REVIEW 3: LABATT BLUE

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  Canada

BREWERY:  Labatt Brewing Company, Ltd.

STYLE:  Adjunct Lager

ABV:  5.0%

PURCHASE:  Case of 28 bottles, $20.99 (Hey, I got a free pom-pom hat out of it!)

SERVING:  11.5-oz. bottle, poured into pint glass. A moderately timed pour will yield a standard one-inch head that dissipates rather fast.

APPEARANCE:  Has the straw/brass color typical of this style. But it's half a notch darker than most North American adjuncts, and a tad less transparent. But just a tad.

BOUQUET:  Heavy on the water and light--really light--on the actual beer elements. Somewhat yeasty, which is to be expected. "Cooked veggie" notes abound, as does perhaps a tinge of hops. But overall, the aroma is very clean--so clean, in fact, that it smells like a just-wiped metal surface in the produce aisle of the supermarket.

PALATE:  Relatively light body; goes down faster than a drunk coed. Standard level of carbonation. Passive taste, and by that I mean it doesn't go in any particular direction. It's agreeable, but nothing more. Bleh. Then again, I suppose that's the appeal. Finish is mostly clean but retains a widget of carbonation, which meshes with the aforementioned "cooked veggie" notes. Seltzer-like aftertaste.

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  From the Great White North, we have Labatt Blue, a beer associated with hockey, a talking bear, and Pamela Anderson. (For those of you too young to remember, before she was C.J. Parker on Baywatch, Pam was featured in a prominent ad after being spotted in the crowd at a CFL football game. Yeah, that's her pictured below; shout-out to myconfinedspace.com.) This is one of those beers that's marketed with an emphasis on how "natural" it is; hence, the talking bear from all those commercials a decade ago. Yeah, the water used to brew it was exceptionally clean. Is that all you got? That's not to say it's horrible, exactly; just unexceptional, unremarkable, unimpressive. Too many "uns." When the best thing you can say about a beer is that it goes down easy, or tastes "clean," well, it's not saying much, is it? 




GRADE:  D+