Aloha! ...Oregon?

One of the nice things about my fiancée is that she likes beer. It's nice to have someone to try a bottle of beer with, or to kick back and have a beer with, or shop for beer with. It helps when you also think that person with whom all that beer is happening is really cute.

Another nice thing about my fiancée is that her dad likes beer, and they have cool things in their house including beer from bygone eras. What follows is one such beer.

A True Oregon Experience?

Behold, Star Brewing Company's Pineapple Ale. You know you're in for a treat when the interwebs note that it's been closed since 1996. Says a positively ancient article from the Portland Business Journal, "Wayne Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Star Brewing, said the company expects to close its Portland brewery by late September and move the operation to Phoenix. The company will be reborn as Phoenix Ale and Lagering Co. and consumers in the Southwest could start quaffing its brew by February 1997." However, that proved to be too optimistic: Star never made it to Phoenix, and shut down instead. A quick google search reveals that Wayne Anderson is now the chief sales manager of Oskar Blues, so at least he's landed on his feet.

I don't know why 1894 is featured on this bottle.

But back to the Pineapple beer. There's indication then that this beer is around 15 years old, since an article in Country Living from 1996 notes that the Pineapple Ale was added at that time. Here's a quote from the article: "Though Star features such high-flying comets as an Alt, I.P.A., and an Imperial Stout, it is the Raspberry Ale that puts ink on an account ledger. "It's an abomination to mankind," [Owner Scott] Wenzel overstates, "but it represents 44 percent of our sales." Star has just added a Pineapple Ale to its line." The art is screened onto the bottle directly, so it's held up nicely. As my future father-in-law opened the bottle (with significant trepidation, I might add), we were all shocked to hear the breaking of a potent seal.

Real live bubbles. Who'd have thought?

Bubbles! Actual carbonation survived for 15 years in this bottle. Impressive indeed. The aroma was all sugary sweetness and while I wouldn't have been able to pick "pineapple" out of the aroma if asked directly, I suppose after a while I started to detect some hints of the ripe tropical fruit on the nose. It wasn't a bad pour either - good ruddy copper color and a fluffy head that stuck around a while.

"Surprisingly tart" is not a descriptor I would use.

Flavor was really out there. True to its aroma, this was a super sweet beer. I tasted none of the Perle & Willamette Hops that were so lovingly highlighted on the bottle. Nor do I think I got much of the 2-Row, Munich, or Carastan 30-37 malts. What I got was sugar and maybe some very sickly-sweet pink bubblegum.

A Vacation In A Bottle!

In my dream vacation, I'm drinking a different beer.

When I was a kid, my Dad used to crack open cans of Dole pineapple chunks to put on cottage cheese. I, being wholly uninterested in the cottage cheese, would spoon the pineapple juice / syrup out of the can. The flavor here was not far removed from that sensation, and it left me in much the same state: speedy sugar high followed by crash.

Sediment. Not nearly as much as a beer this old should have had.

We were totally impressed that this beer had held up for as long as it had. Between the four of us, we ended up finishing a nice tasting of this bottle, though I'm pretty sure I was given the lion's share. This beer went down quite easily, I have to say, but it sat weirdly in my stomach and I would not recommend it again in case another bottle is somehow found.