Red Horse Beer : Extra Strong

This about sums up the Philippines Peace Corps experience.

Oh, San Miguel brewery.  You're so proud of your 98% market share in the Philippines, but then again, you have no competitors.

The go-to beer for drinking to get drunk is Red Horse: Extra Strong beer. Yes, the Busch Light of the
Spanish-conquered archipelago is this working brew (it works on your liver.) Sharing the same sickly urine color of its American contemporaries, Red Horse gives off a familiar odor.

Cast your mind back into the days of late-night beer-pong competitions, and then remember waking up in the morning with a pounding hangover. You sort of stumble your way to the kitchen to get some water, and there you can see the dining table covered in mostly-empty light beer cans. That unpleasant smell of stale beer, potential vomit, and hangovers? That's how Red Horse smells immediately after you open the bottle.

Oh, yeah. When you smell that: you're in for a good time tonight, and tomorrow's forecast for Porcelain City is saying there is a 100% chance of gloopy precipitation.

The taste of Red Horse is much more elusive. When you first cast the bottle back, flavor takes a time to arrive. Mostly, it's just a carbonated tingle with little more to offer than carbonated water. This tingle abruptly accelerates into a high altitude acidic burn mixed with that delightfully mediocre rice water flavor of cheap, light beers. This ricey taste slowly subsides, leaving behind the semi-sweet aftertaste that people who hate themselves seem to love.

Does Red Horse smell good? No. Is it a good beer? No. In fact, Red Horse may be the very reason Philippinos habitually drink their beer on ice- to water down the lack of flavor. However, Red Horse does have a 7% alcohol content. So, does Red Horse get you drunk? You betcha!

And it's cheap.

San Miguel's Pale Pilsen

Like many Philippine foods, the San Miguel’s Pale Pilsen has noticeable sweetness. Yet it is enough of a proper beer sweet that it does not make the brew taste like a fruit beer. It's more like if you took the sweet rice-beer flavor of a Busch Light and then added more beer flavor to it.

This is the exact vaguely sweet, light ale-ness that begins the drinking experience that, according to the bottle, leads to true Philippines friendships. Then a carbonated burn builds, and it is accompanied by a vague pineapple fruitiness, just a faint misting of it. As I said before, it is not enough to make the brew predominately fruity. It's just a hint.

Finally, the swallow leaves behind that refreshing Pabst Blue Ribbon sweetness, but like with the first contact, the flavor of hoppy lager is noticeably stronger, more vibrant.

Altogether, the San Miguel's Pale Pilsen is a wonderful welcome to the Philippines. It gives me great hope for further brew discoveries, though I am not so sure that the Philippines has a strong microbrew culture. Regardless, San Miguel's Brewery knows what kind of beer is necessary in a hot climate, and I think they would make a fine addition to a campout beer lineup anywhere in the world.

Goose Island Brewery's Matilda

People who either think Belgian style beers all taste the same or that they are as bland and boring as most hefeweizens need to drink this beer. My brew sipping days are only about a year long now, but as of this moment, this Matilda brew is the most interesting, the most dynamic, and simply one of the most delicious beers I have tried in my life. It combines a strange mixture of flavors that, when described, might not seem to be anything but another fruity beer that most beer drinkers would want to avoid. But avoiding this Belgian would be like avoiding seafood at a crab shack.

Matilda comes from Good Island Brewery out of Chicago, Illinois, and it smells of a yeasty perfume. If you took a woman who just smelled gorgeous, and then sort of flicked yeast juice on her like holy water during Advent, you'd get this smell: a sort of yeasty fruitiness that makes the nose take notice.

Drinking starts off with a light yeasty bite, and then transforms into a sort of light orange syrup. By light, I mean the flavor texture is reminiscent of syrup, but the liquid texture is firmly beer-ish. Does that make sense? It's a hard beer to describe. I'll try a different way of saying it:  It. Is. Awesome.

At the swallow, the syrup taste vanishes completely and is simply replaced by a orange crispness that ends the experience like a real tight lager. Just fantastic.

This beer is robust. This beer is a dancer. This beer defies my attempts to accurately describe it. If you want something new in your beer life, this is one to try as soon as possible.

Buckerfield Brewery's Berry Ale

Photo from Beck's Beer Blog

The Buckerfields Brewery does a terrible job of providing pictures for their brews. The only pictures that are viable are ones from other beer blogs around the internets. But at least they brew some nice tasting beers.

Obviously, this is a fruit beer. I generally like fruit beers, as long as the flavor is put into the beer correctly. It needs to be brewed in, I think. Otherwise it just tastes like beer with flavoring in it. I couldn't say as to which was which in the case of this Berry Ale, but I do know that I liked it. A lot.

