Hello Great Divide Fans,
Van Honsebrouck St. Louis Premium Pêche
Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck N.V.
Ingelmunster, Belgium
I'm finding it hard to come up with anything new for a fruit beer. Peachy keen? No. It's the pits? No sir. More wine than beer? It is. But it's a Belgian fruit beer not a WINE. It tastes like wine. A table wine at that. A little carmelized toastiness but nothing really knocks back the sweetness. You could pair it with grouse or something if that was your thing. It's not mine. This is a drinkable syrup but I wouldn't try it again.
-Wörtwurst
Dark Horse Fore Smoked Stout
Dark Horse Brewing Co.
Marshall, MI
Where there's smoke in beer there's also creamy lactids. A nice whipped milk flavoring supports the smokey backbone right down to the floating crusted flakes of yeast and god knows what else. Not quite the sensory shocker that the Tres Blueberry is but this one most definitely has the style down to a drinkable science. Not the greatest stout but better than most mid-range ones that are carried by the chocolate and coffee malts.
-Wörtwurst
Atwater Block Maibock
Atwater Block Brewery
Detroit, MI
Most bocks stop short of being good to great and usually fall into the satisfactory one-off seasonal, but not this one. The hybrid of a kolsch and a oktoberfest, this takes the sweet malts and make them jubilant and unfettered. Not sappy sweet but sweet like a nectar with musky under-tones that makes you believe that you're drinking from a fern in Eden with Eve bathing under a waterfall unsuspecting of the evil or impurity that awaits us all. All this from a small brewer in little old run-down Detroit. Hyperbole, drink up.
-Wörtwurst
North Coast Old No. 38 Stout
North Coast Brewing Co.
Fort Bragg, CA
Hear my baby comin' down the track,
Betcha my baby's comin' back,
Someday she'll get back to me,
We gonna raise a family.
We're gonna groove, Yeah groove
Yeah we're gonna groove
--Led-Zeppelin (likely ripped-off)
Beardsley Rummel says to me, "Me and Nosferatu are worried that you're drinking too much. We need to keep an eye on you." Which I appreciate even though it's a preposterous notion. Anybody who's seen me drink knows that after two beers I go to sleep. Then again, I don't need much provocation to fall asleep now do I? Give me a place to slouch and out I go. 
Koningshoeven Tilburg's Dutch Brown Ale
Bierbrouwerij De Koningshoeven B.V.
Berkel-Enschot, Netherlands
This is a brown ale which is really trying to be multiple things and does a decent job at it. A typical brown with the creamy malty nuttiness but it also exhibits character- istics of an oktoberfest in sweetness and an almost subtle Belgian brown ale taste with a mild spicy yeastiness. There's no other way to explain it than that. Decently priced for an import, surrealist art on the bottle and a cap that rekindles all of those good things in life that beer makes me forget while it shakes its dreamy tail in my vertigo-ridden head.
-Wörtwurst
Arbor Brewing Bliss Hefeweizen
Arbor Brewing Co.
Ann Arbor, MI
You can't really go wrong with Arbor Brewing Co. They don't have any extreme brews that I am aware of but they sure have some excellent examples of various styles. This is what I consider in the tradition of the true hefe with the bread and biscuit overtones and the sweetly wheat hidden underneath. This one also has some extra variant that I can't quite place. Something dry and akin to a kölsch in sweetness and texture. Maybe it's just the sweetness wearing other clothes. Like Johnny Jump-up posing as Jack in the box. Hell, it could even be the puppetry of the penis creeping in here! Ugh, we're men and we want something sex-ay! This is as buxom and sucked-in sweet as we get fellas.
-Wörtwurst
Murphy's Stout
Murphy Brewery
Ireland
A little watered down beef, a brisket of drab chocolate, a froth of chemical carbonation and a can as shiny as a pinup girl's greased-up ass cheeks. If you've had Guinness you've had this. Great for the sub-style, mediocre for the genre, macro for the connoisseur and food for the masses. You might not be able to sell Stonch on it but you might be able to bribe him with some St Peter's Cream Stout bottles refurbished with this in it if he's tipsy enough and not in the mood to throw or toss back haymakers. Highly recommended with Altoids Dark Chocolate Dipped Ginger Mints.
