Great Lakes Brewing News Archive

Beers of The Twilight Zone

Originally Published: 12/97

By Greg Kitsock

Presented for your approval...the world's strangest brews.

We're entering a world of plum barleywines. Dandelion and nettle beers. Kiwi lambics. Concoctions so outlandish that you don't mail your statement of process to the ATF, you send it to the X-Files. Brews so far over the top that if the first sip disappoints, you have to notify the EPA before pouring the rest down the drain.

Any beer containing an animal byproduct (other than honey or isinglass) makes our short list. Several years ago, the Brickskeller Restaurant in Washington, DC created its own oyster stout by blending an imperial stout from Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland with pureed bivalve. "Interesting" was the general reaction. More recently, the Creston Brewing Company in Creston, CA released its new label Aphrodite's Tantrik...a spice amber ale incorporating bee pollen and royal jelly among its 22 herbs and spices.

Want to hear something that'll take your breath away? At least three American commercial breweries have dabbled with a garlic beer.

According of the Guinness Book of World Records, the world's strongest commercial beer is not Sam Adams Triple Bock, but an English beer called Baz's Special Brew which measures 23% alcohol by volume. Question: Do you drink it or rub it on your chest?

For the connoisseur of bizarro beers, the Great American Beer Festival is the perfect hunting ground. The 1996 festival brought us Boston Beer Company's Cock Ale, based on actual 16th and 17th century recipes that call for tossing a rooster into the kettle. Brewer Dave Grinnell obtained two small male birds, plucked, gutted and boiled them, then gave them a massage with 11 herbs and spices. The oven stuffers were tied up in a cloth sack filled with dates and currants, then steeped in the brew‹a brown ale‹as it flowed through the hop percolator. The bird beer was a special issue to mark the 50th anniversary of a company investor; there never were any plans for a commercial version. As one brewery spokesperson said, "I don't think there's much market for a meat beer."

Not surprisingly, nothing at the 1997 GABF topped Jim Koch's bird beer. Not that there weren't some genuine oddities. After all, it's not every day that you get to try a watermelon beer. When I asked brewer Daniel Weidman of the Weidman's Brewery in Fort Smith, Arkansas how he makes his H2O Melon Ale, he answered, "First, we have Bill and Hillary come down and pick the melons...." But seriously, folks: "We saw the popularity of fruit beers, and we didn't see a watermelon beer out there." An all-natural fruit flavoring, obtained from a Canadian company, is added to this low-hopped, golden ale during the secondary fermentation.

Hell for Certain, a Wallonian-style ale from the Bluegrass Brewing Company in Louisville, KY, has an unusual combination of condiments (coriander, orange peel and black pepper) and a distinctive name to boot. However, an unusual brand name doesn't necessarily signify an unusual beer. When I saw a Live Oak Pilz listed in the GABF program, I made a beeline to the Live Oak Brewing Company's table. "Pilz" (as opposed to pils) means mushroom in German. Could this Austin, Texas-based microbrewery really be flavoring its beer with an edible ground fungus? In fact, Live Oak Pilz is a perfectly quaffable lager, but contains nothing that would make Wilhelm IV, the Bavarian monarch who decreed the Reinheitsgebot, turn somersaults in his grave. The marketing department must have come down with an acute case of Zima-itis.

Sometimes, it's the larger breweries that are pushing the envelope...particularly the second-tier operations a few rungs below Bud and Miller who are desperate to plug into the latest fad. Pearl Brewing Company in San Antonio, Texas (a subsidiary of Pabst) was exhibiting its Special 800 Reserve Pineapple-Coconut, described as a "tropical fruit drink of natural fruit juices and a hint of vanilla." The effect was supposed to be that of a malt-based pina colada, but it struck me as tasting like the white lozenges in a roll of mixed fruit Lifesavers...the ones whose fruit affiliation no one has ever been able to identify.

The Pink Champale Award for the least appetizing alco-pop goes to Special Brew from the St. Ides Brewing Company. This "refreshing alternative to beer, malt liquors and coolers" was a flaming crimson hue (the color of arterial blood) and tasted exactly like Hawaiian Punch, if not more so. The beer of choice for underage drinkers to carry around in milkshake cups. The St. Ides people also had an azure blue version of Special Brew which had run out by the time I visited their table. The two versions combined to form some interesting shades of purple in the table's technicolor dump bucket.

Still another offbeat brew was noteworthy not for the inclusion of an unusual ingredient but for the absence of a traditional one. It was available on the mezzanine level of Currigan Hall, at the Anheuser-Busch educational booth. Through a variety of specially prepared specimens, brewers from A-B's Specialty Group were demonstrating the relative contributions of malt, hops and yeast to a beer's flavor profile. Among the samples available was a completely unhopped version of Budweiser.

Bud with no hops...think about it. It has a freak-show quality to it, like those roadside carnivals where you pay a dollar to see attractions like the goat-faced boy and the two-headed kitten in a jar of formaldehyde. (Some wiseacres will suggest that hops are already a distant memory as far as Budweiser is concerned. If you think so, taste-test Bud against Miller High Life...a brand whose flavor has come to resemble cheap perfume.)

The hopless Budweiser had a sweet, grainy, pablum-like taste, similar to a watered-down version of malta. It struck me while I was drinking it that this was the perfect liquid for the lactose-intolerant to pour on their Lucky Charms. (A pity that A-B didn't also bring along some Tequiza, a new tequila-and-lime flavored brew that it's reportedly test-marketing in southern California.)

How much stranger can we get? A bit more, I think. A brewer acquaintance who attended the the World Beverage Forum in Munich reported that the Japanese have formulated a horseradish beer...presumably the perfect accompaniment to sushi. And in the summer 1997 issue of Rogue Ales newsletter, we read about another Japanese product called Suiso...a hydrogen beer. "Chic urbanites are able to sing soprano parts at karaoke after consuming a big gulp of Suiso. The flammable nature of the hydrogen has also spawned a new fashion of blowing flames from one's mouth using a cigarette as an ignition source."

Even the wine business, normally so staid and snobbish, is taking a walk on the wild side. The syndicated News of the Weird column informs us that "in June, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario cleared local shelves of a smuggled Chinese wine that purportedly enhances the libido. Three-Penis Wine (deer, dolphin and dog) has such foul ingredients that authorities wouldn't even dump it in the sewers."

Now that is a yardstick for weird.