CS Booze Club.

[Jester]

There are days I honestly hate my job. This, however, is not one of them.

In addition to being the unofficial rum taster for the managing partner when he was the GM, and the official rum taster for the previous GM, our current GM “Grizzly” has pretty much made me his official rum and beer taster, as he no longer drinks, and he knows those two beverages are my “thing.” This has resulted in vendors dropping off bottles of beer for me to try, or doing tastings during or after work, sometimes just me, sometimes myself and my British coworker, who also enjoys beer.

And now it’s taken an even bigger step into “Serious, this is part of my job?” One of my favorite beer vendors, who I consider a friend, dropped off six individual bottles of beer yesterday for me to try. When I saw how much we were talking about (two of the bottles were big bomber-types), I suggested I simply take them home with me and taste-test them there. Both the vendor and Grizzly were fine with this.

Insert shit-eating grin here.

So now, here I am, trying some of these brews. I’ll deliver a simple report to Grizzly, based upon my opinion on their taste and also how well they’d sell, which is a complicated thing, but I generally base it on taste and name recognition. A great beer with no name recognition could very well sell, as could a marginal beer with some name recognition. Average beers with no name recognition, or worse, are not even considered. This “formula” has even gotten me to highly recommending beers I didn’t even personally like, such as Stone’s Arrogant Bastard Ale which, while it is not my cup of tea, is very popular with the craft beer crowd, and has proven to sell reasonably well as one of our draft beers. Yes, I can see beyond my personal tastes. (Well, to an extent. If it’s an IPA with no name recognition, I would have no idea if it was “great” or not, as 95% of IPAs are unappetizing to me.)

So, as I said, here I am trying those sample brews. And, while my report to my boss will be much shorter, I thought I’d review each one as I drank it, for your enjoyment.

Coopers Lager (Coopers Brewery, Australia): Light golden colored lager with a slight haziness to it. Nose is that of a typical light lager, with a slight sweetness to it. Tasty. A little watery, though not to the silliness of BudMillerCoors offerings. No hoppiness, just a easy drinking lighter beer. You’d drink it on a hot day, and then forget it, as it wouldn’t make that much impression, positive or negative. Score: 4.5.

Tagus Original Beer (Portugal): Light gold in color, slightly darker than the typical BuMiCo. The nose is unpleasantly skunky. Not a good sign, though I have smelled skunkier, and I have had good beers with unpleasant noses (and vice versa). Better than the smell would indicate, but not a really good beer. Not as skunky as I would have expected. Basically a slightly richer, smoother version of Bud with an odd nose. Not something I would order in a bar, though I would drink it if handed to me. Luckily, the bottle is only a 8.5 ouncer, so I can polish it off quickly and move on to something else, preferably something better. Score: 2.5.

Ambar Cerveza Especial (Spain): Light golden amber in color, typical for a non-light beer. In other words, it has some color, and more than a BuMiCo. Sweet and smooth nose, not too dissimilar to the Coopers Lager. More taste and body than the Coopers, though. Very decent. Not something I’d seek out, but it would definitely be better than a lot of similar alternatives. Not as good as Estrella Damm from Spain, though. Score: 5.5.

And one more before I retire for the night….

Birra Dolomiti (Italy): I have often said that the French and Italians make fantastic wine…and should stick to doing that. Let’s see if the Dolomiti changes that opinion. In color, it is typical beer color, yellowish. Nothing that would catch the eye. The nose is, like some of these other tastings, a bit sweet, but otherwise normal. The good news is that this is the best Italian beer I’ve had, and the best beer I’ve had tonight. The bad news is, that still isn’t saying that much. Somewhat sweet with no hop bite to it, Dolomiti is decent (definitely not the disaster of other Italian beers I’ve had), even tasty, which in itself is a triumph, but in the end, it is basically forgettable and not that exciting. Not something you’d hit your friend for handing you, but not something you’d pump his hand in gratitude for either. Score: 6, barely (which is a shock to me for an Italian beer, to be honest).

I’ll discuss the other two beers, which I have much higher hopes for, another night. Enjoy your drinks!

[Dave1982]

Alright, this one is hardly in the same class as the fine beers/wines/liquors that everyone else has been talking about, but I discovered this week that rum and Dr Pepper is absolutely delicious. Much better than your regular rum and Coke.

[Jester]

This is the Booze Club. It's all about discussing new experiences with booze. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Hell, a while back, I discussed some new fruit juices I was trying. Not mixed with booze....just the juices themselves.

