Ingenious Brewing had a booth at a beer & music festival.
They served “Alebrijes” that tastes like chocolate mole. “Mole style imperial stout with cacao nibs, cinnamon, peanuts, sesame seeds, anise, guajillo chilies, and ancho chilies.”
Also one that tasted like a PB&J. Might have been “Peanut Butter Vs Jelly,” although that one’s a porter and I’d swear the fruity one was a jelly-colored IPA.
It’s pretty much liquid candy. A small child would love it.
It’s one of those things that I can recognize is really good, and don’t regret trying it, but I would not want to drink it regularly. I’m glad I asked for a taste instead of a pint.
I’ve also had a couple of gruit or gruut-beers, which are brewed according to an old-style recipe from before hops became the standard beer seasoning, substituting various mixtures of herbs.
Does my drinking Cool Colt count? For one thing, it’s malt liquor not actual beer and for another it was only a few swallows and then it came back again. It was beyond vile.
In case anyone is wondering Cool Colt was Colt 45 with menthol. They didn’t sell it for long.
On a similar note, I had a homebrewed dandelion beer.
The dandelions add bitterness but the beer I had also had hops. It wasn’t very good IMO. If I recall the name of the brewer correctly he really liked high hops styles and IPAs. I generally don’t. I’m thinking my issue was more with his hop choices than the dandelions. It’s been too long and the memory is vague though.
I have to check out a gruut beer if I ever wander across one. A mix of the non-hop bitterness with lower than normal hops might work pretty well for my tastes as well.
For me, it has to be rauchbier. It’s not something I’d want as an ‘every day beer’, but I actually rather enjoyed it. It smelled and tasted pretty much exactly like beer would smell and taste if you could barbecue it.
Mamma Mia! Pizza Beer was pretty unusual. And pretty bad. Beer made with tomato, garlic, basil, oregano, and onion is not something one would want to binge drink! My throat actually clinched while this was going down!
If were going to talk malt liquors, I remember the original Four Loko, no longer produced because reasons. I heard about it and decided to buy a few cans. The combination of alcohol and caffeine kicked my ass, and the taste was hideous.
The mention of pizza beer reminded me of a garlic beer I got on the Isle of Wight. It would be great for making beef & ale stew, but was pretty nasty on its own.
I was mentally going through my list: Rauchbier, banana bread beer, Sriracha beer. Those are all contenders, but the weirdest one I’ve had was a 1,000 IBU beer by Mikeller. It was like hops soup.
Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but I had a wonderful beer I Greece flavored with mastic, the resin from some tree that’s more commonly an ingredient in local chewing gums. It has a flavor all its own, a bit like mint but not quite. I think the beer might have been called “Chios,” which sounds like it could be the island it came from.
When I read the title to this thread, chile beer was the first thing that I thought of. Its been close to 40 years since the one time I had it but I think Cave Creek was the brand. I liked it!
Only beer I’ve had to pour out was an organic bacon beer at a PDX organic beer festival. There have been a few spicy (jalapeno, chile, etc.) beers that I’ve enjoyed, but far between. I haven’t had favorable reactions to the Rogue/VooDoo pairings, but they are at least mostly drinkable.
I’m drinking a Room 309 right now, an ale flavored with truffle and black pepper. The pepper is mostly a slight aftertaste, not unpleasant, but weirdly tacked on, but thr truffle gives it a weird, metallic/earthy tang? Kinda hard to describe. Not really for me…
I wouldn’t quite go that far, though. While I didn’t care much for the flavor, it was still a well-crafted beer—kinda like rap music, it’s not really my thing, but I can appreciate the skill that went into creating it. Much worse are those beers that just fail at what they set out to do. The worst beer I have a record of is the Russian-brewed Neon Beer, for which my tasting notes simply read ‘like having sex in a small boat’.