Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Beer!

Introduction

I got the idea for this post from the co-founder and CEO of Spoon University, which is a website devoted to a) educating college kids about how to “eat healthier,” and b) teaching college kids how to be online journalists. ( All Spoon content is written by students.)  The other day, the Spoon CEO said something like, “We have our most illuminating ‘moments’ when an article is shared widely, which happens when it strikes an emotional cord,” and as an example she cited a popular recent Spoon article about a beer based on Ben & Jerry’s chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream.

I want college kids to love my blog and forward my posts, so I am taking on this subject myself.  Since I’ve already been scooped, I’ll just have to do a better job with this topic than the college kids did.  Watch me try.

The existing literature

I expected the main Spoon article to read like Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, but it was fairly down-to-earth and mostly just covered the basic facts:

• New Belgium Brewing is making a beer “inspired by” Ben & Jerry’s chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream
• This is the second beer New Belgium has produced on this Ben & Jerry’s theme
• They’re donating $50,000 of the proceeds from this new beer to a nonprofit environmental organization called Protect Our Winters

When I researched the topic on mainstream news sites, I really didn’t get any more information—so these Spoon kids seem well on their way to writing like the pros.  All the stories I found read like thinly veiled press releases.  And yet, this very minor news tidbit—another new seasonal beer!—has really generated a lot of press.  How did this indifferently reported story become so popular?  My theory is that people just really, really like beer.

Case in point:  I used my smartphone to photograph a beer recently, and because I’d accidently left Location Services turned on, Google Maps asked if I wanted to share the photo with future users investigating the pizza place where I snapped the photo.  It wasn’t a great photo or anything and didn’t capture the ambience of the place, much less showcase the pizza.  It was just a photo of a glass of beer, for Beck’sting.  But I thought heck, I’ll let Google use it.  They asked for a caption.  The beer was in a glass bearing the name of the pizza place, so after deliberating for 1/100th of a second I posted the caption “Pizza and beer … am I right?”  Amazingly, this photo has had 56 views already, despite the fact that you can easily tell from the thumbnail that it’s an utterly pointless photo. 

So:  beer.  People love to think about it.  Maybe beer + ice cream is some kind of magic pairing, capturing the minds and hearts of college kids everywhere.

What can I add to the coverage?

I will go further than the available news stories on this beer by answering the following questions:

• Does drinking this beer increase one’s sex appeal?
• Is it a good beer?
• Is it a gimmick? 

As luck would have it, I’m traveling on business right now in the very locale where New Belgium is test-marketing this beer.  At an airport bar I ordered it, speaking really loudly so the attractive woman next to me would be sure to hear my bold and interesting choice.  I took a sip, and then waited.  I expected the woman next to me to say, “Well … how is it?”

After a minute or so she hadn’t said anything.  Had she not heard my daring, planet-saving order?  At this point the beer was two-thirds gone so I figured I better step up my game before it was too late.  “Hi,” I said to the woman.  This utterance didn’t come out very loud for some reason.  In fact it came out as kind of a high-pitched croak.  (Chocolate-chip-cookie-dough beer is only about 6% alcohol so it wasn’t exactly liquid courage, and I’m a shy person.)  The woman just stared at me like I was her dog and had just made a mess on the carpet.  But I wasn’t about to give up.  Summoning all my verve, I said, “Airports and beer … am I right?”  At this, the woman abruptly got up and walked away, leaving half her cocktail behind.

Conclusion:  drinking this seasonal ale does not increase one’s sex appeal.

So how was the beer itself?  Well, let me preface my commentary here by saying I don’t consider myself an expert on beer.  Honestly, I bristle at the very idea of a beer expert.  I would hate for beer drinkers to end up sounding like wine aficionados, with all their fancy language.  Unfortunately, this may already be happening. 

Official reviews of the last Ben & Jerry’s-themed beer

Consider the following highlights from the amateur reviews on beeradvocate.com for last year’s New Belgium Ben & Jerry’s-themed seasonal beer, Salted Caramel Brownie Brown Ale.  (Each bullet is from a different reviewer.) 

