watson booze cruise part 02: panach’ (switzerland [france])
Posted by christolles | Filed under Booze Cruise, Switzerland
Today I had the pleasure of sampling the finest of historical, revered, storied French beverages: Panach’! What is that apostrophe doing there, you might ask… no clue. If you roll francophone, please check out their homepage and fill us all in, because it certainly is ugly to have two punctuation marks in a row. That’s right up there with using periods in an acronym at the end of a sentence: U.S.A.. Ugh! What do I do with that second period?! Which reminds me of another despised punctuation faux pas: attempting a “smiley” emoticon within a parenthetical: (of which I use many :)). Leaves a terrible taste in my mouth.
But we’ve come full circle, because so does Panach (no apostrophe from now on). First of all, what is Europe thinking with these ridiculous 250 ml bottles? 8.454 fluid ounces for the imperially-inclined among us, it’s like serving beer in a glass juice box - a little silly, although perhaps it’s proportional to their stomach sizes, because Tory and I have noticed many things sold in surprisingly tiny portions, from yogurt to pasta (more on that in a later post). I would describe Panach as weak lemonade that was accidentally mixed with a small amount of water-flavored light beer. Not inspiring. But at 1.8% ABV, you needn’t worry about it getting you in trouble, either. Even Tory didn’t feel anything!
Enjoyed at a church BBQ afternoon in France, one thing I’m pleased with is that it was free. Panache is like a wimpy Euro version of Mike’s Hard Lemonade: a lot softer, and made by a smarmy mustachio’d guy named Michel (pronounced Michelle). Overall taste grade: B-, but only because it is also as inoffensive as it is uninspiring…
Design-wise, the same. Gradients, swooshes, annoying Flash website, blah blah blah: C+.
What’s this?! Classic scripts? Foil? Embossing?! Also discovered at the BBQ was a package of Lindt’s 99% pure Cacoa chocolate, if you can even call it that. From the brilliant perforated pull-strip to the restrained typography, you can tell that this is a product of distinction. As I raised a bite-size bit of the nearly black bar to my lips, I was glad to get the Panach aftertaste out of my mouth… NOT. This stuff is gross.
With the consistency and flavor nuances of black chalk, 99% Cacao would be Excellent as fertilizer. Would your car run on 99% crude, even if it did cost $23/gallon? Taste: F. Design: A.
NB: The Google can also do other neat calculations.
watson booze cruise part 01: michelob lager (USA)
Posted by christolles | Filed under Booze Cruise, USA
Welcome friends to the first expression of my new serial column: Watson Booze Cruise! Before I submitted my Watson proposal to the initial level of review/exclusion at RISD, I asked Steve, RISD’s Watson liaison, how seriously I would be taken if I proposed an “international scholarly survey of alcohols of the world” as my Watson project. He seemed to think I could come up with something better.
And while it’s arguable whether I did or not, the sweet reality is that I’m getting my survey anyway! Now, if you ask any close friends, they’ll tell you I’m not one to really pay much for alcohol, so don’t expect anything luxe in this collection of reviews. I plan on sampling the most “authentic” of beverages from wherever we travel, such as the bubbling cauldron of black alcoholic goop Jon and Dory saw in Uganda. Find me a straw, baby!
Which brings us to the maiden voyage of our potation schooner… Michelob Lager.
Sorry to have waited so long to post this (I am, after all, no longer in the USA), but I’m doing my best here…
Now, as any of my close friends will tell you, I have a particular interest in quality beverage consumption. However, unlike some of those same friends (coughcough ScottThompson coughcough), I can be persuaded to attempt an excursion into the land of more typical (read: crappy) college beer fare, say, Miller High Life. With the exception of those horrid michelada-type domestic lagers (Miller Chill, BL Lime, etc.), I’ve not found a beer I couldn’t find a time to like.
Michelob places itself on my palate squarely between the aforementioned Low Life and Sam Smith. As my dad reminds me, it’s always been Anheuser-Busch’s premium lager, so perhaps that’s where it belongs. Here’s the shocker (for an A-B concoction): it has flavor! Sadly, much of US beer production has been reduced to an alternative to a soda or glass of ice water. Michelob takes a much-appreciated different direction. One of the most flavorful lagers I’ve ever tried (though my sample size is, admittedly, limited), this beer is extremely smooth, with a very low hops bitterness, and traditional high carbonation. Without getting into all the ridiculous wine-review flavor poetry, sweet barley flavors are certainly prominent and tasty. The most appropriate analogy, perhaps, is to that of half-drinking, half-chewing a carbonated barley raincloud. And an inexpensive one at that. Overall taste grade: B+
On a design note (and you should expect one from now on), while I’m glad Michelob has returned to at least a wimpy reinterpretation of their famous water-droplet bottle shape, the lack of full over-the-cap foil is extremely disappointing and certainly diminishes perceived value. You can see examples of the old-style bottles below. However, I really must commend the designers for their restraint with the label. Though the background textures could be dropped, it could have been much worse. Overall design grade: B
