SKA True Blonde Ale

Brewed By: SKA Brewing in Durango, Colorado

Purchased: Single CAN (12oz) from SKA mix pack bought at Binny's in IL; 2011

Style/ABV: Golden Ale/Blonde Ale, 5.3%

This is ska.

Music was my first love, way before beer or any other personal interests in-between. It turns out that I did go through a ska phase, and occasionally relapse into old Bad Manners, Skankin' Pickle, and Mustard Plug albums. Most third wave ska is pretty bland, and you might have trouble telling some bands apart, but I was always a big fan of Hot Stove Jimmy, the Blue Meanies, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Streetlight Manifesto, and the Voodoo Glow Skulls. At this point I'm just throwing out band names to wax nostalgia and show off my knowledge of ska, so I'll stop.

SKA Brewing are all about the ska, from the design of their website to the Toasters' songs playing in the background on the homepage. In fact, they even released a special Toasters 30th Anniversary IPA. The website is pretty bitchin'...and while I usually get annoyed by websites that have music playing in the background, the site is playing music by the Toasters. The freaking Toasters, yo. It's such a feel-good nostalgia trip it is hard to hate. Flipping through the cool comic animations on SKA Brewing's website will give you a lot of cool brewery information (like that it was founded in 1995) as well as information on their beer.

Can-Can. Yes I can. Can.

 

Tonight's beer is not the first SKA beer I have tried. My first experience with SKA was back over winter when I had SKA's Euphoria. The Euphoria was a skankin' good beer. Actually, I had it during a snowy period and I would say it was the perfect winter Pale Ale. It was full of fresh pine notes and would be the appropriate vessel to accompany me down a mountain while snowboarding. Of course I don't snowboard, and have zero coordination, so I'll just live vicariously through the beer.

 

The gimmick here is that the Euphoria and today's beer, the True Blonde Ale, come from a can. I'm pretty sure that SKA has or does release these beers in bottle form, but I have mostly seen SKA beer distributed via can in the northern Midwest. That's cool though, because cans are awesome. Craft beer and canned beer don't really go hand-in-hand, and you usually find cheap stuff like Miller High Life donning a can. But canned beer has some clear advantages over bottled beer. For starters, canned beer is shielded from light better than any bottle. Second, the can is smaller and more compact than a bottle, doesn't break, and seems easier to transport. You also don't need a bottle opener to open a can. 

So why don't more breweries put their beer in a can? My guess (and I honestly don't know) is that canning beer requires more work than putting it in a bottle. I assume that at the end of the day can production costs more, or is harder to implement. At any rate, let's roll forward with this ska party. While you can drink straight from the can, I still like to give my beer a proper pour. This beer pours alright, and kind of resembles a lager. That makes sense, since American Blonde Ales are kind of like the American craft scene's take on the German Kölsch. The beer pours with a really nice golden color. This beer is filtered, completely transparent, and full of bubbly carbonation. There was a 2-finger head immediately following the pour, but it has winded down to a nice 1-centimeter covering. The head is white in color, and isn't very thick or creamy. It has the consistency of the dish soap bubbles and is kind of thin and web-like.

Don't let the bastard grind you down.

So how does it smell? There honestly isn't a ton of aromatics. The first thing I pick up is a bit of can...I know, I know...you shouldn't be able to smell the can, and maybe it is strictly the placebo effect. The only way to know for sure would be to do a blind testing comparison with can vs. bottle. The thing is, I have smelled hundreds of beers (creepy, I know), so I would hope I could determine if something came from a bottle or can. I pick up some light grain or corn on the nose, a light amount of caramel, and maybe some apple or pear.

The taste is fairly underwhelming, with a lot of grain and malt supporting this beer. It's quite creamy and feels really smooth in the mouth, which may or may not be a good thing. It kind of reminds me of a light lager or a cream ale. Some of the apple and pear comes through in the taste, but it is mostly a grainy affair with a slightly astringent biting character that is dominating the finish; it's sort of spicy and reminds me a bit of that ginger-spice character in some lagers. The malt part of the backbone is caramel, sweet, sugary, maybe honey.

This is a light beer that is a step above a lot of adjunct lagers. You could probably recommend this to your IPA-hating friend. It doesn't have any complexity, but the smooth and creamy mouthfeel helps this beer extend to medium depths on your palate. This would be a lot more fun to drink if there wasn't that biting finishing note. The front end is carbonation and grain; the middle is grain and malt; the back end is malt, grain, and that slightly astringent ginger-spice note. It finishes kind of spicy and sharp on the back end. Although the overall profile is a bit watery and thin, the other stuff kind of works.

Rating: Below-Average

Score: 30%

 

This is not the ska party advertised on the can. As I just finished off this glass of beer, I have decided that the astringent ginger-spice note is actually Windex. Yes, I think I got a note of Windex. Now, I like science, so I'll acknowledge the variables. Maybe this beer was engineered to be consumed out of a can and I unfairly shafted this beer by pouring it into a glass. Perhaps my expectations are too high, after all this is a beer in a can. 

But I'll call bullshit. SKA's Euphoria and Modus Hoperandi are both really good: and they come from a can. This beer just misses the mark for me. It has some funky astringency, it doesn't have an aromatic nose, it is grainy and not in a good way, and it just doesn't stack up well compared to other Golden Ales. It's kind of an underwhelming experience, and I would not buy this beer again.

 

To conclude: if you see a 6-pack of SKA's True Blonde, you may want to consider an alternate Blonde Ale. If you are hesitant to try the SKA mix pack because this beer is in it, buy the mix pack anyway. SKA's Modus Hoperandi is delicious and their ESB Ale isn't that bad either. 

Skip this one, and go have yourself a beer.

Big Sky Moose Drool Brown Ale

Brewed By: Big Sky Brewing Company in Missoula, Montana

Purchased: Single bottle (12oz) from Friar Tuck's in Urbana, IL; 2011

Style/ABV: American Brown Ale, 5.1%

Big Sky Brewing's website reinforces the vibe I get from the bottle. What vibe am I getting? The vibe of fishing on a lake out in north Wisconsin or going camping in the middle of nowhere. This rounds up the last of the beers my girlfriend brought me, an American Brown Ale out of Montana.  

Big Sky Brewing is the largest brewery in Montana, and distributes beer to 23 states. They produce 33,000 barrels annually, and have been around since 1995. The brewery brews six beers in total, including this Brown Ale. Info on the Moose Drool can be found here: the beer is brewed with pale, caramel, chocolate, and whole black malts, and also uses a handful of hops. This should be a largely malt-forward affair with some hops to balance things out. The presence of hops is seemingly more unique to American Brown Ales, hence why this is classified as such.

Moose Drool. Yum?

This pours pretty legit with a decent creamy, tan-colored head. The head is creamy and sustaining, so while it was only about a finger's worth at pour, it is getting the job done. This is a dark but filtered beer. When held against a bright light it takes on a reddish-brown color. In lower light it is more dark brown or dark dark purple, but it isn't black. Aside from looking pretty good, this beer smells quite nice. There's a lot of malt profiles on the nose, but there is also some hoppy notes which is nice. I'm picking up on toast, some roasty notes, molasses, and maybe some grass or earthy note from the hops. 

In regard to taste, there's a really earthy note in here that balances well with the toasted note. I think it's the hops playing off the malts and it's pretty good. There's a good amount of caramel in the body, and maybe some pulls towards chocolate but nothing overpowering or immediate. There's maybe a touch of fruit: berries maybe, or subdued citrus? But it's hard to put a finger on. Overall this is pretty well-balanced, and has okay hop components complimenting the malt-based body. 

