Fruit Salad

Shiner Prickly Pear Lager

It's decent. Tastes kinda like what you'd imagine a prickly pear would taste like (admit it: you haven't eaten one and neither have I).  And other than that, it's a decent tasting lager. It has enough hops but isn't hoppy, and it's not sweet either. Even holds up once it's not cold anymore.

Flying Dog Blood Line

There's a big hop component to the smell of the Blood Line, but taste wise, it tastes like a cross between orange juice and beer, which it is. Unfortunately, I like really pulpy orange juice and this is crystal clear. More gold-amber than orange. And the orange character is really more juice than zest or tartness, if that makes sense. If you love orange juice, you may love this. Or you may consider it a perversion against that which you love most. I think it's decent. For a beer that's supposed to taste like "blood orange", I am grateful that it tastes like orange and not like blood.

Omnipollo Hypnopompa

I've been looking forward to this all week, saying the name aloud every time I open the fridge.

It's quite heady, with powerful, even bitter malt and some hop presence too. Do yourself a giant favor and take the thing out of the fridge first. Drinking it cold kills it—it starts to taste good around 62°F to my meat thermometer, which also probably makes it taste slightly more like chicken strips.

It is at these temperatures that the chocolate, mallow root, and other fun flavors show themselves. Like a naked guy coming in from a blizzard, the flavor in this one is a grower, not a shower. The bitterness really subsides, and I'm left with the impression that if aged, this would get real leathery and even more delicious. If I find myself in a beer store with some extra coin, and if my new apartment has somewhere appropriate to store it, I'll get another.

I love the bottle on this. Fun disco font on the back, and these little white discs on the front. What are they? A venn diagram?

Nope, they're little eyes! Too cute. There's actually black printing on the brown bottle (which is impossible to see when it's full of dark beer), but once you empty it, it's staring back at you!

Anyway, this is a winner. I'd keep the bottle too, if I had space. A bit expensive, but worth it, and I'd save it away for a year or five for best results.

(Hits and) Misses

Northwest Brewing Company Mango Weizen

The label says Mango Weizen. To me, it tastes like neither a mango, nor a weizen. The label also says it's on clearance, and now you know why I bought it. It wasn't even good enough to take a picture of it, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

New Belgium Pear Ginger Beer Contains Alcohol

The new Belgium one on the other hand has a beautiful printed bottle. I love the Lips of Faith series, as has been evidenced by previous posts. It doesn't really taste like pear, but there is definitely a ginger kick. It doesn't work that well, but it's all right. If you really sniff hard it kinda smells like pears. And the bottle says it contains alcohol, which it definitely does, though mercifully it does not taste too much like alcohol. Anyway, this is decent but not great: a bummer, because it's on the pricy side, but when you use adjuncts such as those, the end result is just going to cost more. New Belgium's Lips of Faith is sometimes a bit hit or miss, and this one I just have to pass on.

pFriem Belgian Strong Blonde

Time to see what the hype is all about. pFriem, local Oregon favorites, finally started bottling, so I now have no excuse not to try any.

This has a really nice color. It's a kind of peach-tone gradient with little bubbles and a creamy white head. It also has a great mouthfeel, rich and creamy. Smell is punchy, and I think there's a little too much coriander here for my taste. But other than coriander, it tastes kinda like banana (but less sweet), and maybe peach (though really it more looks like a peach than tastes like one). Other than that, not tons going on here, though assuming this is bottle conditioned (judging by the sediment), I could see this improving with age.

The label, incidentally, said it would taste like pear and clove. I don't really taste either.

In conclusion, this beer is good, and I look forward to trying more from pFriem. Corked and caged 375mL bottle makes for a nice presentation and is an appropriate size to share or consume by yourself. Was it worth $6? Not to me, but in the immortal parlance of LeVar Burton, you don't have to take my word for it.

de Garde Tableau Rouge

Smells sour, maybe like wild strawberries, with a slight off-note which reminds me of dishwater.
Taste is tart and dry, floral with that same wild strawberry. Lingers a bit (you'll want a glass of seltzer to go with it), but overall pretty balanced and tasty. Glad I grabbed this when I did, as it seemed to be flying off the shelves at the Whole Foods in the Pearl. Fuckin' hipsters. They can have the sour beer; I'll take the smoky beer.

Which is not to say that I don't appreciate a good sour beer now and then. Nor to espouse undue hatred on the hip—my own facial hair style is goofier than most and all of my clothes are secondhand. But there is a certain type of sour-beer-swiller (you can tell, because they were swilling IPAs two years ago) who would be just as happy sipping some carbonated apple cider vinegar as a decent beer.

