I seem to remember once having had a Leinenkugel's red something or other years ago. Nowadays, I don't tend to drink things that are reds or ambers. They've always seemed like the concessionary beer, the one you sold to yuppies who didn't get beer but wanted to be seen drinking a microbrew. I only drink them because I'm an expensive lush, but I've got an air to keep up with all the hep cats and shit.
Our local grocery store hasn't always carried the best selection of the finer beers, but over the last couple of years, we've been getting more and more choices in better beers. We stopped this afternoon to stock up on beer, and I found a few new varieties awaiting me. I don't remember the other new options, but Leinenkugel's Summer Wheat was the one that came home with me. I've read
Chris and
Don discussing the beers lately, and they've both mentioned the Leinenkugel's brewery, though looking through their archives earlier, I don't seem to find this particular beer mentioned.
I refused to drink wheat beers for a long time. Early in my beer snobbery I drank some funky German shit that honestly tasted like I was drinking an extra bready loaf of bread. That one beer made me extremely leery around any number of beers for several years. That damn beer was so much like bread that it made you want a shot of ham, cheese and mayo vodka.
Years passed before, working at the pizza place, I finally tried a locally made hefeweizen. The first one just didn't appeal to me, but over a couple of years, for various reasons, I came to drink enough that either they grew on me or I finally began to get it. I'd hate to think so many brewers would continue making a shitty beer, so the problem had to be me. This doesn't hold true with Guinness however as that's just a shitty beer. I don't know why they keep making that shit. There's more to a good beer than head dammit!
As I slowly figured out the wheat beers that were available to me, I feel I've come to be a fair judge, though I have to admit there very few in my li'l neck of the woods, so without the experience, what the fuck do I really know?
Checking the website tells me that the beer is brewed with "select wheat and pale malts, cluster hops and natural coriander." What the fuck they mean by "natural coriander" is left for you to decide. Are they suggesting that other brewers are so ill intentioned as to use synthetic coriander? And why the fuck does it taste like someone squeezed an orange into it? I don't want an orange squeezed in my beer. I'm not against it if you like it, but the one beer I can get offered with orange slices at bars is, in my opinion, better without. The orange hides the spicy notes of the beer.
But don't take tonight's rant too seriously. I certainly won't drink it all tonight, mostly because I also got a six pack of a beer I do like, a tried and true favorite. Tomorrow night will see a return to this beer I'm quite certain, and tomorrow's taste buds may get this beer.
It might be a good spring afternoon beer, one of those afternoons where it's so perfect that you don't mind scooping dog shit out of the yard. And it's really not as if I don't like the beer but that it came as such a shock, the near vibrant orangeyness of it. I was really just expecting a different beer, and it's kind of like the feeling when you try to pick up something that turns out to be heavier than you expect and instead of lifting it you fart a little bit.
