Beers – Page 8 – What I Learned Tomorrow

Rohrbach Red Wing Red Ale

Rohrbach's Red Wing Red Ale — Rohrbach’s Red Wing Red Ale

Youngers won’t remember, but once the Berlin Wall came down and the Kremlin got de-communist-ified, it was safe to make “red” beer again without some rat-faced Congressman using you as a scarecrow. Even Genesee did it, making “Genny Red”, but my favorite was Carlsberg’s version, the Red Elephant, which came in an oilcan 25 ouncer, and which would trample you.

Now since Rohrbach Brewery is in Rochester NY, and the home baseball team is the Red Wings, simple to predict that eventually we’d get a Red Wing Red Ale, and here it is. One ding against Rohrbach is that they don’t put much info about the beers on the side of their cans, or on the bottom (i looked, and it has a use-by date down there and “please store cold”). Rohrbach doesn’t tell you how strong their beers are, and i found out the hard way that their Highland Lager is quite a bit stronger than suspected.

But a plus for Rohrbach is the 1-pint cans with easily recycleable hard plastic clusterers. Not like the usual soft-plastic can clusterers, where you have to grab the scissors and cut each loop to be a responsible person and prevent seabirds from strangling.

As for the beer itself, this red ale is clear with a healthy coppery tone, a mellow taste and that customary “red beer” aftertaste of iron. Juicy midranges in the taste, like oatmeal with orange syrup, or saltines with nutella spread. Overall a tasty brew, but pricey at $9 for 4×16 cans = only 64 ounces.

So it’s a fine beer but i’m going to give a seemingly low rating. Part of that is the price, part of that is the fact that Red Elephant was the only one i really liked out of the flood of reds in the 1990’s. If you’re after a red, then this one is for you. I just prefer other types of beer. So this one gets a 4.5 from me.

Wachusetts Green Monsta IPA

Wondered about the odd pattern on the label and the odd name of this IPA, and then realized: of course! It’s made in Massachusetts and the pattern is the stitching on a baseball, so the Green Monster is the one in Fenway Park. But the Red Sox have trademarked the phrase “Green Monster” which is ridiculous, it’s like getting a patent on bread, but it means this beer has to be Monsta instead of Monster. The Red Sox even went as far as slapping Ellwood Blues when he used to say on his radio hour that his sponsor, The House Of Blues restaurant chain’s place in Boston was “right behind the Green Monster.” Now Ellwood has to say “behind Fenway Park.” Ridiculous.

In any case, now safe from being sued by a baseball club they likely adore, the Wachusett Brewery has another winner on its hands. Billed as “unfiltered” and an “American India Pale Ale”, which is… nevermind… this sippyslut is a healthy 6.1% alk with a stand-up 55 IBUs. Cloudy so it’s certainly unfiltered, but if they want to go that route, they need to talk to the Monkey Handler at CB Craftbrewers about the Makumba, which is so unfiltered as to be chewy.

This Massachewy beer is not as dirty as all that, but it does chew up and spit out most of its competition. A killa dilla of a beer, strong beer body flavor and adventurous hoppys (Amarillo, Cascade and Centennial). It all adds up to a deep one to left center and if you want to catch it, look out where you’re running. The hops are citrus of course, but the hint of sweetness brings out other tart fruits, nectarine and peach.

Have to place this one in the top five IPAs to cross this tongue, and it breaks the tie. The previous 4 toppers were Smuttynose Finestkind from Maine and Sam Adams’s 48º from Boston, and Sierra Nevada’s Hop Hunter out of Cali, then Full Sail from Oregon. With another addition to the echelon from New England, we are no longer tied… the Easterners have the edge. With the 6.1% it’s not really a hot-day beer, but the all ’round excellence of this masterpiece is an easy 9.3 rating. Ignore baseball but love this beer.

Oskar Blues Pinner IPA

Tasty, almost salty, canned IPA in the wry-humor Oskar tradition. 4.9% alk here and not terribly hoppy. Can’s outside claims this as a “throwback” IPA, so perhaps that means “before people went goofy about hops” and “before nutsos started trying to out-do each other in alcohol content.” So this is a mildly hopped IPA, in modern comparison, just more hoppy than regular beer so you can tell it’s an IPA.

