Pinecone taste- hop bitterness or spoilage?

Last time I looked Sam didn't date his beers. If that's the case who knows how old that grocery store brew could be. Last season maybe?????

They date the month, but I don't think they date the year. They have the months on the side of the label and notch them for a "drink before this month" date...

I was starting to suspect seasonal allergies (they do affect the tastes of some things), but....

Something I didn't mention, was that I went back a couple of weeks later and had another Sam's Oktoberfest- part of what was left over from that BBQ, and it was just as good as the first time around.

You're probably encountering beers that use very specific varieties of hops that you just don't like the flavor of. Certain American hops have a deeply piney, resiny taste, and that could be what you're getting from those particular beers. I highly doubt it's due to spoilage, as that's not a flavor commonly noted in off beer.

-Steve

The same brew shouldn't change much from batch to batch unless they ran out of a certain hop and sneaked another in to substitute. Maybe they changed the recipe as Old Dominion did with their Wheat beer. I still suspect age or really poor storage.

I was hoping that's the case. There *are* some beers that are just too bitter or too intense for me, i.e. some of the porters that are like drinking asphalt. But that's a different kind of bitter. The pinecone thing is just gross.

I'll have to put some research into local beer sales and find out where they store the best and sell the most...

That's always been my fear of trying a new brand in the store. I never know how popular it is and therefore how long it's been sitting there. I really like Beck's but 7 times out of 10 i get a skunky one, and St. Pauli Girl has never tasted the same way twice. I recently saw some imported HofbrauHaus beer in the store and really wanted to check that out (my dad accidentally smuggled one of their mugs out of the restaurant in Munich in the 1960s) but I couldn't find any dates on it.

About the only one I can count on is Leinenkugel Original Ale. Not a bad "workingman's beer". Priced to move like BMC but actually has some real flavor to it. Pretty popular around here so it rotates well. Not exotic, or really special, but reliable and damn good outside on a hot day.

Leinie has some others- Honeyweiss, Creamy Dark, Red etc (and a really disappointing Oktoberfest) which are alright on their own, but not any real contenders in the Honeywiess, Dark, or Red arenas respectively.

"phaeton" sings of arms, the man, and Usenet news: snipped-for-privacy@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Leinenkugel's various brews were really my gateways into the world of craft beer. Post-grad school, my favorite bar sold pitchers of Leiney's Red for $4, which was a stupidly good bargain. I still really like the Creamy Dark and their Auburn Light was one of the best light beers I'd ever had (it had flavor and everything).

Then there's the Berry Weiss. Actually, let's not talk about that one. Let us never speak of it again.

Agreed. We've all done that once, i'm sure. ;-)

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, which has some outstanding micros and brewpubs in its own right. Deschutes River Brewery used to be my gig. Their Black Butte Porter Ale was my "everyday" brew. It's just "porter" enough to be drinkable without starting to taste like a ground up set of roasted Michelins. Then I moved to the Chicagoland area in

1998. Miller Lite everything. You go into a bar and just say "beer" and that's what they'd put in front of you. BBQs, pizza joints, you name it. Miller Lite. Or MGD. Or Budweiser.

A friend of mine in Chicagoland (who also grew up in the PacNW, and felt my pain) suggested I go out to a liquor store and get some Guinness if I wanted something dark. My first Guinness (canned) I did not like. I remember it tasting like flat, cheap wine (I've since come to love Black N Tans but that's another story). Bud, Coors, Busch and all the other macros were simply out of the question. So I simply stopped drinking beer altogether. I guess I gave up too soon and didn't look hard enough.

Several years later (just before my Chicagoland friend left to go to boot camp) he ordered me a Leinie's Red from the tap at a pub. I reluctantly took a sip (thinking it'd be another lame beer) but it was amazingly good. I tried all the Leinenkugel stuff shortly after, and since I was in Wisconsin at the time, there was seemingly much more selection of beer, lots of it local micros, and most of it pretty goshdarngood. So I guess Leinenkugel was my gateway into craft beers again too. heh.

I've since had better reds, a better honeyweiss, and better darks (i.e. Guinness) than what Leinenkugel makes, but their offerings stand on their own and for just an all-around Ale Leinie's is often my first pick.

It would be Berghoff, which is an amazingly good beer, but it gives me a mild case of the sh*ts every time. I wish there was a way to solve that.

Btw....

I started out Saturday with some Bass Ale, and after going through the few of those I had left I went into my remaining stock of Leinenkugel. Leinie's sure doesn't follow Bass very well... ugh...

In fact, a couple of days later i cracked open a Leinie's (not following anything) and it still doesn't appear that I like Leinie's as much as I did...

Odd, or normal?

"phaeton" sings of arms, the man, and Usenet news: snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Tastes change. Is the Leinie's getting old? It's not going to age well. May have been that your palate wasn't feeling very beer-ish at that point.

Nope. Wasn't really that old. Leinie's is pretty popular here in WI so it gets good rotation, and my "stock" of it was purchased about 4 days prior.

Maybe I was feeling beerish for something else... hmm...