beer review

SEEDSPITTER WITBIER—A better purchase than a Cuisinart oven mitt, but still an unnecessary experiment

My Fellow Inebriates,

Too often, consumers buy crappy products and never say anything. Today we decided not to let Cuisinart get away with selling us an inferior product. But then my mum got lazy about writing a letter, so I did it.

Cuisinart letter

…

Seriously, I can’t find this product on your site(s). What the hell, Cuisinart? Are you ashamed of this product? (you should be) and/or pretending it doesn’t exist?

cuisinart oven mitt

My mum got the Puppet Mitt for Christmas from my dad. She was as delighted as you can be with an oven mitt and began using it immediately, as its 15-year-old predecessor had a gaping hole. It was the sort of gaping hole that’s fully visible, so you get used to it and adjust your grasp accordingly, and even though she’d gotten pretty strategic at picking hot things up with it, she was happy to have a super-deluxe new Puppet Mitt with Silicone Grip from Cuisinart.

A mere five months later, she was reaching into the oven for one of her god-awful meals with the Puppet Mitt, only to realize her fingers were burning. Yes, the Puppet Mitt had a hole. Not a visible hole of the sort you can work around, but a hole inside it, in the lining interior to the silicone part. And the silicone part, without that fabric lining, just wasn’t enough against a 400°F pan. Of course she yelled “Fuck!” and Dad said, “Hey, do you have to do that with the windows open? Do the neighbors really need to hear that?”

Five months, Cuisinart! That’s how long your stupid Puppet Mitt with Silicone Grip lasted. That’s less time than dollar store oven mitts would probably have lasted. That totally sucks.

We should have learned our lesson after the Cuisinart grind-and-brew repeatedly spewed coffee all over the kitchen.

We should have learned our lesson after the Cuisinart grind-and-brew repeatedly spewed coffee all over the kitchen.

And when the Cuisinart percolator perked our coffee in something like ten seconds, essentially defeating the purpose of percolation.

And when the Cuisinart percolator perked our coffee in something like ten seconds, essentially defeating the purpose of percolation.

I don’t know how much our Puppet Mitt with Silicone Grip cost my dad at Christmas because I can’t find the damn thing on your website(s). That’s why I think you’re trying to cover it up. You’re embarrassed of the Puppet Mitt, and so you should be!!!

Just in case you’re wondering why I, a bear who doesn’t even eat solid food or care about the outcome of my mother’s cooking experiments, should be upset about an oven mitt, it’s because I often hang out in the kitchen while she cooks; she likes to have a beer now and then while cooking, and being an alcohol-seeking animal, I like to get in on that. She chops and fries and bakes, and I steal gulps of her beer. Today, for instance, she and I were both stealing gulps of my dad’s beer, a witbier from Parallel 49 called SEEDSPITTER, so I was on the counter near the stove. But here’s the thing, Cuisinart:

If she doesn’t have an oven mitt, what the hell do you think she’s going to reach for when she needs one??? Holy shit, Cuisinart, do you realize how much I RESEMBLE an oven mitt? I’m soft and cloth-like and about the size of an oven mitt. Sure, I have eyes and a nose, and I don’t have a giant orifice that could accommodate a hand, but please try to understand that—if my mum had to make a choice between burning her hand and not burning her hand—she might grab…me. So, just for my own peace of mind, I need her to have a FUCKING OVEN MITT THAT WORKS, okay?

It is not a far-fetched concern, Cuisinart.

It is not a far-fetched concern, Cuisinart.

As for that SEEDSPITTER beer, just in case any Cuisinart staff members are wondering how it is:

SEEDSPITTER just might illustrate the tenet that we don’t have to do things just because we can. We shouldn’t combine watermelon with beer any more than someone should attempt to stick a hand up my ass. Granted, the watermelon is subtle. Let’s back up a bit.

seedspitter_bottlesSEEDSPITTER pours fresh and bubbly, golden yellow. The aroma is light and wheaty with familiar witbier notes such as candied citrus peel, but there’s a lurking vegetal smell in there too—more like tomatoes than watermelon. Yeah, yeah, tomatoes are fruit, as Miss P would remind us while shoving five into her mouth at once, but they nevertheless have a vegetal vibe, and so does SEEDSPITTER.

Those garden-vegetable notes redouble as you sip SEEDSPITTER. The beer is fairly tart, with the watermelon/tomato flavors horning in on the hops a bit; if these flavors were partnered on So You Think You Can Dance, they’d probably get eliminated. As the beer crosses mid-palate to the rear, those flavors transition from candy-like to medicinal, tart to bitter, with pilsner notes frantically trying to catch up, wailing, “I’m a beer, honest, I’m a beer.” The whole sensation is off-putting and strange.

I’m a big fan of Parallel 49; we’ve been repeat buyers of UGLY SWEATER MILK STOUT and HOPARAZZI, to name just a couple. These guys are masterful brewers with a couple of chemical engineers on board, but SEEDSPITTER seems to be an example of an experiment that didn’t have to be conducted. In fairness, we’re not big witbier fans at LBHQ and therefore we lack a nuanced appreciation of witbier characteristics. But watermelon? Watermelon??

