MY FIRST VIDEO REVIEW!!! Rainier Ale

I forgot to rate the beer in the video. I'd give the first have of the can a 3 out of 5, and the second half a 2 out of five.  DRINK THIS SHIT QUICK!

Earthquake high gravity lager

Tonight is thanksgiving, and I have been trying to finish a can of Earthquake high gravity lager for nearly three hours now.  This malt liquor is owned by the same company that makes the now infamous Four Loko energy beers. Earthquake is also 12% alcohol, and it is also...abhorrent.
As a beer it is an interesting beast.  It really isn't so hard to swallow.  Unlike Four Loko, I have not really noticed any sharp solvent flavors or fusel alcohols.  But the beer is exceedingly sweet.  It almost reminds me of high alcohol beers like dopplebocks or barleywines, but without the level of complex flavors that those beers have.  This taste of this beer is very simple: malt and adjuncts.  I don't even really think that there are any hops in this beer.  The alcohol is probably high enough to replace the preservative qualities of the hops.  And if they are putting so much malt into such a cheap beer, they might just need to cut corners in a few places.  Basically, this is like drinking pure fermented malt syrup.  It actually kind of reminds me of some of the sweeter Belgian style beers that I have had, but by no means in a good way.  The mouthfeel is really slimey.  It sticks to your tongue and wiggles down your throat.  There is a slight grape juice taste to it, which actually helps get you through the first few sips.  Really, for what this is- a cheap source of rocket fuel to keep the the poor wasted- it isn't that bad.  It just shouldn't be thought of as beer.  It actually kind of tastes like an unflavored Four Loko.  Given the folks who are making it, I wouldn't be surprised.

3.5 out of 5 PUKES!

UP NEXT: a tasting of dark beers from Japan.

Is there a beer or wine that makes you gag just thinking about it? let me know down in the comment section below.

Farewell Four Loko

So, last week the state of Washington mourned the loss of alcoholic energy drinks.  More specifically, Four Loko.  To celebrate my long-standing friendship with the 'quarto crazy", I decided to do drink one of each flavor.  I never got to say goodbye to the beloved lemonade flavor and I will never forgive myself for this.  But here are my reviews of the other flavors.

Rating system:  I rate on a scale of 0 to 5 PUKES.  0 PUKES means that it is outstanding (as in "I didn't puke at all),  and 5 PUKES means that the drink in question is an absolute massacre (as in "I couldn't stop puking).  

Watermelon (green can)
The Watermelon was arguably my favorite flavor.  It poured a lovely bright pink and tasted like watermelon Jolly Ranchers.  With a hint of nail polish remover. And a bit of salty gym sock on the tail end.  It was so artificial tasting that this became a selling point in of itself.  It had a slight tartness to it that I quite liked.  If ever I get nostalgic for Loko, I'll be pining for Watermelon

2 out of 5 PUKES!! 

Blue Raspberry (blue can) 
I couldn't drink this right away, because of really intense fumes coming out of the can.  I coughed just from the smell.  The flavor is... well... blue flavor.  It was really sweet, had slight solvent undertones, but generally tasted like blue Slurpee with 151 in it.  Drinking this really makes you feel like you are a 14 year old drinking in the bushes at the county fair.  Not bad for what it is.  One I was able to stomach the first sip, I was able to finish the rest of it pretty easily.
 2 1/2 out of 5 PUKES!!

Orange (orange can)
This was not good at all.  It took me two hours to finish a can of this.  Granted I wasn't trying too hard, but the thing tasted like a cocktail that they would make on a military base or something. Sunny D and alcohol-based hand sanitizer.  It was sort of like a mimosa from that company Club that makes those prepackaged cocktails that come in little bottles in California.  Except, I had 24 liquid fucking ounces of the stuff. Good riddance.
3 out of 5 PUKES!!

Raspberry Lemonade (yellow and red can)
This flavor was great! It was very tastey.  I thought that this was the most drinkable flavor.  You couldn't even taste the alcohol, really.  If I'm ever in a state that hasn't banned the stuff yet, I'm buying a fucking flat of the raspberry lemonade.  If they made a non-alcoholic version, I would buy it.
...so that I could put vodka in it. Ok... maybe I'm grossly exaggerating.  I mean, it's still Four Loko.  Who are we kidding?
2 out of 5 PUKES!!

Fruit Punch (red can)
This flavor was very drinkable.  It tasted like the fruit punch that they would serve to you in summer camp when they wanted you to forget that Jimmy PeePants just nearly drowned in the lake.  I've had it at room temperature at it was unstomachable.  But at proper Four Loko temperature, i.e. as cold as humanly possible, it tasted pretty good. Except for the salty aftertaste.
2 out of 5 PUKES!!

Grape (purple can)
This stuff wasn't purple when you poured it. It was India Ink Black.  It has those familiar Four Loko solvent fumes.  I thought this flavor was gross.  It wasn't sweet enough (if that is even possible with this stuff), and tasted like satly garbage wine.  It was almost like they poured a hint of Campbell's chicken soup into the can. Terrible.  Just terrible.
4 out of 5 PUKES

Lemon Lime (yellow and green can)
This wasn't a beverage.  It was a fucking paint remover.  This flavor is nuclear green and looks like a mad scientist's potion from a shitty straight to video horror film. I had this the night before Four Loko was banned and I could not take a sip with out shuttering and crying out in pain.  Absolutely HORRID.  I swear that I could feel the enamel on my teeth being burned away. AHHH!!! Just thinking about it makes me angry!! You motherfuckers made people pay for this shit?!  It strikes rage into my heart, you bastards!!!
...ahem... yeah, I wasn't a fan
5 out of 5 PUKES!!  An absolute Malted Massacre.

Next time: I'm going to be reviewing Earthquake high gravity lager, a 12% malt liquor from the makers of Four Loko.  Hold on to your gag reflex, folks.

First Review/ Horrid disappointment: Hale's Ales Kolsch, Bud Lite Golden Wheat and... some... Korean thing

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.

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.