Posts Tagged “Recession Beer Tasting”

What a weekend! I was more tired and delirious on the ride home Sunday than I remember being in a long time. The trip was well worth it and I had some ridiculously tasty brews and made new friends. Let me get to the good stuff.

Friday, the wife and I left the Tri-Cities about 11AM and stopped in Johnson City for lunch and because my wife said “I just need to see if they have any tank tops for tomorrow.” An hour later, she hadn’t bought any of the tank tops I had imagined she might, but had an arm full of stuff.  Thank God she has her own bank account.    After the shopping extravaganza, we headed to Asheville. Where we are located geographically is nothing short of a miracle, to be honest. I can get to Nashville, Atlanta and Charlotte in about 4 hours each way. I am also within day trip distance of Louisville and several other cool cities. The great thing about where we live, tho, is that we can hit Asheville, NC in about an hour. Asheville is a beer drinker’s dream come true and is always a stop when we head to the Hops festival.

We stopped in at Bruisin Ales to buy some things I had on my shopping list. I picked up some Stone Levitation, The Bruery’s Hottenroth, an Oskar Blues Gubna and a couple others. I wasn’t sure what time I would come back through on Sunday, so I wanted to be sure to make my purchases during business hours. We loaded up my bounty and headed East to Hickory, NC. Upon our arrival, we got settled and after running into some friends from Knoxville, decided to head to a local restaurant/bar named Amos Howard’s. I was due to meet up with someone from Olde Hickory Brewery there as well, so it worked out. We had a great dinner and several tasty brews from Olde Hickory. The list goes something like this 1. Tavern Ale 2. ESB 3. Doppelbock 4. Imperial Stout.  The Wife had the Ruby Lager, Hefeweizen and the Nut Brown. I sampled hers as well and quite honestly there is not a bad beer in the bunch!

We met up with Nikol from Olde Hickory and had a great time talking about beer and then what has to be the oddest combination of topics for a tweetup ever. It was interesting and my wife and I both feel we made a friend, so it was a win/win for us. Shortly after some random dude played Purple Rain for me on the jukebox (I crap you not), we headed downtown to the Olde Hickory Taproom to meet up with some other friends from Knoxville. Our drinking was limited at this fine venue, but we had a great time with friends before we retired to the Park Inn for some rest.

Saturday morning I woke up early and rested and ready to go. My buddy Clint, his wife and our friend Ima got into town a bit later and we headed over to the festival. The line wasn’t too bad and the staff (including Nikol) was on top of things handing out bracelets and checking ID’s to make sure we all got into the area quickly…which we did. After setting up camp, I realized that I hadn’t gotten a “program”, so I went to get one and stopped by a distributor’s booth who had New Belgium and Oskar Blues. My first beer of the day was Mama’s Little Yella Pils from Oskar Blues. To demonstrate how much I love this beer, I bought some before I left NC the next day.

The next 6 hours are a blur of meeting friends from the local homebrewer’s club, talking to old friends and chatting with brewers. I hope to do a more detailed post on the grades I gave some of the beers, but here are the highlights for me:

Beer of the day: Natty Greene’s Cask Aged Sour Ale – perfect blend of aging with lacto and talent in brewing. The beer was sour in all the right ways and was one I went back for seconds of.

Brewer of the day: Mother Earth Brewing – I had 3 of their beers AND a special bourbon barrel aged version of their Tripel that was incredibly tasty. Their Kolsch is a perfect and refeshing example of the style. My wife also likes their hippy imagery and shirts…

The beer I hoped would be there and was: Foothills Sexual Chocolate – If it were not for the 2 sours I had, this would have easily claimed the beer of the day crown for me. Perfectly malty and bitter and a pleasure to drink. I hit it early to make sure I got to it before the crowds sucked the tap dry, and that may have caused some slight inebriation on my part. 

Biggest Surprise – Liberty Steakhouse and Brewery:I had eaten at this place in Myrtle Beach SC a few years back and was not pleased with the beer. It was OK at best for me. I passed their booth and noticed they had an odd Belgian/French type name to a beer that was described as a sour wheat. I had it and loved it! I am trying to find the exact name, so that if you are in SC, you can ask for it. More on that later.

We ended the night at the Hickory Taproom for dinner and after having half of a 6″ pizza that was delicious, I headed to the hotel for bed.

I made a stop in Asheville on the way back looking for Mother Earth beer and couldn’t find it where we stopped…I know they have it in Asheville, so I will grab it next time. I picked up the Yella Pils and some Raging Bitch from Flying Dog. I will review those as time and diet (I gotta cleanse after this weekend!) allows.

We are nearing the end.  If only the night we performed this tasting were over as quickly as these posts are completed.  It seemed like an eternity with some of these beers in my mouth!  I will give you 4 more this time and then a conclusion and the winners of the night in my final post.  Here is a pic, though, to make you smile as you read these 4 reviews:

Busch – Cold as a mountain stream, smooth as it’s name.

The Pour – No smell at all.  Same color as most of these wretched beers.

