The upside - and downside - of flavoured beers

Our friends at Amsterdam Brewery recently released
their Oranje Weisse in time for you-know-what...

As the heat of Summer edges near and patios are slowly opening (or partios, as Beer Musketeer Stevil St Evil refers to them), the wheat beers are returning and this year, they're in numerous flavours... which is odd since wheats traditionally were meant to be slightly tinged with orange and light spices such as coriander. But these days, breweries are going nuts with them and like anything else, that can be good... or that can be something quite south of that.

Now a lot of beer drinkers note that they don't like flavoured beer but the fact is most beer styles have a touch of some fruit or food stuff in their essence - IPAs often have a touch of grapefruit or mango or citrus. Stouts rely on oatmeal, some fruits (cranberries, mostly) and lots of chocolate. Porters have the essence of coffee and licorice. Red ales... apple. And so on and so on. Mainstream beers, however, tend to be so malt-forward that no, you don't get much extra out of them. Which is fine since they still are the brew of choice for the masses and why would the major breweries change a formula that clearly works?

Is it possible he thought you asked for a 'crap' beer...

Now before I go on, allow me to disqualify a couple of types of flavoured beers that ride an inexplicable popularity wave in the summer - the lime beers, the lemon shandy beers and *gagging* the ice-tea-infused ones. Why am I disqualifying them? Okay, in terms as diplomatic and polite as possible (I am Canadian, after all), they are... well, disgusting, nasty, vile, sickly-sweet ass-water that no one other than an under-age teenage girl should ever drink. And since I can't advocate under-aged drinking, if all the 19-year-old girls (legal age in Ontario) could buy them all, drink them or pour 'em down the drain for all I care and then (what do 19-year-old girls do? Oh I remember) post thousands of giddy, giggly selfies all night on Instagram or Snapchat, well, I would be most appreciative. "DRINK THE LIME BEERS, YOUNG LADIES!!! DRINK THEM ALL!!!" This has been a court-ordered Public Service Advisory - two down, 98 to go - clearly the courts shouldn't have let me choose the topics. Oh wait... don't do Meth: it's, uh, whack... (do we still say 'whack'?)... okay, 97...

The new Shock Top line - their regular Belgian
White, centre, flanked by the Lemon Shandy and
Raspberry Wheat. You know where I stand on one

Shock-Top sorta poses as a craftie but here in Canada, it's brewed by Labatt while in the U.S., it's brewed by Anheuser-Busch - both of whom are, in turn, owned by Belgian giant, In-Bev. As such, they get punished on RateBeer... which is fine. The regular Shock-Top Belgian White actually isn't too bad. The orange is there but not overpoweringly so. As it turns out, the more a fruit is muted, the more I am inclined to enjoy it. The stronger its flavouring, the less so. The Shock-Top Raspberry Wheat is strongly fruit-flavoured and suffers because of that. It's like having a 5.2% Raspberry Soda. The Shock-Top Lemon Shandy? Hey, 19-year-old Instagram girls, hurry up and buy that crap. As noted in last blog, my old publisher/friend Arnie did say that I can't say I don't like something without trying it. To Arnie, I simply say this: yes... yes, I can. I'm gifted that way.

Had the Amsterdam Brewery's Oranje Weisse today and quite enjoyed it. Brewed at Beer Musketeer Cat's hometown favourite brewery, this is pure Belgian White. Light orange and coriander on the nose, light citrus touches on the tongue... very nice. Scored a 47 on RateBeer, a decent score for a Canadian wheat. Where Shock-Top could have done themselves a solid would have been by sampling Amsterdam's KLB Raspberry Wheat. Yes, you get the raspberry on the nose and tongue but it disappears quickly in the mouth. We're not looking to be overpowered. We're drinking beer here... not wrestling with a damn orchard.

Yeah, their Apricot Wheat Ale is overpoweringly sweet...
but when I had that Oatmeal Stout? Whoa. All was forgiven

Okay, remember that Okanagan Spring Apricot Summer Weizen I talked about last blog where the flavour was so muted, I couldn't even figure out what fruit it was - just that there was an unknown one in there and it was tasty? Well, meet its polar opposite - out of Montreal, St Amboise Apricot Wheat. I grabbed a St Ambroise Premium Selection Pack at another Beer Store and it has three of these, 3 IPAs, 3 Pale Ales and 3 Oatmeal Stouts. The pale ales and IPAs (a junior IPA, really) were decent, not outstanding. But the Apricot Wheat? I've had it before. Sweet to the point of apricot syrup, it was too much for me. How this managed a 46 on RateBeer is beyond me. Gotta be some sort of Montreal Apricot Orchard Voodoo. So it went upstairs to Hathaway's British Pub where the owners and denizens could give it a try.

This 8% Double IPA only got a 78 on
RateBeer and the Beer Musketeers have a
pretty strong nothing-under-90 rule about
IPAs. That said, I will hunt for it anyway

Owners Simon and Amy were first up. They took their gulps... and both made faces. I laughed, "You can pour it out, if you want. I didn't like it, either." They both instantly dumped it in the garden - no doubt killing both plants and bugs alike. Ugly way to go. But gawd bless him, Dan from Draft Services pops over after a long day of video gaming and I offer the other to him. He takes a huge haul, says, "Mmmmm, peach!" (meh, close enough) and pounds it happily while he's plugging away on his iPhone. Again, people, every beer has its happy audience.

Indeed, St Ambroise Oatmeal Stout definitely has me in its audience. This is the best session (5%) stout I've ever tasted in my life, if not the equal to many of the great one-off high-octane seasonals I had this past winter. Chocolate, coffee and butter (weird, right?) on the nose, it was all cocoa and molasses on the tongue. Just an outstanding stout. The store that sold me the mixed pack also has this in six-packs. I'll be back for more. Whereas wheats, excepting the outstanding German ones, are a style I only want one or two of at any sitting, a session stout this outstanding? That I could drink all night. I will force one on Beer Musketeer Glenn when he next visits. He continues to resist stouts and porters but he will bend to mine and Cat's will. (Evil Villain Scientist laugh in 3... 2... 1... *click* "Mooo!" What the deuce? *click* "Muah ha ha ha ha ha!!!" Okay, better... but could I get someone from IT down here? This sound effect app blows.)

I have no idea what's in Aisle 1 through 7. I also
don't care. Dairy, meat and grain right there. Wait.
What's the fourth food group again? Dessert??

And finally, due to the popularity of Austria's Stiegl Radler Grapefruit 2.5% beer last summer (the LCBOs could not keep it on the shelves), Brick Brewery has put on their own Waterloo Radler - a 3.1% beer/grapefruit combo. Big fan of the grapefruit essence in many IPAs so I tried one. It just tasted exactly like grapefruit juice, which I love, my favourite of the Juice Family... but not as a beer replacement. There is no beer essence to this whatsoever. I told my co-worker Karen when I was sampling it after work one night and her reaction? "Need some vodka there, Donny?" Uh, yeah, like a 13-ounce mickey at least. Granted, I may have stumbled across a breakfast beer that won't mess me up by lunch.

So flavoured beers can be a crap-shoot - just like any style of beer, I suppose. Can be great... can be horrific. And they are small doses beer - one or two, switch to something else. It's a little like my buddy who wants to hold a Beer Pong Tournament at his wedding reception - it walks that fine line between trashy as hell and pretty much the coolest idea ever!!! Don't panic, ladies. He's single.. and likely to stay that way for a long while.

Okay, more beers in a few days... but guys and dolls, that's it, that's all and I am outta here!!! Until next time, as always, I remain...