In the Busch with A.B.’s specialty beers

The last time I was inside a fancy hotel on the Sunset Strip was the birthday celebration of a wealthy, hedonistic Dallasite. We chugged PBR, snorted cocaine off a toilet seat with the stars of Jackass, and tried to communicate to the glass box girl in the lobby using Morse code.
Tonight, my lady and I were on the list for a different kind of keg party. Ascending to the top of the Mondrian Hotel in a wood paneled elevator, we giggled in wonder while staring at a video loop of tropical fronds swaying in the wind. Tonight we had a date with A.B. (not the prison gang, but Anheuser Busch) and their new line of specialty brews.
We were received with tall glasses of Hefeweizen and encouraged to mingle.
I had been eying the row of five bottles set at each place, and thankfully noted different kinds of glassware for each brew. We slugged down the Hefe and seated ourselves at the lavishly decorated table as we were introduced to our tour guides for the evening: George Reisch, a fifth generation brewer, and Jacques Haeringer, an Alsatian-American chef from the East Coast.
I was shocked when I was served Michelob Light out of a champagne flute.
Jacques, who started calling himself Jack after the whole freedom fries thing (and not for the right reasons), had paired Micky-Lite with a triple cream style cheese made in Mendocino county. Triple creams are sinfully supple. They should be oozing from their delicate rinds of white bloomy mould, which taste blissfully like mushrooms, nether-regions and butter. But the cheese from Cowgirl Creamery was sadly weak in the flavor zone and way too firm. And despite the various stages of swishing and twirling that George, the brew master, demonstrated to fully enjoy his product, the citrus notes that were supposed to play in my mouth were missing. If you closed your eyes it tasted just like a Velveeta quesadilla after a beer bong.
Our next beer was from a Chinese brewery owned by Busch called Harbin. It came in a green bottle, wrapped with a decorative, see-through, rice-paper bag, and was served in a small tumbler. Our beer guide explained that the large bottle and small glass implied a sort of family-style boozing. All I could think was how much it reminded me of another beer that came in a green bottle whose name starts with an ‘H.’ It was paired with a mixed milk (sheep and cow’s) Camembert from New York. Most Camembert is made exclusively with cow’s milk and is accompanied by a bit more flavor than your typical soft ripened cheese. This was a good match of curd and brew. The light hops met the texture of the cheese nicely. The rapid and vigorous bubbles scrubbed the salty lactose ooze off of my tongue, sending a harmonious river of flavor magma down my gullet.
It’s important to note that I don’t like lagers–I find them bland. I’m a strict convert to the American craft beer: very alcoholic, very hoppy, and made in much smaller batches than anything that Anheuser Bush (or its subsidiaries) brews. The reality of the situation at hand was I was chipperly slamming A.B.’s China Heini and loving it. Weird.
Then came Stone Mill Pale Ale, a beer that roused the cockles of my heart. There was a nice hop aroma and flavor, and a deft malitiness. This was the first beer in the lineup that seemed to follow the insinuations of the A.B. ‘specialty series.’ It tasted similar to many American craft brews and would be a welcome addition to any convenience store’s refrigerated section. Matched with a sharp, raw milk cheddar from Vella Creamery, Stone Mill was by far the pick of the litter. It was also organic, a concept that has been thoroughly under-applied to the micro and macro brew scenes.
Number four in our flight of five was a flavored beer designed for the holidays. Jack’s Pumpkin Spice ale forced me to return to 1999 when my weekends were spent convincing waiters at my favorite diner to buy me booze across the street. I would always have a wad of cash and a list, which consisted of “hard” lemonades and weird fruity beers for my underage female colleagues. My hookup would meet me in the dingy parking lot of a liquor store and complain that I always forced him to buy the nanciest stuff in the store. We were both embarrassed.
Jack’s dairy companion, an English Wensleydale chock full of cranberries, was equally kitschy. The pair made sense in a cute turkey context, but they did nothing but saturate each other with sweetness. While a sugary beer is not my cup of tea, a stronger cheese would have brought out more of the darkness hiding under all that Thanksgiving fluff.
We finished the night with Michelob Porter in a highball glass. Classy. The heaviness of the chocolate and coffee malts and the Smokey clean finish made me say “wow” out loud. As porter tends to be a dessert beer, it goes fantastically well with bleu cheeses. Jack picked an awesome creamery–Rogue in Oregon–but the lesser of their two blues called Oregonzola, which was now in my mouth. It’s a fine cheese but its name is misleading. Real Gorgonzola is very creamy and spicy, a perfect match for a dessert (or breakfast) beer like Porter. Rogue’s is quite firm and rubbery: a mouthful with no mouth feel. The Smokey Bleu would have been insanely perfect for this beer: Smokey, sweet, and gooey. Jack’s mistake.
My night with Anheuser Bush did not change my mind about mass produced beers. The winners in A.B.’s specialty line certainly pass muster, but I’ll always reach for a smaller company’s product when thirsty. While George Reisch’s gift of gab made for an astounding sales pitch, I couldn’t help but call a Lite™, a light.
– AB (Alex)