I drink a lot of beer (no, you’re drunk!), and live in a very beer-filled city called Denver. Occasionally, I like to talk about beer, but my wife and kids don’t seem to care (assholes). As a companion post to Old School Zero’s “Kommenter Kocktail Society”, I present to you the very cleverly-named “Kommenter Beer Barrel” (no, you’re name sucks!). These posts will appear irregularly and will talk about beers that I have had recently or not-so-recently. Whatever. Feel free to post under the “Kommenter Beer Barrel” tag as well, because I will probably do this three times and get bored with it. For what it’s worth, I will drink pretty much any beer, even if it tastes like ass, and these posts are just, like, my opinion, man. Unlike the Deadspin guy, who prattles about for 1,500 words about himself or his shitty Massachusetts home town before he even talks about what beer he is reviewing, I will get right to the point (except in this introductory post). Away we go to the land of STRONG BEER TAEKS.
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NAME: Yuengling Traditional Lager
SOURCE: D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc., Pottsville, PA; also Satan’s taint
TYPE: Lager
REVIEW: Let’s get this bullshit beer out of the way. Yuengling tastes like Coors Banquet that someone left in a hot garage for 3 years. Its skunky bouquet is complemented by a thin mouthfeel, which results in a musty finish. Like most beer, it tastes better after a few; but this one never tastes good. Pennsylvanians that love this shit either have horrible taste or have some sort of high school nostalgia attached to it birthed from the time they had a few and got their first handjob in the back of a Delta ’88 from the skank in the Franco Harris jersey who worked at Tower Records.
GRADE: D
My wife and I went to Urbn Pizza and Brewery for lunch today. I had their Brown Ale (5.1%), not too heavy and quite easy to drink. Also had their Dry Irish Stout (4.8%) which was also quite good. They had a cask of their Blonde Ale with a bunch of citrus added (Meyer lemons and such) which was up my wife’s alley. She only really drinks Blue Moon or Shocktop so I am glad she is branching out to actual decent beers.
I thought I heard an alarm go off.
This was meant to be in response to OSZ’s reply. Stupid iPhone.
That’s a good response to any situation.
/wipes away tear of nostalgia
Wife and I are headed to this fest (http://www.beavercreek.com/events-and-activities/blues-brews-bbq.aspx?page=viewall#/Microbrews) this weekend. I will report back if there are any exciting beers (assuming I don’t die). Have a great weekend. Go dead army guys who make freedom free, because freedom isn’t free!
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Honest question: Anyone get any Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye this year? I can’t remember what season they roll it out for, but I know it’s been a while since I’ve seen it.
I had it over the holidays in their IPA 4-way, but haven’t seen it (or, truthfully, looked for it) since then. Looks like they won’t be doing it on its own this year, and the release is over: http://www.sierranevada.com/release-dates
I think they replaced it with the new Hop Hunter IPA, which isn’t as good, in my opinion. The dryness of the rye > another hoppy beer in a stable of hoppy beers.
That sucks. It’s one of the few IPA’s I can tolerate.
Yeah, I can confirm that one’s discontinued outside the variety pack. Damn shame, too.
Yuengling is a classic case of people thinking that a beer must be really good if the locals won’t let it out of their own backyard. You would think people would have learned from when Coors “surprised” everyone by coming east of the Mississippi and sucking, but you would be wrong. Coors is little more than water with some alcohol and perhaps a smidge of beer taste. Also it’s made by Nazis. (Actually that’s not true. Snopes is always good for checking these things out. You would be surprised, (actually it’s the internet so you probably wouldn’t), how many people put apparently false things about Coors and Nazis and the KKK on the internet. Check here for good ol’ Snopes debunking. http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/coors.asp).
Yuengling is not made by Nazis, (again neither is Coors, it’s just really bad), but it is also a generally terrible beer. I can’t say much about the black and tan version, except that I’m a huge asshole about beers and if it says “black & tan” but comes in one bottle I will turn up my nose at it like I do when I walk through the backyard without first checking for dog shit. Yuengling’s light beer is OK, in the sense that I don’t hate it because it has no taste to hate. Yuengling Lager, however, and I have to give the company credit for doing so, very much has a taste. Unfortunately it tastes like ass.
Yuengling, however, is out with a huge ad budget, (I’m kind of curious where they came up with all that money. Probably Nazi gold.), has the cachet of being able to say they’re America’s oldest brewery and the fascination with a previously hard, (and not worth the effort), product to get. They’ll do just fine.
Meanwhile me and this Lagunitas are gonna sit here and talk me down from having PTSD after sitting through “Mad Max: Fury Road”. It’s good to have a 4 day weekend.
I can’t tell if that’s a good movie review or a negative one.
Oh God it’s a terrible movie. There’s no dialogue, the plot seems like something a 4 year old put together after a bad dream and Charlize Theron looks terrible!
I’d see it again right now. Seriously. Shit gets blown up start to finish. It’s awesome.
Hell yeah.
http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll304/ramon_gila/dethklok-headbang.gif
That movie is so awesome. In an action movie, I’ll take a simple story well told over a more complicated story that doesn’t make any sense (see any Marvel or Transformers movie). George Miller is schooling almost every action director with this one.
