The Best of 2009: #3

New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red

Brewery: New Glaurs, New Glarus, Wisconsin

Style: Fruit Beer

ABV: 5.1%

Rating: 5 stars


Prior to having this, I'd had two kinds of cherry beers: the incredibly sour kriek, and the cough-syrup sweet nastiness. I expected this one to fall into the sour category, but I was quite wrong. Not to say, obviously, that that was a bad thing.

This beer is brewed with handfuls of Wisconsin cherries, and the flavor is not that of a cherry-flavored beer, but a mouth-coating cherry spritzer that happened to have fermented. It tasted like cherry pie in a glass. By far the best fruit beer I've had, and one that I'd present to guests. Now, if only we could get New Glarus in Minnesota.

(These reviews are getting shorter the longer I let them drift. Top two coming this week, promise.)

The Best of Late

Been watching too much basketball lately to dedicate time to post. This doesn't mean I've slacked on the consumption. My stash is dwindling, though, and I want to make it last as long as I can, so I've been leaning toward the wines and the liquors more as of late. With that said, I've had some great beers recently, including a well-respected beer that didn't disappoint. Here's a
mini rundown of the best stuff I've had recently.


New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red

Brewery: New Glarus, New Glarus, Wisconsin

Style: Fruit Beer

ABV: 5.1%

Rating: 5 Stars


One of the best beers in the Midwest, and certainly the best fruit beer available. I imagined it would be akin to a Belgian kriek-like cherry bomb. Quite wrong I was. New Glarus uses one pound of Wisconsin cherries for each bottle (not your 12 oz. sixer bottle, mind you) and it's evident in the pungent aroma.

I was slightly worried when I realized this wasn't going to be as tart as the sour beers, because I typically loathe cherry-flavored things. In fact, the Sam Adams Cherry Wheat was one of my least favorite beers I tried in 2008. But this cherry was different. It had immense sweetness, but not like a Popsicle or sucker. It was sweet like the gooey inside-the-pie cherries, a real richness that couldn't be faked by synthetic flavoring. There was enough tartness to keep the sweetness at bay, though, and the late sparkle scraped my mouth so that I was ready for another sip.

Kristie and I enjoyed this one together, and it's exciting to me that I now have a better grip on the types of beers she might enjoy. I wish they didn't cost $10 a bottle, but it's exponentially better to enjoy a beer with company.

This beer (and the myriad of other New Glarus crafts) are well worth the 45-minute drive to Wisconsin, and I plan on making semi-regular trips from here on out.


New Glarus Crack'd Wheat

Brewery: New Glarus, New Glarus, Wisconsin

Style: American Pale Wheat Ale

ABV: 5.95%

Rating: 4 Stars


Prior to my whimsical February jaunt to Hudson, I'd had only one New Glarus beer--the infamous Spotted Cow. Thought it was below average and not worthy of the hype I'd heard from my Madison brethren. I had no idea they had as expansive a line of reign-free beers as they do. This one sounded interesting, and both employees said they'd had it and were pleasantly surprised.

It's an interesting idea. It is, basically, a wheat beer. But it's also dry-hopped with amarillo hops. To dry-hop a beer means to introduce hops after the fermentation has begun. It's a way to give the beer an extra hop kick and bring out the characteristics of the specific hops used. It's a pretty common tactic, but this is the first I'd heard about a wheat beer being dry-hopped. Though gimmicky, the idea sounded quite interesting to me, especially because wheat beers generally all get lumped into the same clovey/spicy/orange-peely heap for me.

It tastes exactly how you would imagine. The smell is all spicy wheat, and wheat is obviously the base of the beer. But the amarillo hops kick in toward the middle of each gulp and leave the beer's lasting impression. The beer is bottle-conditioned, another common brewing practice meaning the beer finishes the fermentation process in the bottle. Always a plus, and it usually guarantees a large frothy head, which I happen to enjoy.

Potentially the perfect summer beer, though later tonight I plan to enjoy their Berliner Weiss, which I've heard is phenomenal. Light as a wheat with the bold hops of a pale ale. I foresee many more of these come July.

Stone IPA

Brewery: Stone, Escondido, California

Style: India Pale Ale

ABV: 6.9%

Rating: 4.5 Stars




It's all basically been said about IPAs. We love the citrus, love the dryness, love the hops, love the mouthfeel. This is no different, and it's an excellent representation of the style. I know I've had it in the past, before my tastes were honed, so I wasn't surprised to like it again. Had to go to Wisconsin to get it, which makes no sense to me.

The Skunk List: 1. Michelob Ultra Tuscan Orange Grapefruit

Brewery: Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Missouri

Style: Fruit Beer

ABV: 4.2%

Rating: .5 stars


We've finally come to the worst beer of the year, and it's a real treat. The most insulting beer I tasted this year, and I don't see any on the horizon that could touch it. I troubles me that there are two other flavors of this beer--the lime cactus and pomegranate raspberry varieties are actually rated lower at ratebeer.com. Much like LaCrosse Light, it hurts my brain just typing about this beverage.

Let's clear the air: I would never, under any circumstances, buy this beer with the assumption that it may taste decent. Or even average. That's not on my radar. I bought this beer simply because I wanted to see how awful it could be. Let me tell you, it overshot even my loftiest garbage expectations. I knew it was bad when the clerk at the liquor store, a young woman mind you, encouraged me to put it back on the shelf. I've seen Phillips tequila go without warning, and that, for my money, is the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth. This beer is really that bad.

It's insulting on many levels, the first being that it just tastes horrible. Its low alcohol content and ridiculously low amount of calories make it so. This debuted at the tail end of the low-carb, low-calorie craze, so the demand was there. It also came out during this weird Tuscan obsession we all seemed to be going through, which is another puzzling story altogether. Why not capitalize on both? Tuscan orange grapefruit? Really? Who's buying that? Wow, did Anheuser-Busch load up on grapefruits and oranges from Tuscany? I've gotta try this! It's disgusting. This has less flavor than club soda. There is no grapefruit. There is no orange. There is no Tuscany. (On a side note, there's no Tuscany in Pizza Hut's bacon mac-n-cheese either.) All this beer has is a small amount of calories and some stomach-filling liquid. If you're counting calories, drink some water. If you're going for flavor, buy a vitamin water. If you want to get a little tipsy, drink something hard. If you want to puke, have this so-called beer.

The Skunk List: 5. Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat

Brewery: Boston Beer Company, Boston, Massachusetts

Style: Fruit Beer

ABV: 5.2%

Rating: .5 star

Sometimes the non-beer drinkers give the most dead-on assessments of a beer, and that was the case for this one. Kristie, my wife, who despises all kinds of beer, usually gets to sample mine in case she has something brilliant or funny to bring to my attention. With the cherry wheat, she was able to pick up a flavor that was nowhere near the forefront of my mind: urinal cakes. Once she said it, though, I couldn't get it out of my mind.

So does having a beer hater's opinion in your ear alter your opinion of a beer? You might say it does, but I've loved dozens of beers that Kristie would have spit out if I'd let her. It would be like taking marital advice seriously from Elizabeth Taylor. So I feel strongly that this beer would have made this list even without the urinal cake epiphany.

I've previously stated my enjoyment of the sour cherry kriek taste, and this cherry is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum--sweet but dull, heavy and smothering. It's sticky in your mouth and the coating stays for a while. I've been known to compare beers to cough syrup, but I won't slap that label on this one. It simply isn't that good, especially from a brewery that is very visible and up front about its ingenuity and high quality. This one doesn't fit the "Brewmaster's Collection" title they've given it.