Uncommon Brews

Reviewing beer by using the most obscure references possible because i dont know what coriander tastes like. Find me here on Untappd: https://untappd.com/user/Nasa

[uncommonbrewsblog]

Brooklyn BAM Boozle Ale

The best thing about going to Brooklyn Brewery is they have an awesome tasting room, their events are always jumping, but not over crowded AND they have taps with stuff you can't get anywhere else.  In addition to a kick ass gift shop, they also sell rare bottles there.  I grabbed this BAM bottle because I always wanted to try it.  I loved their "Defender" which was made specially for Comi-con, so I knew they'd bring it for their special brew in the name of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

My ignorance was on display here, even though I live in this city I confused BAM for a museum, originally I had images of beautifully white walls and gallant attendees dressed in all black looking at paintings I couldn't understand the meaning of.  The taste sort of fit that profile, it had a lot of body on the tongue, but went down flat-lined.  This would make it easy to drink and similar to some champagne's for a high brow crowd. 

I've always been obsessed with art galleries, or even high end music halls, because I'm just not of that life.  At the same time, I love and respect artists and obviously musicians, since I am one myself.  You can see that on display from the cover of my label's 2006 compilation here:

In any case, I'm a fool, BAM is Brooklyn Academy of MUSIC!  I think my assessment still stands.  It had a Belgian bubbly feel to the top end, but at the bottom of the taste it was smooth, almost a bit watery, which a more high brow audience that isn't quite so high brow about beer would enjoy. 

Brewing for specific surroundings or events is one of the things I love most about Brooklyn Brewery.  Unfortunately, Brooklyn Brewery probably falls into the Sam Adams category nationally for most people, but here locally, we know they are a high end brewery and one of my favorites in operation.  And most of that reasoning, comes from brews like BAM Boozle Ale.

[uncommonbrewsblog]

Magic Hat Pistil

When I cracked open the bottle, based on the label, I expected to be immediately tele-ported back into the "Summer of Love".  I'm not sure what that would taste like, or what beer tasted like back in 1969, but I was willing to go there.  If anybody could, it should be Magic Hat, a brewery known for some off the cuff and adventurous concoctions. 

The artwork on this bottle can't be understated, it's really cool, but it seems that beer makers don't understand that when you pop a lot of color and put a lot into the art, people expect BIG taste.  If you want to make something reserved, then make a reserved, but eye catching label.  I digress.

Expectations are irrelevant in this case, I immediately knew there was a flavor in this that I wasn't familiar with, at all.  As my bio says, I don't know what coriander tastes like, so could it be coriander?  No, it's fucking dandelions.  Yes, these things....

If anyone has ever grown up around Dandelions, I assume most Americans have, maybe they're everywhere, I have no clue, they'd know that they are weeds.  They taste like grass if you ever eat them and this beer definitely had the flavor of blandish beer with finely ground up grass inside of it. 

I guess this is where I go on a rant, I created this site to fight against the "pinkie in the air" beer reviewer sites that I find out there.  The sites that break down ridiculous ingredients like Dandelions into fine particles as if someone would use Dandelions in a beer for you to do such a thing.  I'm not going to pretend that Magic Hat wanted to use Dandelions to make a beer because they thought Dandelions were the future of beer.  They did it because it's kitchy and these days fashionable to make beer out of anything.  There's even a beer made out of the pages of old copies of Moby Dick these days.  While Dandelions as an ingredient aren't, frankly, as offensive as pages of an old book, it's up there to me. 

I think the idea I come away with these days from some craft brewers is "these idiots will drink anything".  That's simply not true, here's hoping that craft brewing doesn't continue down the "Man Vs. Food" path.  The worst crime of this wave of kitch beers is that they don't taste good.  Dogfish Head has been very successful with their Ancient Ales line, I have no idea whether those mixtures are actually based in anything historically un-Earthed, but I do know that they taste great and that's all that matters.  The story and the ingredients are icing, get the flavor right and sell it to me afterwards.  It shouldn't be the other way around.

Pistil, seemingly was reverse engineered, it seems someone had the idea to make a beer with Dandelions and regardless of it's taste, was going to release it.  That's marketing, not art.  I shouldn't come away from a beer describing it as "grassy".  I'm a nobody, but I can tell you that people love sunflower seeds.  I sit on public buses littered with their foul remains.  If you wanted to do something that was hippie and nature influenced why not use sunflowers (or the seeds)?  Basically, if you have a reason why you can't use sunflowers, just apply it to Dandelions too.

All told, it wasn't a terrible beer and I generally like what Magic Hat puts out there.  I drank the full bottle and although I wouldn't run back for another, it's great crime was just being a bit underwhelming and falling into what I see as a marketing black hole.

