpose.”

It was “a sense of purpose” which got me.

The idea of green raisins in my beer didn’t sound particularly attractive, but I thought I’d give it a try. I wasn’t surprised by the sweet aroma after I popped the cap, but I was surprised by the taste.

It was fruity, yes, but not overly so. It was more nutty than fruity, to the point that I couldn’t really tell it was a fruit beer. After the initial sweet/nut rush there’s a nice sharp chorus of hoppy overtones, all very smooth. It gives this ale an edge that I hadn’t expected.

I like it.

A visit to the Dogfish Head website reveals that this isn’t just a brewery but a restaurant, and it features “Off-centered stuff for off-centered people.” They also distill specialty vodka, rum, gin (“jin” as they call it), and tequila (“Ta-kee-la”).

You have to admire people who seriously enjoy drinking the spirits they make. And they also preach the word, as well, as they sell a book on Extreme Brewing for those who’d like to do it themselves at home.

The first thing I did with this beer is baptize my desk and laser printer with it. I don’t know exactly what happened. I guess I twitched or something, and droplets flew everywhere.

No harm done. I only wasted an ounce or so. The printer may smell like beer from now on but that’s a good thing in my mind.

So, my printer got the first sip. I get the leftovers.

You can smell the chocolate. It’s not subtle. In fact the bottle is sticky with it, thanks to my twitching.

First sip … Chocolate. Chocolate and more chocolate. Waves of it, riding high over the base of chocolate malts. It’s freaking delicious. It’s like beer candy.

It crosses my mind that, if Willy Wonka brewed beer, this would be it. Can you just see all those Oompa-Loompas running the Wonka brewery, singing:

Oompa-Loompa doompa-dee do,
I’ve got the perfect beer for you
Oompa-Loompa doompa-dee dee
Wouldn’t you love to get drunk with me?

My fiancee points out, though, that the Oompa-Loompas are very moralistic and probably wouldn’t approve of alcoholic beverages.

Oh well, it was way too freaky to contemplate anyway.

Someone near and dear to me said that I review way too many ales, bocks and lagers, and am almost completely ignoring lighter beers. Well, that’s mainly because that’s how my tastes run, but it’s also because the traditional “Holy Beers” brewed by monks are more or less all darker and heavier.

She’s right, though. I do need to mix a few more lighter beers into the picture. So today I’m drinking a wheat beer from the Sierra Nevada Brewery. I picked it mainly because I know I like wheat beers, and Sierra Nevada is a brewery close to my old home town in California.

My expectations were not that high. For one thing, it’s a twist off cap. Should that bode ill? Only if I’m a beer snob … am I? Good Lord I hope not.

But you know I am.

So, off comes the twist off cap, and I take that first sniff. What entices my nose is a sweet hop scent that literally draws a “MMmmmmMm!” out of me.

The first sip hits with a light airy hoppiness, followed immediately by shadows of the mild malt and wheat. It’s a nice, cereal flavor, grainy and wholesome. That fades gradually to a mild bitterness, not overpowering or unpleasant.

Good stuff, methinks. Indeed, very tasty. Drinking the bottle makes me think of a sunny day on the river, with sparkling waves, a gentle breeze, and dragonflies buzzing around. Sitting on the banks with my feet up on a log, holding a fishing pole and not caring if I really get a bite … as long as I don’t run out of beer.

This is not a Holy Beer contender but it is very nice and happily drinkable. I’ll give it a few gold starts on the goodness chart, and invite the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company to send me a couple cases. Just because.

Bass. It’s the heavy beat in the music. It’s a fun fish to catch. It’s an ale. It’s the word “ass” with a “B” in front of it.

My friend Tim likes it. My fiancée likes it (and she generally doesn’t enjoy beer). I’m feeling some pressure here to like it.

Oddly, I have never had Bass Ale before, or, at least I don’t remember it. So tonight is the night.

I pop the cap, take a sniff. Smells delicious. Hints of brown sugar and malt.

So far, so good.

I take my first swig. It’s light and pleasant on the tongue, with a warm caramel malt beat emphasized by a delayed hoppy bloom. The bloom fades to a pleasant, mildly bitter aftertaste.

It’s yummy.

So what is with the red triangle on the label? It looks like an icon. I want to point my mouse at it and click. Upon investigation, I’ve learned that this is one of the world’s oldest international trademarks, registered in Britain way back in 1876. The beer itself has been around since 1777, when William Bass opened the first brewery in Burton-on-Trent, England.

Another interesting tidbit: 500 cases of Bass Ale are aboard the Titanic, sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.

Speaking of the Titanic … unfortunately, the more of this ale I drink, the less I like it. The mildly bitter aftertaste continues to grow, sip after sip, until toward the end of the bottle it comes to overshadow the malt and dominate the taste. I’m biased toward sweeter brews, so those of you who like a bitterness in your beer, discount this. I just find it odd to have a beer that lauds itself “A beer that only makes other beers bitter” should end up so … well, bitter.

Should I have been forewarned? Even ignoring the name, there’s other things…

For one, I found it extremely difficult to get a picture of the bottle without the label fading into the brown of the glass. Another, I realized that it’s 10.5% alcohol. On top of all this, it’s from Canada.