• No idea why this needed salt added
• I can't pick up on any caramel or certainly not salt
• There is some overly sweet caramel
• A little bit of sweetness
• Mostly sweet
• Despite the name, this is not sweet
• I was surprised at the lack of sweetness
• Smelled fine, but the taste was sweet without much balance
• Taste about matches the smell
• [Smell is] a barely-there whiff of metal and vague creaminess. The taste has more going for it—heavy notes of homemade vanilla vodka, macadamia nut, and cocoa butter
• Light brown, amber hues
• Clear amber brown
• Clear reddish brown
• Chestnut/mahogany brown
• Translucent brown
• It's damn near black and almost completely opaque
• Definitely tastes like a brownie
• The beer has a strong brownie flavor
• You could say there is a slight brownie flavor
• Not really a caramel brownie flavor
• Honestly, if I didn't know it was supposed to taste like salted caramel brownie ice cream, I would have thought it was just a standard brown ale 

Okay, nobody agrees on whether or not it’s salty; whether or not it’s sweet; whether or not the taste matches the smell; whether or not it tastes like a brownie. And nobody can even agree on the color. What the hell good are these beer people?

Thus emboldened by the state of the art in beer-blathering, here is my experience drinking the new flavor, Ben & Jerry’s-inspired chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ale.

My taste test

I did not start with the beer at 48 degrees, as one reviewer thoughtfully did.  This was an airport bar, remember, where all the beer is near-frigid.  But you know, had I been pouring this at home, I’m not sure what I’d have done.  On the one hand, it’s inspired by an ice cream, so perhaps it should be drunk chilled.  On the other hand, it’s kind of inspired by cookie dough, so maybe it shouldn’t be all that cold.  I would probably need to consult the brewer on this.

I did not pour it into special stemware designed for beers.  I suppose I should have asked for this, at the risk of pissing off the bartender, in order to demonstrate my sophistication to the attractive woman next to me.  But this didn’t occur to me, as I was a bit preoccupied about my upcoming flight.

I also forgot to smell the beer.  This was before I’d started researching this blog post, remember.  And I don’t know a soul who actually makes any special effort to smell his beer.  Nor do the beer drinkers I know swish it around in the glass to check the “legs” (though six beeradvocate.com reviewers mentioned “lacing,” their descriptions being variously given as “light lacing,” decent amount of lacing,” “web-like lacing,” “spotty lacing,” “no lacing,” and “some lacing”).

All of this said, I have much to report on the flavor.  My first quaff (since I’m unabashedly incapable of sipping beer) set off a major alarm in my brain, as in:

WHAT

THE

FUCK!?

Have you ever raised a glass to your lips thinking you were drinking one thing, but it turned out to be another?  Like, you think it’s water but it ends up being lemonade?  Or you think it’s orange juice but it’s grapefruit?  And for a second you’re totally freaked out, and then your brain figures out what’s going on, and you’re greatly relieved?  Well, I had that experience with this beer, big-time.

Of course I’d expected it to taste a bit like chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream, and also like a beer.  But I was completely unprepared for the actual flavor, which was—get this—not at all that of chocolate chip cookie dough, but of fully baked chocolate chip cookies.

Look, I get it that it’s difficult to match the exact flavor of an ice cream, especially from a specific manufacturer like Ben & Jerry’s.  But New Belgium Brewing Company has a reputation to protect, and there’s no other way to say it:  they really shat the bed with this beer.  Don’t get me wrong, I was able to finish it, and actually by the end—once I’d totally recalibrated my sense of what it could be—I was able to enjoy it on its own terms.  But that initial taste probably caused me to make a really bad face, like when you drink wine that’s turned to vinegar, and that’s probably why that good-looking woman at the bar dissed me so hard.  Maybe New Belgium can fix the recipe, or at least change the label to “Nestle Toll-House Chocolate Chip Cookie” or something.

Counterpoint

Look, it’s no fun bagging on an experimental beer, from a socially responsible, solar-powered brewery I happen to like.  And it’s especially bad when they’re doing something good for the environment with their new product.  In a way I feel like this has been an evil review, and that because of my harsh honesty, our oceans may warm up even faster, and many species may die.  But I have a responsibility to the truth here.

Which is a funny thing to say, actually, because so much of this blog post has actually been completely untrue.  Yes, you read that right:  within this essay I have flat-out lied.  That whole thing with the woman at the bar?  Pure fiction.  The fact is, I don’t buy beer at airports because it’s a fricking ripoff.  I also don’t try to get the attention of women, other than my wife (and I know that if I’m looking to win her favor, beer isn’t the way to do it—I’ll build the FLÜNDTRAÄG she brought home from IKEA).  Moreover, the new beer celebrated by Spoon University isn’t even out yet.  If New Belgium has a test market for this beer, I’m not aware of it.

