A Place to Gather and Talk
“Because some marketeers will do anything to avoid focusing on making better beer.”
The public knows little about good beer. What to do. What to do. Ah, this guy knows! Make a stupid gimmick: a device that makes your bottle float in mid air. What’s next, making scalpels that also serve as bottle openers? Surgeon to nurse: “Did you see where that cap went when it popped off? Oh. see, now it foamed over. We’ll never get all that out. We’ll just close up; he won’t know the difference.”
“MR. Colbert! How DARE you steal Scribe’s pronunciation of ‘report.'”
Courtesy Beernews.org
Harvest Dance
Wheat Wine Style Ale
Boulevard Brewing
Kansas City, Kansas
9.1%
Start with unpredictable foam. Scribe doesn’t mean “open and run like HELL to the sink.” That happens and wheat can do that. Brewers USE it to bolster head. Scribe means: open it, start to pour and part way through the pour the glass suddenly fills and the bottle overflows. Let it sit there and it overflows, then not, overflows, then not. In other words: about as unpredictable as a cat dropped unto a bed of hot coals.
Ruined a TV control. That’s OK. Mrs. Scribe wanted to watch soap operas.
BARF.
9.1? Tastes like more and still loads of sweet. Aroma: sweet and wheat. Maybe just a bit of peppery yeast. Maybe.
Mouthfeel? Scuse Scribe for a sec. What did ya feel, mouth? Oh, yeah. OK. Scribe will tell them. “Foam, wheat and sweet.” This beer has about as many dimensions as Flatland. That would be: two. YUP, that’s about it: sweet and wheat. The foam doesn’t count because it’s so &^%$#@!)*&^ unpredictable.
Misty yeast/wheat haze. Slight light gold color. If labels made beer grand, at least the packaging would save this. But it doesn’t. Why didn’t they keep the red provided in the picture culled from Beer News? Looked better. This was kind of a Dracula BLAH-se’ brown.
Did they fully ferment this sucker? Barley wines can be sweet too, but to claim this is cloying is like saying the only problem a puking kid is the cement-like PBJ sticking to the roof of his mouth was a teensy weensy “cloying.”
If not for that: “drinkable,” if you can get enough in your glass between explosive foam pours to drink. Drinkable: yes. Interesting: hell no.
Now, please excuse Scribe again. He needs to go steal a jackhammer from the county to get the “cloy” out his mouth.
Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales
Dexter, Michigan
Can you say, “head?” When poured there was little beer: foam coats the glass and hangs, hangs, hangs on. In the glass: all pillow head. Mrs. Scribe was mad when Scribe looked at all that head with envy and said, “If only….” Malt and alcohol nose. Sour. Is this supposed to be Flemish? Mahogany brown,
Dark malts and alcohol coat the mouth. Not as much carbonation in the mouthfeel.
From their site:
“Noel de Calabaza – Deep mahogany and malty, layered hops, figs, raisins, sugar plums, cashews betwixt rum laden truffles.”
If this were an attempt at Belgian, as some claim, it should be on da bloody bottle! Mention that. Skip the hop BS. If there had been a hint of this on the bottle Scribe may have reconsidered. But not much.
There has to be some black patent in here and maybe some brown malt. If that sour sense is the hops, change the damn hops! Bottle label says “multi-layered hops.” What %$#@! hops?
If ya wanna pucker then sucker this one down. But as far as being “Christmas,” “seasonal,” or all that interesting?
Bah humbug.
“Reporting bad beer and bad beer news so you can do better than drinking or thinking crap.”
Professor Good Ales says: pronounced like “‘report’ as in Stephen Colbert Report.”
FINALLY. A beer column again. Been so many years since Hopping Around stopped hopping Scribe thought the whole beer blog biz would CASCADE without him. Not really. Just FUGGLE-ING with you.
Continue reading “Ye Olde Scribe’s Bad Beer Report”
YOS has been somewhat nasty as of late when reviewing beer. But LOOK! The sky is clearing! The birds are chirping. Quick, go get the blunderbuss! We’ll have a feast. And once we’re done we can crack open a bottle of Maredsous Annaye-Abdi Tripel.
Continue reading “Beer Profile: Maredsous Abbaye-Abdij Tripel”
“Liquid barf in a bottle!”
Barrelhouse Red Leggs Ale: An All American Deep Red Ale
Damn those infernal Commie Red Ales. If this bottle were truly representative of the best Americans can do we’d be speaking Russian, Scribe doesn’t do other languages well. Someone would have to LENIN him a hand.
But he doesn’t blame the brewer…
Continue reading “Ye Olde Scribe Presents: Anatomy of a REALLY Bad Beer”
Continue reading “Beer Profile: Troubadour Obscura Mild Stout”
“A bit more clumsy than a pub CRAWL.”
(Note: I pasted this first beer-related submission for Scribe as is, as he requested when he called: no editing. Oh, and the wisecracks are his and his alone.-Ken Carman)
420 Stockbridge Rd.
Great Barrington, MA 01230
(413) 528-8282