The Drink – Tastes like the watery run off after cooking yellow corn.

The Verdict – “Did I just taste some dead body???”

Score: 0 stars

Schlitz Original Malt Liquor

The Pour – Sweet wet socks on a summer day.

The Drink – Lingering taste of crotch…or at least what we imagine it to taste like.

The Verdict – “It’s ruined my mouth!!!”

Score: -1 star

Natural Ice

The Pour – Sweet wet bread smell.  Light pee.

The Drink – Carbonation, weak malt, bananas (faint).

The Verdict – “These burps are horrific.”

Score: -.125 stars

Coors Originial – The banquet beer.

The Pour – No smell at all.  Nothing.

The Drink – Bad moldy bread. No fruity taste.  The carbonation makes it crisp.

The Verdict – “I’ll only drink another if you throw in football head.”

Score: .875 stars

Here are 4 more of the recession beers we tasted.  About this point, we still had an inkling of hope that we would find something that was even drinkable.  No bottle or can has been finished up to the end of this post.  The Southpaw was finished because I was feeling nostalgic.

Icehouse – Brewed colder, brewed longer.

The Pour – Flat, musty mildewed grain smell.  The pee color is a theme.

The Drink – Weak tea..no hops at all.

The Verdict – “Zero.”

Score: 0 stars

Old Milwaukee

The Pour – Moldy/wet bread smell.  Looks like watered down white grape juice.

The Drink – carbonation makes it more tolerable…slightly.  No hops, very little malt.

The Verdict – “Oh gawd!!”

Score: .125 stars

Miller High Life – The champagne of beers.

The Pour – No skunk.  Very little smell at all.

The Drink – Bubbly.  Light tasting…actually very little taste.

The Verdict – “It IS the champagne of beers!!”

Score: 1.5 stars

Southpaw Light

The Pour – Faint wet bready smell.  Some bananas?  Possibly from the yeast?

The Drink – Crisp.  Very good use of carbonation to offset the lack of real beer taste.

The Verdict – “The poor man’s High Life…but a little better.”

Score: 1.4375 stars

This is about the point where we lost hope…but that will be covered in the next post.  First person to comment via Twitter, this site or Facebook, gets a 24 oz can of Icehouse.

It’s not that we believe the recession will end, it’s that the beer was so horrible that we cannot possibly fathom, at this point with the wounds still fresh, having to taste another horrible, crappy tasting beer.  But we did this, for you, the American people.  We spent 2 hours tasting, commenting, gagging and working our way through a list of 14 beers that would be considered “cheap”.  Some are steadfast daily beers for the common man.  Some are usually shadowed with a paper bag, perhaps out of shame.  Some made me wonder how they sold enough to stay in business.

I will split the tasting notes into about 4 posts.  This will act as the intro.  You know why we did this…and if you don’t, we did it because it’s very possible our wonderful government will make poor men of us all before it’s over and maybe you will need to know what beer tastes enough like real beer to drink when you just want a cold frosty beer and have little money.

My suggestion, of course, is to homebrew.  Many of the ingredients can be grown, so do it.

What we did find are a couple steadfast rules for cheap beer that may help guid you in the future.

1. The less the cheap beer attempts to taste like real beer the better it actually is.  To say it another way, the more a cheap beer tastes like water, the better it will taste at about 40 degrees on a hot day.
2. These beers are made to be drunk at a very low temperature.  So rule number one comes into play early and often.  It may be best to drink these beers in the freezer section where you buy them.

We graded the beers on a 3 star system, since none of those in question could ever be considered above 3 stars anyway.  The average of all involved came to .77 stars, if that gives you an idea of how good the sum total was. The “Verdict” is  a random quote from someone around the table as we summed up the experience.

We includes myself, Rich Wagner, Clint Robinette and Brad (Ima) Hicks.  We all have tastes for beers other than what we are drinking, but have been known to throw a few cheap ones back if the situation calls for it.  We are not experts, but we are experienced.

So away we go:

Steel Reserve – Extra malted barley and select hops for extra gravity.

The Pour – Smells of skunk and metal.  When the aroma hits the back of your throat, you gag.  Looks like a very light pee color.

The Drink – Skunk.  No hops.  Bitter malty corn tasting.  I found it odd that they mention hops for extra gravity on the can.

The Verdict – “God bless that’s awful!”

Score: .5 stars

Natural Light – A smooth pilsner with all natural ingredients.

The Pour – Not so much smell.  Very light malty tea taste.

The Drink – Very little taste.  Some malt, with no hops.

The Verdict – “If I had no taste buds and wanted to get drunk, I’d drink Natty Light!”

Score: 1 star

Pabst Blue Ribon (bottle)

The Pour – Musty smell.  Smells like a dirty basement.  I thought it looked like my urine when my blood sugar is high.

The Drink – My memory says its much better out of the can.  Filmy taste and feel.

The Verdict – “The official beer of dudes who beat their wife.”

Score: .625 stars

To be continued…