Hale's Kolsch
Appearance- Straw-like golden yellow. Can't quite see through it ( chill haze? wasn't filtered?), Small head that dissipates quickly.
Smell- wet dog. Salt water. almost a little bit of sweet corn.
Taste- nice malt backbone. Sweeter than most Kolsch that I have tried but not by much. Bread like notes. Brackish bitterness from the hops.
Mouthfeel- Real light and thin, nice carbonation. Proper.
Overall- I was actually pleasantly surprised by this beer. The first time I tried it, I thought it was horrible. Thus, I wanted to write about it on the blog. But I could easily drink a sixer of this on a hot day like today. Well done, Hale's.
Bud Light Golden Wheat
A- golden, cloudy, no head, fizzy
S- smells like oranges
T- It tastes like orange flavored water. Kind of like orange Crystal Geyser or something. There is nothing that resembles beer at all! Just flavored low-alcohol water. I can't even call this bad, it's so bland. I guess if the point is to drink 30 of them, then this could be ok for your 16 year old cousin
M- water
O- This is a pathetic attempt to jump on the pseudo-Belgian Wit craze created by Blue Moon. The thing is that Anheuser Busch already has a Blue Moon clone, Shock Top, so this I don't know what the hell they are going for with this beer. This might as well be Zima (man I wish that stuff was still around to go on my blog), it is just flavored garbage. A waste of cereal grains. Truly a malted massacre..
Bek Se Ju- Korean rice and corn wine with ginseng and other natural flavors
oh...my...god
jackpot, figuratively speaking.
This stuff is absolutely, mindbogglingly horrendous.
The scent is that of ginseng root, bile, and ...*sniff sniff*... corroded pipes, maybe? The smell is revolting.
The taste is an improvement over the smell. OH GOD! THAT SMELL!! I come close to puking in my mouth a little every time that I take a whiff.
Anyway, the taste is rather lackluster, believe it or not. Kind of tastes like those little tubes of ginseng tincture that you find at health food stores and Korean markets. But with more alcohol and less intense ginseng flavor. It somewhat resembles sake. I get a bit of a honey-like backbone and I can taste the corn.
and then ginseng, bile, and more ginseng.
I am about to drink what is left in my cup in one big swig. I wish that I had another Bud Light Golden Wheat to wash the taste out of my mouth.
Note to Korea: No offense, dude. I just can't quite get the hang of Bek Se Ju. Nothing personal.
Note to Bud Light Golden Wheat drinkers: I'm NOT sorry.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The wide and bizzare world of drinking videos
Something that I've become oddly obsessed with lately is the strange world of drinking videos on Youtube. Do a search for 'chug' and you will see what I'm talking about. A lot of the videos are just bros doing beerbongs with their bros, or girls jumping up and down and having pillow fights. That's all well and good. Have at it folks.
But I've also stumbled across a sub-genre of this sort of video that I find oddly amusing in a rubbernecking, car crash witness sort of way. I like to call it the "Let's Drink" video. Do a search on YT for "40 oz crew" or "bruz40" and you'll see what I'm talking about. These aren't videos of bros shotgunning Four Lokos at parties, these are singular dudes drinking beers and staring into the camera. These videos remind me of the little Let's Play microcosm of gaming videos (another YT phenomenon that I find oddly compelling), except instead of old SNES games....they're getting wasted. It is kind of like they are trying to bypass the fear that you might be an alcoholic if you drink alone, by using the web as their audience. In a sense, we the viewer become his bros.
Now, I'm not hating on the folks that make these videos. There is a sort of implicit comradery amongst these dudes that I can't possibly understand; even a sort of collector geekery showcased by a common penchant for 40oz bottle collections and even a trade network for hard to find 40oz beers. What'chu know about this? Nothing, I guess.
I think that what I might be missing from the vantage point and cultural encapsulation of my craft beer obsession, is that there is a certain pride that many people take in their 40oz. I mean, $2-3 gives you all the beer that you'll need for the night all in one neat little package. I bet that a lot of these folk would laugh in my face if I told them the price of some of the beers that I've bought. I hate to say it, but craft beer = privilege.
If I ever get access to a webcam, maybe I'll start posting a few "Let's Drink" videos of my own. I guess I'm just jealous.
coming soon: an actual review!!!
