Monday, June 21, 2010

I've been pretty busy lately, but I did manage to finish off the last beer from my custom six pack. I also managed to get to Fireflies with my cousin Brendan last Friday to have some beers. We made nice with the bar manager there, which led to me trying perhaps the most interesting beer I've ever tried (see my last review). My family went back there on Father's Day for brunch (no new beers though). For Father's Day, I got dear old dad a custom six pack of IPAs.

Lion Stout: This was the last of my custom six pack. If you like stouts, you will like this. If you don't like stouts, I would avoid it. It's made in Sri Lanka, which I can't exactly say gave me high expectations - I hadn't really heard of a long and storied beer tradition from there. The beer was like any other stout, dark. It had a bit of ompf to the taste. Like I said, if stouts are your thing, this is the beer for you.

Leinenkugels Summer Shandy: This beer was so terrible, it practically made me weep. If you like fruity beers, then I guess there is a chance you will like this - but I tend to doubt it. It was basically a glass of lemonade mixed with beer. This is an insult to beer. Unfortunately, this is a sad strange trend for Leinenkugel.

Breckenridge Avalance Amber
: I like amber ales. As far as an amber ales go, this was below average. However, you could argue I was biased against it, since it came in a can. It was poured out into a glass, but it wasn't anything special. In some ways, I thought it was lacking in character or watery.

Left Hand Sawtooth ESB: I thought this was a slightly above average pale ale. I generally thought it wasn't overwhelmingly hoppy, which is traditional for its style. I rushed through this one a bit, so I don't have the best descriptors for it.

Green Flash Le Freak
: Perhaps the most interesting beer I've ever tried. This beer follows America's long, proud tradition of pissing on Europe's cannonical norms. This beer seemed like a blend between a Belgian Trippel and an American Pale Ale (which basically amounts to an IPA on the 'roids Barry Bonds took). The taste was very flavorful with a slight fruit characteristic during the sip, and as the glass was pulled away, the taste turned turned into full on hops. I can't say I loved it, but I can say it was interesting.

Note: I also discovered one of the vegetable drawers in my fridge is full of Yuengling and pork roll. I love my roommates.

The scorecard:
Colleen: 267
Paul: 249

Cheers,
Paul

7 comments:

  1. When I was in school at U of I, Leinie's was your pretty standard go-to lager, much in the way that Yuengling is here. It's sad that their fruity crap caught on nationally.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm sure they have some stuff that is decent, but I've not been very impressed. Lemonade has no place with beer, or alcohol for that matter. Thanks for the heads up about what Leinenkugel used to be like.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wasn't apologizing for them. This summer shandy crap needs to be taken out back and shot.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm so glad you called it pork roll despite your geography.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Are we talking NJ or VA? And...what exactly is a pork roll anyway?

    ReplyDelete
  6. The crazy residents of everywhere else in the world outside of NJ tend to call it "Taylor ham".

    ReplyDelete