Epic Portions

Category: Beer/Drinks

  • Epic Family Beer Tasting

    I come from a small family and the family I do have is spread out around the country.  My brother in town for the Summer which represents one of the longest stretches of time my immediate family has been together in the last 6 years.  He’s heading back home to North Carolina next week so the family decided to get together over quality beer and good food.  Hardik at The Wine Seller hooked us up with some pretty fantastic beers and it was one hell of a night. 

    We tried to get a variety of different beers from a variety of places.  Not as many American micro brews as I would have liked, but we put together a pretty nice selection.  The “quality” choices included the following.

    • St. Pauli Girl
    • Fuller’s ESB
    • Founders Devil Dancer
    • Kell’s Irish Style Lager
    • Jolly Pumpkin B.S. Bam Hoppy Farmhouse Ale
    • Chimay Premiere
    • Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Brew
    • Brooklyn Local 2
    • Delirium Tremens
    • Fuller’s London Pride

    We didn’t just get good beer though.  We had to mix in some “run of the mill”, and in some cases awful, choices as well.  It was nice to be able to compare the good beers to absolute shit.  Really makes you appreciate your beer a little more.

    • Miller Genuine Draft
    • Budweiser
    • Heineken
    • Corona
    • Molson Canadian
    • Fosters

    After five hours of drinking great beer, eating good food(including my world famous queso) we met to discuss our thoughts on the beer.  My memory is a bit hazy, but random thoughts include…

    • Founders Devil Danceris the best IPA I have ever had.  Think about the most bitterness you could pack into an IPA and this is what you would get.  This isn’t just a beer, but more of an experience.  The first sip is intense but it mellows out after a while.  I would have trouble drinking more than one of these due to the intense flavor.  Incredible beer and easily the beer of the night.
    • Jolly Pumpkin’s Hoppy Farmhouse Ale is one of the most interesting beers I’ve had in a while.  Very earthy farmhouse flavor, but very drinkable.
    • I hadn’t had Delirium in a while and I’m confused as to why.  To me, the stuff is very similar to champagne.  Delicious and very carbonated.
    • Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Brewwas delicious.  If you can get your hands on some, I would highly recommend it.
    • Miller Genuine Draft is AWFUL.  Just in case you didn’t already know that.
    • While it’s not great, Budweiser resists the “complete shit” label and does an admiral job standing up to the higher quality beers.  I’m not saying Budweiser is a top choice for me, but when it comes to mass produced American beer, I feel like Budweiser is one of the better ones.

    In closing, I just want to throw this out there… When you Google “Delirium Tremens”, the following comes up from Google Health:

    Delirium tremens is a severe form of alcohol withdrawal that involves
    sudden and severe mental or neurological changes. Symptoms most
    commonly occur within 72 hours after the last drink

  • Ypsi Summer Beer Festival FTW

    Summer Beer Festival is over and before I comment on my favorites I would like to point out the awesomeness that is Ypsilanti.  Thousands upon thousands of beer drinkers, many of whom were inebriated (myself included), and the crowd was amazing.  Everyone was friendly and why not, we were drinking incredible beer.  Rain and swamp-like conditions be damned, it was one of those happy to be alive moments.

    I tasted so many beers that before I announce my favorite here are the honorable mentions:

    Copper Canyon Ginger Kids Revenge Imperial Red

    Frog Island Bengal IPA

    Big Buck Lemon Summer Ale

    Dark Horse Crooked Tree IPA

    Founders Black Biscuit

    However, my award for beer of the Festival goes to:

    Dragonmead Redwing Raspberry Wheat – Perfect for a warm summer evening, hint of raspberry that really comes alive with the finish.  For me to pick anything with the words “Red” and “Wing” in it is amazing in and of itself, as I am certainly NOT a fan of the local hockey team. However, even with that handicap Dragonmead’s Raspberry wins.  Also, Dragonmead is a really bad-ass name.

    Special award for Most Interesting Beer goes to our friends at Bastone Brewery for their Peanut Butter Ale.  Refreshing and delicious.  Seriously.

    The best tent and overall brewer award goes to Gaylord, MI’s own Big Buck Brewery.  Their Lemon Summer Ale was a revelation, damn near a winner overall.  Also, they made an ice cream stout that was unbelievably delicious.

    Kudos to the Michigan Brewers Guild for a fine event.  Let it be known to all that Michigan is the United States capital for microbrews, so says Epic Portions.  I’ll put our group up against any other state.

    Good night and good luck.

  • Epic Product Reviews: Bud Light Golden Wheat

    Your eyes are not deceiving you.  What follows is a review of Bud Light Golden Wheat.  Why, you ask?  Did I fall and hit my head?  Did I recently give up self-mutilation and feel a need to wound myself?  No to all.  We’ve seen the commercials and wondered. I have written glowingly about Budweiser American Ale, and stand by those writings.  Could Anheuser-Busch/InBev or whatever the hell they call themselves now strike gold two times?  I was curious to find out…

    Not so curious to try it before now.  If you are a price conscious beer shopper, then you may have noticed that a six pack of Bud Light Golden Wheat is priced at $7.49.  I’m not that curious, especially considering a six pack of Leiny’s Sunset Wheat is $6.99 and Bell’s Oberon is $7.99.  Anyone who would choose Golden Wheat over those two at that price is insane, stupid, or some horrifying combination of the two.  But this past weekend, it was on sale for $5.99.  Why not go for it?  I justified it by saying I could write a review; such is my love for you, dear Epic Portions readers that I was willing to not only purchase Bud Light Golden Wheat, but consume it as well, all for your knowledge and edification. 

    But is it that bad?  How low were my expectations?  If on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the beer equivalent of fermented horse urine, and 10 being the most delicious wheat beer ever (Hoegaarden), I was hoping for a 5 or 6.  Something akin to Blue Moon Light.  Not totally unrealistic considering that the aforementioned Bud American Ale is a very solid amber ale.

    Quite often the word FAIL is casually tossed around, but after trying Bud Light Golden Wheat I now believe the use of FAIL was intended specifically for this product.  It is wretched.  The bottle claims it is brewed with, “coriander and citrus peels.”  I defy anyone to tell me they can taste either in Golden Wheat.  I couldn’t taste coriander, I couldn’t taste citrus, but I could sure as hell taste Bud Light.  Even after drinking five of them, I still couldn’t taste either.  And at 4.1% alcohol, I was unable to drink myself into a state of no longer caring.  I stumbled upstairs to bed, knowing that I would awaken the next morning with a shame not felt by yours truly since I was single.  Waking up next to Golden Wheat made me feel like I needed to bathe in disinfectant.

    Surely some kind of sexually transmitted disease was passed on when these two hooked up

    On a side note, written on the bottle is the following:  “Unflitered wheat beer will settle.  Roll gently to mix.”  Not to go all beer snob on them, but do they mean DECANT?  I’m supposed to decant my bottle of Bud Light Golden Wheat?!?!  And like an idiot I did!  I spent an hour apologizing to my frosty mug for subjecting it to Golden Wheat.  Trust me, you haven’t really suffered from humiliation until a frosty mug has called you a “sorry-ass piece of shit.”  Time to take up self-mutilation, I suppose.

    Great pain and suffering can produce great art, and while I am no artist I did compose a haiku to cleanse myself of the befouling beast of Golden Wheat:

    bud light golden wheat

    a golden shower of shame

    summer beer failure