Look. I don’t want to be one of those “hurrrr this doesn’t taste like beer hurrrr” people, but… this doesn’t taste like beer. Hurrrr.
In fact, I’m not convinced that it is beer. It looks like beer – nice golden body with a creamy white head. And, apparently, it’s made with beer ingredients. But I can’t taste hop or malt or yeast characters. Not one iota. No bitterness. No fruit or resin or toffee or caramel or banana or spice.
What I believe has happened is that at some point, between the point when this "beer" was brewed and when it reached my lips, an alchemist has got their hands on it. But instead of converting base metals to gold, this was some kind of beer alchemist who converts beer to melted ice cream (that still looks like beer). Melted vanilla ice cream, thick and sticky and fluffy and super sweet. Melted vanilla ice cream that makes you think of those milk bottle lollies from when you were a kid. Melted vanilla ice cream that has your breath smelling like white marshmallows.
Of course, One Drop Brewing claims that this is a beer from their Liquid series, which has a “pure, unadulterated focus on complete saturation” and uses “every lactose product and process available to brewers right now”. They claim this is a milkshake ale with lactose from the Bega Valley and vanilla and nitro. In fact, they’ve been experimenting with adjuncts in beer since the day they opened, and the pancake-cheesecake-mudcake-vanilla-pastry-caramel-maple-chocolate-marshmallow-syrup beers they’ve made up to this point could even be used as evidence that this, too, is a beer.
But they’re lying. It’s the alchemist thing. This is melted vanilla ice cream.
Mick Wust
Published March 19, 2021 2021-03-19 00:00:00
