Efes Pilsener/Bare Knuckle Stout (TUR/NH)

Efes Beverage is a swaggering international corporation based in Turkey. They apparently sponsor a basketball club where Mehmet Okur and Hidayet Turkoglu used to play (and where former Syracuse Orangeman Preston Shumpert currently plays, but I digress).

Their pilsener isn't all that bad. I think this a beer that our European cousins have seen around a lot, but it's new to me. It tastes like a second tier Euro pils, with grainy malts and light, grassy hops. Not much kick, but nothing off about it either, and it's reasonably crisp and refreshing. I liked it with a spicy stew.

Bare Knuckle Stout is A-B's attempt at a Guinness clone. I'd never heard of it before and ordered it in an out of town hotel bar thinking it might be a local beer. A-B only sells it on tap I think. It certainly has the look down, complete with cascading foam, and the nitrogen texture, for better or worse. Taste-wise, it comes across as a somewhat watery version of Guinness (which isn't the stoutest stout to begin with). Still, it wasn't bad, and I'd order it again in an A-B exclusive location (or maybe I'd order American Ale).

But who's going to drink it? This isn't Anheuser-Busch trying to overhwelm tiny microbreweries. Guinness has formidable marketing and distribution of their own. Also, I can't imagine the Guinness fanboys switching even if BK Stout were superior. Is Bare Knuckle destined to be the stout of choice in unlikely places (e.g., hotel and airport bars)? Or does A-B plan on doing some serious arm-twisting to take taps away from Guinness?

Budweiser American Ale (MO)

Curiosity must be accounting for a lot of sales for A-B, but probably not enough to pay that massive advertising bill. They need repeat sales for that, and probably won't be getting them from me.

Not that it's a bad beer. The bottle itself is very attractive with its bulging shoulders and classy color scheme. The beer looks great too: clear amber, impressive head. There's a slight citrus hop aroma (those dry-hopped Cascades we've heard so much about). Not a lot of hoppy flavor or much bitterness, though. It's a decent balance of caramel malts and hops, I suppose, but not a lot of bite. The body is too thin and there's a hollow finish.

American Ale isn't a bad attempt, though. I paid only $5.99 a sixer, which is less than even the cheapie micros like Saranac. I can't help but wonder how it will taste to BMC loyalists not used to a bit of flavor. You have to work your way up to hop-bombs, and maybe this is a first step.

Blue Dawg Wild Blue (NY)

Anheuser-Busch does a pretty good job of hiding traces of their fingerprints from this one. I saw a six-pack in my supermarket and had only a vague recollection of the name. A fruit beer at 8%? Award winning? Seems interesting. Baldwinsville, NY should have tipped me off, or perhaps the poseur-ish "dawg" brewery name.

Not that I prejudged it because of the brewery. In fact, this actually turned out to be not quite as bad as I'd heard (though it's still pretty bad). It's heavy on the blueberry, although I wonder if they could pass it off as grape. The sweetness is at the level of an alcopop. It's a bit syrupy. The back end has a trace of hops that doesn't jibe with the rest of it. Rating by style -- and defining the style simply as beer -- it would score terribly, but it actually makes for a passable, high school grade spiked punch. That's really not what I was looking for, but I do have some acquaintances who probably wouldn't mind taking the rest of the sixer.