Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat

According to their website, Sunset Wheat "has a soothing taste that will leave you speechless." Oh yeah? Well, that would make for a pretty shitty review, so I'll just try and work through my sudden bout of speechlessness.

It's really difficult to give an unbiased review on this fine beverage because my love for Sunset Wheat has been well documented - I drink Sunset Wheat like it's my fkn job. In fact, the frequency in which I crack open bottles of Sunset Wheat would probably be comparable to the number of jerk-off sessions I had between the years of 1994-1999. I often refer to this phase of my life as The Troubles. Not The Troubles, but the time of my life I spent praying for a freak accident involving a pool of Jello, a 12-Volt battery charger, my dick, and an anonymous vagina falling from heaven. Needless to say, I never did find that pool of Jello nor did I get enveloped by the business end of a labia majora. However, my mom did get me a 12-volt battery charger for my birthday one year.

Score.

On to the beer....

This is the beer I fall back on when wanting to relax with friends - whether it be a warm day at the golf course or a chilly December day manning the grill for the last time of the season. Its drinkability score is off the charts, and the great thing is that I NEVER get tired of the flavor. Some people compare the taste of Sunset Wheat to that of Fruit Loops. To that I can only reply with a hearty "go fuck yourself". Seriously, I want proof of said self f-ing session in the form of a) polaroids; b) conventional 35 mm film; or c) stinky pinky.

I highly recommend this beer, so go buy some right now. Either that or show up at my door with pinky extended.

Inexpensive Beer Report: Old Style

Ever hear of the great punk band The Queers? They're one of my favorites. On their album Don't Back Down, there's a great song called "I Only Drink Bud." In the song Joe Queer sings:

"People in Chicago
always brag about Old Style
before I drink that swill again
it's gonna be a while"

I've been humming the tune all night while putting down these cans adorned with a red and blue shield. However, it's hardly swill.

I find it to be a rather enjoyable beverage. I would definitely prefer a bottle rather than a can but something tells me this drink is best served from an aluminum container.

It's sweet at first taste and smooth on finish, with the sweetness sticking around just a bit. I'd like a bit more carbonation but with a beer of this value and it being served in good ol' Al, I can't complain too much, I knew what I was getting when I bought this beer.

If I had to compare it to another beer I've drank, it would be Bud Light. This is strange, because I'm not a fan of the beer promoted with the best radio ads ever. My dislike for Bud Light has a lot to do with the hangovers it usually causes. For whatever reason, a night of slaying Bud Lights is followed with the worst beer shits known to man.

Enough of this babbling and boring nonsense, onto the ratings:

Taste: 7/10

Again, nice and smooth, pretty balanced. No real surprises here, it's about what I expected and didn't disappoint.

I will say it isn't quite as good as the first time I had the pleasure of drinking it. That was in a hotel parking lot tailgating with friends.

Aroma: 3/10

Smells like aluminum. Which reminds me of picking up thousands of cans in college the morning after parties.

Ever smell your hand after drinking all night, and smoking an untold number of cigarettes and bong loads? It's not good. Not good at all. Cleaning up mostly empty cans of beer that have been sitting out all night only makes things worse.

The bile is starting to build just thinking about it.

Price: 5/10

$8 and change for a 12'er. And these are cans. As I said, as far as I know, Old Style isn't readily available in Phoenix. The price is proof. Fuck you, Walgreens.

Hangover: N/A

It's Thursday night and I don't plan on drinking any more than four of these suckers. If I did finish the 12-pack my guess is I'd be on the shitter half the following day, battling a raw asshole and a splitting headache.

I can see myself now, walking gingerly back to my desk, sitting down gently as my stomach continued to bubble and gurgle.

Inexpensive Beer Report: Milwaukee Classic Ice

On Saturday afternoon, the Good Brother and I decided to take the 45 minute drive up to Kenosha, Wisconsin to go beer hunting. Specifically, my brother was looking for Bells (which ain't available in Chicago) and we were both looking for the Holy Grail of Inexpensive Beer - Genesee Cream Ale. We hit up this HUGE grocery store called Woodmans, it was literally the size of a Super Wal-Mart, maybe bigger. Their beer selection did not disappoint - we got the Bells & Genesee along with a bevy of inexpensive beers that will grace the pages of Your Liver Hates You over the next month or so.

I was immediately drawn to the "Classic Ice" for the following reasons:

1. I've never heard of it
2. It was dirt cheap ($9.99 for 30)
   
3. It came in four packs

That's right people, four 12oz beers for sale. This absolutely blew my mind, what company would have the gall to sell 4 regular beers for a sub $2 price? Apparently the Milwaukee Premium Brewing Company, that's who!

