King Pontiac Porter

  

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King Pontiac Porter
King Brewing Company
Pontiac, MI

Sometime in your life you're going to be sitting around a campfire with a pale-faced girl who has hot embers in her heart and you'll be drinking something made of woodsmoke and lightly burnt caramel and the lot next to your campsite will be occupied with the drinkers of Coors Light and you're going to be all smug thinking that you are drinking something akin to woodsmoke and lightly burnt caramel and your nemesis loud-mouth neighbors in campsite 17 will be swigging Coors Light listening to Rob Zombie from their pickup truck cabin and burning the insides of your brain with primordial vibrations that say this is not the time to be part of their folly and folly it is that you are at the lip of the hard coals tipping into this steaming coalpot of dark wood and smoke and nature is with you and the cherubs are singing and Shostakovich swirls in the firepits while the crickets all crouch low and play their song in quiet contemplation of having never existed

-Wörtwurst

New Holland Ichabod Pumpkin Ale

  

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New Holland Ichabod Pumpkin Ale
New Holland Brewing Company
Holland, MI

I'm not a beer lover per se, I'm just in it for the reviews. Seriously. Tasting is merely an ingredient in formulating my own perfect idea of a beer to brew. One of these ideas involves pumpkin beer. Of the two kinds I imagine one is a dark animal with light pumpkin pudding mutton chops and a whipped cream chin strap. The other is a transparent ale with overwrought punky pollutants. Not overly spicy like Buffalo Bill's and not quite as faint as our dear comrade Ichabod. He has a head the size of the Sears Tower and bubbles as if just born. Viddy viddy smoof wif a specklin' da de punkie. It's a pumpkin with a full set of teeth and glowing eyes and a cumberbund. I want mine to have a derelict smile with a few fangs knocked out and the others rotting from over-indulgence in the candy goblin's bag and eyes maddened with malty sucroses. A notch above Blue Moon but a kerbobble below my future jack o' lantern bier.

-Wörtwurst

Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere Farmhouse Ale

  

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Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere Farmhouse Ale
Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales
Dexter, MI

Listen, I don't believe in this mouthfeel mishmash. In fact my "mouth feels" a bit filthy saying it. But my "tongue feels" that this is a member of the fruit family. Namely the glockenspiel fruit playing Jesus music. It pings in there and bounces from tooth to tooth: boong baaang bong bong. And my belly says it is truly the spice lords stamping their gummy little feet into the loam and making footprints. And there's a tractor behind a barn carrying apples to a spice-barrel and dropping them in and all the monkeys are loose and throwing gobs of the pulp at the back of your throat and your uvula is saying "aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh."

-Wörtwurst

Kulmbacher Monchshöf Schwarzbier

  

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Kulmbacher Monchshöf Schwarzbier
Monchshöf
Kulmbach, Germany

Being as I am a self-professed intuitist and a novice cockswain on the draught boat I go by a completely different set of beer standards than some dude who makes love to a row of barley like it's a buxom and swanky woman. I'm in it to become more ignorant and farcical than I presently am. Plus I'm thirsty and heading for diabetes, amputation, adult diapers and musty white pubes so I might as well get some olfactory bliss and whatever the hell the pansophist's euphemism for sense of taste is while I'm able. This stuff is akin to Samuel Adams Black Lager but with some thousand dollar black licorice stuffed into its pretty mouth. I could see me waltzing with this beer and settling down in Denmark to raise my fourteen illigitimate cyclops sons all named Adolph with her (again with this humanizing!). To and fro, my arm lifting the swingtop and spinning the little lusty tramp around and around my mouth like a mouthful of liquid gold and black jelly bird eggs. Happy birthday little ones! All the rings of Saturn and a milky way of stars for this special one.

