Mar

20

Hop Hound Amber Wheat

By Andy Murphy

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You could say I was tricked into drinking this Michelob. Perhaps tricked is too harsh a word — misled may be more fitting — but you try drinking one and only one beer a day and then see what word you use when your waiter recommends “a great micro-brew from St. Louis”.

My first clue should have been his inability to make a wine recommendation. Since restaurant beer selection is usually shoddy, and because I prefer to drink my one beer a day without food as a palate influence, I’ve only rarely ordered a beer when I’ve been out to eat so far this year. That leaves me to explore the wine menu with wild abandon.

Kenneth, my waiter, was at best less than helpful — “That’s a white wine,” he said of a Chardonnay — and when pressed he could only equivocate, such as, “It has some spiciness to it, but it’s kind of bland. I don’t like red wine so you would have to tell me.”

Two beers were listed on draught as specials. One was an oatmeal stout from a good, local brewery. The second I had never heard of — Hop Hound Amber Wheat. The menu described the beer as “an unfiltered amber wheat ale with caramel sweetness and a refreshing citrus note”.

“What do you know about this beer?” I asked Kenneth. Considering how little he knew about the wine menu, expecting him to know more about the draught specials was probably akin to taking candy from a stranger in a van. But I’m too trusting. Afterall, it was the special of the night. He probably had a cheat sheet somewhere.

To my credit, when he described the beer as a “great micro-brew from St. Louis”, I asked him who brewed Hop Hound. In fact, I sent him to the bar to find out. He returned saying the bartender didn’t know and would talk to the manager.

Ladies and gentlemen, learn from my lesson. Don’t order a beer from someone who knows nothing about what they are serving. As soon as I ordered the Hop Hound, my wife gave me a long look and said, “You’re already regretting your beer choice. I can tell, you have buyer’s remorse all over your face.”

The beer arrived in a full pint glass — not a wheat beer glass — with no head and no aroma. It was so hazy and orange-brown that it looked like a barleywine-style ale, which gave me a glimmer of hope. I sent our waiter to the bar again, explaining that I really needed to know the name of the micro-brewery in St. Louis. While he was gone, I took a few sips and couldn’t taste much, but the beer was very cold and I had just eaten a bowl of clam chowder. Surely, I reasoned, it just needed to warm up while I let my palate recover from all that salt and cream.

That’s when young Kenneth returned to say they still didn’t know who brewed the beer, but that they were, “Just bought by Anheuser-Busch.”

I’m not a complete beer snob. I join America in enjoying Coors, Budweiser, and many of the macro-brewed, macro-marketed beers lining store shelves. But suddenly the “micro-brewery in Saint Louis” was beginning to look like Candide the Waiter’s fairy tale.

It took just a couple of minutes with my Blackberry to discover what Kenneth couldn’t get from the bartender — that Hop Hound was a Michelob seasonal.

Micro-brew? Blasphemy!

But here’s the thing — Michelob is actually doing a pretty good job of introducing beer with real flavor. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a bar and the only ray on sunshine on the menu was a Michelob AmberBock. As craft ales grow in popularity and appear on more and more bars, brands like Michelob can actually go a long way toward influencing the American palate and encouraging beer drinkers to branch out a bit. Sure, Michelob’s “craft” brews are pretty tame. But as they influence the casual beer drinker, that rising tide will lift all boats.

Just don’t try to sell me on a lie. To be fair to Kenneth, Michelob doesn’t exactly advertise its name on the bottle or marketing lit. It seems they are disguising the beer as a micro-brew by giving it a funny name, showing a cartoon dog on the label, and only listing Michelob in the fine print.

From the Michelob website, Hop Hound Amber Wheat is described as:

An unfiltered amber wheat ale with a slight caramel sweetness and refreshing citrus note. Brewed with Cascade and Willamette hops from the Pacific Northwest and Hallertau hops from Southern Germany, Hop Hound certainly lives up to its name. The amber hue results from the blend of caramel, wheat and pale barley malts.

No, Hop Hound does not live up to its name. The hops are muted at best, only becoming apparent after the beer warmed. There didn’t seem to be any “citrus note”, only malt and yeast. It had a hint of sweetness — the caramel, wheat, and pale malts blended into a subtle, honey taste.

But to get any of those elements, you have to really look for them. Not much going on. Many people would enjoy this beer — but I would have given anything to switch my order to that oatmeal stout.

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Categories : Beer a Day