Michelob Celebrate Vanilla Oak

Brewed by Anheuser-Busch InBev
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
St. Louis, Missouri USA

Sweet and artificial, tastes like cheap French oak staves microfilitered through the tank. Sweet vanilla, cotton candy, saltwater taffy and a graham cracker maltiness. Not very good at all. Tastes way too artificial and fake all the way through.

The aroma is of vanilla and caramel malt. The color is amber with a tan head. The flavor of vanilla comes through lightly and there is a bit of cloyingess at the finish.

I had this bottle before it was released. I had a sample at the FOBAB in 2005, didn’t bother rating, but when the fest was over, the A-B rep let me have an unopened bottle (or did I just lift it? Who can remember?) This gem sat in my cellar for a year until I broke it out at a tasting. Here are the notes from 2006. Golden color. Aroma is primarily vanilla with some spice, but mostly vanilla. Taste is very sweet with lots of vanilla & wood on the finish. This is so cloying that it is hard to drink. I remember not liking this when I had it a year ago, thinking it was cloyingly sweet with too much vanilla. A year has not helped.

Clear amber color. Not dark as marketed. Screw top-you know you’ve got a top 50 beer now. Very thin soapy head. Dissipates quickly. Aroam of vanilla and plastic. Taste is heavy on the vanilla as if vanilla syrup were used; not beans. No taste of oak at all. Too carbonated. What else could one expect from Anheauser-Busch.

7oz Bottle. Pours a clear amber/ copper color. Sweet aroma with tons of vanilla and some alcohol. Sticky sweet with an abundance of vanilla and bourbon as well as some toasted caramel notes. Out of balance. Gets pretty hot as it warms.

Well, I tried to have an open mind on this beer, but it simply is not very good. Mahogany color with a thin white head. Licorice, vanilla and cotton candy dominate the aroma. Very sweet flavor, almost cloying. One dimensional vanilla flavor that lacks balance of any sort. I am glad that a friend got a bottle of this for free, because it is certainly not worth it’s price.

I’m a big fan of vanilla in beer, and when you have a beer brewed with vanilla beans, and aged in bourbon barrels, I’m all over it. Here was a chance for AB to hit one out of the ball park, but with all the speciality beers they do, this one was just a pop fly. This beer pours to a brilliant, deep amber color, with a small, tan head that fades, and a soft to moderate amount of carbonation. The nose on this beer is very inviting, with aromas of sweet vanilla bean, caramel, and hints of oak. The palate is thin, with lean caramel, and sweet malt flavor, paired with hints of oak and vanilla. This beer finishes with more sweet malt and oak up front, then ends with a sweet vanilla, and warming heat that lingers. A nice effort, but this beer could have been so much better if AB just had the balls to brew a beer, that was all about flavor and character, and forget about offending their core Budweiser/Michelob drinkers.

2005 bottle. Pours reddish amber with a small white head. Strong bourbon and oak aroma, with some vanilla highlights. Aroma is very enticing. Flavor is toffee, vanilla and fig at first, but is quickly overtaken and dominated by oak, bourbon and alcohol. Thin, watery mouthfeel. Oak lingers for a long finish. The aroma got my hopes up, but ultimately this beer disappointed.