Posted on 09/11/2013 2:30:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
When it's time for a beer, you probably have a few classic go-to brews. Rev up your tastebuds, because these offbeat beers are nothing like that.
Some pack an entire meal's flavors in a can or bottle; some are Fear Factor-level weird for consumption. But if you're in the mood to reconsider your old standbys, these adventurous brews offer an altogether unique experience.
SEE ALSO: 10 Weird Ice Cream Flavors to Terrify Your Taste Buds
Step away from the Bud Light, people. These suds are definitely not run-of-the-mill.
1. Avocado Ale by Angel City Brewery
Among other guacamole-inspired ingredients, this beer contains avocado and cilantro.
While the drink was invented for the Avocado Festival, this isn't the brewery's first foray into experimental brews. They've also dabbled in au jus-inspired beer and dill pickle-flavored beer.
2. Oyster Stout by 21st Amendment Brewery
Oyster-stout Brewed with Hog Island Sweetwater oyster shells, this stout promises a "silky, salty finish." Hopefully, unlike the name, you'll never be marooned on Hog Island.
IMAGE: 21ST AMENDMENT BREWERY 3. Coconut Curry Hefeweizen by New Belgium Brewing
Coconut-curry-beer Undoubtedly, there's a lot going on in this beer -- and you'll probably still crave curry afterward.
The beverage is flavored with coconut, cayenne, cinnamon, coriander, fenugreek seed, ginger root, kaffir and lime leaf, with a hint of banana from the hefe yeast in which it's brewed.
IMAGE: NEW BELGIUM BREWING 4. Spirulina Wit Beer by Free Tail Brewing Co.
Spirulina-beer Yes, this beer is actually green, but it's still beer. And we're not talking Bud Light St. Patrick's Day food-coloring green either.
The fact that it's brewed with blue-green algae doesn't quite make it healthy. (Sorry.)
IMAGE: FREE TAIL BREWING CO. 5. Kelpie Seaweed Ale by Williams Bros Brew
Kelpie-seaweed-ale Kelpie Seaweed Ale is supposed to recapture the taste of traditional beers brewed in Scottish coastal alehouses. To do so, bladderwrack seaweed is mashed in with malted and roasted barley.
IMAGE: WILLIAM BROS BREW 6. Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout by Wynkoop Brewing Company
Rocky-mt-oyster-stout-can-glass We're not repeating beers. While this brew goes by the name "oyster stout," it's actually brewed with something stranger: bull testicles.
Maybe just pretend you're on an episode of Fear Factor when drinking?
IMAGE: WYNKOOP BREWING COMPANY 7. Bacon Maple Ale by Rogue Ales
Bacon-maple-ale Rogue Ales collaborated with Portland fixture Voodoo Doughnuts to create this bacon maple doughnut-inspired beer, brewed from bacon and maple syrup.
IMAGE: MADE IN OREGON ROGUE ALES 8. Pizza Beer by Mamma Mia! Pizza Beer
Mamma-mia-pizza-beer Brewed with basil, oregano, tomato, garlic and, of course, pizza crust, this pizza-flavored beer considers itself the "World's First Culinary Beer."
We consider it one step closer to Willy Wonka's three-course meal gum becoming a reality.
Budweiser cannot be rightfully called ‘beer’. By all rights, it’s a malt beverage.
I had some brewery clients while living up north - none of the mass-market beers. I call Anheiser Busch products “beer filtered through Clydesdales.”
Plus A-B is awful stingy with hops.
Miller at one time had a Miller Red Label. That had a good hops bite to it for a lager/pilsner.
A friend and I were talking about beer the other day and we wondered what is the best beer to find that would bring back the very first taste of a sip we copped from our dad’s beer that was sitting on the table. We decided Falstaff or Regal Select, maybe Black Label would approximate the old can of beer that was opened with a puncture point can opener.
I think I meant Lucky Lager instead of Falstaff.
Bud gives me an instant hangover, it’s undrinkable rice pee. And it’s been getting worse, ever few years it gets lighter in color and flavor. The American beer flagships rose up at a time when the American food palette was terrible, we ate and drank some seriously nasty junk from around WWII through the 90s. The era of instant coffee, weak beer, and franchise restaurants. We still do to an extent but we’re getting better. Which is where the micro-brew revolution (and its equivalents in many other food groups) came from. Not sure what happened to finally make us realize our food was terrible, but I’m glad.