But there is that saltiness. Had a few IPA’s where the citrus and evergreen nearly combined into a salt flavor, nudged right up against that border. But this one falls over the line. It’s not distracting enough to make the beer wretched, but salt does some weird things to other tastes. It makes a beer’s natural bready taste cross over into crackery. Makes pine taste like resin and makes citrus taste like blood.

No kidding, drinking this i thought a couple times “hey, that kinda tastes like blood.” So no, i won’t buy this again. Will enjoy the other five cans, but will think twice about spending $10 on another sixer of a different variety of Oskar Blues beer. This one rates a 4.9 in my book.

Samuel Adams Rebel Rouser Double IPA

Sam Adams' Rebel Rouser 2X IPA — Sam Adams’ Rebel Rouser 2X IPA

There’s an eye-opener. 85 IBU’s, 8.4% alk, and the outside of the can has all kinds of other descriptors like “West Coast Style” and “unapologetically hoppy.” Speaking of the can, this is the fourth Sam Adams “Rebel” IPA i’ve tried, and it should get mentioned that all the cans themselves are top-of-the-line hunks of aluminum. Much more solid and sturdy than most cans these days, and it sounds like a small matter, and it is really, but it’s just a subtle indication that this is a high-class beer operation.

But the horror of that Grapefruit IPA still clouds my opinion of Sam Adams as a whole, and it will for years to come. Apologize, Sam, or i can’t buy any of your stuff anymore. I still shudder when no one’s watching.

Now on to this Double IPA… High alcohol, absurdly hoppy, like giving your mouth a hop bath even though it insisted it was clean already. There’s no slinking around the corners with this one, either you face the hops head-on or they’ll slap your face like you just pinched their sister. Not for dilletantes, this one.

Pine and orange, according to the label, but also pine-bark and rhododendron roots, green berries and scored kafir leaves, this is so hoppy that it nudges right up against the boundary into salty. Drinking this, even your burps come out like Pine-Sol. Drink too much, and i’m sure that you won’t have to buy Lysol… your upchuck will surely leave the toidy sparkling clean.

The beer-body side of the equation is very nice, someone at SA has learned a thing or three about which malts you want if you’re going for the halo of Hoppier Than Thou. Nearly a German body to it, but instead of the sour they’ve brought in the tart. It’s a pretty good beer, and would have an 8.1, but there is the now-automatic deduction for all Sam Adams beers, until they apologize publicly for making that grapefruit IPA. So this one gets a 7.1.

Genesee Brew House Pilsner

Another crafty brew from the enormous and otherwise uncrafty Genny Brewery. To lift a wet finger to the beerworld winds, it seems like the craze for IPAs is dwindling down, and the next craze, though uncertain at this date, might just be Pilseners. Crisp light-body beers, lower in strength than IPA, lighter in hops, and all that makes the brewer’s art stand out in higher relief.

This here is a good example, though i admit that i have not been jumping all over the Pilsener wagon, but this is indeed crisp, lightly hopped and low-alk at 5.0%. As said before, i prefer a lager, so in the dark ages before crafts, i’d usually go for the lager Bud over the pilsener Miller. The pils heartland in America was always the Upper Midwest, where North Germans settled heavily… think Milwaukee and Detroit.

So with my limited comparison skills, this brew blows the doors off of the Miller i know and remember. This is hoppier, likely a nod to the current fashion in overall brewing, and it’s got real beer taste, which an 80s megabrewer had to forego in the rush to get as much beer as possible out onto the loading dock.

I like this, but at $9 for a sixer, and being neither a lager nor IPA, i probably won’t buy it again. Plenty of things i totally adore are only a buck more per 6. All considered, i can give this a hearty 7.0 for quality and for killing the preconceived notion of a pilsener, even though they spell it “Pilsner” on the label, heh.

Samuel Adams Rebel Cascade IPA

OK, i have to deduct one full point from my rating here, because of the horror of SA’s Grapefruit IPA which refuses to leave me, even after a couple weeks. And i’m sticking to my promise: i will never buy any Samuel Adams product again, until they publicly apologize for putting grapefruit juice into beer.

This is a good IPA, however. At a strong 7.3% alk, with 76 IBU’s, and i now know what an IBU is, thanks to an article in a local weekly about local craft breweries. It’s a real beer, with fully malted barley and finished with darn heavy hops, but it does go a little overboard on the hops, a problem which SA’s exquisite 48º Latitude IPA does not suffer from.

