Review of Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale
Posted By Ken Friday, 08 February 2008 15:33
This is an interesting little seasonal beer put out by Anheiser-Busch, I assume for the holidays. This was the first time I had heard of this beer, and saw some at the liquor store and decided to try it out. As you will read, this is an interesting beer to say the least....
Ken's Review
Taste: C Taste on this beer I was not a fan of whatsoever. The beer is labelled as being aged on "Bourbon barrel oaks and vanilla beans". The latter part is what kind of ruins this beer for me, as having a vanilla taste in my beer did not please me at all. I was hoping for a milder taste of vanilla (or none at all) but the initial taste was fine until it settled and the overwhelming vanilla taste kicked in. This is more a type of beer to sip on one for a cold winter's night, but definitely not a beer you would slam a sixer of at a party.
Packaging: B+ I liked part of this packaging, and did not like part of it. I liked the snowman on the bottle, wearing sunglasses and holding a beer. I did not, however, like it because it gave off the completely wrong impression of this stuff. It is not "cool" like the snowman was, and the misrepresentation of it being that kind of beer did not sit well with me.
Value: C The sixer I bought of this was $7.49, or as I like to call it "a complete rip-off". Any beer like this should cost less than $1.00 a bottle, and not more than that. For the taste and the context you could possibly enjoy one of these, it was just too overpriced.
Drunkeness: B+ Drunkeness factor gets a little higher rating because this beer comes in at 6%. Now, if you really wanted to struggle through an entire sixer, I'm sure you would get more than a nice buzz going. My concern, and a road I will never travel down with this beer, is what the aftermath would be like. You can get much better beers with comparable alcohol content for cheaper, and enjoy getting trashed on more.
Overall: C I would not recommend this beer to anyone who had to pay for it. If you happen to have a friend with some left over in the fridge or something, it's maybe worth a taste because you may enjoy it whereas I did not. All-in-all, I cannot recommend this beer in good concience, and can think of many other beers I would rather partake in over this one by far.