Michelob Celebrate Vanilla Oak

Oh boy - don’t get fooled by the nice cardboard package it comes by, all in black and with nice letters, the bottle itself, nice and then - BUMMMM - a screw top - what the heck???? Hello Mr. Bottle Designer, have you had to much of this beer or was that your funny little gimmick??? Light red color, no head - mmmmh - not quite the appearance I see on that picture to the left, I guess Photoshop doesn*t work in my head. Ok nose - some almond, clay and woody notes but also alcohol. Fizzy carbonation and a cherry vanilla and alcohol taste. Actually like a cheap fusel - am I disappointed? No, not really. Just because Mc Donalds names a Hamburger "Royal" it doesn’t make it more than a greasy piece of beef in between a bread roll.

Celebrate, my friends. Let’s see. All 6.5 billion - 82 people that have not had the experience of drinking this beer. I was surprised that such a product existed. Now I am disgusted. This is raunchy and disgusting. When you crack the lid some vanilla aroma sneaks out but then it is totally dominated by alcohol and god, let’s see, some weird chemicals...maybe melted plastic. Flavor is alcohol, medicine, a little vanilla. copper color with no head. It tastes like a nasty brandy mixed drink. At $8 for 26 oz. stay away from this at all costs. I don’t understand why with all the money and resources that Busch has why they can’t create a good tasting beer.

Pours a clear, copper/vermillion with red leanings. A fizz of a head settles immediately to a hairline of halo. Dusty, macro-corn & light diacetyl aromas under prominent vanilla. My impression is that it smells like a brewpub experiment. Alcohol is intense as it warms. Flavor finds cloyingly sweet vanilla with nuttiness beneath. Thinly syruped with light alcohol-astringence late. My suggestion is to have this in place of your late night craving for ice cream.

I suppose the increase in alcohol, body and flavor (albeit contrived) is reason for A/B to celebrate, but it’s not quite reason enough for me. This beer is cloying yet strangely drinkable for those who don’t mind their pancakes absolutely smothered with syrup.

<font size=-4>Under the tree from <a href=http://www.mikesjournal.com/Santa Plate.jpg>Santa.<font size=-1>

On tap at EBF.... What is that shit.The representative of anheuser-bush explain to me that beer was old in oak barrel and taste vanilla flavor and he sayed to me he love Montreal and blablabla..So i try the beer with a lot of enthousiasme.Humm that beer taste like a crap malt liquor..Corn and alcohol..Thas is a crap beer like the other Anheuser-bush beer....

Strong Vanilla. No confusing the flavor here. Very sweet. All malt with little to no hops. Very drinkable. Got this for my buddy who had this on tap down in Seaworld where they give you free samples (since Seaworld is sponsored by Anheuser Busch). He said he liked the tap version better, but still thought this was good. Of course, his palate isn’t quite adjusted to the more hoppy beers. Give Michelob some credit for trying to "dress up" their beer. A valid effort. Still not worth the overpriced $19 which I paid for it (even though it contained 2 snifters in a gift set). Also, at least they should put a cork in the bottle if they’re going to charge that much for it. The screw off cap is cheesy.

Aroma is oak, flour, butter, raspberries, vanilla, cherry coke. body is brown white orange hue. Taste is fruity with oak, caramel, vanilla and dried fruit along with some hazelnut. Palate is too light for the alcohol content, but if this is really 10% it is hidden well.

2005 24oz. Bottle: First off, if Michelob wants to be taken seriously about their beers, they need to ditch the aluminum screw top on the bottle. It is too reminicent of some cheap 32oz’ers or malt liquor with this packaging. It pours a clear coppery color. There was quite a bit of a fizzing head, that was almost cascading ala Guinness, but all of this mayhem stopped almost immediately. The nose is definitely vanilla, with some fruits hiding behind it. The taste is overpoweringly that of vanilla. Yuck! There are some other flavors trying to make it out of the vanilla, but my taste buds are on overload from it and they can’t pick anything else out of it, except maybe some alcohol. It is harsh and syrupy. I also regret this purchase.

2005 bottle. Ruby-garnet to chestnut-auburn, clear, rather viscous looking in the glass, with a bit of fairly dense grey-beige head (look at the picture to the left) that is poorly to moderately retained, no lacing. Aroma of thick, syrupy, artificial candy (twizzlers, jolly ranchers provide the light fruit notes, while a heavier, darker and equally artificial candy note is present as well). Bits of light wood notes, dry, short lived but no where near the strength needed to balance this sweetness (which is predominantly thick, syrupy, cloying caramel and buttercream). Notes of light cinnamon and toffee and then of course, we have the vanilla. What can I say? This is actually done well, be it a bit too heavy. The notable thing is that it is a whole bean vanilla addition, providing a true vanilla note, in place of the expected vanilla extract. Some crunchy dark malts, bit of graininess, but it’s fleeting and inadequate. The flavor is a syrupy, cloying mess of a beer, very artificial, sluggish and with no elegance whatsoever. Thick vanilla cream flavors combine with syrupy sugar and candy coated cherries to pulverize the senses, while the wood character adds a sharpness on the end that is neither welcome nor balancing. Syrupy, extremely undercarbonated and underattenuated mouthfeel. But at least they got the vanilla right (sort of). . . .