beverage of the week – Page 4 – Syndication Server

Pumpkin beer season is upon us; that means it’s Elysian’s time to shine

Elysian’s pumpkin pack covers everything from ale to coffee to stout. Is it worth rolling the dice on a finicky flavor?

Elysian Brewing was born in Seattle. But as fall kicks into full swing, you won’t find anything approaching the Pumpkin Spice Latte flavor fellow Washington juggernaut Starbucks has developed into a national frenzy in their beers.

Pumpkin, sure. Hell, they’ve got four nationally distributed pumpkin beers ranging from ales to stouts and crushable to heavy. But there’s no pie-adjacent, sugary-sweet brew amongst their flagship beers despite the neverending rising tide of pumpkin spice … everything. That’s on purpose.

“Starbucks has a reputation as a soccer mom, SUV type drink,” founder Joe Bisacca told me midway through a pumpkin beer tasting session. “I think Elysian’s vein is more ’72 [Dodge] Challenger. There’s a little more edge to it. Latte inspired? Maybe, but we’ll put a twist on it that’s a little more edgy.”

That doesn’t mean there aren’t spiced beers in the company’s portfolio. Crack open a bottle of Night Owl Pumpkin Ale and you’ll get plenty of cinnamon and nutmeg right from the first whiff — it just won’t be Starbucks sugary, and it will be unmistakably Elysian. It also doesn’t mean those sweeter beers don’t exist at all — just that their distribution is limited to the brewery’s annual Great Pumpkin Beer Festival.

“We do 10-12 pumpkin beers each year to fill out Pumpkin Fest,” Cellermaster Dan Beyer said. “We go as eclectic as one can — a straight up PSL clone is not unheard of. You’ll hear multiple instances of “latte” in our Pumpkin Fest lineup this year.”

That’s great if you’re in Washington to help bartenders drain a hollowed-out, 1,800-pound gourd on the festival grounds. You’ll also get to try guest brews in styles like pumpkin pickle beer, cinnamon roll stout and apple cobbler ale — two-thirds of which sound pretty good.

But if you’re, say, stuck in Wisconsin your options are limited to Elysian’s core four pumpkin beers. And while I’m wishy-washy on the topic — there are so many ways to do pumpkin ales and every brewery’s take is different, leading to a wild variation even before you get to overall quality — I’d be remiss if I didn’t tuck into this year’s pack from a trusted brewer.

Let’s see how it tastes.

Beverage of the Week: Essentia and House Wine’s rose+water box is weird, possibly brilliant tailgating

Alkaline water and wine, in one convenient 30-pound box. Perfect to get you tipsy AND hydrated.

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

Sometime this summer, a 30-pound box arrived on my doorstep. It was bulky and cumbersome and, honestly, a little strange. Inside were three more boxes. Inside those, three plastic bladders; one containing water, the other two containing wine.

This Jesus cube, a collaboration between Essentia alkaline water and House Wine, is meant to walk a fine line. A little booze to get you tipsy and then some purified, ionized water to … well, maybe not bring you back, but at least make your following morning more pleasant.

It came to me with the intent of a summer sensation; a limited-edition offering for pool gatherings and beach days. But since I’ve got a backlog of beverages to drink here (brag), it lingered a bit longer. And since Patrick Mahomes is an official Essentia spokesperson — no word on how he feels about boxed wine, though I’d wager he’s in favor, partically after looking at his wideouts — I turned my attention to a similar social space in need of hydration. The tailgate.

OK, that’s a weird tailgate combo, but I don’t judge. Drink what makes you happy, and if a little rosé is gonna make pre-game better for some folks, hell, have at it. Personally my review of the wine itself is going to be muted because, as I’ve mentioned before, that’s pretty much the one thing I don’t drink. But I’ll do it for the sake of the review — and to figure out if Essentia and House Wine created a viable product or merely a 30 pound curiousity.

Beverage of the Week: Sammy Hagar’s canned cocktails don’t even go the speed limit

Hagar was a celebrity booze pioneer. His canned cocktails taste like they’re trapped in 2015.

Before there was Casamigos or Crystal Head or 818, there was Cabo Wabo.

