56 - Lion Brewing Inc. - Lionshead Deluxe Pilsner Beer

This is a good beer. Very beer tasting. Lotsa malt, lotsa hops, lotsa taste. If a lion were a beer, it would taste like this: mighty.

But very much a malty pilsner. And I am not a malt lover, but this is well done.

55 - Hardcore Cider Co. - Hardcore

I like apple cider, and I really liked this cider. It was sweet with a sharp, crisp taste. Real clean, real tasty.

54 - Terrapin Sunray Wheat Beer

So the gimmick to this hippy styled beer is the use of Tupelo Honey. This is great for Van Morrison fans, but the effect is minimal. You can taste it, but you have to really squint your eyes and enter some high intensity tasting realm.

I preferred the Agave Wheat from Colorado. Terrapin is okay. Not bad. Eh. Whatever.

53 - Erie Brewing Company Mad Anthony APA

The American Pale Ale. If we keep repeating it, it must really be a real type of beer. Okay, fair enough.

I liked the Mad Anthony. I happened to be watching the HBO Miniseries John Adams as I was drinking it, and its colonial imagery whipped me up into a revolutionary ferver. It was pretty good. A nice, complex flavor, with a little bite of bitterness and some nicely placed hop. Probably the best APA I've tried yet, and I keep running into them.

51-52 Bar Harbor Blueberry vs. Sea Dog Wild Blueberry

I am typically no huge fan of fruit flavored bears. I'll stick to a wine cooler, thank you. But I had these two in close sucession and my mind was blown by the difference.

Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale - This was a bland, boring, bitter, flat beer with blueberry taste masking a lousy beer. This beer is the dead person done up by the coroners make up person.

Sea Dog's Bluepaw Wild Blueberry Wheat Ale - I really liked this beer. The flavor was refreshing and had a great aftertaste. It was a little bitter, but in a very tasty and drinkable way. I was sad to see it go.

No competition. Sea Dog all the way. Not sure why blueberries only grow around nautical imagery. I grew up in New England and they were all over, but we were no where near the coast (15 -20 miles). But someone more inland might have a less skewed view of being away from the coast...I'm lookin at you Cleveland. Any blueberries around here??

51 - Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout

Woah nelly. This is certified organic. It must be good, right?

I hated this bear so much. I like Oatmeal Stouts and I thought this bear smelled like pee and it took me forever to finish it. I debate ever drinking a Wolaver's beer of any kind again. I debate giving up on anything labelled organic based on how gross this beer was.

Buyer Beware. This beer blows.

48 - 50 Conway's Irish, Yarpivo, The Kidd

There are three that were scheduled to be blogged about over a month ago, and just sat on our "to blog about" shelf. Now I only have a vague notion of my impression. I am going to share this now:

Great Lakes Brewing Co. Conway's Irish Ale - I thought it was okay. I wondered what was so Irish about it.

Yarpivo - Really good pale lager, and I typically don't like lagers. It was really good and I can't wait to have it again and remember it.

Fort Collins Brewery - The Kidd - Sortof remember it being flat and having a lame aftertaste. The cover art is lame also. I look at it, and think "lame".

48. Hopslam - Bell's Brewery

So we drank another beer and I actually liked it. A beer that I was pretty much convinced I would not like. Because I do not like hoppy bitter beers and with a name like hopslam and a picture of a guy getting crushed by a giant hop on the label, I wasn't expecting to take more than one sip of this beer. But the closest emotion to what I felt about this beer would be 'like'. I think I liked it. I for sure didn't love it, but I kept drinking it. I have had more enjoyable beers that would fall into the like category, but it was still ok. Besides being bitter and hoppy, I don't have much to say about it. It wasn't as bitter or hoppy as I expected. Jordan didn't like it. He thought it had a bad after taste and was more enamoured with the other beer we drank last night. I give this beer a solid three dudes being crushed by giant hops falling from the sky out of five dudes standing around.

47 - Harpoon Brewery - Celtic Ale

I decided to get the seasonal Celtic Ale on tap a local Millvale bar the other night. I almost immediately regretted it. Then I saw it was Harpoon and thought "Oh that is why it sucks". I am not sure where I got this prejudice toward Harpoon, because I don't think I have ever had one of their beers before, but that was my excuse for not liking their amber ale. It was a flat, boring, watery, beer that only someone who was an idiot would like.

If you like this beer, you are boring and stupid. [I have been drinking a lot tonight, but I stand by this statement. You suck for liking this beer you boring, sad, loser].

I give this beer 1 out of 4 yinzers downtown on St Patricks Day being loud.

