Frangelic Mountain Brown Hype and BA Rating correlation

It's the hazelnut....not a whole lot of people who generally like coffee like the "fake" hazelnut taste (or artificially flavored coffee in general). I enjoyed my bottle.

 

Haven't drank mine yet. I'll try to keep an open mind.

 

I shared a bottle and thought 12 ounces was enough. I really love coffee beers, and hazelnut too. I just thought it was very one-dimensional with the hazelnut taking over everything. Meh. Blushing Monk and CBS are still my favorites from the series so far.

 

You're sitting on a case for trade aren't you?

 

I didn't consider FMB to be that hyped. I also didn't think it was that good. It has a lot of competition from within Founder's own portfolio of beers. Compared to FBS, KBS, CBS and CBH, FMB was mediocre at best.

Different strokes..

 

I picked up a bottle even though I don't like hazelnut coffee, and then I heard all the lamentations over the artificiality of the hazelnut flavor here and elsewhere. As such, my expectations were none too high.

So I was surprised by two things when I drank it: I really liked it, and I couldn't detect any hazelnut at all.

Crazy.

 

I don't think its that "hyped" up at all.Maybe its because Founder's produces so many tasty beers,and the fact that people are gonna compare to KBS,CBS, ect. ect......It is what it is,a brown ale w/ hazelnut.I enjoyed my bottle thats for sure.

Cheers

 

Unless you were already inebriated or ate something that demolished your palate while drinking it I cannot see how this is possible.

 

I adore Founders. I've visited the Brewpub more times than I can count, buy everything I can from them, and will scream their praises from the highest mountain tops..... But FMB was not a good beer. The hazelut "flavor" was way over-the-top.

 

I love hazelnut coffee, but this was too much (and too fake) for my tastes.

It's ok Founders, you're allowed to have two bad beers out of the entire lot.

 

I noticed some artificial flavors, but it didn't stop me from polishing off a bottle by myself. I even bought a second bottle last week...although that was more due to the fact that I got excited to see a limited Founders beer sold on a shelf in CT.

 

Its the fact that it said "artificial" on the label.

Maybe my pallatte isn't as refined as others but I don't detect anything artificial flavored about it. I enjoyed my bottle quote a bit and have 2 more chilling that I need to drink here soon too.

 

I thought it was delicious, but I didn't respect it and I factored both of these feelings into my review. It tasted like hazelnut coffee that you'd get at a decent gas station (like a Sheetz), which tastes good but isn't a high-end artisanal product. I could have looked past that, but it was one-dimensional as someone already wrote.

 

Agreed, I absolutely love Founders as well. I didn't compare FMB to any of the other Backstage Series release or any other brew for that matter when I reviewed it. In my opinion, hype is one of the main reasons it is around a "4" and not rated lower.

I think there are a lot of valuable reviews on BA, but the reviews of limited releases from breweries generally considered among the "top tier" are, on the whole, generally hype-inflated ratings. If you honestly look at the pattern, any limited release from a brewery with a reputation like Founders, is getting a "4" out of the gate. Many people are highly influenced by hype, a brewery's previous reputation, and rarity--period. They decision to gush over the bottle once obtained was made months before actually buying it.

Overall, if a limited release actually does get rated below a "4" I figure it is most likely to be poor to average. I'm highly doubtful it has ever happened--and no, I didn't scour the ratings. The limited release rating scale probably looks a little more like this: Rated 4.0-4.2 probably poor to average. Rated 4.2+ to 4.4 average to good, rated 4.4+ to 4.6 good to exceptional, rated 4.6+ or higher, exceptional to truly world class. However, I fully recognize difference in palates--mine as well as others.

 

My buddy and I drain poured it during a brew session. i thought it was somewhere between really spoofy and horrible.

hey, they can't all be winners.

 

I bought two bottles of it, then had some at a beer tasting / bottle share party. I don't really feel like drinking the other two I've got now.

 

I thought it was a delicious brown ale that had a strong coffee backbone to it and some hazelnut in the background. Definitely did not feel it was overpowered by the hazelnut, but I love flavored coffee, so maybe my pallet is just contoured to that.

 

1) as always, that's not what hype means.

2) it wouldn't surprise me to see someone give this beer a 4.5 or a 2.0. why?

because it's a very well done brown ale with a REALLY overdone (flavored) coffee edition. some people may love that, some people may hate that.

myself, i thought of it like ST creme brulee; i like it a lot, but i don't want more than a few ounces of it at a time.

(also, i'm a bit of a coffee snob, so the overwhelming hazelnut sort of flips various anger switches in my brain, but the overall taste is still pretty good)

 

Crazy, isn't it? I hadn't been eating anything palate-blasting that day and it was my first drink of the evening and the coffee flavor came through loud and clear... but it didn't taste to me like hazelnut coffee or hazlenut anything else.

It was most confusing. I was stoked to like the beer more than I'd expected to but it's left me wondering if I got a bizarro bottle or if certain flavors have come to elude me for some reason.