-Wörtwurst

MacTarnahan's Uncle Otto's Weiss Beer

  

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MacTarnahan's Uncle Otto's Weiss Beer
MacTarnahan's Brewing Co.
Portland, OR

I thought today would be as good a day as any to write an essay entitled "Why I Hate Jazz" but instead I've opted to listen to Donovan sing Shakespeare and drink a too dark colored glass of beer. By too dark I mean it's too dark to see the Uncle Otto's Weiss Beer which barely resides in it through the blue tint of the glass. So what's the point of my little preamble? Well, there is nothing hip about this beer. I don't hear Coltrane bugling out of a smoky alley, I don't hear Billie Holliday whispering through the airy vapor and I sure as hell don't think that Charlie Bird Parker is the air holding up this balloon sack. It's just a nice smooth little beer with no zip or zing and no bad intentions. It looks and feels like it was made on a little farm in the hinterlands where it's always early summer. No music except the wind blowing things like it ought to and endless wheat fields where gods are only men and men are merely minor players in the drama.

-Wörtwurst

Founders Dirty Bastard

  

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Founders Dirty Bastard
Founders Brewing Co.
Grand Rapids, MI

This Scottish style ale pours with a head like Einstein and the brain of a Speak-N-Spell. I'm mumbling to myself right now with a bowl of salty tortilla chips next to me trying to keep the burn from my throat and the hot tremors from the rest of my body. Three parts propane and one part shark liver this is sure to rip your intestines to shreds like the flag on a paddle boat in a noreaster. I kind of enjoyed the first two or three sips but in a similar way that one of my old childhood friends did when he got an Egyptian eye tattooed on the side of his head, "It hurts but it's a good kind of pain." Needless to say he was an idiot and time has caught up and taught me a few lessons about practicality. Get a fire extinguisher and some Rolaids because the whole town is going to burn down inside your body.

-Wörtwurst


Notes from Re-review of 9-1-06

Not the jalapeno fire of the previous review and none of the side effects mentioned as well. A smooth caramelish malty brew with hints of cinnamon or some other slightly sweet hoppy affect. Somehow I like the tone better when I was disparaging the beer. Nonetheless, not a bad brew but certainly not one of my favorites.

-W

Mendocino White Hawk IPA

  

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Mendocino White Hawk IPA
Mendocino Brewing Company
Saratoga Springs, NY/Ukiah, CA

Back a week or two ago before a sudden and severe attack of vertigo I had no real reason for quirky ideas. But I had/have them nonetheless and one of them was to take Trüb's dog and drive him to Wyoming and put a harness on his back and let him loose to get in touch with his nature as a freedom loving wandering nomad. I suppose the harness isn't really natural except where man is included. This holds true for beer as well. Taking from the earth and melding something together for our own pleasure and utility. This predator pale ale is a little gamey under those terms. It eats carrion and picks up field mice and dices them up and puts them to use as the fifth ingredient in guacamole. I was told not to use too much lemon in my guac and I tell you White Hawk put not your carrion to thee. It bites a little too hard at the end for me, being a lover of chocolate and smoke.

-Wörtwurst

Sleeman Cream Ale

  

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Sleeman Cream Ale
Sleeman Brewing & Malting Co.
Guelph, Ontario, Canada

It has been pointed out by Trüb(I guess second-hand anecdotes will be all we hear of him here!) that I taste coffee and chocolate in every dark brew and high alcohol aftertaste and sour squid and balsamic vingear or some such foreign thing to beer in every thing we drink. I guess this might be true but I could have sworn that with this beer I tasted the grapey-grapey-grape of Grolsch in here and something akin to Michelob without the grimy feel of a lobotomy. My heart said that a Cream Ale (having never tasted one) would taste like a milkshake or as Trüb suggested, a creme soda, but it tastes more like a typical mass-produced beer but minus the playing deck of cards looking label and a heart (as small as it is) that at least tries to sing.


Note: the bottles we have are dark brown.

-Wörtwurst

Heineken

  

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Heineken
Holland

I remember a distinct period of my life every time I think of or drink this beer. It was seemingly melancholy and the Big Sur coastline and forests seemed like a foggy northwest wilderness painting that one was foisted into with no harp or harpoon to fight off the predatory beasts of self-infliction and natural beauty. And when a large elk-like beast walked near the side of the winding coastline highway and looked like he was the mountain and we were the little knee fence in his way I nearly lost it. Then of course the pint sized bottles cost $5 a piece and the firewood consisting of tinder and oversized and fermenting popsicle sticks perfumed with spray paint wood scent was even more than that and only burned a few hours. Such nostalgia wasted on a so-so beer. I wanted to remember it tasting like the bitter dregs coughed up by the ocean but a recent taste made me realize that it was more like a tapwater beer than a fine nectar. 2.5 out of 4.