Check out more info on Pistil from Magic Hat including a video and origin story here:

http://www.magichat.net/elixirs/pistil/

[uncommonbrewsblog]

Long Trail Pollenator

The bear on this label stabbed me in the back, he slipped the pillow over my face while I slept, he's evil.  The bear on the label is a twisted individual, he rides the back of a honey bee while a Sun smiles down on him.  This bear has a plan of his own that you'll never see coming.  The whole time the same bear is plotting the demise of your evening. 

Pollenator is the kind of beer that your wife says "try this one" as you shop together at Trader Joe's.  So that's how it came to be.  I said, "sure wife, what could go wrong, it has a cartoon bear on the label and touts the Spring season".

Maybe it was a misunderstanding, maybe when I grab a beer in a bright yellow label with a smiling bear riding a honey bee bare back with the Raisin Bran sun shining down on him in a grass field I SHOULDN'T expect a sweet flavored and refreshing beer.  That makes sense.  I came into it thinking "refined Blue Moon".  I even broke out a Hoegaarden glass to pour it in.

I was deceived, as soon as I took a sip the label on the bottle changed.  The sun disappeared and dark clouds came out, the bee turned into a cobra and the bear took a swing at me and let out an evil laugh.  They taunted me, it was fucked up. 

Those cartoon characters forced some unnecessarily bitter tasteless beer down my throat.  Drinking it was like being punched in the teeth, it was stiff on the way in, bland on the way down.  These are the kind of beers that make me question why craft breweries choose to brew them. 

Any corporate swill house could pump this out in mass, in fact, there are lots of beers from In-Bev I'd much rather drink and these days, that's about the worst thing you could say about a craft beer in the current climate.  On the site it says Long Trail has been brewing this since 1996 and I have no idea why.  In fairness, Long Trail is a pretty good brewery, I've had stuff from them that I've enjoyed.  Pollenator was not and never will be one of those.

I think it was the deception that got me the worst, once the trust is gone, all is lost.  Maybe if this was presented differently I'd have come away differently.  At best I'd just think it was mediocre.  Check that, no, I know better.  This just isn't a great beer.  That simple.  Spring will have more to offer.

Check it out here http://www.longtrail.com/family-of-ales/ales/pollenator.aspx

[uncommonbrewsblog]

De Ranke Noir De Dottignies (Belgian Dark Ale)

I mean, it comes wrapped in parchment paper, need I really say more?  When you get beer that comes wrapped in parchment paper from across the Atlantic with a picture of a Church on it you shut up and drink it.  I sort of imagined this thing being shipped over on a pirate ship from another time period and that was perhaps backed up by the fact that it's neither filtered or pasteurized.  We've been pasteurizing beer for close to 100 years now so between that and the wrapping paper this is a bit of a throw back, a way throw back.

I felt kind of like the dad from "A Christmas Story" as I opened this package that could easily be marked fra-gee-lay, except this time it wasn't from Italy, it was from Belgium.  It was almost as if I didn't want to ruin the presentation, or maybe I could even place it in the front window for the neighborhood to see.  Not sure my wife would like that anymore then the wife from "A Christmas Story" did in that case though.

This build up caused me to be a little let down on first taste, but the Bitter Belgian would win eventually.  Noir is becoming the it word in beer these days.  Nobody wants to simply say dark or black anymore I suppose.  These guys are from Belgium though, so they get a pass, how could they know how played out a word like Noir is in Williamsburg. 

It poured like a Coca-Cola, but somehow didn't taste like one at all.  As I drank it you could feel brick roads and hand carved wooden barns.  Whatever scenic is in my head for Belgium, that's where it was at.  This wasn't a beer you drank to party, this was a beer you drank after a long hard day of work.  This is a beer you drink after milking cows for 20 hours or some shit. 

The beer was heavy and high in alcohol content, I can't find the actual % on the bottle, but I know it was somewhere in the 9% range just by drinking it.  The bottle matches the beer, it's so heavy on the bottom that I constantly thought there was more.  I hoped so too.

All in all, it was a beautiful beer.  Who am I kidding?  If it's from Belgium it's going to be dope, these folks don't play around.  That said, it had the curve ball of being a dark from those parts.  The polish was still there, that sheen that can only be described as "Belgian flavor" cut through the dark and hoppy edges like a knife through butter.

The paper had a bunch of hands on it that reminded me of some sort of important warning from the 80's.  I think they're just saying, "give me more of this shit" though.  If I had another bottle, it'd be drank.  Just saying.  One.

Visit them here: http://www.deranke.be/en/index_en.htm