Experts Are Not the Only Ones With an Opinion

We are often browsing around for new beer styles that we can make. With our growler system, we are able to try new beers without the problems of designing new packages.

If you don’t know what we mean by growlers, come and see us and we’ll show you.

There are a whole bunch of websites out there that are resources for new beer ideas. Of course, almost every brewer in the world has a website of its own, but other websites that we like to look at are “beer rating” sites.

These are good because we can read through the comments that people leave about the beer. It is the poor man’s research tool into what people are looking for in a style and what they would rather avoid.

Sometimes we stumble on descriptors that are a bit hard to decipher. We are pretty familiar with all of the normal beer words — full bodied, astringent, buttery, etc — but other people are sometimes more creative than that.

The following are descriptions that we found on a popular site, www.ratebeer.com. The spelling and grammar has been left exactly as found, for authenticity. We don’t name the beers, though, as that is not really the point.

“dark brown pour with a sticky brown head. smell is nice:cognac, peanut butter and grape jelly. taste is overly attenuated red grape taste. ashy pressboard taste with an unhappy caramel finish.grrrr.”

“muddy black brown pour with a grey head. roast peanut aroma. dry unswet tea flavor with the taste of model airplanes. a biting carbonation level. a lingering bittersweet berry taste.”

“pours a urine tainted neon yellow with a white head. yeastastic aroma of grains of paradise or corriander or something, a really great spicy nose. first taste bites me then i compensate for the crappy mouthfeel of pine needles. lemon pear and blueberry come out in this in an bad balance for me.”

“amber body with a grey white head. nose is loose and hard to catch. a bit of honeysuckle. flavor is astringent pear and balsa wood. apricot finishsomehow still smooth.”

“nice fiery gold body with a lackadaisical ring of grey head (some weird scribbles about big beer and upsetting something and trying something else are in my notes, someday i’ll figure out what i meant) penny and donut flavour with a glaze. Some candy corn here.”

Fortunately, none of these beers were ours. I can’t help but think how disappointing it would be to read that somebody thinks your beer has the taste of model airplanes or that it pours a urine-tainted neon yellow. Ouch.

This column is courtesy of the Yukon Brewing Company, an organization that appreciates thoughtful feedback.

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