Nicely drinkable here, smooth texture in the mouth and rich beer body underneath the cloak of hops. But that 7.3% keeps it from being a “kickin back” beer. There’s really no point in running that race anymore, the Hoppier Than Thou race is over and Sierra Nevada has won. But this one got a mention on the final leaderboard, and that’s something to cheer up someone’s Grandma.

After deducting the Sam Adams Grapefruit Penalty, this Cascade IPA rates a 7.2 for quality brewing and attention to ingredients.

Kona Fire Rock Pale Ale

Kona's Fire Rock Pale Ale — Kona’s Fire Rock Pale Ale

Now the fourth and final Kona beer to try. A 5.8% alk pale ale, the label says it has a coppery color, though i’d call it more dark yellow than coppery. They still win for great bottles, it’s just that whatever’s inside them is, to be charitable, less than awesome. This one’s probably the best of the four, at least in this one the distasteful additive to Kona beers is masked better by a fuller beer body.

But it’s still there. That bitter ingredient that tastes like rat poison, a much different bitter than normal beer-flavor bitterness. They’re adding something to all the Kona beers, assumedly to make them stand out in the crowd, but whatever it is, it tastes terrible. Someone at Kona made a bad decision, and a side effect of that bad decision is having their beer made in Memphis, Tennessee while the label talks about catching waves and watching awesome volcanoes.

Where, exactly, does one surf in Memphis? How many volcanoes are an hour’s drive from Tennessee? My last Kona beer to taste and review, and definitely my last Kona beer to ever taste at all. Maybe beer brewed in their home shop on Hawai’i is better, but the foul thing they’ve got licensees making in their name in New Hampshire, Tennessee, Washington and Oregon is just an embarrassment.

Rating for this one is 2.9 and i advise every person to avoid all Kona Brewing beers.

Kona Castaway IPA

Kona's Castaway IPA — Kona’s Castaway IPA

Another swing and a miss from Kona. Not bat-piss, but again there’s that unexplained un-beer-ish bitterness. There’s something going into Kona beers as a flavoring additive which is inconsistent with beer. Whatever, i’ll never buy a Kona beer again. In the meanwhile, light body and muddled hops in this 6% alk IPA, it would rate a 5-something, if it wasn’t for that distasteful additive, whatever it is. As it stands, this can only be rated at 2.8 for a disastrous choice of unnatural flavoring.

On the other hand, the bottles and labels are just gorgeous, and i chose this one as a keeper, now and forever proudly displayed on a perch atop my plates cupboard, right between a Sapporo Reserve can and a Fiedler’s Bock Im Stein earthenware swingtop.

Kona Big Wave Golden Ale

Better than the terrifyingly poor Longboard Lager, the golden ale offering from Kona is not as bad, a very light brew at a light 4.4% alk, and light in color. Tart hops and the thin body make this a good one for a Summer day, and that’s every day in Hawai’i. There’s a little bitterness on the backend, for god knows what reason, but it’s not beer bitterness, it’s like contamination bitterness.

It can’t be a mistake, all four of the Kona beers in the sampler 12 have this same nasty chemical taste to them. Have to assume that they’re adding something to the beer to give it some sort of “stand out” taste to set Kona apart from a crowded field of new beers, but whatever that additive is, it does not belong in beer.

This preparation rates at 2.7 but i can’t recommend it for anyone to drink.

Kona Longboard Lager

Kona's Longboard Lager — Kona’s Longboard Lager

Not much to it. Light for a lager, a savory taste, slightly spicy, a hint of sweetness. Decent beer, but not much to write home about. This one is my first taste of a Kona beer, and though they win an award for very nice bottles, the label makes me suspicious. It lists 5 towns where they brew this beer, 4 of them not in Hawai’i, so we don’t know if this qualifies as a craft beer or if it’s one of those zombie brews which was bought out by a major player, only to be simplified, bastardized, and mass produced by industrial drones in a commercial food production environment.

Can’t say i recommend this one, and not just because of the suspicious label. Mostly, this reminds me of the weak lagers prevalent in the 1980s. Almost a perfumy taste, like licking the wrong kind of toad. Can’t give this more than a 2.2 rating, for confusing natural sweetness with an incomplete fermentation.