Budweiser Copper Lager
Anheuser-Busch

The clear deep reddish-copper colored beer pours out into a Duvel glass with a 1/2” light tan head that soon recedes to a thin irregular island of foam on the surface while leaving a ring of foam on the sides of the glass. Sipping creates a couple of arches and some scattered patches of foam.

The aromas include some vanilla, some bourbon, a light touch of oak and some caramel.

The flavors are much as expected from the nose with vanilla, bourbon, the light touch of oak and some toasted caramel malt. There’s also a just a touch of light bitterness behind the toasted malt sweetness but the sweetness is a bit more than I prefer.

The mouthfeel is medium bodied and both smooth and a bit crisp with the light persistent carbonation. The moderately long finish begins when most of the flavors begin to fade leaving the long semi-dry ending tinged with bourbon and just a hint of bitterness.

Overall this is a drinkable beer that is worth giving a try if you enjoy bourbon barrel aged beers (this is not the first or the only beer aged on barrel staves rather than in the barrels themselves). I’ll probably not be getting more but it was interesting to give it a try.

Poured from a bottle into a pint glass. Pours red orange with a fluffy white head. Smells of caramelized grain with some bourbon notes. Tastes of caramelized grain with just a hint of bourbon. Beer is light bodied and easy drinking, good carbonation. Overall, a good beer.

Poured from 12-ounce bottle into a tulip glass. Dark copper color with red highlights and a thick light tan head that left some spotty lacing as it settled to a cap. Dark caramel up front on the nose and palate, a little sweetness but not too much. Medium-light in body, maybe even a tad watery. Not much bitterness at all, and the character it should have from the Jim Beam barrel staves seems to be absent. Clean and crisp finish, without any inkling of what you've just tasted. This sample had some age on it, which undoubtedly had an adverse effect. Pretty interesting concept, though.

 

Taste: malty, oak notes, some sweet, mellow, warm mouthfeel. woody, bourbon nose. Dark copper color, clear, tan head, some rings of lace., medium body. mellow.

 

A: Good head at first, faded to slight lace. Copper amber in color.
S: Some hint of the wood/bourbon but was primarily sweet like cheap frosting on a brownie.
M: Creamy with no burn. Sweet aftertaste.
T: Almost a cheap chocolate pudding or cheap chocolate ice cream. Faint bourbon and more pronounced alcohol profile but still reminded me of regular Bud.
O: I had this a few times. It was tastier than a Bud and had a bit more profile and less cheap beer flavor. This review was written some time ago, so I'm sorry to see they don't make it anymore.

 

 

 

This beer is awesome if you're a fan of sweet, malty beers, and those are my favorites. I LOVE this beer and am sad it's a limited run and is no more. I bought plenty while it was out. Please Bud, bring it back.

 

Pours a dark bloody-burgundy with a clear transparency that drops to a little foggy at the center. Head is a finger and a half of khaki foam. Head retention is good. Aroma is caramel, molasses, vanilla bean, toffee and chocolate with toasty, nutty and caramely malts. There is twinge of whiskey at the back, but not much. Flavor profile brings together the same syrupy connection - toffee, molasses, caramel and vanilla bean with a very light bourbon slow-ooze at the end. Malts are toasty, nutty and caramely. Mouth feel is medium in thickness with a light crispness that pairs well with a modest velvety texture. Overall, a little syrupy, but otherwise fair.

Served in a 15.5oz Speigalau tulip from a 22oz bottle.

 

 

 

473ml can - I can't particularly (ok, fine) tell if the marketing blurb at the top of the label has so many unnecessarily capitalized nouns because 1: they read too many Trump tweets, or 2: they are adhering to their distant Teutonic past. No matter, as marketing should be a thing to be entirely avoided, but is apparently my literary bane, as it were. Anyhoo...

This beer pours a clear, dark bronzed amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, rocky, and sort of chunky tan head, which leaves some splendid spidery pattern lace around the glass as it evenly subsides.

It smells of semi-sweet, grainy and bready caramelized malt, a bruised domestic pome fruitiness, some generically ethereal boozy wooden notes that (as my mother used to refer to store-bought chicken noodle soup) seem to have simply trod through things wearing rubber boots, a hint of wispy smoke, and nothing else, really. The taste is grainy and biscuity caramel malt, a fairly hard to discern rye-esque woody essence (see above), still muddled and confused apples and cheap pear flesh, and a sense of hop bitterness that should be there, but obviously is not.

The carbonation is pretty tame in its generally benign frothiness, the body a pretty DTF medium weight, and more or less smooth, with a gentle aerosol creaminess lingering about, wondering why the 'cool' girls won't give him/her/them the time of day. It finishes off-dry, the malt and barely-there, committee-mandated bittering offset juuuuuust making those third quarter targets.

Overall - yeah, I get that this would be a polarizing release (from both ends of the spectrum), but I have to give credit where credit is due. Sure, the 'barrel' equation here doesn't add up to squat, but the malt bill and general easiness of consumption (the more general, modern meaning of the term) make for a pleasing quaff, no lie. If we cannot meet in the middle, then, uh, so be it, I guess.

 

It tastes like a syrup and pours very flat. The overall taste is good, but I would like more frothy excitement from the brew masters. It’s disappointing that it looks more like a glass of vinegar than a healthy beer.