Acme California Pale Ale Awesomeness

Do you like beer? Do you like crisp, refreshing, delicious beer? Do you like redheads clinging to a rope with one hand and holding a pale ale that can go to toe to toe with any and all comers with the other?

Then Acme's California Pale Ale is for you, my friends.

It doesn't get much better than this beer. We're talking beer you take to a desert island with you, beer you thank the beer gods for after every sip, beer you pay whatever price they're asking because you'd be a mouth-breathing, drooling, shit-stained moron if you let an opportunity to drink this magic beverage pass you by.

I turned 30 this past Wednesday and received a few gifts from family and friends. All were greatly appreciated and all brought a smile to my face. None bigger than the six pack of Acme California Pale Ale my brother handed over. I love this beer.

Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema: say it four times fast

I'm reading each and every comment left at Anderson Valley Brewery's page for their Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema, and my mind is splattered on the wall behind me. It seems everyone who drinks this beer is head over heels in love with it. Everyone that is, except me.

I'll be honest with you, I love Anderson Valley's beer. I do. I'm an Anderson Valley Brewery fan. I celebrate their entire catalog. For my money, I don't know if it gets any better than their Boont Amber Ale.

When it comes to summer beers, I don't know if it gets any worse than their Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema.

I love summer beers (Sierra Nevada, Alaskan, Sam Adams in particular, in that order) and combined with my respect and admiration for Anderson Valley's other work, I was fucking EXCITED to drink this beer and drink a lot of it. I didn't even know they made a summer beer. This was going to be awesome.

Sigh.

Perhaps I had a bad batch. It could have sat on the shelf too long at a less than optimum temperature. Maybe, and this is a big maybe, a Total Wine employee opened the bottles, filtered it through his socks after masturbating into them and capped the bottles back up. I don't know what happened with the beer, but I know I was not a fan of this particular beverage, not a fan at all.

Instead of a smooth, slightly sweet, easy-drinking beer, I found SSCC (I'm sick of typing that shit out) to have far too much going on. It was fruity, bitter, and even spicy. Beer and spice don't do it for me. Never have, never will (I hope those clowns at Sierra Nevada are reading this and taking notes for this year's batch of that abomination Celebration Ale.)

There's a chance I'll try it out again next year, give it another go, allow SSCC to redeem itself. A slight chance. I don't deal well with disappointment.

Shiner Smokehaus tastes like, well, smoke

Every once in a while I'll have what I call "six pack Friday." I have a certain amount of freedom at my place of employment, where I can nearly do whatever I want. Drinking a few beers at my desk on a Friday is sometimes the thing I want to do.

Today was one of those Fridays, and the beer selection was Shiner's Smokehaus. Now, I love Shiner beer. Everything I've sampled from their brewery has been delicious and I've always wanted more.

Not so with their Smokehaus.

I read the label, and knew full well what I was getting into. It says "mesquite smoked beer" front and center. I have no one to blame but myself, as there should have been some thought in my head of "this beer probably tastes like a combination of Shiner Bock and liquid smoke."

Which it does. It tastes like Shiner Bock when it gets past the lips, and tastes like liquid smoke on the way down and at the finish. I love smoke, I love bbq, I love drinking and bbq'ing.

I do not love Shiner's Smokehaus and it's liquid smoke tinge. It's not for me, and I have a hard time believing it's for anyone out there.

It pains me to say, but I've found a Shiner product I will never purchase again. It's bad enough disliking a new beer, it damn near hurts when it comes from a favorite brewery.

To quote the great Kelly Bundy, "case of rum, case of rum."

Shiner Bock is the Awesome

1 - purchase Shiner Bock
2 - drink Shiner Bock
3 -
4 - PROSIT!

I've enjoyed every Shiner beverage I've sampled in my beer drinking career, but none more than their Bock. Delicious, balanced, and reasonably priced, it's my kind of beer.

I don't have any crazy stories to tell involving this great beer, or any jokes to beat into the ground at its expense. All I'll say is if I'm looking to come home from work, do some grilling, listen to Avail, and have a beer or two with dinner, Shiner Bock is at the top of my list.

I'd totally go gay for the Shiner ram.

High Life still reigns supreme

Holiday weekends kick fucking ass. I know it, you know it, hell, even Michael Jackson knows it, and he's as dead as the pigeon my neighbor's cat gutted and left in my yard Saturday.

There's nothing quite like an extra day away from work, an extra day to do whatever the hell you want, be it sitting on your ass and drinking beer, bowling and drinking beer, grilling and drinking beer, or even mowing your demon of a lawn and drinking beer (hint: I did all of these this wonderful holiday weekend.)

What doesn't kick fucking ass is going back to work. The joy of a three day weekend can only be taken down by the misery of a Monday, and take down that joy is exactly what Monday did to me yesterday.

The details are boring and don't really matter, but my Monday sucked giant donkey balls and left me hating life. Thankfully, man invented beer. More to the point, the fellas at Miller invented High Life.

It's delicious.

It really is. Smooth, tasty, and cheap. It's the perfect beer to drink after getting repeatedly kicked in the balls by Monday. I love it, I love it, I love it.

Now, I've been on health kick recently, and admittedly, it's gotten a bit ridiculous. So ridiculous in fact, I don't drink beer during the week.

Sigh.

However, my new, healthy outlook on life was no match for the High Life last night. It didn't stand a chance. Being healthy was playing checkers while the girl in the moon was playing chess.

A 12 pack of High Life. It'll cure what's ailing you, even a horrible case of the Mondays.

Samuel Adams Triple Bock (2008 remix)

Samuel Adams is known for 3 things. Patriotism, beer, and hardcore revolutionary-era pornography. Unfortunately, they only sell one of those at the beer store. My buddy Mike got drunk one night and made a liquor store run, and picked up a bunch of random beers. Cue to next week, after polishing off most of what he bought, and my monthly work trip to Dallas became a beer-sampling expedition. For some reason he had been saving this, since it was expensive. I wish he hadn't.

I didn't see our previous review before opening this son of a bitch, which was my mistake.

Price - 0.0/10. 5 bucks for an 8.45 oz bottle. You could water it down and fill up a 24oz container, though.

Smell - First test by Mike, "a fuckin tawny port". He's fucking right. Straight up raisins and chocolate in your ass. In fact, I couldn't smell anything other than that, including anything you would normally associate with beer. The raisins and chocolate did smell nice though, so I don't really know what to make of it. Unrated.

Taste - 2/10
It tastes like beer raisin syrup. There are enough sediments in the bottle to pan for gold in. A little too harsh aftertaste for a beer. I drink beers in under 10 minutes as a rule, and half a glass took me 30 minutes to wash down. The tallboy of Coors I had as a chaser was much better. However, it might actually be better used as a sauce for meat. Neither of us want to venture into actually using it, as we own actual seasonings and Tapatio hot sauce.

I would never drink this again, even if I was paid for it.

Hangover Potential - 8/10
Having 1 after 6 Millers at the bar. We are guessing it's around 14%. Don't try this at home.
Update:
I had several Coors after that. I overslept for work, and walked around in a haze most of the day. No headache or extreme stomach issues, even after accidentally inhaling a good amount of the black death at the bottom of my glass.

Randomness - So I hear from folks that there are good triple bocks (or tripel bocks, fancy pantses). This was my first introduction to them, and from Flood's review, this is definitely not the one to get your feet wet with. Try some Belgian shit. Seriously, don't do it.