Miasmatic Review

In-Heat Wheat.

Tonight I will be reviewing a beer by first time donator, Wes of Bodhran Roll, Please. He actually gave it to me a couple of months ago; I’m just now getting around to being able to review it. Tonight’s beer is In-heat Wheat Hefeweizen Ale by Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, MD.

We have our standard 12 oz brown bottle. There is a yellow label with a cartoonish picture of what appears to be a mildly retarded dog. The name of the beer is in some kind of scrawl next to the dog. On the neck label is the flowing dog logo. At the bottom of the main label it has the quote, “Good people drink good beer. “ –Hunter S. Thompson.

It has a nice golden honey color to it. There is a haziness to it that is so thick that you can’t see through the beer. Light passes through, giving it a nice glow. Almost no head formed when poured. I even added a bit of an aggressive pour towards the last quarter of the bottle. What head formed was white and faded quickly to nothing. There is no lacing on the glass.

When you take a whiff of the beer, you get a combination of wheat and grains. There is a banana undertone with just a hint of citrus. The scent is less than pleasant. The taste mainly consists of bananas, cloves, wheat and a slight bitter hop finish. The after taste reminds me of eating Cheerios with green, unripe bananas on it.

It is a medium bodied beer; there is no coating to the mouth. The carbonation is a little heavy for my tastes and bites on the tongue.

This is a standard American Wheat beer done in the Bavarian Hefeweizen style. It isn’t something I would go out of my for, and to be honest, it took drinking half of the beer before the flavor got to something that didn’t bother me. This is definitely not a beer I would recommend to friends or even to a stranger at a bar. I give it 3.5 out of 10.

Saratoga Lager

Tonight we will be resuming our beer reviews. I know you all missed me, but hey, I’m back! Okay, let’s get this going right. This beer has been waiting for me to review it since early August. It was donated to me by my friend Wil. He’s decided he wants to be an enabler too. The first beer I’ve drank in almost two months and the beer we are reviewing tonight is Saratoga Lager by the Olde Saratoga Brewing Co in Rochester, NY.

We have our standard 12 oz brown bottle. There is an olde style series of pictures on it that depict various scenes of horse racing. The name of the beer is in red letters across the top of the bottle, with the word lager in red on a banner in the middle. There is a matching neck label.

It pours a dark copper penny color. When the light hits it, you can see amber flashes. Light passes through it easily, but there is a haziness to it that prevents you from seeing objects on the other side clearly. A ¾ inch head formed. It was off white in color and faded quickly to a film on the top of the beer. There was minimal lacing.

The smell was of rich toasted caramel malts. A touch of biscuity sweetness can also be detected to fully enhance to scent. There is a dry, roasted malt flavor that is balanced by the taste of floral hops evenly. It finishes smoothly. The after taste is a mix of citrus and grains.

It is a medium bodied beer, and is a little bit heavy on the carbonation.

This is a good sipping beer. Sit back, crack one open and chat with friends. It is a good representation of a Marzen-style lager. I enjoyed this beer and could see myself drinking another. I give it 6.5 out of 10.

Updates

I've been back to work a week and a half, and boy am I tired. Things are going okay, but I never realized how tiring it is sit at a desk.

I had to return to the doctor today. She likes the way things are going and cleared me for the weekend to go to the Fort Obie re-enactment. I still have all kinds of physical restrictions, but she said as long as I don't do anything too physical, strain myself or over do it, I should be fine.

Of course, due to an injection given to me with a needle longer than my hand jabbed into my stomach. Yea, I have pictures if you want to see my pasty white belly with a really big needle sticking out of it! She wasn't too thrilled with me taking a picture while she was doing the procedure. But hey, those that know me, know that I don't care. Anyway because of that I had to be on fluids only for 24 hours. Which really sucks, because I was just starting to get used to things that didn't taste like fruit, chocolate or vanilla.

Either way, things will start getting back to normal hopefully in a couple of months.

Hi-Ho Back to work.

Well, they won’t let me have beer yet. It looks like I’ll be able to move up sometime around the 10th or 11th. As much as I was looking forward to rekindling my love of beer this week, it looks like I’m going to have to postpone for a while longer. Hey, it’s better to be safe than sorry. I’ll be honest, it’s starting to get hard to resist though. I do love my beer.

I also returned to work this week. Wow, that was much more difficult than I anticipated. I figured I had been sitting around the house doing nothing but playing on a computer; I might as well go back to work and do it. So I returned a couple of weeks early with the doctor’s blessing. The first day wasn’t so bad. I was tired and a little sore at the end of it, but I felt okay. Tuesday was a little harder. The fatigue and soreness presented itself much earlier in the day.

Yesterday was awful. I woke up sore and tired, the whole time I was at work I was sore and I even took some Tylenol while I was there to help reduce the discomfort. I generally do not like taking pain killers, even as weak as aspirin, but I needed something to help me to be more comfortable. Fortunately I was able to leave early so I could rest and take it easy.

This morning when I woke up, I felt fine. The soreness had gone away. I was still tired, even with going to bed early. This whole sleeping on my back thing is difficult. I’ve always slept on my side or stomach, and I just can’t do that right now. If it doesn’t start hurting right away, it does after a while. Hence I end up lying on my back again.

I’m really ready for all of this to go away so I can get back to feeling normal, but I have a feeling that there will be months of this left before I get back to that point in my life.