Sensical Beer Reviews

A few weeks ago, The Tiger ran an article in the Timeout section claiming to be a scientific review of a number of domestic and import beers. Even though the piece carried a disclaimer that their tasters “may not have had the most qualified of taste buds,” the results were astounding. And not in a good way. Natural Light, Bud Light and PBR earned inexplicably high scores, while old standards like Newcastle and Becks languished with comments like “nasty and bitter” and “tastes like a barnyard floor,” respectively. The piece went beyond not making any sense. It made anti-sense.

The only logical recourse was for the Forum to do a response. And with heads held high, two staffers, a writer, and a few random acquaintences made their way to Nick’s one recent evening, to right the wrongs that “Timeout’s Official Beer Tasting” had done to the Clemson beer world.

Eric Osguthorpe - webmaster, staff writer, and man-about-town - was the first to arrive, and settled in with a Franziskaner Weissbier, which at Nick’s is served, appropriately enough, in the tall Weisen glass, with a lemon slice. Wheat beers generally are light, somewhat fruity, and a little translucent, and Franziskaner is no exception (and might even be the standard). “Not something you’d want to drink all day,” Eric noted, “but one or two, maybe at dinner, would be good.” Everyone agreed to recommend the Franziskaner to zee Germans.

Eric’s friend Will took his seat with a Woodchuck Amber Cider, which he delicately referred to as “The Happy Meal of Beers,” both in that it made him happy to drink it, and that it was incredibly immasculating for him to be seen with it. “No, really, a beer that tastes like apple juice — that’s tough, right?” Not really, but we won’t tell anyone. He recommended it to his little sister, and no one was about to object.

Forum writer Steve and his friend Tim showed up each with an imposing bottle of Fiddler’s Elbow, which they both agreed was “definitely a dark beer.” Adding to the obvious, we also noted that its bottle was made of glass, and that it probably contained alcohol. We pressed them for more useful adjectives: “I don’t want to say bitter,” suggested Steve, “but it’s almost there.” They recommended it to someone who’d been drinking liquor all night, but whether that was a compliment or not we never figured out.

Copyeditor and beer afficianado Peter eventually wandered in, and went to the bar to find something interesting. While scanning the list of available brews, he mentioned something to the bartender about the Timeout article, which drew the attention of a patron a few stools down. “You’re talking about the beer review article in the Tiger a few weeks ago?” asked a scruffy-bearded fellow nursing a Shiner Bock. “I was one of the testers for that!” Talk about a small world. Peter returned not only with something to drink, but with someone new to meet. He introduced everyone to Chris, and we all asked him what he thought both of his Shiner and the article he contributed to. “Well, everyone there definitely hated the Newcastle, and I was one of the only ones pulling for Shiner Bock. It’s my favorite.” Chris described Shiner as no-nonsense: smooth, tasty, and “it has alcohol.” Three for three. He recommended it to himself before ducking out to finish preparing for a Calculus exam. Good luck, buddy.

Peter, meanwhile, had picked up a Red Stripe, not necessarily for any reason other than the funny shape of its bottle. “Do I want that in a glass? Hell no!” Jamaica is not known for its beer, and probably for good reason - Red Stripe is not particularly good, or bad, or remarkable - but the fat little bottles helped it earn its place among the chosen beers that night. Peter, much like the Red Stripe radio and TV commercials, recommended it to your ugly friend. And if you don’t have an ugly friend, by the way, it’s probably you. Sorry.

Eric wandered off and came back with a Cottonwood Almond Stout. Cotton, wood and almonds are not things one typically associates with beer, and maybe for good reason. “Strangely,” he said, “it’s like drinking almonds.” Without a history of tasting cotton or wood, however, Eric was less capable of drawing further comparisons. “I think it’s dark, but I can’t really tell” is never really a good thing to say about beer, and neither, for that matter, was Eric’s Cottonwood Almond Stout recommendation: his “fat aunt, or another equally manly woman.” Ouch.

Will had found himself a Highland Gaelic Ale, which is an impressive enough sounding name. “Malty sweetness and delicate hop bitterness?” he read from the label. “Sure, okay. We’ll go with that.” Delicious in its own right, the plaid label made us all want to put on our best shanters and go to a kaber toss. Will recommended it to fans of Newcastle, which we all knew from the Timeout article were in disappointly short supply around Clemson.

