Beach Bum Blonde Ale

Brewed by Anheuser-Busch InBev
Style: Golden Ale/Blond Ale
St. Louis, Missouri USA

Thanks to Bob, Michelle, and mostly my baby Jana for the 12th annual Indiana Microbrewers Festival today! On tap @ the fest. Light and subtle but fresh nose that hints at pine. The brew is a sparkling straw. The quickly diminishing white creamy head leaves no lace. The light and fruity flavor almost resembles a wheat, perfect for summer. The light body is dry and soft.

Poured from bottle with a monster white head ....lots of carbonation...Very crisp aroma...the taste however tastes just like any of the other beers out of AB....sorry I did not get spicy or fruity flavors. It is very drinkable for a smoking hot summers day.

I didn’t even realize this was AB until I read it online thirty seconds ago. I could dive into the details ... "blah blah coloring, blah blah lacing, blah blah finish, blah this, blah that." But you get the same song and dance every time you drink a freaking AB beer. It’s pretty much Michelob with a colorful label on the bottle. Yippee.

This pours a bright golden yellow with a short head, but it manages some lasting lacing. The aroma is faint, honey, pale malt, some grassy floral scents. The flavor is a generic pale malty sweetness with a touch of grassy bitterness in the finish. One was enough.

<font size=-4>Single bottle purchase from <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/Places/ShowPlace.asp? Tuck Wines, Sprirts, and Beverages, Savoy, IL.<font size=-1>

Pours a pale yellow color with an instant voluminous head that just-as-quickly disappears. Laces in thin rings. Mysterious, if not altogether absent, scent. Hard to percept. Flavors are bland, with just a touch of toasty malts that are sadly watered down. Mild graininess in the aftertaste. I applaud the effort, but the final result lacks.

Bottle. From the pour and nose I wouldn’t have guessed this is an AB product. Pour is a nice gold color, but the head is a densly packed white one finger head. It is slowly dying back, but compared to the fizz head on most AB products, this is remarkable. Aromas are of malt, honey, grass, etc. Flavor is also above average. I’m not dancing in the streets, but I’d drink this more than once. Malt body is nicely balanced by some hops, a bit of spice, etc. I guess that while it is nothing too special, it is a well balanced beer that doesn’t completely suck. *** So after those kind words, I had another sample from the six pack... can’t quite figure it out, but it was very different from that first one... bland, directionless, etc.

Very faint sweet malt aroma, pours a clear yellow, with a quickly vanishing white head. AB must have a much different definition of hop aroma then I do. There’s a bit of spice and a touch of spice in the beer, but it’s very short lived, with almost no body. It’s a drinkable beer, but that’s about all that can be said for it.

Bottle claims this was brewed with "real malts." But the flavor had that rice feel that their macro lagers generally possess. Poured a thin looking orange brown. White head that dissolved almost instantly and nearly flat. Nose had a hint of citrus to it but no more than a whisp. Flavor was subdied as if drinking through a coffee filter. Very flat in flavor. Some very mild wheat. Any citrus I could smell was not present in the flavor. Light body without much of a finish. Still very easily drinkable but a bad take as a craft beer. I am glad my friend brought this six-pac over to share because I would have disappointed if I paid cash for it.