Brewery: The Phoenix Ale Brewery
Beer: Watermelon Ale
Style: Fruit Flavored Wheat Ale
ABV: 4.8%
Character: Fermented with natural watermelon flavor
Ratings at time of Review: BA: 76 | RB: 16
Metal Connection: LANDMINE MARATHON – Shadows Fed to Tyrants
This beer was brought to me by a friend who I met while working at Big Hops. Thanks to Robb for the beer. There was a good number of beers brought back for me, but this is the first one to make the pages here at BMD. The package had a good mix of different beers from Arizona and other states that we normally don’t get here in Texas, so for that I really am grateful. With such a wide mix, there were some that were great, some decent, and some bad. Here is one of the bad ones, unfortunately.
I was really excited to receive this beer, as this was my first watermelon beer. I have seen some around the internet, but as said I’ve said before, a lot of these beers are not available to me here in San Antonio. As refreshing as this beer sounds, well at least to me, I will explain my drinking experience with Watermelon Ale by The Phoenix Ale Brewery.
For this session I poured the beer into a Twisted X Brewing Company branded shaker pint glass. This beer poured a very nice looking unfiltered hazy pale golden color. This is a really nice looking color for an unfiltered wheat ale. It was topped with a very thin line of bubbles, which would quickly disappear, leaving not a trace of head or lacing anywhere on the glass. A bit flat looking.
The aroma is very sweet. As watermelon is present, there are other characters picked up here. The wheat is established early in my nose along with hints of barrels of hay, and a smell reminiscent of breakfast cereal. As I said, the watermelon is present, and combined with the other scents, there is a weird fruitiness like cantaloupe, and even a weird berry smell. The watermelon flavor added to this beer makes it’s appearance in the nose at the end of the whiff, and lingers a bit afterwards. This scent is very sweet, and very artificial. Imagine a watermelon flavored Jolly Rancher candy. The label on this beer and on the website says this beer was brewed with natural watermelon flavor, so I am assuming, not real fruit.
The taste of this beer was a bit off for my tastes, as well. Flavors of wheat, hay, breakfast cereal combined with that of artificial watermelon flavor really did not mix very well. Again, that weird berry-like characteristic showed up again, giving this beer a taste like a bowl of blueberry shredded wheat, and someone accidentally dropped a few watermelon flavored Jolly Rancher candies in the bowl. The weird thing is though, is that despite this handful of flavors, this beer is very light tasting, almost watered down. These flavors are definitely muted. The after taste was lingering watermelon candy.
The body was thin with a flat, watery mouthfeel. There was very little carbonation. There was a dry finish, like having a Jolly Rancher in your mouth for several minutes.
Overall, as you can tell, I did not like this beer. I have read a lot of reviews on this beer, and have seen a 50/50 ratio out there. It’s a love or hate it with no in between thing going on with this beer. I give The Phoenix Ale Brewery credit for brewing outside the box, as there are other watermelon beers, but not many, so this one is in a very selective group. I want to think maybe I was thrown off the day I had this. I would like to have another crack at this one again, freshly brewed. I do not remember seeing a bottling date on the bottle, so maybe I just had an older one. I want to try other beers by them, as they have at least three other beers that have caught my attention.
Just remember this though, these are my thoughts, my nose, my palate, and all of these things will be different from person to person. Compare this to a good review of this beer, and then try the beer for yourself. Cheers!
Metal Connection: The criteria for finding a suitable Metal Connection was pretty easy to be honest with you. I quickly eliminated searching for bands or songs with the word or theme of watermelons. OK, I lied, I did try one quick search and the results were very few, and mostly inappropriate, and songs I will never put on here. OK, I lied again… Here is the band Anal Cunt and their song Easy E. Got A.I.D.S. From Freddy Mercury. There are lyrics, and offensive, but god dammit, do I love this band! The only other song I could have used is from an unsigned band named Monster from Brazil, and they have a song called Metal Boy which features the word watermelon in the lyrics, but it was just too cheesy to actually feature. Maybe I should have saved those for other watermelon beer reviews? Nah…
The real featured band has nothing to do with watermelons, but resides from Phoenix, Arizona. I am talking about the awesome Death Metal/Grindcore band, Landmine Marathon. When I first heard this band’s music, I was instantly hooked. Their music is fast, brutal, inanely catchy, and violent. The band’s four full length albums feature original vocalist, Grace Perry, who has an awesome shriek and growl to fit this package of grind. This song, “Shadows Fed to Tyrants” is from their 3rd full length, Sovereign Descent, which was released in 2010. This same year, I had the pleasure of booking them a tour date here in San Antonio, and I loved this band’s intensity and stage presence. So much energy from all the members. Grace Perry was an amazing front woman for this style of music. She has since left the band, apparently on good terms, and they have another front woman to lead them into hopefully new music and more tours. Enjoy this piece of sickness from Arizona.
Beer Metal Media 