What a good beer is can be very subjective. A large community inside Beer Twitter adores Allagash White. Some herald it as the perfect beer.
I could never stand the fucker.
A thin old tasting beer that tastes like it was put through a Randall filled with smushed bananas? No thanks.
But it had been a long time since I had one. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my palete had changed. I am wrong a lot so I could be totally off.
So I tried one again:
Yep. Still as awful as I remember. Maybe more so. So difficult to drink. Just gross.
Allagash Brewing is a great top-tier Indie brewer that I highly respect. But Belgian Wheat beers are terrible, and the King of the style is Allagash White.
I did not think it was going to go down like this. It’s red.
When I saw “fruited” West Coast IPA, my mind went to tropical; orange and pineapple. Turns out it’s cranberry and orange.
I am not too big into cranberry in beer. So it was a shock. Not expecting a beer billed as a West Coast to be like that. Not here to say it’s wrong to bring WC into it, just here to say it’s weird, dude.
But hey, I got through it. Not mad. Maybe even glad, as I would have never tried if if I had known about the berry action, so I guess I am expanding my palate and junk.
That said, I am making sure my next beer is not red.
I went to my neighborhood bottleshop today and noticed some new beers from a brewery I had never heard of called Hello Friend.
Normally I am too tight with my beer budget to risk trying something from new breweries, but today I had some rare cash to take chances with.
I look for beers with Mosaic hops first off and this brewery had several with Mosaic – if you’re a brewery that uses a lot of Mosaic you are already pulling me in, brother.
Over the past few days I have had four of their beers. One I forgot 🤷🏻♂️, but the other three were:
I’ll At Ease.
Nothing’s Never Forever.
Till I Crumble.
If I had to choose my favorite of the four three… Till I Crumble. But they are all nice beers.
Come to find out this is a brewery operating out of Berkeley’s the Rare Barrel. They are on the property but have their own “area” I suppose.
I think it’s a good idea to make a separate brewery in your own brewery, if you want to make a different style beer with its own marketing.
If you are interested and in California, you can get their beer here.
If you have not seen an Ambient Review yet: It’s more about what I’m experiencing during the time it takes to drink the beer than what the actual beer tastes like.
Setup: I had boneless chicken wings (I can’t handle eating it off-the-bone) from Lazy Dog restaurant and a Diet Pepsi – yes I am a health nut.
Drinking Start Time: 10:00 PM
I open the beer and take a sip. On this occasion I am drinking from the can as The Alchemist basically demands. This is more about laziness and not wanting to get a glass than listening to the can’s demands.
First sip is strong. I feel like we forget Heady and Pliny are doubles. Maybe it’s just me that forgets.
I forgot to roll the can. I’m a believer in can rolling to mix a hazy up, I usually forget to do it though.
10:10ish: I am helping my daughter with getting one of our cats from her room to the outside. The cats are newish and our dog wants to eat them so we have to take measures to keep them separated.
Royal Cake Eater, Elaine, reacts
10:15ish: Take another sip of my Heady. Watching Seinfeld. It’s the one where Elaine eats Petterman’s $2,900 cake. I’d buy Elaine any cake she wants – #crush.
This is also the episode with George and the Frogger machine and Jerry dates the Sentence Finisher.
10:30ish: Some more sips of the Heady. Then things get fuzzy as I fall asleep on the floor – sometimes the floor and a pillow is more comfortable than a chair.
11:11: I wake up to another episode of Seinfeld but I am not sure which one. My beer is warm now. I power through some gulps and mostly finish it because I would feel too much shame if I completely wasted a Topper.
Thanks for coming to this Ambient Review, look for more on this blog soon!
3:50PM. Fresno. On my patio at a table in my backyard. 94 degrees.
Music: “Citizen Erased” by Muse plays in the background.
Woah. This beer is easy to drink – I mean that in a good way.
I wonder how many people know that Bridalveil Falls is in Yosemite – that can be a very dangerous hike up that trail, super slick.
Oh hey, a little breeze. Maybe a 10mph gust.
Is Muse an underrated band or are they rated properly and I just haven’t paid attention?
Someone odd parked across the street. [inspects]. It appears to be someone looking at the house to rent it.
A neighbor with their patio on the other side of the fence from my patio, has come outside. She is arguing with her boyfriend whom is still inside. She is yelling back at him things, I can’t help but overhear. The fight seems to be about a friend of his who is a woman and he was defending her. My neighbor is not okay with the amount of positive talking he is doing about this friend.
This is a solid Lager. As crisp as the sky is blue right now.
Thanks for coming to my first Ambient Review of a beer. Here is some Muse for you:
