It's only been a couple months since the semester started, but I must profess, I'm already counting down the days until the first snowfall. I've always thought that winter is the best time of year to be at Bowdoin and I've found that our first big snowstorm usually closely tails Thanksgiving Break.
Though not everyone at Bowdoin returns home for Thanksgiving—something to keep in mind before gleefully telling the world that you just bought your plane ticket—those who do will probably meet up with high school friends for holiday festivities before returning to the stressful and hellish weeks of the end of the semester.
When the time comes for you to buy beer for a get-together in your home state, my advice in previous columns about local brews will do many of you no good. The beers I have recommended won't be in the cooler at your local gas station and, if you don't know any better, you could make a disastrous choice.
Sure, you could always grab a 30 of Keystone, but I'd hope that you'd want to pretend Bowdoin students are a little classier than that, if for no reason other than to fool your friends who go to big schools and who will no doubt try to steal the show with stories about weekend tailgates and massive frat parties.
This week's column focuses on beverages that, aside from being called beer and sold in a bottle, bear little resemblance to the carefully crafted microbrews I usually review. All I can promise of the following drinks is that you will find them in almost any gas station, and that showing up with one at a hometown reunion will make you seem more sophisticated—or maybe just more pretentious—than the guy or gal who brought Natty Ice.
Blue Moon (5.4 percent alcohol by volume) is a wheat ale, surreptitiously brewed by Coors, who expends considerable effort to conceal this fact, even going so far as to list Blue Moon Brewing Company on the bottle. Coors promotes Blue Moon as a "Belgian-style White," in an attempt to capitalize on the favorable public opinion of Belgian wheat beers. The beer is partially unfiltered and pours a cloudy light orange with a large head that subsides fairly quickly. The taste is typical of light beers—not at all hoppy or malty, and neither bitter nor sweet. Blue Moon has no lingering aftertaste, though it does have a bit of citrus and spice flavor. This flavor, however, does not taste as though it comes from the natural brewing process; rather, my fellow tasters and I agreed that Coors brewed a generic light wheat beer and then injected a syrupy flavor prior to bottling. The citrus and spice taste artificial and become overwhelming as you continue drinking, so I cannot recommend this beer.
Heineken (5 percent) is a pale lager from the Netherlands, brewed with barley and hops. It pours a very clear, pale golden color with a quickly rising head that immediately disappears. Of all the beers in this article, it had the least flavor. In fact, it washed down so quickly that we could only detect a hint of hops and nothing else. Perhaps the most defining feature was the lingering bitter aftertaste that left our reviewers begging to move on to the next beer.
On the plus side, our resident light beer aficionado—who has been known to drink two-week-old keg beer—said he preferred Heineken to most cheap beers because it has less carbonation to interfere with his chugging. Take that for what it's worth. I cannot say this is a good beer, but if I was in a pinch for a pizza accompaniment, I'd grab a Heineken from my neighbor's fridge.
Stella Artois (5 percent) is a lager from Belgium, brewed with barley and corn. The pour was light gold, slightly more opaque than the Heineken, with a small head that lingered. There are few words that describe the absolutely putrid smell emanating from our glasses after the pour.
I believe skunked is the most appropriate term, but "horse piss" was bandied about consistently. I had purchased the beer less than a week prior, and the expiration date on the bottle was May 2012, so there was no excuse for the rancid stench. When I braved a sip, I could detect a more complex flavor and fuller mouth feel than the rest of the beers, but I was nonetheless quickly overwhelmed by the malodor and refused to drink any more. While I can say that I have had a good Stella in the past, this experience abolished any intentions I had of purchasing it again in the future.
Corona Extra (4.6 percent) is a lager from Mexico with a yellow color and almost no head. I fundamentally reject the notion that a beer should require an accompaniment in order to be drinkable, but to ward off the critics, I bought a few limes. The clear color of the bottle all but guarantees the UV-light damage that leads to skunking, and unsurprisingly, the aroma was that of road kill...with lime! Still, it smelled a bit better than the Stella, so I gave it a few quaffs and was unsurprised to discover a caustic, bitter bite with overt tones of spoiled produce. And, of course, lime. The mouth feel was like water, but the acrid aftertaste lingered. My advice: Buy Corona if you're beguiled by their advertising. Otherwise, invest in a bottle of tequila to go with your limes.
Amstel Light (3.5 percent) is a lager from the Netherlands that pours a golden color with a small, quickly fading head. It smells miles better than the competition, with the possible exception of Blue Moon that smells generically spicy, but not much like beer. The best thing that can be said for this beer is that it tastes like absolutely nothing specific, and, unlike the Heineken, it has no aftertaste. It has a very mild, generic beer taste, but Amstel Light is, in all senses of the word, entirely inoffensive. It's not good beer, but it's not bad beer either.
If you are looking for a beer that you can knock back and pretend is a cut above the 30s, Amstel Light is the choice for you, unless you are turned off by the relatively low alcohol percentage. If that is the case, I am forced to recommend Heineken, but please, do yourself a favor and have something handy to cut the bitterness until you can get over to a proper beer store.