So, yeah, rum and Dr. Pepper rocks. If you have spiced rum, try it with ginger ale.

And on that note, let me tell you a bit about Absolut Brooklyn. It's a red apple and ginger flavored vodka from Absolut. Now, as many of you probably know, I don't like vodka. Pretty much at all. And the bottle of Absolut Brooklyn has been sitting in our bar, not getting much use, because frankly, we couldn't figure out what the hell to DO with it.

And then I had a couple come in a few months ago, and the girl asked for a Moscow Mule. I've heard a lot of recipes for this drink, but according to her, it was vodka with ginger beer. (Ginger beer, by the way, is similar to but not the same thing as ginger ale.) So I suggested trying using the Absolut Brooklyn instead of regular vodka. She tried it, and LOVED it. Hell, I even liked it! So we named that drink the Brooklyn Mule. And it is very tasty...if you like ginger. Of course, if you hate ginger, this drink is more or less a piece of shit.

A quick word on ginger beer: like ginger ale or root beer, this is a non-alcoholic soda. Like most sodas, different brands vary in flavor from one another. The one we use at our bar, Regatta, is fantastic, and I've described it as being "a ginger smack to the face," as it is just loaded with gingerness. Which makes, of course, for an awesome Brooklyn Mule.

I've been meaning to post that story for a while now. If, however, I already did, my apologies for repeating myself.

[Frantic Freddie]

So, yeah, rum and Dr. Pepper rocks. If you have spiced rum, try it with ginger ale.

Regular ol' Bacardi & root beer is pretty good too

I've tried 2 new bourbons recently,the Maker's Mark 46 & right now I have a shot of Jim Beam The Devil's Cut on my desk.Both are very good,tho different.

A few weeks ago we bought a bottle of Balcones Baby Blue Whiskey & frankly,I was underwhelmed.Way too light for a bourbon & not as good as any number of blended whiskies I could name.
It got stashed in the emergency booze closet.

[KiaKat]

I've tried 2 new bourbons recently,the Maker's Mark 46 & right now I have a shot of Jim Beam The Devil's Cut on my desk.Both are very good,tho different.

A few weeks ago we bought a bottle of Balcones Baby Blue Whiskey & frankly,I was underwhelmed.Way too light for a bourbon & not as good as any number of blended whiskies I could name.
It got stashed in the emergency booze closet.

I was recently introduced to Old Pogue, Bulleit Bourbon, and Rock Hill Farms.

*drool* YUM. Though I think Bulleit might be my favourite. Smooth, with just a little kick and on the dryer side. Their rye is really good, too.

[Jester]

Zatecky Gus (Baltika Breweries, St. Petersburg, Russia): This is a Russian lager that has piqued my curiousity…and was given to me as a sample by one of the local beer vendors. Bonus! Light golden amber in color, with a decent head, it is quite transparent. It smells like beer. Not great beer, not even good beer. Just beer. That generic beer smell. The kind that if it spills on something, later it just smells awful. Like stale generic beer.

And the first sip….turned into a gulp. This is surprisingly quenching and easy-drinking, yet with good flavor. Perfect for a sweaty Jester who just unloaded a Bunch O’ Shit from his truck. Crisp, refreshing, clean, a much better alternative to a BuMiCo. Great for a hot day.

Proof that the nose doesn’t always know.


So, would I drink this again? Oh yeah. Would I seek it out? No. But if I were hot and sweaty, and this were available, I would definitely order it. Score: a surprising 6.

Bulleit Bourbon

I'm pretty sure it's Bullit, not Bulleit. Only reason I know this is because we have a bottle of it sitting in storage, but not out, at my bar. Not sure why, but since we don't do a lot of sales in bourbon, this is not surprising. The surprising thing, really, is that we have it at all. Probably one of those "buy a bottle of this and we'll give you a deal on something else" that a liquor vendor offered my management. Only thing I can think of.

And....I'm completely wrong on the spelling. Just checked online. Yet more proof that I'm an idiot.