A rep once explained the Cantillon mystery to me (it always tasted like vinegar to my palate). He said that Cantillon was a famous brewery that produced great sour beer, but had to ramp up production in the face of widespread demand. This caused a shift in their product towards tasting oppressively of vinegar, but with their brand recognition, whenever a neophyte sipped this vinegar brew, heralded as the best of the best, they formed an impression that vinegar was how sour beers are supposed to taste, and the rest is history. Narsty, narsty history.

Anyway de Garde is producing some pretty darn good beers, and I say that as a non-sour-head. I have noted the dishwater smell in Petit Desay, so it may simply be an ester from their house/local yeast. And this beer is pretty good as well. Not stupidly expensive (less than half the price of a Cascade), and also not terribly high in alcohol (5%). Seems like this could go with sushi or chevre or greens or maybe I'm saying that because it reminds me a little bit of a raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing.

Better than "Slowenbier"

Yes, our friends (my friends? my would-be friends?) at Schlenkerla Bierbrauerei have finally packaged their renowned Fastenbier—a Lenten smoked seasonal brew previously available on draft only, and (to date) still the top-ranked rauchbier on beer rating website (among beers with 4 or more reviews). (Editor's note: evidently it appears to be the top-ranked smoked beer on several beer reviewing websites.)

So how is it? I lovingly prize the cap off the bottle, attempting to keep it intact; it's a shiny purple one and would look great as an ornament on my Christmas tree (which is generally beer-themed). I bend it, obviously.

My hero Matt Brown at Wine Warehouse described described this as a more approachable rauchbier, and after he offered it as a featured beer at a recent tasting, he proved himself right and sold himself out of every bottle. Excepting of course the one he saved for me (like I said, he is a hero).

To smell this, the smoke is intense, and I think it's the same beechwood as their flagship line (I prefer their oak-smoked, which only costs a little more. Also I enjoy other types of wood for smoking, like applewood, but these folks are traditionalists and who am I to argue with delicious tradition?) When you sip it, it's thick, and this is the point of a Lent beer—it's designed to sustain monks who are fasting, and in Bavaria, beer still enjoys legally protected status as food. The smoke is on the acrid side, but that hefty backbone keeps it from being overpowering. The copy text for the beer says it has a 'hoppy bite', (but these are Germans we're talking about) and while it does have some bitterness to it, it's not 'American hoppy' by any stretch of the imagination. It also claims to be made with a percentage of unsmoked malt, which you might never guess, because it's pretty darn smoky.

It's unfiltered and vintage dated "Anno Domini MMXV", but I drank it fresh. I guess it might do things over time, but it's hard for me to imagine what. Especially being brewed as a once-a-year seasonal, I think you'd be ill-advised to put this one away.

Anyway, this beer is a success, and may finally (please?) make 2015 the Year of the Smoky Beer, which I have been predicting (unsuccessfully) for the past three years (at least). Restauranteurs and chefs love 'em; they hold up much better with food than many other beverages (beers included). The brew is a success for being thick and substantial, which keeps smoke from becoming acrid or overwhelming (for another example, see New Holland Charkoota Rye, though for the past few years this has been only available in a brandy-barrel aged variety, which is also fantastic, but buries the lede a bit)

Woodland Empire Crispy Apple Turnover

I bought this at Beer Mongers late into (yet not at the end of) an evening of attempting to keep pace with my one-time beer mentor, fulfilling my role as Portland tour guide over an epic few nights of bar hopping.

I'm not sure why exactly I lighted on this one, but I'm glad I did. Probably because of the word "Crispy," which is irresistible to drunk people, and arguably impossible for a beer to be (though 'crisp' is another matter). The beer itself, while made with apples, doesn't beat you over the head with them, and the finish, surprisingly, is a sort of caramel that turns into... flaky pastry flavor? Like a croissant? The name seems pretty apt really, and the really special part is that even though it's slightly warming at 10% (you would not know this, to taste it), it doesn't linger or coat your palate. It's pretty good. Smell wise, I guess it could smell more appley. And taste-wise too. Why are they called Apple Jacks if they don't taste like apple? It also has an aspect of 'generic strong beer' that I could do without.

The label is cool too. A dog with ram horns, a Dungeons and Dragons d20, and a sword with elvish on it. I guess ultimately I could take or leave this beer, but it's decent, so if you think you might like it, I'm not gonna say you nay.