Exactly what am I getting myself into?

I pop the cork and take a sniff. Not much of a scent. Very low, deep malt. Smells sweet.

Tip it back, take my first swig.

It’s…

It’s … terrible! Yuck!

No, it can’t be. I don’t believe it. I take another sip. Hmm.

Not so terrible. Take another…

It’s light on the tongue … much lighter than I’d expected. Highly carbonated. A subdued flavor that needs time to blossom. A slow upwelling of dark malt, then a wave of green-tasting hops. Then another wave of the malt swells up under the hops. Twenty seconds later, my tongue is tingling.

It’s not so terrible at all. It’s intriguing. I continue to sip. I have two stories I need to read for a writer’s meeting tomorrow, yet here I am drinking this stuff, writing about an ale instead of critiquing.

Jeeze, I wonder what my critiques are going to be like? Are they going to be coherent at all?

I’ll take a break here and go do them. Be back in a while…

Okay, I’m 2/3 the way through the bottle, and had to take a break from critiquing. This ale has become wonderful. I’m loving it. Of course, I can’t feel my face, and my teeth seem soft and wiggly … but my palate is most definitely enjoying this so-called “terrible” ale.

Is this the alcohol speaking? Maybe so. But really, does it matter?

Terrible is anything but. By the time I reach the end of the bottle, it’s like the sweet nectar of life. It’s made the contender list, tipping in at about 6.7 on the Holy Grail scale.

Why do they call it Terrible, anyway? And…

Where are my clothes?

 

On first sip I get the immediate reaction: What the hell am I tasting? This is beer?

No, its … cloves or something. This hits hard with a massive fruity overtone and a double whammy of spices. It overpowers the chocolate malt. I seriously wondered if I’d gotten a bad bottle, but no, reading the back label, this is exactly what I was to expect. Fruity, spices, cloves.

It tastes weird. That’s the best way I can describe it. And I don’t think I’ve ever described a beer tasting “weird” before.

According to ye old label, this is Germany’s original wheat-doppelbock, from Bavaria’s oldest Weizen brewery. Bottle fermented, so there’s some yeast still in the bottle (making me wonder, did I shake it up or something?) I am getting a yeasty note in the taste. The weird taste.

But, no, it’s not the yeast. It’s the spices. The cloves. I’m no authority, but what the heck are they thinking putting cloves in a beer?

Being that it’s 8.2 % alcohol, it’s packing a pretty good punch, which probably explains why it’s tasting better the more I drink it. I mean, it’s not weird enough for me to go pour it out. I am, after all, a fairly adventurous kind of guy. I’m just hoping it doesn’t make me throw up.

Why do I have the feeling, though, that if I were drinking beer 2000 years ago, sitting at the table with Jesus Christ, this is how the beer would taste to me. Weird. I’m talking as a time traveler, mind you, not a native of the era. Because of course a native of the era would think it tasted normal.

Yet, I can’t bring myself to put it on the Holy Grail scale. If I did, it would be like negative 3000 or something.

I recommend this if you’re just so jaded with tasting “beer” that it’s all blending together in your head, and you need something to jolt you back to wakefulness. But if you want to taste beer instead of some wild weird German wheat-doppelbock, avoid this one. Step away from it. Ignore the high BeerAdvocate rating.

Shun this beer. Shun it, I say.

It tastes … somehow evil.

My old friend Akihito and I had a language barrier. He knew three words of English, and I knew one word of Japanese.

His words were, “sex,” “rock-n-roll,” and “beer.” (To him “rock-n-roll” was one word.)

My word was “sake.” As in, that rice wine you serve hot.

So when I asked him about sake, he thought I was saying “Asahi,” something of which at that point I’d never heard of. It was years later at a sushi restaurant that I finally figured out our misunderstanding. I had my first Asahi beer.

I wasn’t that impressed then, and I’m not that impressed now.

My impression is that it has all the right elements to make a really good beer, but just not enough of each of them. They were afraid to add too much, or they figured economically they could make more money if they added maybe 7% less of this, 4% less of that. What they ended up with was the antithesis of synergy. The whole is even less than the sum of its parts.

It’s a beer that really could almost be good. Through Asahi Black’s watery nature are fine elements. You can taste them. They’re there. But if beer were music, this would be a symphony with too few instruments playing at too low a volume for anyone to really enjoy it.

Asahi, you need to listen to more Grateful Dead: “It takes dynamite to get me up. Too much of everything is just enough.”

Beer is about gusto, not subtlety.

This beer tastes happy.

No, not hoppy. Happy. This is a happy beer. It’s like beer for kids.

I love the label. Not only does it proclaim itself as remarkable, it is also “partakable.”

I agree!

It’s a light, fun beer that has definite vanilla overtones … which it should, being that it’s “brewed with real vanilla beans” (as opposed to fake ones?) … but the part that wins me over is the solid undercurrent of toasty, warm chocolate malt. It’s smooth and friendly, with a gentle note of hops riding up top, almost like it’s hiding in the foam.

Visiting the Breckenridge website I found the most amazing thing. A recipe for using this beer to make a milkshake. I kid you not. A beer milkshake. I’m a hardcore beer lover and even I have a problem with that idea.

I’ll take the beer, but hold the dairy. Thank you.