Jeff and I try the Budweiser American Ale

Much has been said and written about the Budweiser American Ale, especially in craft beer circles. For awhile I didn’t have the heart to try it, mostly because I have a real problem paying for a Budweiser product. But since they were serving it at the Decatur Beer Fest, it was essentially free. So Jeff and I strolled down to the American Ale booth, trying to make sure we weren’t seen by anyone of import.

We both asked for about a third of a glassful, and in typical domestic light beer fashion, received much more than was necessary. And then we sniffed it. And then we drank. And then we looked at each other and sort of smirked. And then we drank some more.

We both came to the realization that this was a solid beer. I enjoyed it. Technically it’s a sound session ale. Some nice hop aroma, but it’s also balanced really well in the malts. I wish I had hated it, but Budweiser is the king of making inoffensive beers, so I guess I knew what to expect. What’s interesting is that many craft beer junkies are coming to similar realizations. The Beer Philosopher (AKA Shawn Connelly) sums my feelings up perfectly in this great post:

Match it against a “middle of the road” craft amber (Fat Tire anyone?) and all of a sudden you’ve got a player. Bud American Ale is one of those evil corporate beers I’d like to bottle in some obscure craft brewer’s bottle and label it something weird and wild and watch the beer snobs lavish praise on this great new session beer. “Wow, you can taste the dry-hopped cascade right up front and the finish is really clean…”

And a discussion forum over at Aleuminati tells a similar tale. It’s a good beer. Sure, I’m not going to go out of my way to order it. But if I’m choosing between macros at some sorry excuse for a bar, American Ale has a great shot of ending up in my belly. Because, as The Beer Philosopher says, “My objection to this beer is an ideological one, not a technical one.”

Brewing tonight CANCELLED

Don’t come to Jeff’s tonight, as you will find it a sad and lonely house. We’ve decided to cancel brewing tonight, since Joel and I both won’t be back until very late and Jeff doesn’t know how to brew without us. Sorry to kill your Monday night plans.

The Decatur Beer Fest did not disappoint

Jeff and I found ourselves in Decatur yesterday for the annual Decatur Beer Fest. What a great time. The weather was perfect, there were a ton of great beers, and we actually bumped into a bunch of people we knew.

Before we get into the beers, I would like to go on record as saying that I hate pretzel necklaces. It’s always difficult to recap a beer festival. You drink so many beers, pour out a bunch of the crappy ones (I do anyway) and always end up with less capacity for memory than when you started, if you catch my meaning. However, these were a few of my favorites:

• Duck-Rabbit Imperial Russian Stout: tasted more like a barleywine than a stout, but quite delicious
• Avery Kaiser: an imperial Oktoberfest. Normally I don’t like Oktoberfests, but this was one malty, high gravity bombshell of a beer.
• Oskar Blues Ten Fidy: an imperial stout in a can? My oh my this beer was money.
• Port Brewing: there were 2 excellent beers from Port, and I can’t for the life of me remember their names. One was a Belgian IPA, a collaboration between Tomme Arthur and, uh, someone else. The other was a funky, funky farmhouse ale. Delightful.
• Post Road Pumpkin Ale: of the 2 pumpkin ales Jeff and I tried, this was hands-down the winner.
• Flying Dog Horn Dog Barleywine: I’ve had a bunch of Flying Dog beers, but not the barleywine. It was great. Had it towards the end of the festival, don’t remember much else.

There were, of course, other highlights. The cool tasting glasses we got, for one:

Though for $35 the glasses better be cool. We also tried the Budweiser American Ale. Much has been said of this beer recently, and I think it deserves its own post. Look out for that later this week. And Jeff tried to convince me that the Sam Adams Cherry Wheat is an acceptable beer. It tastes like cough syrup. To which Jeff replied, “I LOVE cough syrup.”

I think the 28 rating on RateBeer.com says it all.

Getting ready for the Decatur Beer Fest

It’s been a crazy week, as you may have surmised from the lack of interesting posts. We’ve been in the process of changing hosts. It hasn’t been as smooth as we would have hoped (read: our website has been down more than we’d like), but we’re confident that the worst is behind us. And with that in mind, we’re looking forward. To the weekend. And more specifically, to the Great Decatur Beer Tasting Festival (hereafter called the Decatur Beer Fest).

Jeff and I will be making the trek out to the East side of Atlanta from our comfy cocoons on the West side to drink some beer in the heart of downtown Decatur. We hope to see some of ya’ll there. I’ll be wearing my classy MNB t-shirt. There will be 77 breweries represented. Some of the ones I’m looking most forward to are:

• Allagash
• Duck-Rabbit
• Highland
• Dogfish Head
• Avery
• Great Divide
• Left Hand
• North Coast
• Lagunitas
• Victory
• Stone
• Merchant du Vin
• Ommegang
• Unibroue
• Budweiser American Ale (haven’t tried it yet, eager to hate it)

Jeff, I’m sure, has his own list. And he’s probably more snobby about it. Look for an update early next week. My goal is to get Jeff plastered (not easy) and then get him to pose topless with the volunteers (probably easy). We’ll see how that goes.

MNB wins an award of its own

Yes, this is the time of year when breweries start to tout their prestigious GABF medals. Well we’ve got a little bling of our own. Today we were named the clear victors in Adam’s “Best Homebrew Sites” contest. How did we win? You, the tireless masses, voted. And I voted twice. And I think my mom voted. And DJ wasn’t nominated.

Regardless, a win is a win. We ended up with over 3 times the votes of our closest competitor, Lazy Brewer. You know what that says to me? DOMINATION. Move over InBev, there’s a new smallish homebrew site in town.

Our website is broken. Brewing tonight is not broken.

You may have noticed that our website is all jacked up. We’re changing hosting providers and haven’t worked out the kinks. Who is to blame? Mostly Al Gore, but also Joel. Obviously.

Nevertheless, we are brewing a slightly scaled-back version of the Eye Patch Ale tonight. Come on over to Jeff’s around 8pm to partake.

MNB is Moving

Don’t worry, we’re not moving to somewhere lame like Delaware.  We’re just moving our site over to a new bigger, better, faster server this evening.  What this means to you:

• Quicker, more reliable load times when you click on all the amazing pictures of me
• No downtime (we were getting death threats from our fans last time the site went down)
• Better beer (site loads faster, we waste less time on it, we spend more time brewing beer…I think the logic works)

Also, don’t post any comments between now and tomorrow or else they’ll be lost in never never land as the database will be in transition from one server to the other.  BTW, we’re thinking about creating a never never land feature as a permanent one we could use selectively for certain commentors on the site (and Chris, maybe you can patent that for us).