Death Metal Underground

This Belgian ale from Quebec has found itself a permanent place in American stores for two obvious reasons: first, most American beer is horrible because it is both utilitarian and junk food, sugar water soda with beer flavoring. Second, most imported beers have also made themselves terrible, and none quite as bad as the Belgian witbier which increasingly resembles a bilious corriander-beer soda.

Witness, for example, Shiner White Wing. Only a marketing genius could take cheap beer from central Texas and sell it at import prices, and that same twisted intelligence has been applied here to make a “Belgian ale” that tastes like the overflavored teas that women buy in malls. The main reason people like this beer is because it is sweet, bridging the gap between beer and soda yet another innovative way. But in the wake of the success of Belgian ales in America, numerous contenders have popped up. And yet here is La Fin Du Monde which has been pumping out this particular ale since the 1990s at least, and has kept both quality and price consistent. In other words, these people are not marketing geniuses, but they may be a greater form of intelligence: people who realize that if they make a good product consistently they will have an industry from now until the end of time, unless they screw it up. So they watch against screwing up, including the form of greedy screw-up that is marketing genius. Smart, those Québécois.

La Fin Du Monde smells and drinks like a German medium lager but has the light corriander flavor and muted sweetness of a Belgian ale. It retains its yeast, so is cloudy if the bottle has been moved much within the last few hours, but pours in a light golden color with a good foamy head and delicious yeasty smell. It is also worth noting that at 9% alcohol by volume and a heavy amount of carbonation, this fizzy beer will take no prisoners among your brain cells. Drinking one of these babies is like pounding down four of your favorite “import” beer (usually concentrated syrup/ferment imported from Europe, and made into beer American-style here for double the profits) bottles and then doing a couple jumping jacks. Luckily its flavor serves an excellent balance, with the hay-like notes of a good ale surging in behind the slightly bitter forward taste of the Belgian-style corriander-induced sensation, followed by overtones of light fruit — it has been compared to citrus or peach — with a strong yeasty goodness in the background. Thus this beer walks a fine line. It will not please the newly minted Belgian ale fanatics who only buy beers with fancy packaging and pretentious names, but it will rumble the tummy of anyone who appreciates a good beer with a flavor of its own.

****/*****

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Tags: beer, belgian ale, belgian white beer, la fin du monde, quebec, unibroue, witbier

If I had to identify a problem with beer in America, I would say it is that the audience is generally teenage in outlook, even if three decades removed from that age group. People are afraid to buck a trend and to admit that something which their favorite journalist writes up is in fact, odious, and instead they sit around, drinking hipster beers that turn the hops or yeast up to 11 and expect you to like it or be labeled an idiot who can’t appreciate good beer and thus a philistine who belongs in the lower classes, afraid to admit that they are in fact drinking swill.

Shiner White Wing is one such example of swill. Bilgy, decomposition-scented, sweet and yet acidic swill. Joining the trend of Belgian white ales it embarks upon a course of taste that is disgusting, but because it is disgusting allows hipsters and salarymen alike to claim profundity for liking it, White Wing is septic pond water of a beer. It has all that a hipster needs: ironic taste, oddity and quirkiness, and of course it comes from Shiner — who make their fortune selling domestic beers at import prices simply because the average American beers are so horribly bad — so it has automatic hipster cred, which is a holdover from the 1980s when Shiner was cheap beer for desolately poor artists, instead of weekly trust fund credit card swipe party favors for useless hipsters. If you enjoy the thought of fermenting grass and leeks together in a giant vat of sugar and coriander, you may enjoy the appeal of Shiner White Wing, but no one gets to that state honestly; it’s pure Stockholm Syndrome. In all fairness, this review is overwritten. It should merely say: “Yuck.” By doing that, I have stood up in a room of utter sheep disguised as anti-sheep and pointed out that they drink this crap because it is “different” and “ironic” but not because it is good. And good it is not. You’d do better with a brandy and pipe and avoiding this disgusting swill.

Witbier in general has zero appeal to me. The basic idea is this: use lots of cheap wheat in the beer, add coriander to make it “unique,” and then keep the fermentation going until just before the point of consumption. The result is a cloudy, sickeningly sweet, foamy beer that tastes about like huffing the results of a bag of scallions decomposing in the summer heat. If you fed a horse coriander and political promises, its flatulence would taste like this. The white beers I have had from more reputable breweries did better than the Shiner treatment, which consists of making every beer as grainy and yet dehydrating as possible, but the entire style is disgusting and appeals to those who crave novelty more than balanced or even quality flavor. Yuck, ten thousand times yuck. I am sure that the hipsters now are primly poised on their bar stools as they smugly prepare to excoriate me as a beer-illiterate who merely likes his simple ales like a good peasant, but the real peasantry here is people pretending to like this for being “unique,” when in fact it is disgusting. The emperor has no clothes! Witbier is vomit! And Shiner White Wing is low-quality clothes optional vomit sold at top tier prices. Avoid at all costs.

Quality rating: 1/5
Purchase rating: 1/5

15 Comments

Tags: beer, belgian ale, hipsters, shiner, white wing

Unibroue – La Fin Du Monde (2015)

Spoetzl Brewery / Shiner – White Wing