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:

Grupo Modelo’s Corona Extra, 4.6% ABV

Damn, I knew this day would eventually come.  I hate Corona.  No, really, I hate this crap.  I’ve had it more than once over the years, and it always tasted the same to me… a corn made beer that was slightly skunked from it’s clear bottles with this oddball “off” flavor to it.  I can’t describe the flavor… maybe this?  Anyways, I always imagined it was the taste of some Mexican worker puking in the vats before they fermented it and sent it to the States.  Yea, no slice of lime was going to fix that.  I told myself I would do it… for the sake of Awesome Brews if nothing else.  I considered how I would make my purchase… a six-pack where I would take one and hand the remaining five to the nearest hobo on my way home?  Not even the native born Mexicans I know touch this crap.  That’s when I saw the big-can.  It was like the Foster’s Lager, but not quite so grand. It would be cheapest this way, and at $1.50 for the 24oz, I wasn’t breaking any banks.  I also didn’t need to find any hobos, which was a good thing because my hobo sign identification is pretty rusty.

Grupo Modelo, better known for Negra Modelo, it’s far superior German dark beer and now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev of Belguim, started brewing Corona back in 1925.  At the time, they thought bottling the beer in clear glass quarter bottles would be a cool idea – which it’s not.  As I’ve said in other Awesome Brews, a fairly well-known brewing phenomena is that UV light spoils the hops oils in the beer and leads to a skunked taste.  Most of the beermaking world, when it comes to bottles, use a dark brown or at the very least, a green tinted bottle which severely cuts down on the UV light.  Few go for a clear bottle because, well, they’re not dumb.  Unfortunately, ninety some years later, someone has yet to deliver the memo to Grupo Modelo.

Perhaps this is what saved me in the end, because I got a can, and not a bottle.  I had always gotten Corona Extra in bottles in the past, both with and without a lime.  I never got them by choice.  I never went to a Mexican restaurant and asked for a Corona.  No, they were always brought to me by friends at various parties, and every one tasted funky and skunked.  Amazingly, this time, it wasn’t so bad.  There was no skunk flavor, though there was still a slightly off flavor to the beer.  Perhaps the Belgians now limit their workers to only puke in the vats every Tuesday and Friday… I don’t know.  The can of Corona I drank had that familiar corn adjunct lager taste.  It was cold and refreshing with no head or fizz whatsoever.  Half way though though, I power slammed the rest just to get it over with.  That puke taste was slowly building.  Drink cold with some leftover Taco Bell and a copy of Nacho Libre.

And Now, the Awesome Brews…

Hanssens Artisanaal’s Oude Gueuze, 6.0% ABV

The first Awesome Brew of this month comes from Hanssens Artisanaal bvba of Dworp, Belgium, a micro-brewery that cares more for their beers than things like a website.  No, seriously, I linked a general cross-info wiki site to their name because I couldn’t find a site of their own.  I figured since last month’s Awesome Brews was nothing but lagers, I’d circle back to one of my favorite types of beer, a Belgian lambic.  Hanssens Artisanaal is one of the oldest micro-brews in Belgium, having been established in 1896 and on fourth-generation ownership.  The great Jef Van den Steen even claims that Hanssens Artisanaal was the first brewery to use terms Olde Gueuze and Olde Kriek on their labels, which are, by EU law, only to be used by lambics made in the old, traditional, unsweetened, unpasteurized manor.  They’re also a member of HORAL, the Belgian “High council for artisanal lambik style beers”.  A small counsel of eleven breweries which conjures images of beer snobs of such magnitude, they meet wearing special cloaks in secret cask aging rooms to discuss the future of lambic beer and it’s eventual conquest and dominion over all other beers.  This actually may not be far from the truth.

So how does an Olde Gueuze brewed by a 110 some year old micro brew taste?  If you’re into these kind of beers as I am, heavenly.  These beers to me are like the finest champagne.  They’re insanely complex and hard to pin down exactly what flavors you taste, but as someone who can’t taste the difference between some $200 bottle of wine and Boone’s Farm, I pride myself for at least being able to taste the odd complex flavors in some of these Belgian brews.  Hanssens tastes sour, almost like a cider vinegar but without the bite.  I can definitely taste a sour apple and a melon type flavor, as well as a musty, earthy base.  Like all sour beers, these things are an acquired taste.  I remember the first Olde Gueuze I tried, I came away with a “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT WEIRD SOUR CRAP?!” feeling.  It stuck with me though, and I tried another one later and was more like “OK, this stuff if fucking weird… but strangely good…”  I like sour things, and drinking a beer that’s sour in the age of soda pop and Kool-aid sweetening the taste of every liquid we pour down our gullets, is a welcome change.

This stuff, like most stuff bottled with an actual cork, is carbonated as hell and fizzed up considerably when first poured.  As seen from the picture, it pours to a nice orange-tan color.  There was no sediment or anything.  The beer was a smooth drinker, and after I was done, I wanted another but unfortunately only picked up one. Tomorrow, I plan to pick up several more.  Serve cold with a dinner of roast turkey or duck and an action flick afterward like Crank.

Against The Grain’s 35K, 7.0% ABV

I really didn’t know what to expect when I picked up this oddly artistic can.  It was right before Halloween and I was in a macabre mood so perhaps this was what drew me to this can.  Against the Grain Brewery is a total unknown factor in my book with beer dealers in my region just beginning to stock their wares.  I picked this can up from World Wines, which used to be my main beer-haunt before the opening of Red, Wine and Brew.  As awesome as R,W & B is, I still stop into World Wines on occasion because they frequently get in some oddball stock that I have never seen before… and man, I have never seen a can with art like this on it before.

I mean, what the hell is it?!  It looks like a bearded skeleton wearing a Russian military surplus overcoat, holding a large bag of money – presumably $35000, and a gun with a kid-sling holding some midget blonde dude eating a skull lollipop.  Yea, I saw three of those while browsing the “people of Walmart” website.  No, seriously, click the link and take a really long look at that can art; here, I’ll re-link it here if you’re too lazy to go to the header of this entry.  I’ll wait while it burns itself into your visual cortex.

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Now that this image is ensured to haunt your dreams for all eternity, let’s talk about the brew inside.  35K is a milk stout.  Milk stouts are generally ridiculously tricky to brew and reserved to a handful of mostly English breweries who have passed the recipes and cultures down through the generations.  Occasionally, a brewery like Left Handed Brewing Company crack the enigma and create a truly great milk stout that is well balanced, creamy, not too bitter and not too sweet.  More often though, these attempts end up a mess of a failed biochemical experiment.  Against the Grain seems to have gotten this one right.  35K pours dark and creamy.  The taste is a good balance between smooth milkiness and strong hoppiness that few have mastered.  I tasted the malty flavor of Whopper’s candy and fresh coffee, and my only regret was I didn’t have a second can to quickly chase after the first.   Serve chilled with a bowl of Halloween candy and a copy of The Addams Family.

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