Harpoon – Summer
It's a bit late in the year for a summer beer, but I thought it may be appropriate since I'm a bit late in general in terms of my frequency of beer blogging. So for my third or fourth return to this beer blog, I've decided to go with Harpoon's Summer beer.
This particular brew is a Kolsch style, which in general I'm not a huge fan of. When I think summer beer I'm inclined to think of something light and wheat, or perhaps a corona if I'm looking for something on the cheap. Kolsch style brews too often taste a bit on the skunky side of things to me, and Harpoon's Summer beer is no exception. It certainly has both a light body and color, but there's a skunky bitterness which I just can't seem to shake. Perhaps (definitely) I'm a biased towards darker beers in general, but this really isn't a very pleasant experience. The only way I could see myself really enjoying this one is if it were chilled down to near freezing and accompanied by some red meat slathered in bbq sauce with thick strips of bacon... in other words this is basically a somewhat poorly flavored delivery system for alcohol. Granted it's no Miller High Life, but it's not a far cry from that.
All in all I'm a bit disappointed here. Whenever I buy beer from a local brewery, I always assume their stuff is going to be of a higher quality than the larger national competitors. Maybe I've been spoiled by an abundance of Sam Adams... Anyway, my sliding scale of judgement awards this offering from Harpoon a mere 4 out of 10.