Lip Stinger

Howdy y'all, I guess it's been a little while since I typed up my last little blog, let's just say July was a very busy and chaotic month. Alas I press on to blog about a different sort of beer I was weary on tasting. This month's entry comes to us via McTarnahan's brewery out of good old rose city. For those not aquainted with the history of random breweries so much, McTarnahans was a brewery that was once seperate, but then bought by Pyramid, then of course the Microbrewery back east that purchased Pyramid. Over time they've kept their tradtional beers going, a standard amber ale, and nice little cream porter. Okay beer, but definitely nothing that's too fancy. Over the past year and a half though the brewery has been churning out some specialty brews, like a great deal of other larger brewing companies have also tried to do. Though some of their new standards are pretty much pyramid clones, the specialty ones that usually come in a 22oz bottle have been suprisingly good. Now Redhook makes a couple good ones, parent Pyramid also is giving it a go, and Widmer needs to go back to the drawing board, out of these higher profile breweries I would have to say McTarnahans is doing a much nicer job overall. Now I'll say up front that I definitely not a fan of the beer I'm writing about, but I can see how others may enjoy it, and give a standing ovation with an Arsenio woot for brewing something that is definitely not the norm. Lip Stinger is a belgian style farmhouse ale fermented with peppercorn. Belgian farmhouse ales are a nice golden smooth ale, that tastes nice in the summer, has the usual beer accompaniments like lemon or other citrus flavors. It tastes close to like a hefe, or golden ale, with the difference being that nice belgian yeast flavor. This ale itself follows all those characteristics, smooth, light, golden, with the major difference coming from the peppercorn. There is no way to escape the flavor, when accompanied with a farmhouse style ale all accompanying flavors become immediately infused and refuse to be ignored. To me it tasted like someone had sprikled pepper in my beer, I'm already vigorously against salt in beer, and now I'll go ahead and add pepper to the list. And yes your tongue will feel a slight sting as you drink it, witch is a nice nitche if your into the gimmicky side of brewing. Like I said though, this beer is awesome in trying something completely different. It's refreshing to see McTarnahans sporting a massive set of cahones on this one. If you feel like some expensive marinade this could be a great beer to cook with I imagine, may have to try it out on a steak or something, or even better some beer battered halibut ggaaaa. Now I have seen some other beers that have been made with peppercorn as well, but they are usually a pale ale, or other beer that has other portions of it that will definitely blot out most of the flavor, as opposed to this farmhouse one which walks right up and staples it to your tongue. So my cudos, props, and salutations go out to one of Portland's older breweries that's staying true to the towns motto of being weird, and trying something different.