46 - Breckenridge Brewery Pandora's Bock

This is a nice bock. Sort of like a red ale with some bitter tang. It is a tangy beer.

Breckenridge don't have anything special here. There is no magic in this bottle, and definitely no unspeakable evils like the mythical Pandora's Box. Let's face it, it is just another bock. Not as bad as the crap one with the goat wearing glasses but not as good as another one that I wish I could remember.

It might be because I have been drinking all night, but this one has made me lose feeling in my tongue. If you have this same reaction please let me know. But I am guessing that I'm just drunk.

I like it, Ill finish it. I just sort of get bored with bocks after 5 sips, I think.

I give it 4 out of 5 bored sips.

45 - Victory Festbier

This is a beer brewed for Oktoberfest AKA Germany's answer to St Patricks Day that technical started before we asked the question of "St Patricks Day?".

I am not really an Oktoberfest style beer drinker but this one was a notch or two above most (especially Penn Brewery's Oktoberfest who sort of pissed me off on the whole idea of Oktoberfest with their extra large bottle of toilet water). But I typically like Victory and it almost becomes pointless to review one of their beers cause I always feel pretty fine and good about it. No complaints. They handled the slight bitterness of the Oktoberfest beer in stride and it went down smooth as I cooked an omelet.

44 - Erie Brewing Company Heritage Alt Beer

A little chocolately and caramely, just like my ancestors whose heritage I am celebrating. As I write this I am listening to the interactive DVD menu for one of our ancestors John Adams: The miniseries.

This beer has a nice taste and a lot of complexity. It has a nice "mouthfeel" which sounds gross, but is nice...except your mouth has no nerve endings. This is not true, but I think it is weird to think of your mouth having sensory devices, but I think back to the last time I bit my tongue and it hurts like a bitch.

So this beer is like the opposite of biting your tongue. Real nice.

I give it 4 out of 5 founding fathers.

43 - Saranac Irish Red Ale

It's almost St Patrick's Day, where scores of non Irish people and people who were related to Irish people hundreds of years ago, get drunk and wear stupid hats while combining all of the green articles of clothing in their closet to honor a dead Irish man who was declared a saint for chasing away snakes. WTF?

But this is about the beer, not the behatted douchebags or snake charmers. And Saranac, my favorite half decent beer brewer has half done it again. It's a good red ale. But they are very careful at Saranac not to make it too good. They understand that over acheiving would hurt thier image so they make it thier goal to get it just right, not too good and not crappy. I have stared liking red ales since this blog started and that is why I half like this one.

I give it 3.6 out of 4 chased snakes. Not bad!

42 - Bell's Kalamazoo Stout

I officially love every Bell's I've had. This is rich, chocolately stout with a great flavor and a sweet taste. It has a great head and goes down smooth.

This isn't the greatest stout I've ever had, but it is no scrub either. If this were the only stout I was allowed to drink forever, I would okay with that. Well, not in theory, because that's fascist. But in a less totalitarian and more desert island scenario, this would be A-OK.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 totalitarian regimes.

41 - Church Breworks - Cherry Quadzilla

Do you like the get quickly drunk on cough syrup? Then by all means go and get the Cherry Quadzilla.

47. Faro Lambic - Brouwerij Lindemans

So Faro is a non-fruited style of lambic, where they take the lambic and add candy sugar to it to make it easier to drink than either straight lambic or gueze. I was under the impression that it was lambic with barley added, and I'm pretty sure the bottle said soemthing about barley, which I don't think other lambics have, but I'm not gonna lie I drank way to much last night (note to self: just because Jordan is having another beer doesn't mean I need to as well) so perhaps there was nothing about barley on there. Anyways, this was pretty sweet. Definitely sweeter than a normal fruity lambic, which have the fruit sweetness but you mostly taste the sourness of the lambic. I didn't really taste any sourness, just candy sugar and more candy sugar. It wasn't too sweet, though I wouldn't drink one of these every day, probably only on "beer for dessert" days. It had an interesting smell, I though it smelled like vomit, but that perhaps was just indicative of my mindstate, and Jordan thought it smelled like his moustache after a night of drinking, so we'll call that musty -- an aside, do you think moustache and musty have related origins and that moustache originally ment musty smelling patch of hair on your lip? Oh why don't I have an OED at work? Anyways, despite the not so great smell I liked this. I'm going to switch it up and give it a letter grade: B+ but a low B+ like an 87 not an 89.

