Monday, September 13, 2010

A Tale Of Two Beers: #808 vs #810

The last few days have been days of contrast. Beers, I mean.  One impressed the hell out of  me, while the other?  Well, not so good. Very "bad" in fact.

Living up to their reputation of home runs vs. strikes out, the Short's Brewing Company scored a grand slam with their Oktoberfest Noble Chaos (#810).  What an awesome beer!  A wonderful beer to look simple view, the color is a clear ruby (almost purple) brown with a nice, but short-lived head.  The aroma dances all over the place with hint of citrus-like sweetness.  One minute, I might be smelling raisins or caramel. The next? Plums!  On the tongue, everything fits together so nicely.  The balance of sweets and hops is dead on.  A medium or medium-heavy creamy feel tickles the tongue. The finish starts sweet and ends with a nice malty feel.  Excellent from start to finish.  5 out of 5.  Great stuff!

A few nights ago, I had the displeasure of the dealing with the opposite extreme.  

Before I start totally ragging his beer, let me clear - Kid Rock does some okay things.  While I am certainly not a fan of his music (for the most part), I like to hear that he does shows for the troops overseas and gives freely of his money locally for charities and other events. That is all pretty damned good in my book.

Unfortunately, his Badass Beer (#808)  is not badass at all.  It is bad and tastes like...well, you can figure it out.  

I gave it my best when I tried it, but it was hard to get past the visual aspect, to be honest.  While the books suggest the palest beer color is "pale straw", I would argue "pale pale pale sorta straw  crappy stuff" would be more applicable.  No beer anywhere should look like this.  Taste was basically nonexistent.  The finish?  Ditto. Nothing in the start, middle, or end.  One person said recently that is has "no aftertaste" and they seemed to brag about it.  Um, beer should have an aftertaste, but lets call it a "finish". Okay, hell, call it aftertaste if you like.  Call it whatever you want, but it should be there.   This stuff doesn't have it.  It doesn't have anything.  1 out of 5.  Sorry Kid.

A tale of two beers.  One is all rock-n-roll, while the rocker's beer is horribly out of tune.

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