A funny aside while looking for a picture of a Heineken bottle on google; the first image that appears is this: http://lamaisondubazar.free.fr/Mes%20images/pubs/heineken.jpg

-Wörtwurst

Fischer's Bitter

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Fischer's Bitter
Fischer Beverages Intl.
Schiltigheim, France

I bought this mainly for the swing-top bottle for homebrewing. I figured instead of paying $3 for an empty bottle I'd put down a dollar more and get a brew out of the deal. It wasn't worth much more than that empty sterilized sparkling green bottle I would have gotten plus I'd still have my hard-won buck-a-bill. I remember my brother collected beer cans when I was a wee little animal and many of the names of the empty cans come flying through my head at odd moments for no particular reason. Schmidts. Rolling Rock. Red, White & Blue. Old Frothingslosh! But the one that came to mind when I tasted this one and still does is Champale! I think there was a standard version and a pink concoction. I never tasted them but this is what I would imagine that it tasted like: a beer and a cheap champagne spilled into the same bucket and consumed by the deprived and the profane. A limp-wristed little back biter that gives you the throw-up face with a little lemon squeezed into the bile. 1.5 saggy boobs to the left of no thank you.

-Wörtwurst

Leinenkugel Red Lager

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Leinenkugel Red Lager
J. L. Leinenkugel Brewing Company
Chippewa Falls, WI

What can I say but that this is Killian's little brother who tags along and pretends he's all grown up too. And I guess he is, if we can call a beer a he and give it human charateristics and wants, but he isn't brash enough to put up a billboard proclaiming "savoRED." It's not as baritone (I know, I make non-beer comparisons, but I'm an intuitist at heart.) as his pseudo-Irish brother from Budskiland or wherever it is Big Red is from but this little bird sings just as loud and for a few pennies less. Plus it has an indian as its emblem and what says beer like a stoic-faced injun? Three cross bows and a pouch of wampum.

-Wörtwurst

Helmar Big League Brew

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Helmar Big League Brew
Helmar Brewing Company
Pleasant Ridge, MI

There is sediment floating in this brew and it reminds me of a burnt apple cider and yet I still somehow like it well enough. Maybe it's the Walter Johnson beer cap on this bottle or the other three decorated with Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Mickey Cochrane. Or it could simply be that my Detroit Tigers are finally the best team in baseball again and I barely have the wherewithal and resources to buy something stocked with a little more punch than a sock full of polluted rainwater like Budweiser or Coors. Plus I saw in the beer cooler today at the local grocery a case of Budweiser with the Tigers logo plastered over it and thought that some class operation like Bell's should be brewing for them instead. It should also be brewed in the bleacher seats at Tiger Stadium in a monstrous vat and a fountain should run down and slowly curl through a canal towards where homeplate used to be and then suddenly drop off and under into a mass reservoir under the city. And when the Tigers win the World Series they could ride gondolas under there and sail off somewhere to where civilization could begin anew. Yip yip.

-Wörtwurst

Paulaner Salvator Double Bock

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Paulaner Salvator Double Bock
Paulaner Brewing Company
Munich, Germany

In my early twenties I had a girlfriend who was my high school sweetheart and I fully expected to marry her even though I knew that I couldn't and wouldn't just the same. One instance why in particular stands out. I had painstaking half put together an edges-only jigsaw puzzle of Monet's "Palazzo de Mula" on the coffee table in her little apartment's living room when we got into a minor squabble. I had been razzing her about whatever people do and she got so incensed that she smashed the puzzle off the table and my week of work went to shit. With nothing else to lose I put it to her real good and she ended up so angry that she finally stood on the couch and somehow kicked me full force in the chest. I had a little wheezy bubble of defeat and disgust in my windpipe. This is the kind of feeling I get from the old Salvator but in not so severe a manner. It's like what I imagine the aftertaste of smoking menthol cigarettes would be like but with a full body dark beer primary taste included. Kind of like what you get from Bailey's Irish Creme. I like it, it's good, but I didn't care for the little hiss of creamy citrus alcohol at the tail-end. Not from a woman or a double bock.

