Summer Beer Gone Awry

I've written before about my contempt for Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy. I hadn't heard of Shandy until I went to the UK - it's basically a mix of dry lemonade (a lemon soda that's got very little sugar in it, like an un-sugared 7Up) and cheap lager. Shandy, when made well, is refreshing and delicious: it's low alcohol, and the lemon flavors do elevate the lighter grassier notes of the lager.

Leinenkugel's on the other hand, sucks. A friend of mine ordered one over dinner while I went to the men's room. Why she did so is quite beyond me - we have had previous problems with Leinenkugel's products before. I seem to remember her and her roommate trying desperately to pawn off Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss to no avail, and eventually throwing out the remains of the case someone had purchased. It's pretty terrible.

Looks gross. Smells gross. Tastes gross.

Don't order this beer.

So this Shandy. Good lord. First of all, it came in the Boston Beer Co.'s glass for Sam Adams Lager, but it wasn't helped at all. Secondly, as you can see, it poured the color of dirty dishwater. The aroma was all sour lemon and white bread. In a normal shandy, one should smell a sweet lemon perfume. Here, it was like the lemon smell of churning stomach acid reminiscent of an aggressive college night out.

Flavor? Beer mixed with lemon pledge. Not pleasant at all. Gross.

Illness.

...makes one not wish to drink anything other than gatorade and chicken soup. Sorry.

I do have a bit of a rant, just while I'm at it though. Last week, a bunch of us tried to make a reservation at Sushi Azabu, and while we were rebuffed from the sushi restaurant below, we did have a lovely meal of "Japanese-inspired-Italian" on the ground floor. What threw me most was that our bartender, very meticulously and neatly dressed, poured our beers into stemless wine glasses. Everything else was just-so, but beer in a wine glass, particularly one without a stem? Bullcrap.

Look, I'm not indifferent to the desires of Belgian beer aficionados who demand their beer in a goblet or snifter or some such glass. I've experienced it and I love it too. But when serving a middling Japanese macrolager like Sapporo, put the stemless wineglasses away and give me a pint glass - something I can comfortably hold, that doesn't make me feel like I'm drinking out of a red plastic cup. Frankly, I'd even have preferred the red plastic cup.

Sam Adams Blackberry Witbier

As I am fond of pointing out to my Californian counterpart, lobster in New England is currently $4.49/lb. So last night, I helped myself to a fine specimen of a sea-bug, lovingly steamed, with plenty of melted butter. Delicious.

I also cracked open a Sam Adams Blackberry Witbier, because it was the only thing left in the fridge. It's part of the Sam Adams Summer Sampler, which also includes the Boston Lager, Sam Adams Light, Sam Summer, Pale Ale, and Latitude 48. Needless to say, everything (even the Light) got drunk before the Blackberry. Here's why.

As you can see, I did end up drinking it. That lobster was pretty salty.

Basically, this is what you get when you cross a middling wheat ale with a 7-11 blue raspberry slurpee, and it's about as refreshing as a piece of whole wheat bread slathered with blackberry jam. This is an unfortunate misstep by Boston Beer Company. Says the label: "Only a specific blackberry could bring the subtle flavor that we wanted for this brew." If subtle flavors were the goal, then this beer misses the mark badly. The only thing subtle about this beer is the hops, which only ends up bringing out the sweetness of the fruit and the insipidness of the grain.

Every sampler pack has a reject. In halloween candy, it's the Almond Joy bars. In Instant Oatmeal, it's the Apple & Cinnamon. And in this beer sampler, it's most certainly the Blackberry Witbier. I'm not saying "Boo-urns"; I'm saying "boo."