Page 40 - the NOISE June 2016

BY GARY KURTZ
the water that came last winter is long gone. “female rain,” it’s called in navajo: the gentle, furtive rains that fall from overcast skies between november
and march ... What we’re waiting for now is male rain. Big, booming, wait-till- your-father-gets-home cloudbursts that bully up from mexico and threaten to rip the sky.
— Barbara Kingsolver
Every now and then, I like to play a game with myself — let me explain. I take great joy in walking into a grocery store, making my way to the beer section, and asking, “What’s the most fun I can have here for $20?” Previous iterations of this game have been great fun. The Beer Camp mixed 12-pack from Sierra Nevada was possibly the best. A selection of Grand Canyon Brewing bombers was spectacular. “O’ Captain, my Captain,” you’re saying, “What did you pick this time?” Well, dear reader, I will tell ... in time. First, I’d like to revisit a subject I’ve covered previously — weird ingredients in beer.
In November, I wrote about the German Beer Purity law, the Reinheitsgebot of 1516. For those of you who overindulged over the holidays and can’t remember anything that happened before Thanksgiving, here’s a quick recap: the law limited brewers to only using barley, hops and water to make beer. Thankfully, we live in less restrictive times. That being said, I’m still a bit mixed on the use of odd ingredients. On one hand, many places make phenomenal beers with all kinds of adjuncts. On the other hand, poor quality pumpkin beers abound during late summer and early fall. So, with mixed feelings and not a little anxiety, I pulled the trigger on this iteration of the $20 grocery store game — San Tan Brewery’s mixed 12-pack.
Why, you wonder, am I approaching this box of canned glory with such trepidation? Mr. Pineapple, that’s why. Mr. Pineapple is a German style wheat beer infused with pineapple juice sourced from fair-trade certified Costa Rican farms. What this means, in its simplest terms, is your eco-conscious hipster friends (who only drink things with little emblems on the package indicating the contents are more expensive because someone certified them as being fair- trade) will love it. Now, I’m going to be honest with y’all. I don’t love this beer. However, when I’ve been sitting outside in the heat smoking a pork shoulder over mesquite and hickory all day, I can see its appeal. This is a wonderful hot weather porch pounder. At 5% ABV and 15 IBUs, it is an exceptionally easy drinking wheat beer. That is, if you adore pineapples. If not, maybe stick with the other three offerings in the mixed 12-pack.
The other three beers in the glory box are San Tan’s Hefeweizen, SunSpot Gold Ale, and my favorite Devil’s Ale. The Hefe is light and lemony, as one would expect of the style. Also as one would expect, it tastes like all that is good about summertime. It tastes of sunscreen and sundresses, sunshine and sunburns. SunSpot is your everyday crowd-pleaser in the pack — not too bitter, not too sweet, not too expressive. This is the beer for people who don’t like aggressively hopped beers or pineapples. Devil’s Ale is everything I love about American Pale Ales. It is crisp, clean, not overbearingly hopped but still has some balls, and just sweet enough to go down way too easily on a hot afternoon. This is a classic American Pale, executed exceptionally well — the hop fans at your little shindig will appreciate it.
The one overarching factor common to all of the beers in this pack is their session-ability. While they may not all technically be session beers, they all clock in at less than 6% ABV and all are very easy drinking, especially in the heat. you might think of this as your default something- for-everyone choice when bringing beer to a friend’s place to grill some burgers by the pool at the beginning of a beautiful Arizona summer evening. If your crew has more of a penchant for hops, perhaps you might supplement the mixed 12-pack with a 6-pack of Moon Juice IPA. Speaking of which, if I could change one thing about this mixed bag of liquid deliciousness, it would be to sub out one of the wheat beers with another hop-forward option. But that’s just me. Now, back to the grill. Those burgers aren’t going to cook themselves.
40 • JUNE 2016 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
| Gary Kurtz is looking forward to a hops-filled summer. gtkurtz@gmail.com