First, the Not So Awesome Brew…

Every month, a Not So Awesome Brew is featured as a baseline. After all, what is an Awesome Brew? Awesome compared to what? Compared to something like this:

Miller Lite, 4.2% ABV

After last month’s send-off with Budweiser, I decided this month to take a not-so-awesome brew that I’m more familiar with.  I’ll admit, of the crappy macro-brewed American adjunct lagers available, Miller Lite is one of the better ones in my book.  Just like “The King” of beers, Miller Lite makes up for flavor, uniqueness, and taste with volume and copious advertising; though to their credit, their marketing is more about their slogan of “Great taste, less filling” and less about weird, tacky Superbowl halftime commercials and gaggles of hot girls.   As you can see from the picture, there’s almost no head on this beer, and carbonation is light.  I don’t hold this against this brew, since this is peddled as the every-man’s brew; a cold beer the hard-working American blue-collar worker can guzzle down in large quantities and not get bloated or filled up on.

Miller Lite is pretty damned watery, but unlike the undelightful neutrality of “The King” and it’s absolute lack of any redeeming flavor, Miller Lite has a slight grain flavor of corn and enough hops flavor to indicate it was at least rolled through a room containing hops.  This makes the brew quite palatable, and with the low carbonation, you can drink a lot of it which is good, because at a meager 4.2% ABV, it’s going to take quite a few to catch a buzz.  I suppose this works out well for the Miller Brewing company as well, since they can sell a lot of this swill.  Overall, while Miller Lite is far from awesome, like all of these mass-produced American lagers, it’s not bad when drunk cold on a hot day.  You can certainly do worse than this beer.  Serve cold with cigarettes and anything off the grill.

And Now, the Awesome Brews…

Crafted Codex Combustum, 6.0% ABV

Nothing like a fine mead to get the blood pumping to the old axe swinging arms!  I’ve been a huge fan of the meads from Crafted Meadery for the better part of a year now.  Their meads will have you in the mood to headbutt a dragon in no time!  The first one I picked up was Pollinator and I’ve had a different one every month since.  Most are varied and fairly unique, with interesting, complex flavors, giving variety to a brew with little variation in it’s purest form.  Codex Combustum was sadly the first one to disappoint me.   Codex is a bochet-style honey mead, which means it’s made from caramelized honey. It’s an absolutely fantastic honey mead.  It’s clean, crisp, pours golden yellow just like any other great mead.  The taste is sweet and smart, and everything a great mead should be.  The problem is, it completely stopped there, kinda like the look the dragon gives you after you headbutt him.

Crafted Meadery as I mentioned earlier, has several various meads, each with interesting, complex flavors, but one constant among them all is that each one had very bold flavors.   So when I saw Codex Combustum in the mead cooler of Red, Wine and Brew and read that it was a bochet-style  mead brewed with cocoa, I kinda expected to taste cocoa.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t taste any.  Not even a hint of cocoa.  Oompa-loompa crack aside, Codex is a fine mead.  So far, everything I’ve tasted out of Crafted has been been fantastic.  As a mead, it’s far more impressive than the majority of meads out there, and even if this particular one isn’t their best; it’s a worthy potable.  Serve chilled with an entire cheese-wheel and a copy of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

Ballast Point’s Calm Before the Storm, 5.5% ABV

I think this is my first beer from Ballast Point, and it’s definitely not going to be my last.  Opened in 1992 over in San Diego, this microbrewery for ages just screamed “pretentious American yuppie brew” to me.  I like a fair amount of established microbrews, but it seems like after the mid 90’s when microbrews took off in this country, they’ve been popping up all over the place with their hipster kitschy looks and American IPA leading their lineup – most not having much anything else besides the  easiest beer formula to ferment.  So, I tend to somewhat ignore a lot of the newer American microbrews, especially those started during the microbrew-boom of the 90’s, perhaps because I’m more of a purist or  perhaps out of some odd respect for breweries that have been around more than a century or five; I really don’t know.  Over the last couple years though, I’ve been changing this attitude of mine, and it’s definitely reaped a lot of rewards.

With it’s Pirates of the Caribbean skeletal helmsman label, one might thing they’re about to crack open a bottle of horrendous pirate grog in the form of an IPA, but Calm Before the Storm is anything but.   This beer is a cream porter with coffee and vanilla.  It pours light, has a creamy head without too much carbonation, and a smooth, rich taste that will have you craving more.  The coffee and vanilla is prominent and bold, and don’t take away from the hoppy, grainy smoothness of the underlying porter.  It’s an extremely well put together beer and so perfectly balanced, you’d think they had been brewing it for hundreds of years.  It’s another one that has gotten me to look at some of these newer breweries in a new light; that maybe they aren’t just trying to be “me too”s and cater to the hipster crowd.  It’s certainly a porter I’m planning on picking up again.  Serve chilled with some slop, sea biscuits, and a rum ration while watching the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Some of the pictures taken for Awesome Brews were done by Diane Schuler of Schuler Photography