This month’s issue of The Session is produced by Tiffany
over at 99 Pours. Her topic of choice is
Novelty Beers:With the onslaught of even weirder beards…erm…beers…than before, I can’t help but wonder if novelty beers are going too far. Or maybe not far enough? LOL! As a merchant of beer, I can see the place for novelty beers, as I am choosing for some customers who say, “I want the strangest beer you have.”
The novelty beer can sometimes drive me nuts. I shouldn’t see
10 pumpkin beers on the taplist in July. It just shouldn’t happen. I want to
drink Oktoberfest beers in September and October, not July. A maibock is a
spring beer, I don’t want to see it in January. Heck, sometimes the seasonal Summer ales are
called “Summer Ale”, and they show up in April.
Come on people. Anywho…
I love looking at a taplist to decide what I am drinking. I
am not afraid to go off kilter and order something that I have never heard of
(actually, I prefer that), something that I am scared of (hot peppers), or
something that is using ingredients to play to the season (pumpkin).
Thinking back to the brews that I have sampled, there are
some that people would think were weird: Right Brain Little Italy Honey Basil, DuClaw
HERO (2011- chocolate peanut butter porter), A billion different pumpkin and barrel
aged beers (I don’t even like most of them), etc.
If I had to choose a beer that I enjoyed the most that
included a unique or different ingredient, I might have to go with the DuClaw
HERO (chocolate peanut butter porter). It was an easy beer to order, as I had
heard that it was good, and I was in a dark beer mood at the time. But my first reaction to the sip will be
memorable. The first taste drew me into the beer. The chocolate and subtle yet
appealing peanut butter tastes weren’t sickly sweet (kind of what I imagined),
but rather they stood balanced with the malt and hops, like a perfect little
triangle.
I had tasted winners and losers when ordering novelty beers,
but this was one winner that I could drink most days.
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