The inaugural post: homebrewed plastic jug dry mead
So, the premise behind this blog is very simple. Instead of seeking out delicious and tasty alcoholic beverages to drink and review, I seek out the most vile and abominable booze on the planet. I also intend to give my honest opinion when I try a particularly horrid craft beer or "artisan" wine.
This begs the question: why? Why would I go out of my way to imbibe the bottom of the barrel? Masochism? Maybe. But, I've always had a strange obsession with gross drinks, the same way that I've always loved terrible movies. Drinking a bottle of MD 20/20 makes me happy in the same way that watching a Troma movie does. In fact, those two things are an fucking excellent combination!
What I'm not setting out to do is assert the superiority of my palate, or the inferiority of cheap beer, wine, or spirits. All of my reviews reflect only my opinion, I am not claiming to be an expert and I am certainly not trying to tell you what you should drink.
So, to kick things off, I decided to review something nobody else has ever tried: my latest batch of homebrewed mead. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I also homebrew. Given that I come up with a lot of my own recipes, there may surface the occasional review of my own concoctions.
Let me give you a little bit of a back story on this mead. Back in September, I brewed a braggot--essentially, half beer, and half mead. Somewhere between not adding enough nutrients and oxygen, unfermentable sugars from the roasted malts and malt extract, and stress upon the yeast from high alcohol levels, fermentation stopped. It was what is referred to as a stuck mead. But the problem was that it was also cloyingly sweet. Incredibly sweet. Eventually, I had the bright idea to brew a mead without much honey, therefore not much residual sweetness, and blend that mead with the super sweet braggot.
Picked up 3lbs of mesquite honey from Trader Joe's, a packet of champaigne yeast from the local homebrew shop, and plenty of yeast nutrient. The only problem was that I didn't really have a fermentor for my mead. I decided to play Maguyver and make a fermentor out of an empty plastic Fred Meyer gallon orange juice jug. The results were, well, a complete utter massacre.
Plastic, unless it is food grade, is not particularly suited for fermenting. Plastic also presents a long-term problem because it slowly allows oxygen into the liquid. The result? Bad tasting booze!
I'm trying it right now, and I think that it might be infected. It smells sour and funky. There is some interesting flavors of citrus and pineapple, but also a really strong vinegar taste. I'm not doing an 'in depth" review of this, because I can't even finish a glass really. I should just dump it down the toilet, honestly.
...but, who am I kidding, right? We both know that I'll drink it.
This begs the question: why? Why would I go out of my way to imbibe the bottom of the barrel? Masochism? Maybe. But, I've always had a strange obsession with gross drinks, the same way that I've always loved terrible movies. Drinking a bottle of MD 20/20 makes me happy in the same way that watching a Troma movie does. In fact, those two things are an fucking excellent combination!
What I'm not setting out to do is assert the superiority of my palate, or the inferiority of cheap beer, wine, or spirits. All of my reviews reflect only my opinion, I am not claiming to be an expert and I am certainly not trying to tell you what you should drink.
So, to kick things off, I decided to review something nobody else has ever tried: my latest batch of homebrewed mead. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I also homebrew. Given that I come up with a lot of my own recipes, there may surface the occasional review of my own concoctions.
Let me give you a little bit of a back story on this mead. Back in September, I brewed a braggot--essentially, half beer, and half mead. Somewhere between not adding enough nutrients and oxygen, unfermentable sugars from the roasted malts and malt extract, and stress upon the yeast from high alcohol levels, fermentation stopped. It was what is referred to as a stuck mead. But the problem was that it was also cloyingly sweet. Incredibly sweet. Eventually, I had the bright idea to brew a mead without much honey, therefore not much residual sweetness, and blend that mead with the super sweet braggot.
Picked up 3lbs of mesquite honey from Trader Joe's, a packet of champaigne yeast from the local homebrew shop, and plenty of yeast nutrient. The only problem was that I didn't really have a fermentor for my mead. I decided to play Maguyver and make a fermentor out of an empty plastic Fred Meyer gallon orange juice jug. The results were, well, a complete utter massacre.
Plastic, unless it is food grade, is not particularly suited for fermenting. Plastic also presents a long-term problem because it slowly allows oxygen into the liquid. The result? Bad tasting booze!
I'm trying it right now, and I think that it might be infected. It smells sour and funky. There is some interesting flavors of citrus and pineapple, but also a really strong vinegar taste. I'm not doing an 'in depth" review of this, because I can't even finish a glass really. I should just dump it down the toilet, honestly.
...but, who am I kidding, right? We both know that I'll drink it.
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