Hitchhiker Brewery in Pgh, usually a very reliable but not top-notch local brewery, just upset my wife. She doesn't know a ton about beer, but does know a ton about coffee. When she saw five adjunct ingredients listed below the name of the beer (coffee, maple syrup, cacao nibs, vanilla, hazelnut), she thought they were simply flavor "notes", like you'd find on a good bag of coffee. Thinking she was doing a thing for love, on Valentine's Day she presented me with a 4-pack of perhaps the single worst beer I have ever tasted. It set her back $17.99 plus tax, which made her embarrassment all the worse.
She comes home from work a half hour ago, tells me that when I open one, she'd like to taste it. So I opened one, poured a little into her glass. She smelled it, said it smelled like maple. The she sipped it, went "ewwwww!", and tossed the contents of her glass into the sink.
Me, being of stout makeup and trained to never throw out beer, tasted mine. She asked, "Do you like it?". I didn't have to say a word, my anguished face told her all she needed to know. I imagine this is what it would be like to toss a bunch of syrup coated Wendy's french toast sticks into a Wendy's coffee with hazelnut flavoring, wringing out the french toast, then blending it into a white stout.
I am trying to suffer through the experience of this one glass. The other three cans will find themselves in somebody's cooler at some Memorial Day cookout.
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What makes a competent brewer even think of crap like this, let alone taste it and release it to the public?