The legend of Sammy Hagar isn’t limited to his vocal range or inability to drive without moving violations. He’s not just a rock mainstay but also a sigil of branding success.

Hagar arguably started the celebrity liquor trend, founding his Cabo Wabo restaurant in 1990 and then, a few years later, bottling and selling its signature house-blend tequila. He sold that off for a significant profit, and now he’s back in the game. Hagar once again is making booze. Sadly, there is no “Hagarmeister” brand extension to be found.

I’ve already covered how delightfully impressed I was by Santo, the tequila he co-branded alongside Guy Fieri. Today we’re talking up his line of canned cocktails and white rum. Will they reach the dizzying highs of his Diners, Drive-ins and Dives collaboration? Or will they be more Chickenfoot than Van Halen?

Beverage of the Week: Loverboy’s hard teas are easy summer drinks… except one

A new hard tea contender brings plenty of flavor at 90 calories per can. It’s not always a good thing.

The summer of 2023 has been the backdrop to a hard tea revival. Several new contenders have come after the shoddy throne upon which Twisted Tea proudly sits and watches monster truck rallies.

Sometime it’s worked well in a common sense mashup — see Arnold Palmer Spiked Half & Half’s debut back in April. Other times it’s been a bit of a mess, like how Jiant made a bunch of tea that tastes like white wine, somehow. Today we’re on to our third entry of the summer — Loverboy’s low calorie, slim can offerings.

Loverboy isn’t quite coming after Twisted Tea. At 90 calories per can it’s clear they’re pushing up against the hard seltzer marketplace. Advertising an all organic recipe list, sweetened with monk fruit, means its taking a more upscale approach to the concept. So did it pan out? Or are we going to regret trying to make hard tea a thing again?

Beverage of the Week: Two Roads’ canned cocktails might be even better than their beers

Two Roads’ beers might not be as good as I remember. Their tropical punch canned cockail, however, is thoroughly legit.

As someone with Rhode Island roots, I’m moderately invested in New England’s vibrant and occasionally ridiculous brewing scene. A region with its own IPA style that’s become a worldwide hit — seriously, every microbrewery in Denmark and Sweden seems to have its own NEIPA lurking and they’re all very close to getting it right — is a microcosm of the brewing landscape unto itself.

One of the landmarks on that horizon for the past decade has been Two Roads, a Connecticut-based brewer who has existed inside the fridges of my back-home beer snob friends for roughly the past decade (at least when they didn’t feel like dropping $27 for a four pack at Trillium). The Stratford brewery made an immediate impact in the region and grew into a reliable mid-tier company with good beers at a reasonable price. This is all I want in the world, so they became a staple of my trips back to the Ocean State.

But it’s been a while since I’ve been home to my land of hot weiners, baffling indignation and the interchangeable use of the words “kiiiiiiid” and “guy” like an old telegram would use “stop.” Was Two Roads still a heavy hitter? Would its foray into canned cocktails sap its efficacy in the beer world? I ordered a sampler; let’s find out.

Beverage of the Week: Heineken Silver isn’t much, but it’s awesome on a hot day

Heineken Silver is supposed to be a perfect golf course beer. And it is, even if that’s sort of boring.

Heineken Silver was pitched to me as the perfect golf course beer. That’s an easy sell; most beers are great golf course beers, particularly those you’ve snuck onto the links in assorted bag pockets and gotten the chance to crack whilst still sweating. That first clandestine beer, sipped before the rest could catch up to air temperature (assuming you don’t have a handy cooler), is one of the great pleasures in the dad world. It’s akin to finding your favorite style of New Balances at Costco or making your first post on a Big Green Egg grill forum.

But Heineken Silver promises more than that; a slim-canned light beer that clocks in at fewer calories than many hard seltzers (95) and easy enough on the alcohol so not to wreck your day if you plow through a six pack on the course (4.0 percent ABV). That’s a solid enough selling point, especially in a booze marketplace where the middle ground is eroding and customers either want super light beers/seltzers/cocktails OR higher gravity double IPA types that provide a bigger bang for their buck.

That left an old standby to beef of its low calorie selections. Let’s see how it turned out.

Beverage of the week: Gosling’s canned Dark ‘n Stormys are wonderful… until you add fruit

Canned dark and stormies make sense, especially if Gosling’s is making them … until you add extra fruit.