-Wörtwurst
Widmer Hefeweizen
Widmer Brothers Brewing Company
Portland, OR
I'm not keen on hefeweizens to begin with but this beer doesn't even taste like one. There's no bready or banana fruit essence which is plentiful in the hefes I'm accustomed to. It's more reminiscent of a regular unfiltered wheat beer but minus the zip and tang that is prevalent in the better crafted ones. There is some dirty sediment on the bottom of the bottle but it doesn't touch my sentiment with anything but the feeling of a decent attempt at a wheaty and a pretty poor example of a true blue hefeweizen.
-Wörtwurst
Stiegl Gaudi Radler Shandy (Lemon)
Stieglbrauerei zu Salzburg GmbH
Salzburg, Austria
I don't know what part of me always believes in the unimaginably bad idea that sounds bad and yet entices me with the notion that "nothing bad can possibly be as bad as we think it is. There must be something of value in it!" But we're not kissing fat girls here, we're imbibing in spirits and a beer is much easier to push away than a big ole mama trying to break you.
Lemon soda and beer. I've neither tried a Stiegl before nor a lemon soda per se so I had no real frame of reference in what to expect. Ironically enough it tastes like beer brewed with lemon soda. You can taste each part distinctly and in a 4oz glass this would likely be refreshing. Seeing as it comes in a bomber and I have a review to write I had to go beyond 4 oz and ended up drinking a little more than half the bottle. To my detriment! Soda pop sweetness sweated into a wafer thin blonde. This is something a bartender would splash into a hard drink to give it a soft framing essence and not make the centerpiece.
-Wörtwurst
Layla Dirty Blonde Lager
Ibbl Ashkelon/Tank Beer
Ashkelon, Israel
I don't want to go and get all Sylvia Plath with you and start calling myself a faux Jew for dramatic effect or to damn my daddy to all hell and such but I think I'm a Jew. Names and bloodlines in my Polish forebearer's lineage point to this and so does my last name if you add a z or z-man suffix to it. Great, now I understand my martyr-complex. Maybe it explains why I think this Israeli beer is a little better than just a tad better than a general macro as beer-thumpers are wont to say. First off it's a dirty blonde. You can taste the dirty, semi-bock, semi-smoky toasted grain from the onset to the dregs. It's not overly complex but there's enough sweetness in the darker malts and enough tooth in the bite of the hop kick jump to make you feel that it's past Miller time. An economical macro with mid-range micro-taste.
-Wörtwurst
Walkerville Premium Blonde
Walkerville Brewing Co.
Windsor, Ontario, Canada
If you've never been to Detroit you've never seen third world living in an American city. The blight is slowly being rectified but in the process half the city is a war zone and deprived of civilized community. Across the Ambassador Bridge into Canada is Windsor. It is a hot spot for topless dancing seekers and casino at a discount. Well it used to be before Detroit got casinos and the dollar fell against all other currencies across the planet. But I think women can still walk topless in the city and dozens have apparently. As you've might have guessed, there isn't much to say about this beer. A decent amount of boring malt, zero hop-flavor and a hairy sweetness that tickles your tongue but not your fancy and who doesn't want their fancy tickled?
-Wörtwurst
New Holland Lucid Kölsch-Style Beer
New Holland Brewing Company
Holland, MI
New Holland is one of my favorite Michigan brewers. Their Poet Stout is under appreciated and one of the best stouts I've ever had. Their Red Tulip ale is maybe the most bizarre and refreshing off style red/amber ales that I've come across as well. So now I have their example of a kölsch in front of me and it's exceeded the genre's expectation. A moderately pronounced fruity sweetnees and maltiness with a microscopic amount of necessary hop support. It might be a tad sweet for the type but in no way is it over-sweet. The best non-stout I've had in a while.