Apparently the Milwaukee Premium Brewing Company (at least according to the fine folks at ratebeer.com) is a subsidiary of City Brewing. Ratebeer's listing of City Brewery's beers is a Who's Who of crap beer that I've enjoyed throughout my lifetime - Beer 30, Camo, DB Hobbs, Jaguar High Gravity Lager (which I also enjoyed thanks to the trip up north), La Crosse Lager, Schaefer Light and Sportz. These beers are all winners to a connoisseur of Inexpensive Beer like myself..... well actually Camo is absolutely terrible but in all the right ways. So my excitement level was quickly rising when I cracked open my first Classic Ice.

Now I love a shitty beer, but Milwaukee Classic Ice takes shitty to a whole new level. This is definitely one of the worst non MaltLiquor/HighGravityWhatever beers I've ever had. It doesn't have much taste going down, but it has a weird "texture" when drinking that I can't describe. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with an absurdly low carbonation level. When your sip is complete, the aftertaste kicks in. Not overwhelming mind you, but just enough to say "I'm here and you won't enjoy my company" - a most odd double whammy.

So Milwaukee Classic Ice has done what I previously though impossible - present me with a cheap, obscure, poorly brewed domestic beer that I don't really enjoy. Actually, now that I'm near slaying the 4 pack and its 6.0% ABV buzz is kicking in - I can think of worse ways to spend my time. Still, be wary of the Milwaukee Classic Ice, fine traveler....

Inexpensive Beer Report: Cerveza Caguama

The Kroger near my house carries a lot of interesting beers, the first on the list of things to try was Cerveza Caguama, mostly because it has a turtle on the front. The back of the bottle explains that Caguama means giant sea turtle, so now I have a beer made out of turtles. Either that or it comes from some terrible river full of needles that turtles fucked in in Mexico.

Beer review websites listed this as a solid C- beer. Those people are goddamned lunatics. Opening the beer, my wife recoiled in horror at the smell and she was 10 feet away from me when I opened it. This did not bode well for me, or my gastrointestinal well being.

Taste: 2/10
Take a Corona, open it, and then leave it out for a week. Put it back in the fridge, open, next to some cottage cheese. Dump some asparagus in the bottle. Whatever you want. That's what can approximate the taste of this stuff. It really is trying hard to be a Corona Light, but as everyone knows Corona Light sucks, and if it's aspiring to be that, well, there's trouble right there.

Aroma: 0.5/10

This is a crappy Blackberry camera phone picture of MacGyver, our crack beer drinking dog. We don't let the other dog drink, because he is already too stupid, and therefore can't spare the brain cells.

Mac has had most of the beers I've reviewed so far, just to see what he'd enjoy, hoping for a moment like there was with The Turtle. After sniffing a little bit of this in his bowl, he moved to the other side of the house and didn't move, and I took the picture above. I'd say that's a resounding fuck you to this beer, if even the god damn dog won't drink it.

As for me, I think it approximates closely to what I would imagine turtle piss would smell like.

Price: 7/10
$5 a sixer is nothing to sneeze at down here, cheaper than Bud/Miller/Coors. It's no Hamm's or Blatz, though. I wouldn't pay $2 for a sixer of this.

Hangover: 2/10
Four before bed and only woke up with an urge to relieve myself. I guess that's the bright spot in all this? To be fair, I was not in the same county as a buzz after 4 of these, so that's probably the reason. I don't like this blog enough to drink enough to make the pain. I was anticipating stomach hell but everything was copacetic.

I have never seen this beer anywhere else, but if you do, and buy it, you're retarded and I hate you.

Shiner Dunkelweizen

Here in Texas we've got a wonderful brewery that more or less takes up an entire small town. Shiner's most famous product, Shiner Bock, is (I'm guessing) exported everywhere around the US and is a fine, fine beer. In the last couple of years, they've been branching out with some success, and some weirdness.

Shiner Dunkelweizen evidently was their Winter Ale and they just decided to make up some bullshit sounding German name to call it so that they could sell it all year round. A Google search says that a dunkelweizen is the dark version of a hefeweizen, so that bodes well, as I love me some wheat beer. It's the only non-cheap beer which will fuck me up good and not make me feel too terrible in the morning, which really is my favorite quality in a beer anymore. Unfortunately for my long term health, I drink way too much.

Anyway, let's crack this mother open.

Taste: 4/10
Tasted more like a crappy ale than what I would have expected from a dark wheat beer. I don't think I could make it through more than two before giving up on my drinking for the evening (at least as far as the dunkelweizen is concerned). No hint of anything from a wheat beer at all.

Aroma: ?
It smells like dark beer. Even years after quitting smoking, I still can't smell shit.

Price: 5/10
7.49 for a sixer. For what I assumed this beer to be, that was about what I expected. I don't pay that much for beer on a regular basis but if it was better, I wouldn't have objected too much.