Needless to say, I guzzled as much of my dad’s SEEDSPITTER as I could. It wasn’t moving very fast, and I’m an opportunist. Mum is chickenshit about weird beers, so she had only a few sips and declared it “gin-and-tonic time.”

I know you’re wondering, Cuisinart, what this has to do with you. It has to do with you more than tangentially. You see, if my mum starts swilling G&Ts while cooking, the danger to yours truly escalates. A few G&Ts under her belt and she won’t even aim for a proper oven mitt. NOT THAT WE HAVE ONE! Your Puppet Mitt with Silicone Grip sucks, Cuisinart! I wish we’d spent the money on beer (but not watermelon beer).

I don’t want to be an oven mitt, Cuisinart.

Yours truly,

Liquorstore Bear

RUSSELL CREAM ALE—Won’t start a fight, or at least stays in the middle

My Fellow Inebriates,

Miss P never had a kindergarten nemesis, but of course Miss V has found hers. If you met V, you’d understand how natural this is. You’d know, after having a meal at the LBHQ table or witnessing bedtime, that V cannot operate without adversaries. She has to live with the ones at home, which means everybody gets along most of the time—but her school nemesis is another story.

PaperCamera Veronica 2012-05-13-11-47-16Take V at the end of a long row of monkey bars. From across the span she sees “H” starting to swing across, bar by bar. This is a logical prompt for V to start from her own side, monkeying her way with characteristic aggression, surely anticipating a clash in the middle and prepared to hang there until Saturday or her nemesis gives up and drops.

In fairness to V, H has been pretty mean to her this year.

In fairness to H, V’s reports are not terribly objective.

According to their teacher, they have a real thing going, and that’s why they sit at opposite sides of the classroom. The teacher does her best to prevent matter meeting antimatter, but she can only do so much, especially when the two seek each other out.

“That’s got to be stressful for the teacher. You should pack a beer for her with V’s homework,” I told my parents, generously thinking of our small stock of RUSSELL CREAM ALE.

What? You think other parents don’t send beer to school with their kids?

russell cream aleYou knew this already, but my parents aren’t that kind of progressive thinker. Oh well—more for us.

RUSSELL CREAM ALE is pretty quintessential—can you say “pretty quintessential”?—for the brew. It pours a clear, deep amber with a soapy-hued head that takes a few minutes to dissipate. Inhale and you get sweet malt and nuts and pronounced breadiness with some floral hops chiming in. The flavor is mild, with the hops pulling their punches until the aftertaste, where they linger with hints of fruit and weeds, providing an effective balance to the initial malty sweetness. The beer sits on your palate politely—kind of a Goldilocks mouthfeel, which obviously passes muster with bears, particularly this one.

Overall, RUSSELL CREAM ALE is nicely balanced although not especially memorable. Just a solid, good-tasting, perfectly standard exemplar of the kind of cream ale your barkeeper might pour you from the tap. In other words—totally non-provoking and non-confrontational—the sort of thing I bet V’s teacher could have used this morning.

COORS LIGHT—Best enjoyed when it’s free

My Fellow Inebriates,

Our next-door neighbor has a sign on his lawn that reads:

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along with some gardening implements and…a chainsaw.

Amazingly, since yesterday the free hoe and spade have disappeared, but the free chainsaw remains.

This is astonishing given how many tween- and teenaged boys walk this road to and from school. What one of them wouldn’t want his own chainsaw? Especially without having to undergo the red tape involved in requesting such a tool from one’s parents.

That the chainsaw is a hedge trimmer shouldn’t limit its appeal. Are potential miscreants concerned, perhaps, that it’s broken and not worth the hassle? Or is our neighborhood gentler than I thought?

MayJune2011-001-free-rocksI don’t want a chainsaw—OMG, can you imagine?—but when one is lying at the foot of a grass-mounted sign that says “FREE,” the urge to take it is strong. Researchers have demonstrated that people will avail themselves of free things even if they have absolutely no use for them. In a famous study, people were invited to take “free rocks” from a sidewalk stall, and many of them did just that. Because they were free.

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This is exactly why I had a COORS LIGHT the other day. It was free. Somebody said, “Hey, do you want a beer? Sorry, it’s COORS LIGHT.” And of course I said yes.

Straw-yellow and blandly corn-flavored with frothy foam, its aroma wafted a veritable periodic table of unwanted metals. Cold temperatures are indeed a friend to COORS LIGHT; while cold it is mercifully flavorless, but as its temperature increases, so does its ability to deposit lingering, unwelcome aftertastes.

But I’m being a douchebag here. COORS LIGHT has no pretensions of “sessionability” or even quaffability. It’s a straight hockey beer and fully capable of delivering refreshment after you’ve, say, trimmed the hedge, cursed your crappy hedge trimmer and resolved to buy a new one, then left it on your lawn with an open invitation for anyone, including neighborhood children, to take it home.

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