We already know that beer is good for you, and also there is a very good chance that we owe our entire civilization to the discovery of how to make beer.  Now these brainiacs turn it into a wonder drug.

Are we living in the new Golden Age or what?

I hereby proclaim the Bio-Beer team at Rice, everyone on the project, as groovy.

This is beyond groovy.

From Greenupgrader.com <- visit here for more pictures!

[Revised]

My love and I were at a Thai restaurant when we discovered this beer. A joke beer, obviously. But after we had our giggle, I had to admit my curiosity was piqued.

Phuket, I thought. I’ll try it.

As it says on the label, it’s "The original island beer." What island? I had no idea. All I knew is that it was from Thailand.

Phuket, I thought. I’ll look it up on the Internet later.

We got it home, took a picture of it, and I popped it open. It’s going to be horrible, I thought. Like Coors flavored with rusty nails, or Budweiser with frog juice in it.

My ceremonial sniffing of the bottle was more out of fear than pretentiousness. The scent turned out to be a tad yeasty and was brimming with hops. Not bad, really. Pleasant even. Totally the opposite of what I was expecting.

Phuket, I thought. Here goes nothing. I put the bottle to my lips and tipped it back.

I have never been to Thailand. I didn’t know there is a coastal island called Phuket, nor did I know it’s a tropical paradise. Thanks to this beer, I know a lot about it now, and in fact it just may end up being where my love and I eventually spend our honeymoon.

This beer is really tasty. It’s flavorful without being aggressive, giving you a laid back island version of a good German lager, with energetic hops riding over a warm golden sweet maltiness. The aftertaste settles like a tropical sunset. As with many beers, it left me mourning the fact that I’d only picked up one.

Next time I see it, you can bet I’m going to say, "Phuket! I’m getting a whole six pack!"

Here it is over a year later, and I’ve put this back on the top of the website.  Why?  Well, because they sent us this cool shirt…

Darn, and here I thought I could just drink it for the pure mindless pleasure of drinking.

Funny how that works.  Drinking beer has become a task.  At least, if I am to review it, I have to pay much closer attention to the beer itself, and take notes.

There’s a good side and a bad side.  The good side is, I appreciate the beer more if I’m entirely focused on it.  The bad side is, well, obvious.

Oh well, I need to just suck it up.  No one is forcing me to do this.  And if I start whining, someone needs to jam their boot into my behind.  I’m drinking beer.  Wow, such a hard job.  Poor me.

Anyway, about the actual brew in question:  Smells sweet, yeasty, and of dark malts.

Tastes rich, smooth, sweetly dark, with a kind of Malt-O-Meal grainy chocolate yumminess.  Very tasty! 

I also find it has a delicate edge to it.  This is a surprisingly refined dark ale.  I hereby proclaim it to be groovy, and award it with a 6.7 on the Holy Grail Scale.

“A hop lover’s delight!” says the label. “In the India Pale Ale tradition, this brew is very hoppy in both aroma and flavor from the generous amounts of Cascade hops used in brewing. Look for a medium to full body and golden straw color. Enjoy!”

Well… I hope I do! And I also hope it helps knock me out of this lonely Sunday afternoon funk in which I’ve found myself.

Pop goes the top. I take that first sniff. It most definitely features a hoppy aroma. Hops and yeast is all I smell.

First sip — an explosion of hops. Sparkling, bold, not too green, bitter but not overpoweringly so. They weren’t lying. It’s as hoppy as you can get without being a frog. It’s as smooth as you can get while being this hoppy.

This is a fine India pale ale, and I hereby officially deem it Groovy. I also bestow upon it 5.7 on the Holy Grail Scale, and am happy to report it has helped lift me out of this funk.

Well, kind of.  In the novel I’m writing, I’ve determined the secret ingredient of the Holy Beer:  juice from the fruit of the tree of life.  Which, in the novel, turns out to be pomegranates.

This beer (obviously) has pomegranate juice in it.  That’s why I picked it up, thinking…  Hmm, I can use this in the novel.

