Wow. March already. Daffodils are blooming and trees are budding. Soon the summer ales will be hitting the shelves again. Ahhh... One more reason to love summertime.
I tried a brew from Bell's a while back and reviewed it here. Two Hearted Ale. It is one fine beer. So I thought if that one was so good, maybe I should try another one from Bell's. They have an entire end cap of all the Bell's brews at my favorite beer store. I stood there and deliberated over which one to try next. After much reading and studying (and wondering if the employees were beginning to get suspicious of me lingering there so long) I finally just reached out and grabbed one at random. It was the Midwestern Pale Ale. Like the Two Hearted Ale, I wasn't a fan of the label design (the curse of being a professional artist for 30 years is that you let your design sense overpower rational thinking sometimes).
– Just a side note about the label art on the Midwestern Pale Ale bottle: It's a painting of a red barn. I don't necessarily have anything against paintings of red barns, but this particular painting looks like something your semi-talented Aunt Betty would paint after she's been taking painting classes at Viv's Art Nook on Wednesday nights for a month. Not the quality of something you'd expect to see on the label of a nationally distributed beer. Plus, all of Bell's labels look like they were designed as high school graphic design projects. The look doesn't reflect the quality contained inside the bottle.
But with the tired old saying of "don't judge a book by its cover" playing in my head, and the fact that I didn't like the Two Hearted Ale label art either, I took it to check out.
The next day I popped open my first Midwestern P.A. to have with dinner. We were having cheeseburgers and sweet potato fries. What better dinner to have a beer with? I took a nice long sip.
Initially, I thought it was OK. Then immediately an overwhelming twang of bitter weirdness, followed by an unpleasant aftertaste of a whole other level of bitter weirdness. I almost hate to say it, but it tasted very close to a mainstream beer like Bud or Coors. It's been a while since I've tasted one of those, but that was the taste this beer recalled. I thought I must be drinking it wrong. So I took a bite of my burger and another healthy sip of M.P.A. ...Same thing. So I blamed the sweet potato fries.
A couple of days later, I thought I'd give it a second chance, except this time I would have it without eating anything. I cracked open number two to have while I was preparing dinner. Big sip. Same taste. I had to declare the sweet potato fries innocent.
I thought I'd give it one more chance a few days later. I had been at band practice. I was hot and sweaty after a three hour rehearsal and loading and unloading my drum kit. I ask you - what better time to have a beer than after that? BIG gulp gulp gulp... Ahhhh! I was very thirsty. Let's just say it DID quench my thirst, but it tasted the same. Three strikes and you're out. I have three left if anyone wants to give it a try to see if I'm wrong.
Would I buy this beer again? I'm checking the "No" box.
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