The beer gives off the nostalgic aroma of raspberry kool-aid. This was not a turn-off for me, for many fond memories of mine involve a large plastic pitcher of that delicious summer treat.  The first taste is not raspberry at all, but a pleasant burn with the robust strength of a solid ale. Sort of thick, but sprightly.

The body of the brew's flavor is reminiscent of raspberry ice tea, calm and refreshing. This strengthens somewhat after the swallow to taste like raspberry flavored Crystal Light. Yet the fruitiness of both these flavors does not make the beer not taste like a beer. The ale-ish-ness continues throughout the drinking experience, and at least for me, made for an incredibly refreshing brew. It was like a beer drinker's sangria.

This is one beer to go out of your way to try if you are ever in Victoria, British Columbia. Just head for the Swans pub, and get yourself a pint on a warm summer day.

Buckerfields Brewery's Oatmeal Stout

Picture from the blog Cold War Cookery

One of my go-to beers is Tadcasters Oatmeal Stout. The review of that beer is yet to come, as I am usually too focused on enjoying it to jot down any taste notes. Yet my love for that brew was at the heart of my decision to order this beer first at the Swans Pub in Victoria, British Columbia. I don't know what it is about the oatmeal stouts, but they get me every time. Perhaps the liquorice-coffee smell of this one lured me in like Toucan Sam.

Like the other two Canadian stouts, this one seems to have some kind of fetish for Guinness. This is evoked in its milky texture. It's not bad, really, but a cleaner feel would bring out more of this brew's rather lazy flavor. However, this stout is noticeably more tangible than the others, and the beer hits your mouth kind of like buttermilk; thick, creamy, and just a bit bitter.

The initial bitterness is quickly replaced by a sweet coffee taste. It is like a good coffee in the morning mixed with an "original" flavor sweetened creamer. But then the bitterness comes back to merge with the sweetness like a happy couple, creating a bottom of the pot sort of taste. I liked that.

The Buckerfields Oatmeal Stout is the best stout I found in Canada, but it does not surpass the Beaver Brown in terms of dark beer deliciousness. If you enjoy the oatmeals, try this one. You won't regret it- but you probably won't buy a second one, either.

Bridgeport Brewery's Hop Czar

A quick brew from close to home, made in Portland, Oregon, the Hop Czar! I'm not the biggest fan of the India Pale Ales, but I am attracted by the adjective "Imperial." To me it means more robust flavor, and perhaps as important, more alcohol. It makes everything better! Imperial Stouts, Imperial Porters, Imperial I.P.A.s, Imperial Star Destroyers.

This Czar opens with a strong hoppy scent, that acrid tangyness that gets you ready to drink a beer. Of course, that makes a lot of sense by the name of the brew.  The brew goes in smooth, with a latent spiciness of hops, which then kicks into high gear. I cannot describe it better than saying it is a hop explosion, a nuclear test of the H-bomb in your mouth. And like latent radiation, the taste lingers for ages after the event, dwelling in your pallet and corrupting it for an age.

Hops. Hops. Hops. That's what this beer advertises, and that is all you get. But you get a lot of it. And it is good. I would have trouble drinking two in a row, but after a few beers in between, I would open another Hop Czar with an eager alacrity. Get one. Drink one. You'll enjoy it.

Canoe Brewery's Summer Honey Wheat Ale

The first beer I enjoyed was a Blue Moon. I was told that it was a hefeweizen style beer, so I set out on a mission to drink more hefeweizen beers. Then I grew brave and ventured into ales, stouts, porters; you know... REAL beer. Since then, I've found enjoying the wheaty beers much harder than it used to be. Perhaps it is my own beer-prejudice, like how people who became successful fear returning to their hometown where they are known as the nerd, or fat kid, or both. Or it might be because it is difficult to craft a great hefeweizen. If that's so, then the Canoe brewpub could use more practice.

What I need in a beer is flavor, and despite the faint promise of honey and citrus aromas, the Summer Honey Wheat has almost none of it. The honey tasting burn of the mild carbonation is a good start, but it quickly dissolves into something else: think of when you're swimming in a public pool and you accidentally take a mouthful of the stuff and then spit it out in disgust. That lingering flavor of community socialism which sticks to the pallet? Yeah. That's this beer.

After you gulp the stuff down, it leaves behind a bitter hoppiness that is very like a milder IPA. Which if the beer tasted, I don't know, better, it would make it more dynamic than most wheat brews. But as it stands, I would recommend any beer besides this one. Yeah, the flavor starts great and ends nicely, but you can also put a piece of shit between two slices of bacon.