La Crosse Lager

This week’s review is kind of a double treat for me. As I mentioned last week I had a friend bring me back some beers from up north from his fishing expedition at Lake Erie. This is a beer I had never heard of before so it was an extra I didn’t even know to ask for, then on top of that it is supposedly the original recipe for the one beer I did request he bring back, Old Style.

La Crosse Lager – City Brewery, La Crosse, WI.

So the story is that MillerCoors owns the naming rights to Old Style but City Brewery uses the recipe for this beer. Now, I can’t say if it is better or worse than Old Style as I have yet to try the one can of Old Style he managed to bring back. I will say it pours the typical golden yellow that most American lagers do, and creates a very nice, thick white head that even leaves a bit of lacing behind. I get a slightly sweet scent of corn, very similar to roasted corn on the grill from the smell. Taste and mouthfeel are very light, not as crisp as other American lagers but refreshing none the less. Slightly sweet taste with a bit of bitterness kicking in at the very tale end and not leaving any after taste.

Before I started this journey of tasting as many different beers as possible I might have taken the first sip and gave this one away or even turned it down completely. Now that I have been brewing beer and enjoying the Craft beer boom, I have come to really try and appreciate what any and all beers bring. What it is the brewer is trying to give us. Now, I’m no fool and I don’t think for a minute that this beer is nothing more than a thirst quencher made to please the masses, but still, someone somewhere had to develop this recipe and then perfect it. So I can now mark off another beer of the list, expand my experience a little and think about how sad it was in the early 1900’s when this style dominated the U.S. Not that this is a bad beer but one that doesn’t really bring much to the table, alah Miller Lite, Coors, BUD, etc…

I do however have some pretty cool pics to post. One from FoxNews.com about crazy ads, and another from reader JF about how serious Ireland is when it comes to alcohol consumption. Which just serves to remind me that time is running out for me to make the trip I have always wanted to make, visit Ireland.

Well, it’s the weekend and I have no baseball games to attend as my son’s All-Star team is finally finished, it was fun but tiresome, so that means it’s time to relax. Cheers beer friend!

FourBoysBrewPub!