Peter, in his breakout role as alcoholic of the group, wandered off next, and returned with an old favorite: the Black and Tan is layered Bass and Guinness, and is rich and creamy as well as being quite a sight to see. “This beer,” he said with a little too much enthusiasm, “is as much about looking at it as it is drinking it. Of course, when you combine Bass and Guinness, it’s gonna be delicious.” If you’ve got some Irish heritage or, like most everyone else, wish you did, you owe it to yourself to try the Black and Tan out.

Like the bunch of pretentious drunks we were slowly becoming, our conversation started to drift to things that none of us had any clue about. We took a break to wax philosophical about time travel, relativity, Yahoo Serious and, inevitably, the Simpsons. As each of us took turns trying to explain why an atomic clock in a supersonic jet runs faster than one on the ground - or was it slower? - everyone within earshot took their turn rolling their eyes at us. We totally deserved it. I’m not sure that we made any significant breakthroughs in physics - or even came close to holding a sensible conversation on the subject - but we at least felt like we did.

Eric got himself a Nut Brown Ale, and patiently let each of us make fun of the name in our own unique but highly predictable way. He took a sip and stared at the bottle expectantly. “It doesn’t go anywhere,” he said, then after a few seconds: “It tastes so familiar…” We each offered our suggestions: “Gym socks?” “The last beer you had?” “That’s what she said?” But we never figured it out. “No aftertaste at all,” we finally concluded, “it just gets there and finishes.” Eric was having a hard time both finishing the bottle and coming up with someone to recommend it to. “Not my dad, not my mom, not my sister…” Someone perked up, “Your guidance councelor?” Everyone chuckled, Eric thought awhile, then: “Uh, actually… yes.” What a weird beer.

Tim found himself a Spring Heat Wheat, the second wheat beer of the evening. “Very smooth, very clear, like something you’d eat between courses at a big dinner.” Sorbet? Sherbet? “One of those,” he said, adding “it’d also be a good starter.” Tim recommended it to his tennis instructor, while everyone else debated the difference between sherbet and sorbet. For the record, Steve was right - sherbet contains dairy, sorbet is just fruit, and both are delicious.

Steve found himself an Anchor Steam, which he said tasted something like apples, or, after Peter suggested flowers, apple blossoms. Since this was not a particularly masculine thing to be saying, Steve evened things up by lighting up an exceedingly fat cigar. That’s one of the interesting things about Nick’s - ask to see their selection, and the staff will break out the cigar briefcase, with a relatively large number of tobacco selections to choose from. As he did his part to contribute to air pollution, not to mention make everyone else at the table exceedingly envious, we thought the Anchor Steam would be a great match for anyone in SEA. Why? …good question.

Peter finished up with something called an Old Peculiar. “I really can’t describe it,” he lamented. “It says Yorkshire ale, but I’ve never been to Yorkshire, so…” Someone said they had seen a Yorkshire terrier once. “Yes! It kind of tastes like a Yorkshire terrier.” No one was impressed. Peter recommended it to Civil War Reenacters, but it sounded a lot funnier then than it does now.

While we were collecting bottles to photograph, the bartender on several occasions tried to swoop in and steal away the empty ones. We kept stopping her, until she finally wised up and brought us out a cardboard holder to keep them all in. “We don’t want you breaking them and getting into fights or anything,” she explained, maybe half-seriously and half-ironically. Certainly no one who had, 30 minutes earlier, used “Young Einstein” to explain spatial relativity was a candidate for a brawler. But the six-pack was an old one for a beer called The Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout, which sounded too hilarious to pass up. The description promised a unique experience that was high in something called flavonoids. Eric got what would be the final beer of the evening, and took a sip. “That’s not a good face,” someone laughed as he set it down. “It’s not bad, but –” Eric stopped. That’s not a good way to describe a beer, either. “You can definitely taste the flavonoids,” he finally offered. No one had any idea what flavonoids were, but as we passed it around we all agreed. Coffee? Milk? Guinness and water? Guinness with extra flavonoids? We were useless as tasters at that point, and we all knew it. Agreeing to recommend it to weaned Irish babies, we all parted ways. Maybe we weren’t as scientific as the Tiger article was, and maybe we just wanted an excuse to spend some quality time downtown at a bar where you don’t have to shout to be heard. But at least we didn’t rate motherfucking PBR higher than Becks and Newcastle combined. And that, we all agreed, was success by any standard.

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Published:
05.03.06 / 5pm
Category:
Entertainment