New Belgian Brewery's Fat Tire Ale

If you are anything like me you don't do anything until you've evaluated how cool it will make me and this rarely ever backfires. When I saw the Fat Tire Winter Sampler at the store (for $15) I thought to myself, "How the heck cool will this make me?"

After some lightning quick thinking I realized it would make me pretty cool and, heck, I like beer so how the heck could it be a bad deal? Beer does the wasted, and I LOVE that. When I'm wasted I get my super powers, where I think I have the strength of two men, and think I have the power that women can't hear me, especially when I'm callin' em skanks and broads or something. So, yeah, this beers cool so run out and get some. Here's the review!

This is Fat Tire and I'm sure as south will rise again that you've seen it in the stores, and hell, you probably had it before too BUT for everyone that seen it and convinced themselves that this beer isn't for them, well hey, this is for you!

So yeah, its got a scent. It's like a walnut dropped in hot caramel and if you never smelled that before that you're a straight up, flat out jabroni. And it's pretty dark for an ale but who cares? Because it tastes good. It's got a crisp, malty taste with a touch of nutty smoothness. You can get a hint of the hops (IBU of 18.5) but it's not over bearing. It also sorta tastes like peas; I dunno how it just DOES! They use Wilmette, Golding and Target hops and I'd be lying if I said I didn't target hops when I played basketball. They use Pale, Munich and Victory malts and I'll tell you what, these guys use more malts than a lot of breweries which gives each of their beers a distinct taste, unlike a previous Shiner Bock review we did in 1988.

So now your thinking, okay, I'm a master of Fat Tire now, tell me what to do next. Well listen turkey, this thing has an ABV of 5.2% which is a mouse pube away from Bud's 5.0%. So is it gonna royally mess you up? Sure, but not until you slam half a dozen in a church parking lot. I mean it's $15 a 12-pack so it's not the greatest show on turf, but it ain't the worst. If you roll up Big Willie style to a rager with a twelver of this under each arm all the fine ladies are gonna be like "OHH!!! OMG ROTFL XOXO!" and you're going to be all, "WHATTTTT?!???" Solid.


Other New Belgium Reviews:
Ranger IPA
Winter Ale
Belgian Ale
Pale Lager



Drinkability: 6/10
Taste: 6/10
Value: 4/10
Curb Appeal: 6/10

Overall: 5.5/10

Rogue Santa's Private Reserve Ale

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for a Stinky mouse, who was getting drunk on egg nog and miller high lifes. If the Stinky mouse had any sense in him though he would have been getting snookered on Rogue's Santa's Private Reserve Ale, a most wonderful beer indeed.

Somehow I don't think we have ever reviewed Rogue beers on this blog, but since the stupid search bar doesn't flippin' work, I can't find out (you think I am going to go through all 160 posts to find out? Pfffft). For the uninitiated, Rogue Ales is brewed in Newport, OR, a lovely small town on the coast of Oregon. All kidding aside, the Oregon coast is the awesomest place in America, even more so than Flagstaff, AZ. Definitely go there if you get the chance (the OR coast, not Flagstaff). Rogue has a nice little restaurant that goes along with their brewery, where they serve a mean adult mac n cheese (the macaronis are shaped like dongs). Rogue brews about a jillion beers, many of which can only be found at the brewery itself. 

The Santa's Private Reserve Ale is a copper colored red ale that is similar to their Saint Rogue Red, but the Santa has double the hops, just the way I like it. This beer is excellent, as it has a nice malty and somewhat bitter taste, but its not overwhelming despite the 2x hops. If you like a mild bitterness to your beers, you'll like this one. This is just a great tasting beer, one that you can knock back easily, and get nicely blitzed with its 6.00% ABV. I bet you could have a 12 pack on Christmas Eve and pass out with no problem, then forget to put the presents under the tree and your kids are forever destroyed the next morning. I got a six pack of this at the incredible low price of $6.99 (regular price of $12.99). They were practically giving it away! To make a great situation even better, the heavily bearded hipster working the coffee section at the co-op told me I made a great choice upon buying the Santa's Ale. Compliments and a sale, oh boy!

Hopefully you were a good boy or girl this year, as you'd be grateful to find a sixer of Santa's Private Reserve Ale in your stocking. Unless you'd rather have coal that is, then you're screwed.