Everyone has their opinion.
Not any unusual take on rice finishing, although purely subjective.
When it comes to comparisons to piss, that is a common estimation concerning the skunkiness of many of the ‘premium’ German and Czech beers. I’m not in the business of telling other people that they don’t know what tastes good to them.
When it comes to refined pallets, the beer drinkers of the late 19th century would greatly disagree with you, as they were moving away from what had been the common heavy beers, which they considered unrefined.
I’m also not sure what the value of judging other peoples tastes is. If they like it, they like it. Some people love Twinkies and are no less satisfied than a person eating a $12 piece of cake with a nice sour cream frosting, why should I care?
Like scotch, I like most beer recipes and dislike a few. Its more an issue of time and place for me than trying to determine an all around best. On a 95 degree afternoon, I’ll take a light beer over a stout, in fact, I would pass on my favorite stout altogether.
It is a bottom yeast, and bottom yeasts have that effect on some people. I used to get a nearly instant headache from drinking Bud myself. After not drinking any Bud for about 10 years, I discovered that it no longer has the same effect. I'm presuming it was me, not the beer, that changed.
I've had a few beers that are just gawd awful (to me) and tasted like they were spiked with formaldehyde (some places they were) or tasted metallic. I avoid those now like the plague.
I've also had some egregiously bad, amateur brewing, microbrewed beers. Many people fawn over any and all micros, which I suspect is more psychological than pallet related.
It’s not just heaviness but overall flavor. Bud’s brewmeisters admit Bud has been steadily reducing the overall level of flavor. Beer can be flavorful without being heavy, that’s part of what the whole pale section (lager, or ale) is all about, summer beers that don’t land in your gut like lead but are still flavorful. Although the IPA revolution has kind of over corrected that worshiping bitter over other subtler flavors. Luckily I live close to Mexico and have a steady supply of less aggressive beers.
It’s not value judging other people’s tastes. It’s value judging a culture’s tastes. For a long time the American palette just stank, we managed to make McDonald’s and Denny’s the most successful restaurants in the world, there were issues. Nothing really shows the problem our palette had so much as instant coffee, nobody liked the stuff, and yet everybody drank it, instant sales were so high (especially once we got microwaves) regular drip coffee companies were going under. We got to a point where we were willing to eat and drink stuff we didn’t like for the sake of convenience almost to exclusion. That was the real sign of the problem with our palette, we knew what we were getting was bad, we didn’t even like it, but we bought so much of it better products were going under. Individual people should get what they want, but when a culture as a whole is buying mostly stuff they don’t even like there’s something very interesting, and probably not good, going on.
I can’t even drink the mainline American beers, they give me an instant hangover. Which is another sign of the serious lack of quality, there’s something unpleasant in a beer that gives me a headache half an hour after drinking one.
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It’s definitely not the bottom yeast. I can drink Sierra Nevadas just fine and they love them some bottom yeast. It’s probably not even the rice, which is really more a lame practice than anything else. It’s probably preservatives and other junk. I keep meaning to tag back up to the world of Bud now that Inbev took them over, wondering if they’ve gotten better. But there’s so much other beer out there I know is good I never get around to seeing if a known bad beer may have gotten better.
There are some definitely bad microbrews out there. But I respect them for trying new things. Even my favorite company, New Belgium, has a couple of stinkers, but I’ll always try a new one out of them because they hit more often than they miss.
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Budweiser is a rice beer. Read the label. I won’t waste my time with the stuff since the very first bottle I ever had of the stuff gave me an instant sinus headache. *gah*
The only good “pilsner” I ever had was German. American “pilsners” are ugly-tasting.
We had to drive into Wyoming to get Schlitz (or any) Malt Liquor. I made the drive about once a month! ;o]
Sand in your slippers?
Urquell is my favorite, followed closely by Bitburger. I haven’t actually encountered any American microbrew pilsners, they like pale ales more than pale lagers.
There used to be a little beer bar at the Palace Station here in Vegas, and it had nothing but imported beers. It was the first time since I was in Germany that I had a really GREAT Pils....
I don’t know if the bar is still there. I’m so allergic to cigarette smoke these days that I don’t dare go to casinos for anything, including their cheap, filling buffets.
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