-Wörtwurst

Prilep Golden Dab Pils

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Prilep Golden Dab Pils
Prilep Brewery
Macedonia

I did a few google picture searches for Dab and found everything from dogs to pastries to beauty supplies and to most notably Scarlett Johansson. I also found many pictures of white people, namely college-aged to mid-twenties types, en masse drinking up a cheap storm. None of this might be related to our friend the Golden Pils, Dab, but then again much of it might be in an offhand way. Surely with the law of averages we can knock out the top and bottom pegs--Scarlett and white people, in that order-- and we're left with dogs and pastries and make-up. All right, let's just up and toss out the whole preceeding theory and go with an anagram B-A-D. A headache in a bottle. Better than Budweiser but not much and almost on par with Grolsch minus the swing-top circus which will soon bring to town my fresh tasty Oatmeal Stout homebrew.

-Wörtwurst

Erdinger Dark

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Erdinger Dark
Erdinger Weissbräu
Germany

This stuff isn't Sanka! This is the kulak's share of the five year plan's most desired whispering wheat plastered on the world's biggest Mein Kampf mustache. This is Juan Carlo on his mule picking the beans fresh and rinsing them off in fresh hot candied rum. This is the run-off from the Milk Way's underground rivers. Enough of the limp-wristed poesy Baudelaire:

"Time to get drunk!"
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

-Wörtwurst

Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale

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Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale
Buffalo Bill's
Hayward, CA

This is a beer way out of season to be trying in June but it was on a discount rack and my cohort Trüb (pronounced tr'oob, rhymes with teets) was eager to try it. I had it last fall and was a little bothered by the spice rack perfume masque nailed to the face of a pale ale, but in general I'd drink it for the occasional episodes of spitting fire or washing down a number four combo at McDonalds. I prefer a darker beer or one with a hint of pumpkin goodness like Blue Moon's Pumpkin Beer, which is far more wholesome and religious and brings down the moon in the autumn to light the Devil's way home sans all the cackling witchery and hobgoblin potpourri spicing. 1 1/2 pumpkins and 3.7621 broom handles.

-Wörtwurst

Young's Double Chocolate Stout

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Young's Double Chocolate Stout
Young & Co.
London, England

Imagine yourself licking through a block of ice for some burnt choco pudding on the other side of the frozen wall and actually liking it. Then imagine that you do this in repetitions until it's been expired and you are left with a chocolate fog on the roof of your mouth. Maybe my beer mug was too cold but this wonderful cocoa flavoring seemed to be teased in after some delayed anasceptic numbness. Not bad but I wished that I had the whole flavor at once. 2 Hershey bars and a Cadbury fruit & nut.

-Wörtwurst

Newcastle Brown Ale

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Newcastle Brown Ale
Newcastle Federation
Dunston, England

I'm a bottom fermenter and when I seek bottom I climb underground. The dirt and clay taste better than the wispy little cloud poofs and you feel a little closer to the brown people who started this ignorant race of humansauruses. Drinking is afterall a method to kill or cleanse a bad day or a bum occurence. Hell it's even happy time for some elves. But I'm a particularly strange dwarf with my tufted ears and need for gravy and sirloins and sausage. This is what Guinness would taste like if you didn't have to drink it with a fork. Brown gravy soda with chunks of squirrel mixed in. The nutmeggy little squirrel you see hanging from a tree limb and eating all of your songbird's suet energy cakes and laughing as you steam from the inside of the window. Once you knock he'll look and then be gone and you're back to bird watching. Except that the little birds are twittering above your head and building a little shrine to tasty spirits. 3.8 burnt amber crayons.

-Wörtwurst

Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale

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Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale
Great Divide Brewing Company
Denver, CO

Pan is playing the flute. Bacchus is spilling juice down his chin. Venus is reclining naked in the grass under a wafting golden vapor. All the while under the sweet fruit taste (it's more like cranberry than raspberry to me) is a beer's beer. It tastes like beer and bites like beer and shows nothing of the pink dancing swoon of over-sweetness that reviews picked it apart for having. I haven't had many fruit brews besides this and Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat but I've liked them both. Not for regular fare but a change-up here and there between the burnt evening lagers. 3.25 out of 4.

-Wörtwurst