Donny lured me over to his apartment yesterday to have a taste of some highly sought after and fabled beer from the Boston Brewing Company that one of his friends brought him. It wasn’t cold and ready yet, so I’ll have to leave that for another review. Rather than wait a perfectly good Beersurfing meeting, we raided the nearby T’s Liquor Store to hold us over. Low and behold, we came across a few cans of Gubna from the Oskar Blues Brewery in Colorado.

Oskar Blues Gubna

This is the first imperial IPA that I’ve ever had out of a can, and you can definitely tell its been sitting in a can. In addition to the sticky hops flavor, it has a tin and rubbing alcohol taste to it that was quite unpleasant, at least initially. When warm, you’re left with the unmistakable taste of cannabis resin – unfortunately, once I identified  that taste, Donny and I were able to taste nothing else! The Gubna has typical imperial IPA coloring – it’s a golden orange and clear as water, with absolutely no head. It has several interesting aromas floating out of it – I distinctly smelled papaya and mango along with antiseptic and oxidized metal. The latter two really dulled the hoppy aroma that I love about imperial IPA’s, but you can’t win them all, I suppose. The texture is pretty typical of an imperial IPA – thick, sticky like sap, and smooth like butter. It’s very pleasant on the palette of a dedicated hophead.

This is a really great imperial IPA. It has a perfect blend of sugary tastes and hoppy aroma that each remind me of why I love imperial IPA’s. However, to really enjoy it, the Gubna needs to be colder than a witch’s tit – many of the flavors that make it enjoyable are only noticeable at cooler temperatures, and the burnt resin taste becomes much more apparent as it gets warmer.  The Gubna contains 10% alcohol by volume, and was sold for about $4 a can at T’s in Tempe.

I may be a day late and a buck short, but do I have a great beer for you today! Sorry for the delay in posts – I have been driving around the Tempe/Phoenix area to find a bottle of Lost Abbey’s Angel Share that isn’t a week old, because several of you informed us that this bottle, like most brandy/beer liquors, tastes much better if you let the bottle sit for about a year. I spent my time trying to find more and came up with nothing. However, my adventures did bring me to my local Whole Foods. The masses of hippies and people who don’t shower here just weird me out, but their one saving grace that I can’t take away from them is their amazing and diverse beer selection. After having the beer-and-cheese guy scrounge around in the back to no avail, I asked him what he would recommend. He hit it out the park!  For today’s review, I give you the Pauwel Kwak (or just “The Kwak”), from the Brouwerij Bosteels in Belgium..

To truly understand why this beer is so awesome, you must understand my mood – I have been drinking beers for the past two months to find one with an excellent fruity flavor, and honestly, I was drinking garbage 60% of the time. I have now found that beer. The Kwak has a slight fruity smell to it, like hops and mangos. There is some other spice that I can’t identify, but it definitely adds a nice finish to the aroma.  It is a deep amber color, slightly clouded like a hefeweizen with an amazing amount of head. This beer was made for me! The Kwak has a creamy flavor – bananas with a hint of mango – also like a hef with a more flavor to it. I think the spice is coriander, or possibly cloves, but I’m fine with leaving it mysterious. This beer rocks – it has amazing depth and a great flavor palette. It definitely tastes better when it has some head on it. Bosteels recommends that this beer be poured into a specific glass before drinking. I haven’t seen anything quite like it, but call me impressed:

Any beer that requires a wooden stand to keep it sturdy is a winner in my book. Find the glass and drink the beer – it is a treat you won’t forget. The Pauwel Kwak might have just found a spot in my regular rotation of drinking, which does not happen often for a beer reviewer that prides himself on drinking new things. I have another bottle of beer from Whole Foods that has me curious, but until my next review, I’m going to continue enjoying my Saturday before I tell you about it.

~Donny

So last week I tried an interesting beer, something I had never had before – Lost Abbey’s “The Angel’s Share”. Now this beer claims to be a beer inspired for sinners, so of course I just had to try it. I bought the 14 dollar bottle of alcohol and merrily walked out to my car to go home and enjoy the decadence of this beer from my wonderful couch. I do my normal Beersurfing routine where I pour myself a glass, smell it, take pictures, and thoroughly tease myself for the great moment of the first taste. By now you must be wondering why there are no pictures here and why I am not describing to you how The Angel’s Share tasted – that is because I don’t want you to drink it. Or even try it. I don’t want you to think at any point in time that this beer is worth trying – at 14 dollars a bottle I expected something fantastic, something life changing. It didn’t happen, so I urge you not to buy this ever. Ever. Ever! Save your money and buy some other coffee/fruit stout found at just about anywhere that doesn’t rape the taste and flavor for something else. My personal recommendation this week would be the Coconut Joe from Papago Brewery – it does with this tries to do and doesn’t completely fail at it.

For those of you who still want to know what the Angel’s Share tasted like, I will give you the review. When I poured it, it smelled fantastic, like fruitcake, with hints of alcohol, butter, nuts, cinnamon, and caramel. This smelled like pure bliss, so I took said beer and brought it to my lips for the first great taste…. and sadly, it tasted like cough syrup mixed with Wellshire original hard candies and just takes the worst aspects of both. It has the super sweetness of caramel with the astringent aftertaste of cough syrup. I tried to power my way through this glass on my own, and then tried to pawn it off on any person in the room willing to give it a go. After one sip, everyone who sampled it said they’d rather have Bud Light, then proved it by having one. So let my experience serve as an example to others – spend your $14 on something else.