Drinkability: 6/10

Taste: 7/10

Value: 8/10

Curb Appeal: 9/10

Overall: 7.5/10

Boon Rawd Brewery – Singha

Singha is coined as the “Original Thai Beer”, it must have been back when they didn’t know much about making beer, and for their sake I hope they haven’t improved the recipe, because it still tastes like shit. But that’s not far from other Asian beers I’ve had. They all seem very medicinal, it’s almost as if people in Asia don’t wanna be drunk. With all the over population of there, I feel id have to be drunk most of the time just to deal with the congestion.

Boon Rawd Brewery was started specifically because the owner realized there weren’t many beers made in Asia, and thought he could profit from it.

They call this a pale lager, it has a nice think frothy head and smells crispy. When you taste it you say to yourself, “Wow, this beer is skunked”, but that’s actually how it’s suppose to taste. I’m guessing the fermented taste is a cultural delicacy. I watch a lot of Bizarre foods with Andrew Zimmern, and all the stuff he eats in Asia consists of fermented fish or bean paste, so fear factor should consider expanding outside the US., Joe Rogan would be a hit out there.

The beer cost me about 4 bucks, ABV is listed at 5%, has a light malt, a sour grassy taste, and a very dry finish. It’s probably not the worst lager out there, but it’s pretty bad.

Drinkability: 4/10
Taste: 3/10
Value: 4/10
Curb Appeal: 4/10

Overall: 3.75/10

Peak Organic Brewing Company Winter Session Ale

Strap your boots on and don't get your tongue stuck to a pole, you goober, and get ready to hit the slopes with this review of Peak Organic Brewing Company's Winter Session Ale.

I've reviewed a ton of Peak beers on this blog before (like at least 6 of 'em), so you might be thinking that Peak beers are fucked out by now (like tucking your pants into your shoes). Well, they're not. They're all pretty GD (that's the religiously-correct way of saying "goddamn") good, and the Winter Session Ale is no exception. The Winter Session Ale is classified as a "American Dark Wheat Ale" and its so GD dark because Peak uses a lot of dark malt. They also use Citra hops from their friend Brad's farm. That must be cool to have a friend like Brad. You just call him up and say "heyy Brad, we're gonna make some winter beer today, can we stop over on the way back from the Piggly Wiggly and pick up some hops? When it's done you can come over and get drunk with us and compare penis sizes."

I was surprised at how much of a pungent, strong taste this beer had on first imbib-ation. The phrase "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" is popular this time of year, and that's what I thought of when I first tasted this. Roasted nuts. It didn't taste nutty at all like, but it had this roasted, malty quality to it. And it was quite delicious! I simply had to have a few more. It was easy to drink, and despite the strong taste, it is only 5% ABV. But it's a great beer to knock back a few while sitting in front of a fire watching the Jim Carrey version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I got a six-pack of this on sale for $7.99, normally priced at $8.99 (I saved 100 pennies!!!!).

This beer will only be on sale a short time, as winter doesn't last forever, unless you live at the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. I doubt they sell it down there too, so you're gonna be stuck there being cold and sober. How boring!

Drinkability: 7/10

Taste: 7/10

Value: 7/10

Curb Appeal: 7/10

Overall: 7/10

New Belgian Brewery's Snow Day Winter Ale

There's nothing in the winter like a crisp delicious beer while bitchin' about the bastard weather outside. I'm one of the people out there who's happier when they are miserable. I like to complain; babes say its totally attractive.

But I can't complain about this beer. I mean, man, it's simply delicious. I mean most winter ales are. We originally covered New Belgian here in the review of their Belgian Ale; so if you wanna know more about 'em, just click the link, you ding-a-ling! Imagine your tailgating on the east coast and it's colder than piss out. You've been drinking since 7:00am and you piss on a tree and you literally piss so much that it warms the air in front of you, and you never wanna quit peeing. You know that? Then you walk back to the grill to warm up and you grab a beer and the taste just...makes you warm. Rich, deep bodied, and tasty enough that, in this weather, you could drink it warm. And after a dozen or two you puke on that same tree you pissed on earlier and it doesn't leave such a bad taste in your mouth.

