I mentioned last week that my wife bought me a sampler six pack of Tommyknocker beers. I thought that was super cool, she bought me beer to review! As I wrote last week, the Maple Nut Brown Ale left something to be desired. Or more accurately, left me with a sweet cloying aftertaste and notes of over roasted barley or scorched wort.

I tried the Pick Axe Pale Ale hoping that it would be pleasantly hopped. It was hopped, but also had that dark sweet flavor. I figured that maybe it was just an attempt to balance the hop bitterness, but got out of control. So I gave the Alpine Glacier Lager a chance too, same sweet burnt flavor. Believe it or not, I held out hope! Butthead Doppelbock accompanied my lunch this afternoon. (One of the great benefits to being a stay home dad, I can have a beer with lunch and my boss doesn’t mind.)

Finally, I was able to place that darkly cloying sweet flavor! The doppelbock sang true to style. It tasted like a few other commercial doppels as well as two my own homebrewed batches. Frankly though, as happy as I was to place the flavor, I wasn’t overly impressed.

Rather than submit the blog to six separate reviews of Tommyknocker beer over a few weeks,  I will put it out of its misery. This sampler six pack would work really well in a cooler with a lot of BMC* beers, placed there for effect. “Look, I drink microbrew“. The beer would be good for folks that like sweet beer and want to broaden their scope away from Mich Amber Bock to something more syrupy.

Truly, I am trying to be nice! In the end, I won’t buy this beer again. A big mug down on this brewery, not my style.

Cheers!

*BMC = Bud Miller Coors, an easy way to write macrobrew without having to spell it out.