This isn't very complex, but it is light-medium and easy drinking. I would say this is fairly sweet and caramel-forward with some nice hints towards toast, roast, and an earthy and fruity hop component. The front end is carbonation and sweet caramel, which rolls into some of those hops and more malt in the middle, and finishes nicely with a malty drop-off. At 5.1% ABV this is easy drinking, and this beer is widely available across 23 states in the nation. Not a bad deal, right?

Would I go fishing with this beer? Absolutely. Would I take it camping? Heck yeah. I can't say this is my favorite brown ale though, but it is pretty good nonetheless. I can recommend it, but I don't love it.

Rating: Average

Score: 73%

Lindemans Pomme (Apple)

Brewed By: Brouwerij Lindemans in St Pieters Leeuw-Vlezenbeek, Belgium

Purchased: Single bottle (12oz) out of variety pack from Binny's in IL; 2011

Style/ABV: Lambic - Fruit, 3.5%

I feel like I did a pretty good job breaking down Fruit Lambics and Lindemans in my review of the Lindemans Framboise, so check that out. This is the other beer from the Lindemans variety pack, the Lindemans Pomme. Pomme means apple, and this is a non-traditional fruit flavor now being incorporated into Lindemans' Lambic lineup. This is relatively new (within the past few years) and has received a fairly lukewarm reception by beer reviewers. I have already tried this beer, but I'll ignore any previous notions.

Just like with the Framboise, this is as effervescent as they come. There are hundreds of bubbles rising upwards, supporting the white fluffy head. The head is holding at about a fingers-width, but it poured with 2-fingers worth. I suspect the flute glass exaggerates the size of the head a bit. The head is made up of tightly packed bubbles, and looks good. The body is transparent to the point where I can read the words on my computer screen through the glass. The color of this beer is a nice golden-yellow color: it looks like a pilsner or pale lager.

The aroma here is big on the apples, but there are subtle pulls towards a yeast-funk-barnyard note. The apple is sweet and slightly sour, and reminds me of apple candy. Apple jolly ranchers come to mind.

The first sip makes me immediately think of apple juice and apple cider, but then the slight sour note bites in the back end and I think of sour apples. This is largely an apple juice affair, with carbonated apples all over the place. There is a pull towards sourness here and there, which is where the sour apple note comes from. This is slightly tart, but sweet and sugary. Did someone melt sour apple candy in here?

The front end is carbonation and apple, the middles gives way to more apples and maybe a touch of barnyard funk and yeast, and the back end rounds out with a hint of tartness. This is a light-medium beer with very little in the way of complexity. This beer has as much depth as an apple (literally) but at least finishes slightly dry and has some nice effervescent qualities.
 

Rating: Average

Score: 51%

 
Unlike the Framboise which had a solid Lambic backdrop and decent complexity as far as the raspberry was concerned, the Pomme is pretty much apples, apple juice, apple candy, and just a hint of sour apple. So we have ourselves a good ol' dilemma here.

You see, this beer advertises itself as a "Lambic" beer. But I'm not getting a whole lot on the Lambic front. I'm hard pressed to even qualify this as a beer when it almost reminds me of an apple soda or apple malt beverage. 

If this was an "apple drink" then hell yes: I would say this beer rocks the house. If you are looking for over-the-top apples then this beer will rock your cock. If you are looking for a complex apple Lambic...

This is at the bottom-end of Average. I almost rated this Below-Average but there are enough pulls towards a sour note and something funky and yeasty that you are left with the impression that there is a Lambic here, somewhere. Having said that, I would not reach for this beer if I was looking for a Lambic or a Fruit Lambic. HOWEVER, if I wanted something that was all apples or over-the-top apples: I might grab this beer. This reminds me quite a bit of a cider, and might stack up favorably against other ciders. You might be able to pair this beer with an apple dessert or something like cheese. But again, I have to imagine there are better examples of Lambics with apples out there.

Oh, and again I was left with nice lacing on my glass. That's 2 for 2 with Lindemans. I guess I'll keep a running count now.