Hangover: 8/10
I wrote all this other shit last night. I made it through 3, and I felt like ass this morning. I did start the day off with a (free) Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA so that may have been a contributing factor. Even eating a second dinner of Wendy's around midnight while playing Dead Rising was ineffectual. I was dropping a bomb as soon as I woke up, and my head felt like microscopic dwarves had come in through my ear canal and were digging through the front of my head.

Randomness:
I found this in a gas station near my house but haven't seen it anywhere else around the suburb that I live, grocery stores, liquor stores, nothing, just this one gas station. I wonder if they're just repurposing beer just to fuck with me.

I'll be trying the rest of Shiner's newer beers at some point in the near future but this one has turned me off to their stuff for a while. It's too bad because their Bock is the BANC.

Four Peaks Kiltlifter

As you can see from the bottle, this is a Scottish style ale. I'm what one might classify as a novice when it comes to different types of brews as I'm a connoisseur of High Life and PBR. So let's see what the fine folks at Four Peaks tell us about their beer:

You have before you the combination of pure water, North American malt, fresh Kent Golding hops and clean, strong yeast. An ale, artfully crafted in Tempe, Arizona and eagerly shared by the Four Peaks Brewing Company.

Kilt Lifter is brewed in the long tradition of smooth, full bodied Scottish ales. It is marked by a warm balance of hop and malt, with the slightest hint of peat-smoked barley. A traditional touh for a fine ale whose merits are many.

Now, I don't know who Kent Golding is but he might just be the commissioner of truth in advertising because Four Peaks isn't full of shit in the least bit.

This is a moderately dark beer with a crisp finish and just a touch of hops. Nothing is overpowering about this beer except its deliciousness. I'm fortunate to have easy access to it.

I do have one slight complaint about this fine beverage. It's nothing to be ashamed of as another of my favorite beers (Bass Ale) falls in the same boat, but it's better on draft. This is not to say I won't drink from a freshly-poured frosty mug at home all day but I'm not f'ing around when I say Kilt Lifter is something special when ordered at the bar.

If you have the means, I highly recommend it. It is so choice.

taste - 9/10

Really, it's that good. Only piece of advice is to serve it nice and cold. The colder the better.

price - 5/10

It isn't unreasonable but hardly dirt cheap. I got a 6'er this evening for $7. One would think my proximity to the brewery would help price but that just isn't the case.

At the bar it's $4 a pint, which as far as bar prices go, is a fantastic deal.

hangover - 8/10

Costco has 24-packs of Kilt Lifter for dirt cheap. I've made the purchase just once, as I went what we like to call overboard. You see, I was working on my car, changing the oil and the brakes and got into a bit of a rhythm. Before I knew it, half the case was history and I was WASTED.

The next morning was an absolute nightmare. Filmy teeth, cat-piss breath, churning stomach and a head with a tack-hammer driven through it.

The 6% alcohol content did me now favors, nor did my light speed consumption. I'd recommend consuming this beer in much the same way you smoke a pork shoulder, slow and low. That last sentence doesn't really make a lot of sense.

randomness - 2/10

Damn near every supermarket has this in stock and convenience stores are starting to get in on the act as well. Not sure how far they distribute it, if it reached California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

Westmalle Trappist Dubbel

I have been blessed by the beer gods as my lovely young sister recently took a trip to Belgium. As you may or may not know, Belgium is an awesome place to find world class brew. Being the saint she is, she volunteered to ship some beers to me, and this is the first I'll be reviewing. On to the beer...

Appearance: 9.5/10

Poured with a nice head (about 2 1/2 fingers) and showed good retention. Nice caramel color which really looked good in the crystal glass (also a gift from lil sis). The lacing was almost non-existent, but that's understandable in such a wide and shallow glass.

Aroma: 7/10

A nice full, malty aroma with more than a faint hint of caramel. I definitely didn't get a hoppy smell from this fine brew. From the initial smell I could tell this would be a very malty beverage.

Taste: 9/10

Delicious. A nice sweet initial taste although I couldn't quite place it right away. I expected to notice a bit of an alcohol-bite from a 7% beer brewed by monks, but I was pleasantly surprised to find nothing of the sort. Completely velvety smooth and almost, dare I say, frothy . In fact, it had a very clean finish with a very malty (think high-class liquid whoppers) taste. I was surprised to notice a shift in flavors as I worked through my first glass; it started malty, became almost chocolatey, and by the end of the glass I was noticing a strong caramel taste.

Mouthfeel: 10/10

A good feel in the mouth - not too thick and not watery by any means. What a good beer is supposed to feel like.

Drinkability: 9/10

This is not a pounding beer by anymeans - in fact, I was feeling a very slight buzz after completing one bottle. However, its nice smooth, malty flavor and high alcohol content make it an awesome beer (or two) to have after a long day of sitting on your ass at work.

Overall: 9.5/10

Awesome beer that I highly recommend to anyone who can find it. Thanks, sis!