The start of the summer beer drinking season

May 30th, 2007

I had really great plans for a couple of beer reviews I was going to write over the extended Memorial Day weekend.
I went down to Charlies Liquor and bought a six-pack of a couple of summer beers, Anheuser-Busch’s Beach Bum Blonde and Boulevard’s Lunar Ale. Those two, plus a bottle or two of some imports that were previously stashed at the in-laws’ house in Spirit Lake would make for pretty decent reviews.
Well, I did have the best of intentions. I was even planning on jotting down tasting notes in my reporter’s notebook with my trusty freebie Nikon pen.
My in-laws, wife, her friends from Brandon, South Dakota, and myself were on the deck waiting for the hoist guy to pluck the boat hoist from the shore and into East Lake Okoboji when we decided it was two o’clock somewhere ” our official term for the day’s first cracking of the beers.
First up for me was A-B’s Beach Bum Blonde. It was a pleasant enough beer, but not especially flavorful. I’d classify this one a decent lawn-mowing beer. The label stated “all malt” which is well and good, but I really had a hard time tasting a lot of malt flavor. I assume that malt bill is pretty tame. The brew does fit the style of a summer quencher quite nicely, but don’t open it expecting to taste a lot of malty-goodness. A-B lists it at 5.4 percent alcohol by volume.
After a couple hours of catching up, out came the crackers and cheese (our official pre-dinner ritual) and I thought it a good time for the Boulevard, which had come highly recommended from a co-worker here at the Journal. Descending into the basement and to the beer fridge (which I have to keep turning temperature up on) I grabbed a bottle of Lunar.
This beer is supposed to be a darkish wheat beer. I couldn’t tell you, like the Beach Bum, I drank it right from the bottle. At the start, the beer’s flavors were pretty muted and I attribute that to being too cold right out of the fridge. Luckily, it was pretty warm outside and it got up to drinking temperature pretty quickly.
The drinking quality of this beer is fairly comparable to the Beach Bum. The main differences are that the Boulevard has a slightly higher malt profile and a bit more hoppiness in flavor. This is a wheat beer and quite honestly, I don’t generally like wheat beers. I did however, enjoy this brew ” perhaps because I hard a hard time finding the wheat flavor in it. Like the Beach Bum, this is a good weekend afternoon beer. And also like the Beach Bum, there were no “ah-ha” revelations.
My sister-in-law really likes to tease me about how long I can nurse a beer. Jenny wanted to know if I was going to write about how it took me two hours to drink my last beer. “Darn right (or something to that effect).” I shot back.
The “two-hour beer” was right before the grilling commenced and it was getting pretty darn cool outside ” in fact we all retired to the back of the house so we could catch the remaining sunlight. It almost made me feel like the guys in King of the Hill, all standing around in the alley drinking beers.
Anyway, back down to the basement refrigerator and dad-gum-it someone had turned the temperature back down. (This figures in big later).
Since it was getting chilly out I though it time for a bottle of (take a deep breath here, because it’s a long name) Schloss Eggenberg Urbock Dunkel Eisbock.
Bocks and alts are my favorite beers. The good ones pack tons of flavor and can be very challenging to drink. They are the big-rigs of the beer world - especially the ones brewed in Europe. Because of a brewing style that concentrates the beer’s flavor, ice bocks are very intense.
This beer is a big rig monster truck. Malt, malt and more malt. Very low carbonation. A hop profile that barely punches through the sweet, almost syrupy, caramel and coffee malt flavors. Alcohol (9.8%) that lets you know it’s there, but isn’t overbearing.
This beer tasted like crap out of the fridge.
But, like a good conversation on a holiday weekend, it got better every 10 minutes. And, like a good single-malt Scotch, the flavors kept evolving with each degree it warmed up. By the end, it had really opened up and blossomed.
Like a holiday weekend spent at the lakes with friends and family.
And the tasting notes I had planned on jotting down? I was just having too much fun to ruin it by doing that.
Have one for me!
-Tim Hynds

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Entry Filed under: Review