46. Porter - Nøgne Ø

So the last time I wrote about Nøgne Ø beers, I mistyped. The little islands like the one the brewery is on aren't actually called Nøgne Ø (naked island), but instead it's a poetic term that Ibsen coined. Anyways, they make good beer. The porter was no exception. It was super nutty, but not overpoweringly so, you still tasted the toasty malty porter goodness. The head had super big bubbles, but that might have been my fault for careless pouring. It is a good beer, but neither of us was wowed by it, probably because it was accompanying a severely lackluster dinner. Maybe it deserves another chance, but probably not. Nothing will be able to take the place of Bell's Porter in Jordan's book, and I think I'm over dark beers for a while. So umm it gets 15 out of 26 Ibsen plays.

41-45 Beers we drank and didn't write about

We drank these guys, but didn't review them due to internet issues and now have pretty much forgotten what they tasted like. But I need to drink the top two for the Braumeister Beer Club so I'll review them later maybe.

Wiesen Edel Weiss - Private Weissbierbrauerei Georg Schneider & Sohn
This one was really good. And orgainc

Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse - Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu

Altenmunster Maibock - Allgäuer Brauhaus AG

Corsendonk Abbey Pale Ale - Brouwerij Corsendonk

Corsendonk Abbey Brown Ale - Brouwerij Corsendonk

40. Avalanche Amber Ale - Breckenridge Brewery

This is new on draft at Prosperity and just in time. I was getting sick of the Bell's Porter. <> Anyways, this beer is a great substitute. It's a perfect winter to spring transition beer; it's not as dark and the dark, warm, heavy beers that get you through the winter, but isn't as light as a dancing round the maypole, april showers bring may flowers bock or whatever else you drink in the spring. It's amber, not brown, which is a good thing in my book, I think. I like browns and ambers but can never remember which I like more. I think it's ambers. Anyways, this beer is crisp and clean in your mouth, tasty, not really malty at all, with only a little bitterness. It's easy to drink and tastes nice, but isn't so tasty that you only want to drink one glass of it. Jordan still prefers the porter, but I am fully in the Avalanche camp now. But at the same time it's nothing groundbreaking. I could drink a lot of these, but I'm already a little bored with it. Boring but solid. It gets 3.75 /5 avalances.

40 - Franziskaner Weissbier

I am not sure what I expected with this beer, but it was not a golden, thick, cloudy wheat beer. Maybe it's because I took a beer vacation and after a few weeks drinking pitchers of Yuengling I am just excited for high class beer again. But I liked this beer. I liked its color, I loved how cloudy it was, it tasted great and I am genuinely glad that I can find it around in most coolers in town.

I found the bottle sort of misleading. I assume something that understated would not have the bright flavor or thickness. Good beer.

I give it 3 out of 4 surprise Franciscan Monks.

39 - Saranac Imperial Stout

I am usually metsa metsa about Saranac. I think they are good, but that's about it. But that was until I had this Imperial Stout. I love Imperial Stouts in general, but I liked this beer quite a bit. This is the best beer Saranac makes. They might consider only making this beer going forward.

It was smooth and sweet and dark as hell. It had a great head and a nice thickness.

I give it 3.8 out of 4 Saranacs.

38 - Margaritaville Brewing Co. Landshark Lager

It's hard to say where to begin with a Jimmy Buffet themed beer. The Landshark, I suppose is crafted to go perfectly with your Cheeseburger in Paradise. It is golden yellow in an almost unnatural sort of way. It is like a Corona, but it's better than a Corona.

But unlike the Corona, evertime you take a sip of this beer, you think "Jimmy Buffett?". This effect is so strong that the taste just washes over you and its like a 70s corporate island themed rock concert in your mouth.

It is just like a Corona. Only a little better than a Corona.

I give it 2.5 out of 4 Corona. I just am not a big Corona fan, but if you like Corona, or if you love Corona then I would give it 4.2 out of 4 Coronas.

37 - Appalachian Brewing Co. Trail Blaze Organic Brown Ale

This looks like a Pepsi, and takes me back to when I used to chug a Pepsi (That's right I am being the person who says he doesn't drink soda, cause you know what that means.) But this is good and it makes you want to chug a lug. Not to miss the sweetness or the tangyness. But because it has no bad aftertaste to hold you back.

Did I mention it was organic? That's right when I am not drinking soda, I like to drink things that were made with no pesticides or genetic modification. Am I saving the world? No. I am getting drunk, but in a more "sustainable" way than you. Purchasing this Appalachian Brewing Co. number has added me to the romanticized simple folk of the mountains who I imagine drink fantastic homebrew that is as good as this and makes me want to live in my elitist fantasy mountains.

I love this beer. And I think I mentioned before that I am sort of on the fence about brown ales. I think because my first "fancy" beer was a newcastle and then I got over it. But the love is back.

I could drink 5 of these. I give this 4 out of 4.4 liberal elites.