[Jester]

Quelque Chose (Unibroue, Quebec, Canada): Very interesting. Comes in a large bomber type bottle, with some interesting literature on it (see below). It is, apparently, a blend of 50% dark ale and 50% brown ale brewed with cherries. For a dark beer, it pour surprisingly thin and watery. The color is more cherry than dark, though, and very unusual. The nose is that of cherry medicine, but pleasantly so, with only a slight medicinal aroma, but plenty of cherries. First sip: strange. Very cherry, almost obnoxiously so. Aftertaste of…cherries. Not a lot of body. I expect great things from Unibroue, makers of the absolutely wonderful La Fin du Monde, but this…this is not wonderful. This is, to me, what would happen if the makers of Luden’s cough drops made beer. Would I seek this out? No. And it’s not that I’m not a fan of fruit beers. When done right, they are extraordinary. Lindeman’s Framboise. St. Louis Framboise. Even Fruli. But this….this is just strange. I’ll finish it, to be sure. But the fact that I even have to think about whether or not I WOULD finish it is kind of a bad sign. Not recommended. And I’m glad this was another gift from a beer vendor, as I would probably feel ripped off if I had spent decent money on this.

I really wanted a nice, tasty beer to go with my watching of the finals of America's Got Talent. Major letdown. And if I were Piers Morgan, I would buzz this. Wish I had another Zatecky Gus.

Final score: 3.

[taurinejunkie]

Hello, Booze Club. Perhaps you can help me name my new recipe. It's not classy in any way, shape or form, but I find it both tasty and super effective. So effective, in fact, that I would not dare drink more than one of these in one night.

Start off with a double Liquid Cocaine shot, or Hans and Franz if 151 is not available, in which case you would need one shot of each of the other ingredients.

2/3 Jägermeister
2/3 Goldschläger
[2/3 Bacardi 151]

Add to this your favorite small-serving energy drink (my favorite is 5hour Orange). Chug at your own risk.

The orange taste of 5hour Orange goes well with the cinnamon and licorice blend of the Goldschläger and Jägermeister; the sweetness balances out the burn of the over-proofed rum. On top of that, I find that I get just the right level of energy out of it.

also, for those who may be unaware and interested, Quelque Chose mentioned by Jester literally means Some Thing.

[Jester]

It's some thing alright. Something that I'm not really happy about finishing, so I am delaying going to the fridge for the second half of the bottle.

As for naming your concoction, remember that bartender etiquette and tradition dictates that he (or she) that creates the drink has the right to name it.

That being said, if *I* were naming that particular recipe, I would probably call it one of the following:

Nazi on Crack
German Tank
Death to the Infidels
Pump YOU Up!
Hitler's Bullet

But my personal favorite, which I just thought of would be a Nazi Speedball.

[Jester]

Oh, hell.

I said I would mention the interesting literature on the Quelque Chose bottle, and I never did. Probably because I was distracted/distressed/disturbed by how bad the stuff was. And am now drinking the other half of the big bottle. Meh.

In any case, here is what it says:

"Juicy sun-drenched cherries are steeped for months in Quelque Chose to give this ale a sensational sweet and sour taste that makes each mouthful a truly delightful experience.

Quelque Chose is a deep ruby red ale with very little carbonation. It has intense cherry redolence accented by notes of cinnamon and honey, further enhanced by an equally sweet and tart cherry character with hints of vanilla and clove.

In the summer, enjoy Quelque Chose on the rocks as a cocktail or refreshing apertif; in the winter, savour it like a glass of hot wine or a superb apres-ski warmer.

Exceptionally versatile and irresistibly alluring, this ale fits your mood and taste every time, all the time."

Apparently they pay their PR guy a lot more than they pay their brewer.

[Jester]

Duppel-Hirsch (Germany): I saw this and three other beers in the grocery store, and they seemed interesting, so I picked up two bottles, one each of two of my favorite styles. This one is a Bavarian Dopplebock. When I opened the swing top, it made a delightful and satisfying “pop.” It pours a dark reddish brown, or brownish red rather, closer to ruby, thin for a dopplebock. The nose is sweet and overtly malty. I could smell this beer all day and be perfectly happy. FIRST SIP: Decently malty, very slight hints of chocolate and brown sugar, tasty but thin, with no real body. Tasty and good, but not great. As a dopplebock in general, it’s okay. As a German dopplebock, it is actually pretty weak. It’s drinkable, and far better than my last beer, that cherry crap from Canada, but compared to some of the truly great German beers and dopplebocks I’ve had (not to mention German dopplebocks), this beer falls short. I give it a 5.5.

[thansal]

So this isn't actually a new beer to me, however I haven't mentioned it before, and I think it's well worth a mention.