This stuff is real crisp, it'll stimulate your bitter tastes buds on the sides of your mouth a little, but it doesn't have a bitter, annoying aftertaste or a gross, hoppy sensation on your tongue. There's a dry, chocolate taste mixed with a little caramel. It's a touch nutty with a little hoppy tang you might expect from a pale ale. It's real tasty though. It's aroma is a smoky, caramel odor and it's dark in color with a tan head.

They use wheat malts on this baby and Centennial, Styrian Goldings and Cascade hops. This along with the wheat malts we talked about blended with some pale malt and something called C-80 malts, which I think is the same thing Luke Skywalker ordered at the space station where they met Han Solo.

She's got an ABV of 6.2% which is a little lower than I would have guessed. It's got an IBU of 55, so it'll rank around the hoppiness of a Pale Ale. The label is okay. I would have done of a "Bear in the Chair" approach, but that's me. New Belgian is a well respected name in the beer game, so everyone will respect if you roll deep with a case of this. A 12-pack will run you $15.

Other New Belgium Reviews:
Ranger IPA
Fat Tire
Belgian Ale
Pale Lager

Drinkability: 6/10

Taste: 8/10

Value: 4/10
Curb Appeal: 6/10

Overall: 6.0/10

New Belgium Brewery's Ranger IPA

This beer should be enjoyed in nature, outside in the woods, preferably in the cold and with moose all around. It should only be drank by men with beards, flannel shirts, and in the possession of big blue oxen. This is an outdoors-man's beer. It's called f'in RANGER for cripes sakes.

Brewed by New Belgium, famous for their Fat Tire Amber Ale (and also their Trippel, reviewed here), the Ranger IPA packs a punch that would make Joe Frazier proud. At 6.5% ABV, it'll get you nice and drunk, if you can handle more than a couple that is - the flavor on these babies is astoundingly delicious, but heavy as a ton of feathers, so it's better for sipping than bonging. As with most IPAs, the Ranger tastes of citrus and flowers and bitterness, which is all wrapped together in a wonderful taste-gasm. It truly is a very tasty and delicious beer. I got a 12 pack of this for $15, which is much cheaper than a 12 pack of snow tires. According to the New Belgium website, one 12oz serving of Ranger gives ya 185 calories, not that you should care. If you are thinking about calories while drinking beer, go get your head checked out. Or maybe you are just a drunkorexic. Either way, you need help. Or more beer. Or both. Sigh.

Give the Ranger IPA a shot, and I betcha you love it if you are an IPA fan. And if you don't like it, you'll have to answer to the most bad-ass Ranger out there. Sucks to me you, dead guy!

Other New Belgium Reviews:

Fat Tire

Winter Ale

Belgian Ale

Pale Lager

Drinkability: 6/10

Taste: 8/10

Value: 6/10

Curb Appeal: 7/10

Overall: 6.75 /10

New Belgian Brewery's Trippel Belgian Ale

Hi pals. New Belgian Brewery is in Colorado, Fort Collins in fact. Their flagship is the Fat Tire but they have tons of beers, like over 10 on a semi-regular basis and a handful of experiments that they conjure up. The started it around 1989 and began mass producing two years later. So the rest is history.

This beer is their Trippel, the Belgian one. It's pretty tame at 25 IBUs and will knock you on your lilly with an ABV of 7.8%. Most Belgians beers are pretty tough, which is why I usually end up wandering around the streets of Sharpsville after a few. The use Saaz, Target and Liberty hops and Victory, Munich and Pale malts. And they toss in some coriander in there. I don't like the taste of coriander but I like the name. It's like the spice's accordion. The taste is a sour, Belgian style. Hints of coriander and a dry finish. It's fragrance is a bitter mistress. Belgians always remind me barleywines, or if you put a beer and white wine in the same glass, it probably has the same strength! It's crystal clear with minimal, white head.

I got this guy as part of a sampler. They had 12 beers for $15 which isn't as bad as a kick to the balls, or slap to the breasts if you're a babe. But I'd shovel these to other people at a get-together and leave more room for other stuff. It's not bad for a Belgian but I don't like Belgians. Not many other big name breweries have Belgians on their regular roster, so it is a bit of a treat, I guess.


Other New Belgium Reviews:
Ranger IPA
Fat Tire
Winter Ale
Pale Lager

Drinkability: 4/10

Taste: 5/10
Value: 4/10
Curb Appeal: 6/10
Overall: 4.75/10