Speaking of transformers: https://twitter.com/rejectedjokes/status/601741057336938496
I actually prefer Coors Banquet to all other macros. The reasoning is 2% taste, 18% Nazi affiliation, and 80% Sam Elliott grumbling “Coors, the Banquet Beer.”
@Cuntler
Possibly for nothing, but I feel like I am one of only a handful of people who hated his character on Parks and Recreation. Probably a typical Hollywood “Hey let’s throw this high energy annoying guy in the mix so we can have a wacky element! (bow tie spin, honking horn)”.
That’s a good joke, though.
Yeah, he was an “in small doses character” for sure. His sister was the one I couldn’t stand.
I figure it’s because either A. everyone in Hollywood acts this way (because thhheeaaaatttteeeerrrr) or B. those writers have never had to spend more than a few minutes with someone like that.
The Coors family are not nazis. They are fascists. Pete Coors basically admitted as much when he was running for office, although he didn’t use the word “fascist.” “Fascist” is my interpretation of his personality.
I unabashedly enjoy Yuengling. But I like the black and tan much better than the lager, as all right-thinking people do. I’d certainly prefer a great microbrew, but Yuengling is by far my favorite “buy a whole case shitty beer”. I will not dispute that some of this might be homerism.
Now if you want to talk shitty local beers that people are unfathomably proud of, I have some Old Style for you. My God, that is some unpalatable shit.
So it was a Freddie Mitchell jersey in your case, then?
Regarding Old Style, I hate that swill. Chicago beer preferences seemed to be split in the same way as baseball fandom growing up. Northsiders drank Old Style/Budweiser, and Miller products were the staple of the South Side. So my friends and I gravitated towards MGD, Miller Lite and High Life growing up. I think they all taste equally shitty, but Old Style has this thick yeasty taste that makes it taste like urine. I always go Bud products at Cubs games because it is slightly less terrible than Old Style. Or because this commercial was on TV endlessly in my youth (an includes probably first recorded use of comic sans): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9IlS9fiyd8
Miller Lite and High Life are at the top of my shitty beer list.
Holy shit, that review was awesome! That last sentence needs to be framed.
I have been lucky (apparently) to have never tried this beer. Given this review, I’m pretty sure I never will.
Quickie recent beer reviews:
Shiner Bock – somehow tastes like nothing much at all while pairing well with a hot day and a giant ass plate of bbq.
Sierra Nevada Nooner – tastes like that first good gulp of your favorite cheap ass beer, except it stays that good all the way through
Deschutes Fresh Squeezed – I don’t like IPAs that much, but I’ve been craving one of these now since I had one two weeks ago.
Negra Modelo – Because fuck you, Corona.
Anything made by pFriem – fucking great. Drink that shit.
Negra Modelo is a personal favorite, and I am excited to try anything from Deschutes.
Fresh Squeezed is so great. If you like that, I’d recommend anything that advertises its use of Mosaic hops (other than Guinness Blonde American Lager, which is a completely useless liquid). Fresh Squeezed is the first thing I’ve ever had them in; they’re so great that it’s almost like cheating at IPA.
I know we joke about PK’s citrusy beer fixation, but this one is on a whole other level. Like, I KNOW there’s not actually any orange or grapefruit juice inside this delicious beer, but my mouth doesn’t know that. Which is not to take away from the tastiness of the rest of the profile. It’s a total winner; I just bought a six pack of it, and I hardly ever just out and buy a six pack anymore.
Yuengling is for suckers. I knew people in college who obsessed over bringing it back from Pennsylvania or Ohio, and it was the worst kind of grass-is-greener bullshit. I don’t think any other beer has been as successful at building a brand based on unavailability.
Yup. Right up there with Ranier and National Bohemian.
Rainier, that is.
Rainier is the best cheap-ass beer in the NW, especially on tap for $2 or whatever. At the end of the day, though, it’s just cheap ass beer.
Is Rainier the PNW version of PBR? And, if so, if a hipster drinks it, does the universe fold into itself?
@ballsofsteelandfury
PBR is still hipsterbrau in the PNW. Some still try to justify the existence of Miller High Life. But Rainier is better than both of them, hands down. A friend told me before I moved here that a ragged alcoholic originally from Portland said that Rainier is the best. Can’t beat that recommendation.
There was a year or so when the distributor near my school went all in on Olympia.
Is that anything like Rainier?
I have yet to try Yuengling, but if I wanted to drink the distilled essence of dirt fucked by an hobo, I’d put up a craigslist ad to try some Portland hippie’s favorite kombucha-scotch-ale-pot-hops hybrid homebrew experiment.
“I have yet to try Yuengling”
Don’t.
What’s really brilliant is that they moved production to Tampa decades ago to avoid paying union wages and yet it’s still fawned over by the same people they fucked over.
Current beers in or waiting to go in my fridge:
AleSmith- .394 Pale Ale
Ballast Point- Sculpin, Grapefruit Sculpin, Grunion, Dorado, Victory at Sea
Blue Moon (my wife’s)
Coors Light (for after yard work and to remind me how much better the other beers are)
I hate to tell you, but NSZ just read this and disappeared mysteriously.