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:

Pabst Blue Ribbon, 4.74% ABV

I took up the challenge of Pabst Blue Ribbon on recommendation of my longtime friend and fellow Oddysee member, Rascal Tippin.  I was chatting with him one night while playing Ark and said I wanted to do something truly horrible for the December edition, but last month’s flub with Great American somewhat ruined my perception of what “truly horrible” was.  So, he says to me: “Dude, you gotta do PBR!  That stuff sucks!”  Well, here it is.. and yea, it does somewhat suck, but it really doesn’t suck too badly compared to most of my other reviews.

Pabst was established in Milwaukee in 1844 as the Empire Brewery, and later changed to the Phillip Best Company by the founder’s son who took it over in 1860.  It’s not as old as many of it’s German brethren, but old by American standards.  As far back as 1882, they began putting blue silk ribbons on every bottle of their Best Select beer which had won the gold medal at the Centennial Celebration in 1876.   In 1889, they officially changed their name yet again to the Pabst Brewing Company, by Phillip Best’s son-ion-law, Frederick Pabst.  Amazingly, the company stopped all advertising in 1985, and saw a somewhat surprising revival and upswing in the early 2000’s as millennials and young people, noticing it’s lack of advertising and scarcity, took it as a challenge and made it their own.  It’s been joked on South Park as the “white trash” beer, and it’s with most of these prejudices I opened my first can on Christmas Morning.

Pabst Blue Ribbon pours a pale gold with minimal head like most AALs.  Once again, I was saved from the skunkiness perhaps by buying this in cans, rather than bottles, because it did have the faint aura of skunkiness about it.  Taste-wise, it was smooth and simple.  Simple beer-grain that tasted cleaner than the slight skunk smell.  Overall PBR isn’t a bad beer, it’s just not a very good beer if you’re looking for flavor or anything a little above and beyond the typical mass-produced AAL.  It’s easy drinking without being a “lite” beer and surprisingly I rather enjoyed my 6-pack I picked up.  Overall, if I didn’t have many other options, it would be on my list of beers to get a bottle or draft of.  Maybe this is a good college-kids or working class beer – it was certainly cheap enough costing me less than a dollar per 16 oz can, but you can certainly do worse for your money.  Serve ice cold along with Pizza or Buffalo Bleu Cheese Combos, Fritos and home made bean dip and pull a South Park marathon.

And Now, the Awesome Brews…

Great Lakes Brewing Company’s Christmas Ale, 7.5% ABV

Christmas is here, and for most people in my local region, that means the coming of Great Lakes Christmas Ale. This stuff, brewed here in Cleveland Ohio, USA, is a local legend that is finally enjoying some national and international recognition.  Whether you’re a dive-bar with nothing but Miller-lite and Bud-light on tap, or some hoity-toity hipster establishment with two-dozen microbrews on tap, chances are, if you’re in this region, you at the very least have bottles of this stuff on hand, at the most, have kegs on tap and are rimming the glasses with pulverized candy-canes and cinnamon.  This stuff only happens around Christmas time, and thus, like eggnog, it’s a rare treat.  Rarer than fine scotch, because after all, you can drink fine scotch anytime you feel like it.

Great Lakes Christmas Ale is a get you smashed fast 7.5 ABV beer.  A real “Winter Warmer”.  It pours a very translucent dull orange with decent white-lattice head that seems to persist for an eternity.  Despite the high ABV, you can barely taste the alcohol over its massive, in-your-face flavor of hops, cinnamon and fresh ginger.   I’ve heard it described as almost drinking a weird tea, than a beer.  It’s a yummy, almost dessert like-treat.  I mentioned before that some bars with it on tap, rim their glasses with crushed peppermint candies and cinnamon.  Admittedly, I’ve only had it this way once, but it was a delicious experience that I highly recommend.  I must have picked up two six-packs over this last December.  It has gotten me past the insanity of the holidays, the multitudes of celebrities dying and even the orange-skinned buffoon we have in office now.  I can’t recommend this stuff enough, it’s a brew even a casual beer drinker should try out.  So, find some candy canes and cinnamon – maybe some red and green sugar cookie sprinkles for good measure, and grind them up into a nice powder.  Wet the lip of your best beer glasses and rim them with this magic holiday elf-cocaine.  Carefully pour into this vessel your Great Lakes Christmas Ale, and along with all the leftovers from Christmas Dinner, server with an armful of presents and a copy of either National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story (a film made very close to the brewery) or the 1970 Albert Finney classic Scrooge.

To Øl’s Frost Bite, 6.0% ABV

It’s been a really long time since I last reviewed a To Øl brew.  The last time being back in Awesome Brew’s #5 with Nordic by Nature.   I mentioned in that article that I couldn’t find any mention of Nordic by Nature at all on their website.  In fact, I couldn’t find any mention of this beer either.  Further research didn’t turn up much except that it was apparently brewed in 2014, was a spiced pale ale, and had some pretty fair reviews of it.  That’s when I dug a little deeper to understand who the hell To Øl even was…  some phantom microbrew operating on the fringe of society, or some Mandella effect from some alternate reality like a typical episode of Fringe.

Actually, it’s the first one (bummer).  To Øl is a phantom microbrewery, also known as a gypsy brewery, out of Denmark, which means they don’t have a physical brewery and run their small batches out of other breweries they collaborate with, including Mikkeller (Denmark), BrewDog (UK), Magic Rock (UK), Against the Grain (USA), Great Divide (USA), Dieu Du Ciel (Canada) and Buxton (UK).  This gives them both a lot of freedom and a bit of mystery in the beer-snob world.  In a world filled with microbreweries now, they are a microbrewery of microbreweries.  Their beers, the few I’ve had, are always pretty good, and always interesting.  That said, Frost Bite was probably the plainest beer I’ve had from them.

Pouring somewhat cloudy, but with no floaties and massive head that took several minutes to settle to the point a picture could be taken, Frost Bite is a deep golden amber, almost reddish ale.  It’s bitter with strong hops but not on the order of a typical IPA.  It’s dry and earthy, and has a slightly sweet flavor to it from perhaps orange peel and pine needles, but nothing that pops out too strongly.  It was a really tasty beer, and though overall very bitter, it didn’t ruin the experience as it went down smoothly.  If you happen upon a bottle on the shelves of your local beer market, it’s not a bad one to pick up if you like Belgian Pale Ales.  Serve frosty with a cheese tray and reruns of Fringe.

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