Erdinger Weissbier Dunkel

The pale ales and ciders out of the way, it's time to get to the darker portions of my Christmas gift beers!

I offered my mother the first taste of this one. I couldn't see her face, but her shoulders hunched and her neck tucked in like those of a disgruntled pigeon.


Philistine.

So maybe I'm just happy to finally be drinking something with discernible hops, but I like this! It's clean, smooth and pleasant with a slightly creamy aftertaste and the tiiiniest hint of malt. The alcohol content is a modest 5.3% and, when not smothered by a prodigious mattress of foam (drink it from the bottle, kids.), it goes down nicely.

I wouldn't rank it among my favourite (hey, I should write about those.), but I might order it for a lunch out.

Overall, I feel I must bestow upon this beer the highest award in ambiguousness I can provide.

Happy drinking!

McChouffe Ardens Brown Beer

Oh fer- another beer? Really? We've gotta get some soda on here. I'm starting to look like an alcoholic.

But this one's a doozy, I promise.

The second of those bargain-bin purchases I mentioned, McChouffe here has a bedraggled label (it looked like that when I bought it, I swear.), very little information (contains malt!), a relatively high alcohol content (8%), and, to top it off, a creepy gnome as a mascot.

After all that, important questions remain unanswered.
What does unsettled-gnome-beer taste like? Does it contain beard? Inquiring minds must know.

Pretty darn delicious, actually. The malt flavour is understated, and it's overall smooth and enjoyable.

I don't know about the second part.

And I have a cute new bottle for my collection!

It all works out in the end.

Club.Malz malt beverage

Ah, another non-alcoholic malt beverage! This time in an adorable wee bottle! How does it compare to our last brush with the type? ...Not extremely well. A lot of the elements of the Tiger Malt are there, making this a shorter review, but in place of the Tiger's thick, creamy molasses taste we have a sharp, hollow, carbonated sweetness. Losing the richness but maintaining the ever-so-slightly burnt aftertaste. Not a good trade, if you ask me. Skip it unless you're collecting bottle caps!

Kirin Ichiban

Place: Kyoto

Cost: About five dollars.

This is something I'd been meaning to try for a while. I'd never had a Japanese beer, and the label is just beautiful. When I finally got around to it, I was presented with this light, golden brew in a bottle of unusually thin glass. Upon tasting it...

all right, I admit that I'm not very keen on light beers in general. I gravitate toward dark, smooth and flavourful. So my first impression was of acidic tastelessness that hit the back of my tongue with a certain hostility and lingered there with obstinacy. It got better once I was a few bites into my meal (Chirashi, delicious.) and I detected the tiniest notes of other, mellow flavours hanging around, but I found them to be drowned out by that overbearing non-flavour that seems ubiquitous in light beers. And Guinness.

And "One of the world's most unique premium beers" as it says on the label? No, sorry. Also, there are no degrees of uniqueness. But I digress.

I'd recommend it if you like the general type, but drink it with food and drink it cold.

Tiger Malt

Tiger Malt

Non-alcoholic malt beverage

We've had a method to our little tasting parties thus far. I take photos of the drink and it's then passed around. I taste first, my sister second, and my mother third, taking notes all the while. The problem we encountered with this is that after I delivered my conclusions, my sister would shrug and agree with me, adding little of her own input. What can I say? She's a very mellow lady. So this time she went first, to voice her opinions uninfluenced.

She sniffed it. Paused. Her brow knitted as she searched for the right words.

"Tomato soup." Pause. "Or ketchup."

She sniffed again.

"With a bit of cheese. And maple syrup."

We stared at her, mouths agape.

"What?" I asked.

She stood by her conclusion. The only thing the scent reminded me of was a rather egregious batch of "Haytime Switchel" we once made. I'll tell you about it some time.

All absurdity aside, this drink smells and tastes heavily of molasses with notes of caramel. It's a bit sweeter than expected and has a sort of burnt aftertaste which is odd, but not entirely unpleasant. It looks lovely, dark and smooth and foamy, with an attractive design. I'd actually recommend it as a beer-substitute for the teetotaller. It's creamy and heavy and might not be to everyone's taste, so I'd give it a try just to see.