But don’t worry, not everything you’ve just read is a lie.  All those conflicting beeradvocate.com review snippits were real.  And the bit about the that Spoon article being widely forwarded, and lauded by the CEO as having produced a strong emotional response?  That’s 100% true (though you’ll have to take my word for it).  And my implicit point about these novelty beers being a gimmick (though a harmless one) does smack of some kind of greater truth, doesn’t it, despite my beer tasting having been fictitious?  I mean, when you and I do get around to trying this beer, isn’t it inevitable that we’ll come to this “nice gimmick!” conclusion one way or another?

Why would I lie?

So why would I lie like that?  Look, let’s get down to brass tacks:  with the modern media, and the blogosphere, and this new era of journalism, and Reddit, and all the sharing and re-tweeting and recycling that goes on, there’s really only one measure of success:  how widely read something is.  So I decided I had to go well beyond the “moment” that the Spoon article created.  What’s the first thing you’d google after learning of the existence of a new seasonal beer?  You’d want to know if it’s any good, right?  I suddenly had this opportunity to scoop everyone, just by lying!  So I took it!  And I’m not sorry!  After all, if you’ve made it this far into my post, you must have gotten something out of it.  Maybe you smugly enjoyed the pathetic tale of me (supposedly) striking out at the bar.  Or maybe, like me, you dread the ascent of beer from a basic working man’s beverage to something snooty and epicurean, and appreciate the satire.

And if you’re now smarting from having been led on, maybe feeling a bit foolish at your own gullibility, here’s what to do:  immediately forward this article to all your friends and tell them how great it is.  When they get to this sentence—the one you’re reading right now—they’ll know they’ve been punked—by you—and they’ll go punk their friends, and all this will create a global “moment,” and make me famous!  So go on.  Do it.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Ask Mr. Beer

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for references to alcoholic beverages.  Also, this post originally appeared with a slightly different title.  I have changed the title and some of the text at the request of a reader who holds a certain copyright.

Dear Mr. Beer,

What beer should I drink to impress my date?

Bill P, Columbus, OH

Dear Bill,

Don’t kid yourself.  There’s little chance your choice of beer would seem impressive.  Your date might think beer is for philistines, or might associate your choice—however tasteful it might be—with her ex-boyfriend who was mean to her dog.  If you really want to impress your date, fix her bike or write a sonnet for her.

Dear Mr. Beer,

My friends fancy themselves beer experts and I want to show that I’m also very knowledgeable.  Is it okay to describe expensive beer the way you’d describe a fine wine?  Is there a vocabulary available for this?

Chip M, Boston, MA

Dear Chip,

There’s no need to bloviate like wine aficionados do.  If you want to impress your friends, here’s a simple way:  next time they serve you a beer with a twist-off bottle cap, act amazed, like you’ve never seen one before.

Dear Mr. Beer,

Say I’m at a party digging through a cooler for a tasty brew.  Is there any way to tell ahead of time how bitter a beer will be?  Thanks!

Louise S, Tucson, AZ

Dear Louise,

Sometimes you can go by the brand.  If a beer sounds dangerous, like “Ruination IPA,” “Knuckle Dragger,” or “The Rassler,” it’s probably at least strong if not bitter.  If it has “hop” in the name, well, it’s probably hoppy (i.e., bitter), e.g., “Hopasaurus Rex” or “Hoptober.”  An IPA will tend to be bitter, especially if there’s a numeric modifier, e.g., “Double IPA,” “Quadruple IPA.”

Getting even more quasi-scientific, some beer companies are providing a numeric bitterness rating, right on the bottle.  The units are IBUs--International Bitterness Units.  For example, New Belgium's Ranger IPA, which is pretty hoppy, is 70 on the IBU scale.  Their more mainstream beer, Fat Tire, is only 18.5.  These numbers not only help you select a beer you like, but they're good for bragging rights.  (For a website ranking the bitterest beers click here. ) 

(For what it’s worth—i.e., very little—there’s also a scale for measuring a beer’s color, and this is expressed in EBCs; e.g., 4 for a pale lager, 138 for an imperial stout.  I fail to see the point.  If you’re drinking the beer from a bottle, who cares what color it is, and if you’re drinking it from a glass, well, just look at it!)