I love a good dark and stormy. I’d never had the classic cocktail before a work trip to Bermuda, where it’s the national standby. Then, since rum, ginger beer and limes are easy to come by here in the states, it became a staple at home — a simple to make cocktail that doesn’t have more steps than a whiskey-and-Coke but feels significantly classier.

Gosling’s, maker of both rum and ginger beer, decided to streamline that process even further and jump into a crowded market of canned cocktails with its signature drink. Their Dark ‘n Stormys come in four different flavors: original, cherry, pineapple and mango. And because dark and stormies rule, I took it upon myself to try all four.

The good news? Gosling’s knows what it’s doing when it comes to the original. The bad news? Well, there isn’t much sense innovating when you’ve got a base model that’s just about perfect.

Beverage of the week: A summertime gin and tonic throwdown with Engine, Hendrick’s and Tulchan

It’s hot, it’s sweaty, it’s time for a crushable, refreshing cocktail. So which gin should you slide into your tonic and twist?

Most gins trace their lineage back to the United Kingdom, a place where 70 degrees Fahrenheit can be considered steamy weather and the sun was long rumored to be a myth. This is alarming, because there may not be a better hot weather cocktail than the simple, beautiful and thoroughly British gin and tonic.

The simple combination of juniper and botanical slurry with lightly sweet quinine-infused bubbles and a twist of citrus (lime for me, because I am not complicated) creates a crisp refresher that will quench your thirst and, crucially, get you drunk. Crushable is a word that’s been commandeered by the IPA business — more colonizing nonsense — but ultimately it has always applied to gin and tonics.

And thus, as it is 95 degrees in Wisconsin today and the world around us is broiling, it seems like as good a time as any for a G&T taste test. I’m pairing up three relatively new gins — OK, two new-ish gins and one variant from Hendrick’s, which has been around since 1999 but looks much older — to figure out which I want to add to my stable.

And it’s a pretty small stable; my go-to gin is The Botanist, distilled on Islay in Scotland against the backdrop one of the world’s last truly perfect towns. But The Botanist, delicious as it is, can be tough to find in middle America, so it’s time to broaden my horizons.

Beverage of the Week: Four Peak’s Joy Bus Wow wheat beer looks great, tastes … good enough

Gorgeous can, pretty good fruity wheat beer inside.

When I was in Arizona for last winter’s Super Bowl, I used the opportunity to work my way through the local beer scene. I got to hit breweries like The Shop, Mother Road, Lumberyard and Wren House, but there was something missing. Four Peaks, one of the state’s oldest micro-turned-medium breweries was conspicuously absent.

Some of that was by choice. I’m not a big Scottish-style beer guy, which is exactly what their flagship Kilt Lifter is. But there was still a sense of regret. So when the brewery made its new-ish Joy Bus Wow wheat beer, I saw another opportunity. Here was the chance to give Four Peaks a try and drink a beer whose proceeds, in part, go to the Joy Bus charity, which helps improve the lives of homebound cancer patients.

A beer that helps people is an easy way to introduce yourself to new markets. Did Four Peaks come up with a product that’ll help it play outside the southwest?

Beverage of the Week: Vizzy’s creamsicle hard seltzer almost gets it right

Creamsicle hard seltzer sounds great. In execution, it’s a little too … seltzer-y.

In the world of hard seltzers, Vizzy is a name I see a lot but have yet to try. It’s not the industry pioneer, like White Claw. It’s not an industry leader like High Noon. It’s not readily available at the open bar at weddings like Truly. So there it is, recognizable but not yet something I could actually say is good or bad.

Needless to say, Vizzy needed to stand out. Unleashing a creamsicle seltzer in time for hot days at the pool? Yep, you’ve got my attention now.

Coors did their own take on the orange classic in a limited edition seltzer offering last year, but I was unable to find it in time (what I also miss from Coors’ limited summer selection? A pretty decent shandy. Anyway …). I was worried that was my last crack at the ethereal taste of childhood mixed with the unmistakable tenet of drinking in the 2020s. Thankfully, Vizzy — owned by Molson Coors — stepped up to fill that void.