New Beer Sunday (week 545)

It was very good. The aroma was strong with tropical fruits like papaya and mango. As it warmed up a bit those really starting coming through in the flavor. For all of the flavor in managed to stay very crisp and easy to drink.

I would pick this one up again.

 

And now, on to new cheap beer of the day number 2. Hated by many around here, while simultaneously being the best-selling beer in the world and one of the first names that comes to mind when the average person hears "beer." Having never had a "party" phase in my high school and college years, and having avoided beer of all kinds until last year, I've actually never had this one before now:



Bud Light.

No nasty smell hits me in the face upon opening the can (vs. the Country Club shown in background), but on the other hand... there's really no immediately notable smell at all. Oh well, time to pour it in the glass. "Light" is right -- the color of this when pouring is like yellow-tinted water, and even once poured it's not much darker. This is quite possibly the lightest-colored beer I've ever seen. Like the Country Club, there's a lot of clearly visible bubbles rising from the bottom and popping on the surface, and the foam on top fades pretty quickly into a tiny "island" in the middle -- though this one also seems to have a bit of a ring around the edges of the glass, too.

Smell was a bit unpleasant at first -- I needed to practically stick my nose in it to smell it at all, but when I did, what I smelled can only be described as "farty." It was like a sulfurous, fart-like smell overlaid over a faint "standard beer smell." After sitting in the glass a bit, the fart smell has faded and it's now more like a very slight bit of a cooked veggie kind of thing mixed with a slight breadiness. The breadiness here is certainly not a bad smell, just wish there was more of it.

Okay, here goes. My first taste of Bud Light. I'm about to experience "what beer is" to a large portion of the population.

And it's... well, similar to the smell -- a fairly nice (but incredibly light) hint of breadiness and not much else. The "cooked veggie" type thing (and thankfully, the initial fart-like smell) are not coming through in the taste at all. However, upon taking a gulp following my initial sip (this is so light that taking small sips just feels a bit silly -- it's definitely intended to be drunk fast and in large quantities), that nice dry bready thing that I was picking up just a little bit of (and liking!) at first has been replaced entirely with something resembling a "just-chewed white bread" sweet flavor, like right around the point when your saliva starts the process of breaking the starches down into sugars. Okay, that's odd. It's so light you want to go ahead and take big gulps, but it tastes noticeably better on small sips (I took a "small gulp" for my third drink and, sure enough, the flavor has shifted back a bit toward the nice bready thing rather than the "pre-chewed plain white bread" flavor that took over on a bigger gulp.) It's so lightly-flavored that even the less-pleasant, sweeter version that you get on a huge gulp isn't strong enough to be offensive, but there's so little there that it comes across as pretty bland either way.

Feel is... like bubbly water, pretty much. As I said with the appearance -- "light" is right. This is probably the lightest-feeling beer I have ever tried, by a significant margin.

Overall... while not unpleasant in any way and far from undrinkable, it's really not good in any way, either. There's just not much to it, whether in taste or smell or feel or even appearance. It's just not even interesting. I'd take a glass of Bud Light over a glass of plain ice water, but the moment you add a lemon wedge to the ice water the decision would become a lot tougher (especially considering that the water might be free, lemon wedge and all!) -- that's how faint the flavor is here, it's just about the equivalent of squeezing a "beer wedge" into a glass of water. There is only one flavor here; well, two, but you only really get one of them at a time depending on how much you drink at once. Something similar to this might not be half bad if it had some of that European grassy/spicy hop flavor in it on top of the breadiness (just a tiny hint of bitter to counter that sweetness when you take a big gulp might be an improvement as well... do hops add calories? if not, why the heck do they not put them in light beers!?), but as is, the "you have to sip it for it to taste better" aspect of the flavor (it gets sweeter and not as good when you drink more at a time) clashes terribly with the "go ahead, drink half the glass without setting it down in between" mouthfeel. And on a positive note, my burps are actually tasting really nice right now, though I don't know if it's mostly from the Bud Light or the Country Club or some combination of the two.

I can see how people drink mass quantities of this. It's so close to watery that drinking a lot would be very easy, especially if you're drinking for the alcohol's effects rather than the flavor. And what flavor is there is so mild and one-dimensional that even if you don't really like it, it's not going to be strong enough to make you dump it down the drain. And that's me saying this, the person who usually either really likes or really hates things -- this is just so mild I can't form any strong response to it whatsoever, either positive or negative. I certainly wouldn't pay $6.49 or whatever for a six-pack of this when I could get Yuengling for the same price, or the Waterfront beers for just 50 cents more... or even the other new beer I had today, Country Club Malt Liquor, for two dollars less. But at the same time, if somebody offered to me for free -- sure, I'd drink a Bud Light. Better than a glass of water if I'm not paying for it -- just not better enough to pay for it, especially not at restaurant/bar prices.

I suppose as far as "diet food" goes, this really isn't too bad -- no nasty chemical sweetener aftertaste or anything, which is more than I can say about diet soda. But when comparing something to diet soda (which is perhaps the most disgusting beverage known to man) is the most positive thing you can say about something, you know it's not that great. I can't imagine this is as good as it gets even for a "light" beer -- there's just so little flavor here. Maybe if I ever feel like having a "light" beer again for whatever reason, I might try the Yuengling or Samuel Adams versions -- but I can't really see myself paying for Bud Light again.

 

I wish that you could have a piece of this pie. It is a marvel!

 

Second and last new beer of this Saturday. A "Belgianesque" Wit from Fort George:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/16077/37682/?ba=woemad

Not bad, but a little flabby. Could use a little more crispness in the mouthfeel, and finishes a little bland.

 

...and yeah, I called today Saturday.
I suppose it's a reflex created by having worked so many Saturdays this summer that most of the time Sunday IS my Saturday.

 

I suppose this does not quite technically count as a new beer per say, as I drank this one at least 5 years ago if not 6 or 7 years ago. I didn't remember much of anything about it though besides the fact that I liked it enough when I first had it to age this in my cellar for several years before cracking it open to drink tonight. http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/339/48387/?ba=neenerzig

Eric

 

Hey all, sorry, I did have some new brews today, but didn't get around to taking notes, and can't contribute to NBS. I do, however, want to give a shout-out to a handful of NBSers, that contacted me, with offers of contributions for Paige. All y'all know who ya are. NBS is awesome. I just wanted to give a big, public, CHEERS! to everyone one of you. Thank y'all for being my friends.

And, @garymuchow , I apologize for not sending you a thank message sooner. I'll try to get some in next week.

 

hope you enjoyed the hops from the north