Hey! Why don’t you bang your head against this?

I went to the beer tasting on Friday. I like Cellar Rat’s store a lot, and I had a nice time. It would have been more fun if more of you were there. But that’s ok. I had a going-away get together to go to afterwards, so I couldn’t stay anyway. On the way out the door, I snagged a 6 pack of Schlafly’s more recent seasonal releases, a Raspberry Hefeweizen. “Light, summery, girly, to be drank cold," were the types of things I imagined as the lovely man behind the counter rang up my purchase.

I stuck the 6 pack in my car, and went on a later-than expected, Friday-fueled bar crawl of sorts. I didn’t crack into one of the bottles until later on Saturday. Turns out that I should have grabbed the Summer Kolsch instead. And I really should have known better. I don’t do fruit beers.

It doesn’t really taste like beer with a raspberry tang as much as it tastes like a beer cocktail with raspberry flavored soda. Remember the shandy? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it. I drank one, and left the other 5 in my fridge, hopefully to offer to a more girlier girl than me.

It smelled a little sweet, like raspberry candy, when I opened it. It poured into my glass pink (pink!) but with mild cloudiness and beer-like qualities, so it didn’t look like pink lemonade or anything. It settled to a orangey-pink color with a light pink head of foam. It reminded me of the green St. Pat’s yuck, and it turned me off a bit. The flavor of the beer wasn’t raspberry, as in fresh raspberries, but rather raspberry-flavoring, like Kool-Aid. Kind of artificial. There were underlying beer flavors, to be sure, like some yeast and malts, and the slightest twinge of wheat.

To be fair, I don’t like 75th Street Brewery’s Royal Raspberry either, and was never fond of any of the fruity beers the now-extinct microbrews around here offered. So yeah, I know. What was I thinking? I guess I was trying to keep an open mind. The answer is that I still don’t like it. But if you do, you know where to find some for free!

It is still Wednesday, right?

I woke up at 4 am, to leave the house by 5 am, to catch a flight at 6:20 am. What time did your ass wake up? Yeah....rock on, business warriors. The Drury next to the airport is not the hot spot you may imagine.

But how did you spend your Wednesday night? Mine ended with a couple of Schlafly's, watching Chuck Berry, the world's greatest experimental whammy twang bar king crimson stunt guitarist at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis. I'd post pics, but I'm so flippin' brilliant, I don't have the required connections. I might do it later. I might not. I'm like that.

That's right, I shot that. Mr. Berry, checking out the chest on the young, cute, blond sound engineer who happened to be wearing a tank top. Ha!