-Wörtwurst
Arcadia Scotch Ale
Arcadia Brewing Company
Battle Creek, MI
Not ever having tasted scotch whiskey and not being privy to what a scotch ale is I must go on my entire knowledge of Scotland: Sean Connery, bagpipes and kilts. This is a complex brew but not half as much as what thought went into the bagpipes. A bag and pipes that blows music via air expended through pipes of all things, when the world had its share of pipes and music already. Dark, roasted and syrupy sweetness with a handsome dose of alcohol rounding off the flavor. Dark as the dank jewels under the man-skirt with a "You're the man now dog" swagger to it that gives off the impression of being more dangerous than it really is.
-Wörtwurst
Einbecker Schwarzbier
Einbecker Brauhaus AG
Einbeck, Germany
Nut browns I've known and nut jobs I've boned, but once you've had black you'll never go back. Or so the saying goes. I've had schwarzies and this one is more akin to a weak-hearted stout or a brown ale than a nubian prince. A prince of black licorice and bitter grains this is not. It is malty and nutty with a gravelly texture that hints of smoke but nothing close to fire.
-Wörtwurst
Asia Pacific Tiger Lager
Asia Pacific Breweries
Singapore
What's worse than a lying whore? A lying whore who's married! What's worse than a lying whore who's married? A lying whore who's married and pregnant. What's worse than a lying whore who's married and pregnant? A lying whore who's married and pregnant with what might be your baby! Ah- Still there's beer! Beer and opening day of baseball (which my Tigers lost!). Pop open the chips and dip. Pour a tall crisp lager. Getting ready to be underwhelmed by the low magnitude of baseball and beer when your life and another's are held in the balance. Breathe deep. Let the yellow elixir run pour into you like a divine spirit. Float away.
-Wörtwurst
Brooklyn Brown Ale
Brooklyn Brewery
Brooklyn, NY
Ah- the vaunted Brooklyn finally finds its way to the Detroit area at the same time I'm looking for it. Unfortunately for this brownie, disappointment seems to find me wherever I go. Yes, it's better than most browns but then again most browns aren't very good, just drinkable. Like many, this is over maltified without the balancing effects. Stilted chocolate, maybe an amoeba worth of coffee notes, toasted nuts and a tangy sour fruitiness that saves it but doesn't ease my letdown very much. I'll give it some credit for having the character of a sweet stout but to such a mediocre extent that it's almost a failure. "Let's not be a drama queen now Wörtie." "You're right...it's the BAers who are the hypers." "See, the beer is decent." "Yes." "Almost even great." "No." "Ginchy?" "That it is."
-Wörtwurst
Goose Island 312 Urban Wheat
Goose Island Brewing Company
Chicago, IL
It's good to be a sieve in the old summertime. Sweating and pouring out the collected gunk that the body has stored throughout six months of a long-ass winter. You can fountain the goose juice right down into your throat in a steady stream and not forget that you are one amongst the many blips of humanity. Straw-colored and lightly citrified with low levels of hoppiness. The taste is supposed to be creamy and it is to an extent but it couldn't hurt to add a teaspoon of light Munich pilsner malt to the glass if you happen to have a bag lying about. This is a good drinker but not much of a talker.
-Wörtwurst
Sprecher Abbey Triple
Sprecher Brewing Company
Glendale, WI
Hitler broke as much wind in a single setting as he did treaties and young girl's hearts. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. I broke a window or ten in one fateful weekend of my youth. So it's not unexpected that a brewery should break with the style charts of the beer reich. Sprecher here does just that. You'd expect more of a sweetness from a tripel than the caramel infused toffee chewiness and pearapplecot zip of their version. It's a pretty nice drinker once you can get past the afforementioned blasphemies. Though it doesn't have an impressive yeast beard it does have a future as a believable crossdresser because even though it doesn't stand up to the tripel greats (rolls eyes and plugs nose) it tastes GOOD. That'll suffice for me presently.
-Wörtwurst