Popping the top, this brew smells … mealy.  Not in a bad way, just in a raw grain way.  There’s the faint aroma of wheat and a trace of, I think, greenish hops.

I take a taste and am somewhat surprised.  It’s different than any other beer I’ve tried, and that’s saying something.  It’s sharp, delicately bitter, and tangy but not in a citrus way.  Must be the pomegranate, but I don’t taste pomegranate.  In fact had the label not clearly given it away, I never would have guessed it was in there.

It tastes somehow … primitive.  Must be the unfiltered wheat?  But it’s refreshing, and I like it.  A lot.  I could drink one after another.

Methinks they’ve found a perfect recipe for keeping a wheat beer from being boring.

I have to share this bit of the label text:  "Deep in the heart of the Adirondacks, a top secret grove of pomegranates grow wild and free.  They are protected by ‘ferocious’ bears!  We traded them ten tons of honey to make this unique brew."

So, it’s made by bears?

Looks like I’m not the only fantasy writer in the brewing business.

Anyway, I hereby proclaim this to be a groovy brew, and award it 7.77 on the Holy Grail Scale.

What is it about breweries and dogs, anyway?  I see more dogs on labels than anything else.  Dogs and devils.  Some devilish dogs as well.

This one is a nice looking black lab named "Chug" featuring the inscription "No whiners."

Enough about the label … let’s see how it tastes:  Aggressive and tangy, this brew features a vivid hoppiness that rides herd over the flavors, keeping the malts in line and preventing them from straying.  It energetically tingles the tongue right before the hops bloom, the bitterness swells, the beer fairies sing and dance, and it all fades to a clean malt finish. 

I like it.

I hereby honor "Chug" the black dog as an officially groovy brew, and award it 6.7 on the Holy Grail Scale.

It’s an early afternoon right after a Sunday lunch, and I’ve got the house to myself.  The air is full of early fall cricket and grasshopper song, and the gentle breeze is nice and warm.  I’m waiting for my laundry to finish drying, and am craving some jazz on the radio.

I pop the top of this "Deep Cover" Brown Ale from Left Hand Brewing.  It’s a good name.  Cool label.  Hats off to their marketing staff.

It smells a bit yeasty.  My nose picks up some sweet roast barley.  Not just a little sweet, either — it smells candy sweet.

The first sip is unimpressive, but still good.  It doesn’t blow my socks off but it does manage to send a signal directly to the pleasure center of my brain.

Still, this strikes me as a run of the mill brown ale.  It’s like they didn’t try very hard.  The barley malts are on the rough edge, tingling the tongue without any smoothness.  Also, it strikes me that the balance of the hops is off.  So while it’s good, it doesn’t inspire me to crave more.  Instead, it inspires me to crave something better.

To sum up:  Good but not quite groovy.

And with that, the drier is buzzing.  Time to go pull out the laundry!

Call me jaded, but this sounds like a marketing department trying to buffalo small minds into thinking that, not only is this beer something special, but they’d be stupid not to agree.  Kind of like peer pressure in written form.  On a can.

Makes sense.  Peer pressure is what made most of us into beer drinkers at one time or another.  But to me this raises a red flag and makes me think of that idiotic spiel you find on Budweiser cans.

I pop it open and take a sniff.  Yeasty with faint hoppy highlights.

First sip:  Light, hoppy, and very watery.

The overall taste is not that bad.  While the flavor is weak, what there is of it is good.  It’s watery malt with subtle hoppy overtones, delivered in an airy dilution of bubbles.

Conclusion:  it doesn’t completely suck, but its far removed from groovy.  Groovy isn’t even on the horizon.

Raising it up, I take a sniff. There’s a weak scent of barley, and the ghost of hops. Not much else. I take it as a bad omen, but shrug it off — I’ve been pleasantly fooled before.

Raising it to my lips, I take that first sip. I am rewarded with a very weak taste. Watery. Slightly bitter.

No body.

Let’s not waste any more time on this one. It’s not repulsive but there is really nothing there. The expression that comes firmly to mind is, “Bleh.”

This beer is not groovy. Not in the least.