Monday, November 10, 2008

In Carolina Forest, a big glass of Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat

A cold and rainy Saturday afternoon does not tend to inspire the drinking of summery wheat beers, but after a morning's work I went to Buffalo Wild Wings in Carolina Forest (between Myrtle Beach and Conway, S.C.) and realized that the only thing on tap that I hadn't tried, or at least wasn't sure I had tried, was Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat. The Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Co., based in Wisconsin, has made some small distribution forays into the Grand Strand.

I have this problem lately - I'll think about ordering a regular pint and then hear words like "the 23-ounce, please" coming out of my mouth. The barkeep brought an extra tall glass of glowing gold.

The weird thing about Leinie's Sunset Wheat - or, more likely, the weird thing about me - was the undeniable taste of blueberries that continued through the last ounce. Can taste buds hallucinate? Later, I read through the Leinekugel Web site's description of the beer a few times, and never saw the word "blueberry" in it.

So I'm crazy. But by the time I got to the bottom of the glass, I had associated the taste in my mouth with the blue tap handle and made the assumption that blueberry juice was added to the outstanding wheat beer.

The bill was $4.34. I can deal with that price for 23 ounces of a Leinie.





1 comment:

boydmonster said...

Colin, you're definitely not hallucinating. The strange thing is, serve the sunset wheat with an orange and it tastes like a good wheat bear. The sad thing is Sunset Wheat is probably the only Leinies I can't stand to drink. They have so many other great bears the only reason I can think that they'd export this one has to do with a theory of mine, namely, Americans don't actually like beer. So, they have to make it taste like strawberries or blueberries to actually stomach it.