Dear Mr. Beer,

I’d swear Heineken here in the States tastes different than the Heineken I had in Holland.  Is it?

Helen N, Oakville, CA

Dear Helen,

Well, it could be different.  They do bottle batches specially for the American market.  You may recall it coming in a brown bottle there, whereas it’s obviously a green bottle here.  Also, you cannot get Heineken in a can in the Netherlands.  It’s only available in bottles there, because they refill, rather than recycle, their bottles.

Could special bottling, or bottles vs. cans, affect the taste?  Maybe.  I first had Heineken in a can on an airplane, where everything tastes awful by association.  Meanwhile, a Dutch woman I know had Heineken in a can over here and thought it was the greatest thing in the world.

Dear Mr. Beer,

Have you had McEwan’s Scottish ale, and if so is it any good?  Also—unrelated question—how do you decide what questions to answer?

Lawrence H, Greensboro, NC

Dear Larry,

(You don’t mind if I call you Larry, do you?)  McEwan’s is excellent.  When I try to describe it, I’m oddly inspired to do so in French:  présente des arômes de pâte à pain, de fleurs et une finale passablement fruitée avec des notes de cerises.  Définitivement une bière de degustation.  Loosely translated:  it has a good and yummy taste, well worth drinking.

As for deciding what questions to answer, that’s a trade secret.  I will allow that efficiency plays a role.

Dear Mr. Beer,

Let’s get down to brass tacks.  Once and for all, what’s better:  beer or wine?

Jonathan R, Washington, DC

Dear Jonathan,

It’s not hard to guess how I’m expected to answer, and I feel like I may be walking into a trap.  Look, that’s really almost a religious question, and cannot be definitively answered by me or anybody else.  But if you're looking for ways to argue that beer is better, here are a few:  a) a great and impressive beer, like a Chimay Première from Belgium, is only like $12 for a 750ml bottle … way cheaper than a fancy wine; b) beer gets you around the debate about cork vs. synthetic corks vs. bottle caps; c) beer is better for hydration.   But before you decide to trot these out, consider that you are far better off keeping them to yourself as a way to feel smug.

Dear Mr. Beer,

Is it considered unseemly to eschew cheap beer?  Or to put it another way, is there a polite way to turn down a beer when you realize you’re being offered Coors or Budweiser?

Harris L,  Danbury, CT

Dear Harris,

Listen, I didn't get to be Mr. Beer by being a snob.  I love all beer, even cheap beer, even bad beer.  I can't see why you’d want to turn down any of it.  Not only would you probably come off as rude, but you might miss out on something passably tasty.  (Yes, cheap beer can be enjoyable, though it is an acquired taste.)

Meanwhile, consider that you might not be as discerning as you think.  (How would you do in a blind taste test?)  Plenty of wealthy, educated, hip types—you know, like the trust fund kids who become journalists because they can, and drive old beater Toyotas to maintain their cred—are going around these days drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, just to show allegiance to their working class brethren.  True, most of them are drinking this beer ironically, but some of them aren’t in the joke and yet still seem to enjoy their PBR, and anyway the alcohol still works its magic.  I’ve always liked Newcastle, and when some cosmopolitan type informed me that it’s considered rotgut in England, that didn’t make my beer taste any different.

In fact, one of my favorite beer memories involves very, very cheap beer.  I was in college, and I was flat broke.  (“Broke” as in I’d just deposited the last of my cash into my bank account so my rent check would clear.)  A friend and I were going to a barbecue and needed to bring our own meat and our own beer.  My friend was almost as broke as I was and for funds we had to dig around under sofa cushions and all through his car.  We ended up with a little less than five bucks, which at Safeway we parlayed into a pack of house-brand turkey franks, a pack of house-brand buns, and a 6-pack of Meister Bräu.  Not the greatest food and drink, but good enough, and the people and side dishes at the barbecue were all excellent.

Dear Mr. Beer,

Can you recommend some food/beer pairings?  Maybe some rules of thumb (like how “red wine goes well with meat,” but for beer)?