The GF and I went out for dinner last night at Eataly (bad pun, great food), and she ordered the darker beer they have on tap which is Birra Moretti's La Rossa (I didn't feel like drinking so I had a GUS Ginger ale, great stuff). They pitch it as an Amber Double Malt, though in colour it's considerably darker then your standard ambers, more of a mahogany. It pours with a nice thick head, and has a great malt smell to it. The taste is not far from the nose, a very malty beer, though not cloyingly so. It's a rather simple beer, no undertones of citrus/spices you would get from a Belgium beer, or coffee or anything, just a very fine beer, reminiscent of a couple doppelbocks I have had.

The thing that makes it stand out is that, yes, it is indeed an Italian beer that isn't watery/uninteresting. It's really good, I almost always get it when I'm at Eataly (to be fair, they only have 2 beers there, and the other is a pale lager).

One of these days I will go to Eataly's roof top beer garden, where their master brewer is from Dog Fish Head (a company I respect, though I don't like the majority of their offerings).

[Jester]

Not a full review, just a quick note on one of my regular non-craft beers that I drink:

Most of you (well, the beer drinking segment, anyways) are familiar with Foster's Premium Lager in the blue-labeled oil cans. But for my money, better than that is the Foster's Premium Ale in the GREEN-labeled oil cans. A nice honest, quenching beer that, for the money, kicks ass. My local grocery store that sells them has them priced at about two dollars and change, and as they are 25 ounce cans, that's just a bit over a buck a beer. Pretty damn good value! Serving suggestion: drink them out of a pint glass, so that you can keep the second half nice and cold in the fridge while you work on the first half. Especially if you tend to drink beer at a slower pace, as I do.

[Jester]

Today, another free beer, though not from a beer vendor. I finally went to the local bar that I did the beer book for, to pick up the bar tab they agreed to pay me with (which is not inconsiderable). But before I left, the owner handed me a bottle of a new beer he had just gotten in, for me to take home and try, and which had not even been in the original list that I wrote the descriptions for.

From Cisco Brewers in Nantucket, Massachusetts, we have Pumple Drumkin, an “ale brewed with pumpkins and spice,” as the label says. Which is unusual, as most “pumpkin beers” are made with pumpkin spices, not with pumpkins themselves.

Pours a lovely deep orangeish red color, almost completely opaque. Immediately reminds you of pumpkins, which is kind of the point, don’t you think? The nose is very autumny, with hints of all the important pumpkin spices. FIRST SIP: Wow. Very pumpkiny. Not just of the pumpkin pie spices, but of pumpkin itself. Which, for me, is not a good thing, as I can’t stand pumpkin or pumpkin pie. See, I like most pumpkin beers because of the pumpkin spices that they use. So, meh for me. That being said, I imagine if one likes pumpkin pie and beer, this would be the perfect beer for them. Just too pumpkiny for my personal taste.

For that reason, I am giving it two scores. My personal score is a mediocre 5. But I believe that if I liked pumpkin or pumpkin pie I would score it closer to a 7.5. I hope that makes sense.

[Jester]

Today, another new one. Bavarian-Weissbier Hefeweisse, from Privatbrauerei Hoss Sonthofen in Germany.

In other words, a Bavarian hefeweizen.

I notice two things immediately here. First, the color. It is not quite the color I expect of a hefe, being somewhat between a hefe and a pilsner. Also, while it is not translucent, it is not really hazy/cloudy as one would expect from an unfiltered wheat beer.

The nose, normally a strong point on a hefe, is very weak here. I get a hint of honey and of wheat, perhaps a touch of a thought of an idea of banana, but overall, again, not what you would hope for in a good hefe.

FIRST SIP: Well, if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck, right? Sadly, BWH is not in the duck family of hefes. It is as if someone decided to make a regular beer, like a pilsner or a lager, and give it the hint of a hefe. Oh, wait...someone's already done it. Those idiots at Widmer.

The good news for BWH is that it is not nearly as pathetic as Widmer's "hefeweizen," and it at least has some wheatiness to it. It is somewhat similar to Blue Moon or Shock Top, though not nearly as good as Shock Top, and definitely not in the same league as Bell's Oberon.

Overall, drinkable, decently quenching, inoffensive, and completely and totally forgettable. Score: A boring, average, snoozy 5.

EDITED TO ADD: The score of 5 is for this beer as a beer in general. As a hefeweizen, though, I can't score it higher than a 3. And that may be too nice.