beer

The end is near!

My Fellow Inebriates,

My friends the Beer & Whiskey Brothers have the right idea with their question of what beer to drink before a city-block-sized boulder hits us tonight. My fur’s been quivering since I read about this asteroidal mutha, and if it indeed has our little planet in its sights, there’s nothing to do but drink, people.

But I don’t advise sipping.

The prospect of our little blue marble getting plowed by an asteroid is so bowel-emptyingly fearful that you need to render yourself insensible for the impact. So here’s a list of non-sipping beers you can pound or shotgun as you brace yourself.

  • Budweiser
  • Labatt Blue
  • Molson Black Ice
  • Kokanee
  • Corona

You see, on the brink of an apocalypse, your tastebuds are just about useless. The fight-or-flight response galvanizes your body—your heart pounds, your lungs heave, blood rushes from your stomach, your pupils dilate, and you get a metallic taste in your mouth.

You’re ready to freak out, but you’re not the best judge of beer. This is why I RECOMMEND racing to your local booze shop to buy any or all of the aforementioned brews.

If this is the end, I’ve enjoyed getting wasted with you in cyberspace. Be strong, humans, and drink up.

KILLER BEE Dark Honey Ale

My Fellow Inebriates,

For a bear, anything with “honey” on the label is an instant sell. My dad actually picked this beer out for me, which surprised me so much that my fur is still standing on end. He said since I was being pretty consistent about writing reviews, it was time I had something off the beaten path.

It’s true that bears love honey. My friend Scarybear claims that when he’s in the wild he sticks his paw right into any old hive he finds, pulls out globs of honey, and devours it bees and all.

(This is as stupid an image as I can conjure in my furry head, given that the Scarybear I know spends hours on the couch watching reruns of Stargate and begging his humans to order pizza.)

That aside, when beer and honey intersect, alcoholic bears get excited. The Tin Whistle Brewing Company, in business since 1995, specializes in English-style pale ales, and KILLER BEE Dark Honey Ale is crafted with four types of specialty honey.

Only I can’t taste honey in it. Swirled in a glass, KILLER BEE wafts cocoa and molasses up front, with toffee following. First sips are roasty, toasty, malty with chocolate predominating but not cloying. There’s almost a peatiness to it, an earthy, deep quality that hints of an Islay whisky. Think deep, sonorous tones if you’re into musical analogy.

KILLER BEE is almost stoutish but not quite. (It’s almost a lot of things, including honey-flavored.) While the mouthfeel is full, it’s surprisingly crisp. Initially the carbonation struck me as low, but a few sips convinced me that the Tin Whistle people really hit it on the money.

I am really freaking scared of killer bees, and I totally admire Tin Whistle for courting them so dangerously with this dark, intriguing offering. At 6% alcohol, KILLER BEE is boozy and warming—the perfect sipper while sitting on the couch watching TV. But the flavors are so dessert-like that one’s enough—you need to have something else ready to drink when you’re done with your KILLER BEE. I RECOMMEND it more as a curiosity than as a beer for pounding.

Cariboo Brewing Cream Ale

My Fellow Inebriates,

As promised, here’s a companion review to my rave about Cariboo Brewing’s honey lager. It took me until late this afternoon to compose my thoughts because I missed my habitual bender last night when one of the kids elected me stuffy du nuit, which meant I couldn’t escape her five-year-old clutches all night long, people. Fast asleep, she couldn’t sense my delirium tremens but nevertheless maintained an iron clutch all night long. Love those kids…

Where was I? Oh yeah, I woke up grumpy—grumpy and discarded, forgotten in the breakfast scramble, and not a drink in sight to get me back to normalcy.

Once I resigned myself to pancakes on the table and not shooters, I skulked around the empties for a while, slurping out the dregs. This is how I have to pull myself together, living as I do under the veil of hypocrisy that surrounds drinking in this house. Just as my parents frown on pre-breakfast imbibing, so do they also point fingers at my lack of any ID indicating a legal drinking age. I’m a bear, humans—how many bears do you know with a driver’s license?

The empties gave me what I needed, and now I can tell you about Cariboos (that’s what it looks like on the can) Cream Ale. Ahhhh! Delectable stuff. Creamy, smooth, not too sweet: everything a cream ale should be.

My dad commented that it wasn’t as fizzy as he would have liked. But it’s not like my dad’s writing any liquor reviews, is he? I liked it fine. It wasn’t lacking effervescence the way Boddington’s is; it was absolutely within the typical fizz range and enough to tickle my fur. Yes, this morning’s dregs were completely flat, but they retained the character of several nights previous, which tells me I could do anything with Cariboos. I could let it sit out a few hours, heat it up, put it in the blender, whatever, and it would still be awesome.

I totally RECOMMEND buying a case of this beer, because Cariboo Brewing plants a tree for every case sold, which gives me something to climb up when toddlers attack.

http://www.cariboobrewing.com/campaign/reforest/