The opportunity arises and you grab it. That happened to me with spotting Jaguar at a liquor store in Bermuda, buying a tall boy can and carrying it home. With malt liquors a new brew can be bad or something better than bad. I am about to find out. No glassware, what is the point? Time to get clawed by a big black cat, I flip the tab and take a drink. I detect corn, a bit of hay, aluminum, all with a touch of sweetness. With Minhas products there tends to be be some similarities, that is the deal here. I’ve had very good malt liquors (think DKML) and essentially undrinkable ones (too many to list). This falls somewhere in between.

24oz can pours clear gold with semi bubbly zero head of foam. The aroma has a mix of sweet honey, apple juice and pear juice with sugar sweetened chemical booze at the end of the draw. The taste is similar with sugar sweet apple-y and pear-y esters mixed with softly harsh booze and it makes you question the reason you’re drinking this. All in all for the ABV it isn’t too offensive except for the over powering sweetness.

I poured this into a Sam Adams glass, mindful of John Cawelti’s analysis of the Western genre in "Six-Gun Mystique." The fictional frontier, he said, was a forge which burned away the civilized veneer of those who challenged it, and brought forth the true man within. A naturally moral man could become a Lone Ranger, an immoral man could become a Butch Cavendish. I reasoned, if the new Sam Adams glass enhances the experience of drinking a good beer, what would it do for a bad beer? Like this one?It makes the bad beer experience even badder. This pours with a thick white head that resolved to a thin scum in a few seconds. There is at least a bit of yellow lager color in the thick part of the glass, while its "nucleation sites" keep the bubbles going to release the smell of cooked corn, iodide and Band-Aids®. More of the usual malt liquor taste of fermented corn syrup. Way oversweetened, like there may be beet sugar in here, too. Big alcohol kick that carries the promise of a thousand regrets. Tilting the glass to drink it brings the scent of bile to my nose. Difficult to look at, let alone finish.So I was right. A modern designed Sam Adam glass can be a powerful instrument for good beer. But in the wrong hands, it can become a destructive weapon. Keep the bad beers out of it!

Rating #1800.
It was between this and a new Bells beer, which turned out to be no contest. This was an incredible drink, featuring potent unfermented malts combined with prickly, sickly alcohol bite. Sharp vegetal, rotting characteristics. The defining characteristic is a big punch of alcohol following a medley of sweet, cheap malts. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm!

RBSG 2007 Grand Tasting. This wasn’t very long after the tanzanian lager, so maybe the horror of that biased me. Clear pale yellow body with a thin frothy white head. Stale grain aroma. Stale grain and caramel flavor.