The great martin beer tasting #2.

My son KC and I attempted another beer tatsing yesterday.  What you as possible beer connoisseurs need to know about us is that we grew up on American Lager.  My Dad started on Black Label and thankfully switched to PBR.  My Unlce Dick was a Falstaff man, as was my brother.  Another uncle preferred Busch.  A brother in law subsisted on Miller Lite and Meister Brau, later Milwaukee's Best.  A cousin introduced me to Drewrys.  The nice thing was, when I was little, you could go into our local tavern and get all these and more- Old Chicago, Colt 45, Little Kings, Schlitz, Blatz, the list goes on and on.  So with apologies to some of my friends, carbonated coffees like Guinness don't hit the spot for us.  In fact, we checked the review on BeerAdvocate.com and found that we only agreed once- and it was the day's winner.  So, let's take a look at the contestants and how they did:

#1 was the Flying Dog brewery's Tire Bite ale.  This was a "Kolsch" beer, originating from Koln (Cologne), Germany.

KC carefully poured himself a drink, sipped and said, "It Tastes like a Rolling Rock... with some bad aftertaste".  I didn't detect the aftertaste, but agree that it was very similar to a Rolling Rock (IOW, good when you are hot and thirsty, but not neccessarily the brand you buy for lazying around the house.

Next up was St. Pauli Girl, famous from posters  worldwide.  It comes in a green bottle, which I do not understand why ANYONE uses anymore, and of course it had the green bottle's curse...

KC:  "Good, but a bit skunky."
It was good despite the skunk, very light.  But why on earth put it in the damn green bottles anyway?  You KNOW three bottles out of five will be skunked. 

Next up came a contestant from Leinkugels:

Leinie's Red Lager is a Vienna-Style lager, rich amber color and a bit stronger than the regular American beer.

At this point, alcohol was beginning to effect the camerawork, so we had to stage KC's reaction.  (The original pic was a nice view of his shorts, though.)  He detected a bit of a salt taste, and agreed with me that it had a bit of a metallic taste, as if it had sat in a keg for a while prior to bottling.  It improved somewhat after we took Scrappy for a walk, but not much.

Next up:

Becks, from the same company that now owns St. Pauli Girl.  KC has had this in the past, and said he liked it.  But as you can see, it was in a green bottle, so you know what that means...

Yup, a little skunky.  Not bad, though I think if you take the skunk out, I'd have preferred the SPG.

This brings us to the most bitter failure of the lot- and not surprisingly, the highest rated on BeerAdvocate of our six...

(Funny how you get more junk on the table the more beer we drink, eh?) Rogue Brewery's Dead Guy Ale.  From Ashland Oregon, this is a Maibock, or pale bock.

KC: "YUKKK!  This tastes like straight earwax!!!"  I took a sip, and while I don't profess to know what brewed earwax tastes like, I quickly proceeded to the kitchen sink with this brew.  Only trying to get up off the floor kept KC from beating me to the sink with his mouthful.  I washed away this failure with a nice cold PBR.

We had one contestant left:

A Schlafly Unfiltered Hefeweizen, or wheat beer.  This one is brewed at St. Louis Brewing, and was founded by the nephew of activist Phyllis Schlafly.  Now, I've had wheats before, and they have two main charactaristics- light, with a dry taste.  This one was about the same.  However, the dry wasn't as prominent here, and it was so smooth it seemed to evaporate just as it approached the throat.  KC pronounced it "pretty good", and even Scrappy liked it enough to search out every fallen drop.

Mighty damn tasty... where's MY glass?

So there we have our six contestants:

And the winner?  It was between the Flying Dog and the Schlafly, but the Hefeweizen wins out in the end!  Surprisingly, it was the second highest rated of the crew on BeerAdvocate as well.