Leyla A, Seattle, WA

Dear Leyla,

Beer/food pairings aren’t unheard of; there’s even a such thing as a beer sommelier.  That said, for me beer is best on an empty stomach.  I don't like any other flavors competing with it (though it’s pleasant to counter the spiciness of Mexican food with a watery beer like Corona).  Now, you might say, “Aha, but what about the nuts and pretzels bars give out for free during happy hour?”  That's to get you to drink, of course.  It doesn’t make it a pairing per se.  When’s the last time you were drinking beer at home and somebody said, “Gosh, I sure wish I had some nuts”? 

Now, it is the case that when eating pizza you might have a sudden craving for beer, but that’s just to improve your hedonistic experience.  Take it a step further:  you’re eating pizza and suddenly you say, “I wish we had some beers right now.  And geishas!  We should get geishas!”  Am I right?

Dear Mr. Beer,

In one of your previous columns you mentioned a happy beer memory.  I love this concept of beer memories.  What is your all-time favorite beer memory?

Thomas W, Austin, TX

Dear Thomas,

I’ve had all kinds of glorious beer in all kinds of wonderful settings, but really the most memorable was the very first time I had beer.  I was just a bit shy of my eighteenth birthday, and I was such a non-troublesome, well-behaved teenager that I felt, on principle, I should at least one time drink a bunch of beer before I was of legal age.  This was in Colorado back when the legal drinking age, for three-two beer, was only eighteen—so I was running out of time.  I got my brother to buy my friends and me some six-packs of generic beer.  They were dingy white cans with “BEER” printed in a plain black font.  My brother, who was an even bigger goody-two-shoes than I, decided to join us in drinking them.

Of course I’d had sips of beer before, but never enough to really taste it.  I didn’t expect to like generic beer—and I didn’t—but that wasn’t the point.  We all sat around the dining room table, methodically working our way through can after can of the beer.  Three-two is weak to begin with and this was generic to boot, so it was a whole lot like drinking water.  After six of these I still didn’t feel a thing.  At this point my brother’s friend walked in.  He was even more straight-laced than we were, and surveyed the proceedings with a plainly judgmental eye.  I can’t blame him; it wasn’t a very sophisticated thing we were doing, and besides, we’d neglected to invite him.  He turned his attention to my brother and said grimly, “Are you drinking that for the taste?”  My brother looked at him a moment, looked down at the generic beer in his hand, looked back up and said:  “No.”  In that moment I felt very proud of my brother.  I can’t exactly say why.

(Note that I’m not advocating drinking to excess.  Ads for good booze always say, “Those who appreciate quality enjoy it responsibly.”  That’s a good start, but why should people who can’t appreciate quality be let off the hook?  They should behave responsibly, too!  I’ll confess that as a teen I had the worst intentions with this little stunt, but it came out okay in the end.  It’s probably impossible for a large fellow to get drunk on generic three-two beer, because he’d probably feel so bloated by the sheer volume of liquid he’d give up, just like I did.)

Dear Mr. Beer,

I really want to use my knowledge of beer as an affirmation of my self-worth.  Is there any way you can help?

Todd M, Sausalito, CA

Dear Todd,

Sure, you can take this little quiz.  Match the beer quotation with the person who uttered it.

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. Henry Lawson
3. Homer Simpson
4. Flann O’Brien
5. Jack Handy
6. Steven Wright
7. Tina Fey
8. Dave Barry
9. H.L. Mencken
10. Benjamin Franklin

 a. “A pint of plain is your only man.”    

 b. “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

 c.  “Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn’t drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, ‘It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true, than be selfish and worry about my liver.’”

 d.  “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”

 e.  “Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.”

 f.  “In a study, scientists report that drinking beer can be good for the liver. I’m sorry, did I say ‘scientists’? I meant Irish people.”

 g.  “I like beer. On occasion, I will even drink beer to celebrate a major event such as the fall of Communism or the fact that the refrigerator is still working.”

 h.  “24 beers in a case.  24 hours in a day.  Coincidence?”

 i.  “Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a particular brand of beer exactly to his taste he should at once throw up his job and go to work in a brewery.”

 j.  “Beer … the cause of, and solution to, most of life’s problems.”

Answers:  1.  d;  2.  e;  3.  j;  4. a;  5. c; 6. h; 7. f; 8. g; 9. i; 10. b  Note:  Ben Franklin is widely credited with quotation 10, but it turns out he never actually said it.  But in the words of another who liked beer, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

dana albert blog