Knock-offs

In a previous post, I derided Japan's Coedo Brewery of appearing to knock off the Chimay brand. I'm not linking to their website because it's full of flash and other infuriating website crap. However, here's a screenshot of their lineup:

My apologies on the size of this screenshot.

From left to right, that's Kyara, Ruri, Shiro, Shikkoku, and Beniaka.

It's got the same stubby bottle feel, same general color scheme, same luxurious feel. Same undersized pour too. Anyway, that red one, the Beniaka, was actually pretty good. So I had high hopes for the other two.

I tried the Shikkoku next. It's a schwartzbier, and I've had mixed successes with those. Sometimes they're insanely sweet (Xingu); other times, they're perfect (Full Sail Session Black).

Jet black pour

Apparently, Shikkoku is named after Japanese black lacquerwork, and it's pretty apt as an inspiration. This beer poured a very deep black, with a lot of roasted, almost charcoal qualities in the aroma. It had a very creamy head that lasted to the end of the beer, which wasn't terribly surprising given how small the beer was.

I should mention, without snark, that it was also really easy to drink. A lot of that had to do with the 5.0% ABV and a surprisingly dry finish for a schwartzbier. More of that had to do, unfortunately, with a very thin mouthfeel. I got some weak coffee flavors, maybe some brown sugar as well. But the nice aromas and inky blackness ultimately promised more than the flavor could deliver.

Two nights ago, I tried the final in the three (yes, there are two more out there in the world, but only 3 were available in my Japanese megamart. This was the white-label Shiro.

Shiro bills itself as an an unfiltered wheat beer with a "bright, smooth, slightly cloudy appearance." For an unfiltered beer, there's an awful lot of clarity in the glass. Otherwise, it was decent in its presentation, but once again, a wretchedly small pour.

That's a pint glass. Seriously. Maybe this beer is targeted toward people with Asian glow?

When I'm drinking a wheat beer, I try to find some banana or clove flavors, sometimes even bubblegum. It should be crisp and tart, without going too far into "sour." This guy didn't deliver on any counts. I got a lot of sour apple and a lot of just non-descript "beer" flavors with an alcohol bite that a 5.5% abv beer shouldn't have displayed.

There were two strikes against this beer, I think. The first was that it wasn't terribly fresh, and I think it may have just gotten manhandled in transit. The second was that I don't think I was eating it with a complementary foodstuff: fresh cherries. The cherries have been plentiful and cheap and sweet in NJ, so I've been enjoying them a lot this summer. But when paired with the beer, the cherries took on an astringency that negated any apple sweetness that I had managed to coax out of the beer. As a result, all that was left was a chemical bitterness. Small beer as it was, I didn't finish it - I ate the rest of the cherries instead.

East. Far East.

Well, I've been a little preoccupied with the day-to-day routine of my job, though that has a lot less to do with the demands of the position and a little more with the snow that keeps getting dumped on Newark. For real - it's snowing again tonight.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've started into a new job and moved into a new apartment, and the one thing that saddens me the most is that I don't have a local bar near my place. Actually, the thing that saddens me the most is that the heat in my apartment is controlled by the elderly owner of the building, and I think she's trying to get us all to grow tropical fruits in our bedrooms. It's 77 degrees in my apartment right now. So beer helps with that.

Like drinking banana-flavored pancake syrup.

Today, I'm drinking the Ginga Kogen "Silver Bottle" Weizen. I'm a little concerned that the bottle isn't silver - it's dark blue. But the label is silver, and I suppose that's what they mean. There are antelope on this label, and I was heretofore unaware that there were antelope in Japan. This beer is very pale, with an aroma of sour hoppiness that I wasn't a huge fan of at first. The head disappeared quickly, and what's left has a sort of unctuous quality on the tongue. Initial flavors of citrus melted into a very sweet core of banana esters, with a hoppy bite that clears the palate at the end. It sits rather heavily in the stomach as well: something about being so thick and yet so stingy with the carbonation, I think. Ultimately, the sweet banana flavor and syrupy texture will take a lot of getting used to, and I just don't think I'm willing to make that effort. Delightfully, the Ginga Kogen website also doubles as a tourism shill for the region.

Hello? Hello taste? Where are you?

Bonus Beer: Yebisu Premium. This was a very thin lager with very little in the way of hops, depth, or backbone. Instead, what I got was honey and sweetness. Yebisu is marketed as an "all-malt beer," and while that's just fine, there was none of the caramel sweetness that I have come to associate with malt. Instead, it was a very one-dimensional sweetness that I didn't quite care for. Yes, I tend to be a dark-beer snob, but I have absolutely enjoyed a good many lagers. This just wasn't one of them.

Costco? Really?

Costco makes beer. I will repeat this.

COSTCO MAKES BEER.

Growing up in Massachusetts, where blue laws continue to restrict the sale of intoxicating liquors in towns across the commonwealth, the fact that Costco even sold beer was revelatory. And now they make it? This bears investigation.

Note: Wikipedia claims that Costco is the largest retailer of fine wine in the world. Who knew?

OK, so they don't actually brew it, but it's got their Kirkland Signature logo and typical boring packaging on it. Initial reports said this was brewed by Gordon Biersch in California: the same folks who make Trader Joe's house brand. Mine, however, are from New York Brewing Company in Utica, NY, which definitely makes this an East Coast brew. Nevermind that Costco is from Washington State.

Yup, those are apple cider donuts. It's September in Massachusetts. You know you want one.

Kirkland Signature beer comes in a 24-bottle variety pack of four different flavors, and they're honestly not bad. They do have some problems with either balance or texture, but the flavors, surprisingly, are quite refreshing and good. Let's go worst to best.

Kirkland Signature Pale Ale
Immediately, I'm hit with a soapy lemon-citrus aroma and flavor that's pretty thin on the tongue. It's astringent but not unpalatable. Unfortunately, all of the flavors are at the front end of the sip, with absolutely no follow-through or finish except for a buzzing dryness. The alcohol oddly took the reins and drove the flavor considerably. This wasn't a beer I particularly enjoyed, but it would likely be pretty refreshing on a hot summer day. I want to say this had "clean aromas" but really, it was just the aroma of cleaner.

Kirkland Signature German Lager
OK, this is definitely the wrong color for the lager I expected (more golden brown than blond), but it's was pretty delicious. It was malty, with medium body and lovely depth of flavor. Imminently drinkable, I think this beer was a conscious return to a Bavarian lager and a corresponding rejection of the American macrolager that Costco otherwise sells an enormous amount of. I was surprised, and ultimately encouraged, by Costco's direction with this beer: by rejecting the Budweisers and Millers of the world, Costco is showing a willingness to promote better beer, and that's a good start.

Kirkland Signature Amber Ale
With darker roasted malt comes deeper flavor. That's the idea, right? I was glad, then, that the Amber Ale picked up some good malt depth, with a little bit of sweetness and roasted goodness along the way. Unfortunately, this remained thin on the back end of the sip. While this isn't a bad beer at all, it does take a curiously long time to develop any additional layers of flavor on top of the basic "grain - yeast - hops" profile. Once it does, though, its bigger yeasty flavors do complement sandwiches and other starch-based foodstuffs, but it trades-off in commensurately diminished refreshment.

Kirkland Signature Hefeweizen
This one was really aggressively carbonated and had a lovely depth of flavor. Decent malt sweetness dominated, and gave way to a really smooth aftertaste. Per the mold of a Hefeweizen, there wasn't a whole lot of hop bitterness going on, which made it the easiest to drink of the four. I missed some of the spicier notes that hops can bring to the mix, so this felt a little unbalanced in that regard. Nonetheless, this was overall the best of the four. It was solidly beer flavored, wasn't too rich, and held an excellent and long-lasting finish.

So overall, definitely a good buy. At $18.99 per 24-pack, this was a great deal, but above and beyond that, it was decent beer. I hope Costco learns from its missteps and tweaks the Pale Ale more, because it's not fabulous. But at less than 80¢ per bottle, I could be begrudgingly drinking this because it's cheap, and I'm not. I'm drinking it because it's tasty.