stuff my gf actually likes

[Joey Krietemeyer]

My girlfriend does not like beer. Not at all. There are plenty of times I wonder how she puts up with me. Beer makes up over 60% of the things I talk, think and dream about. I have tried to find beers that she would enjoy. Over 99% of them I have gotten the response “It tastes like beer”. She is a hard customer to appease. I have found one that I can get that she will drink. I will talk more about that later. This time around I am going to talk about those beers we can get our lady’s to drink, if they too are as picky as mine is. I am going to talk about a few fruitier type beers.

Leinenkugel’s is an excellent brewery for these type of beers. They are a brewery out of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. They have a regular catalog of fruitier beers that are available pretty readily all over. One of the most popular is the Sunset Wheat. I love this beer and get razzed by my friends all the time. This is, for all intents and purposes, the Fruity Pebble beer. This beer is brewed with a bunch of fruits and flavors and it tastes just like Fruity Pebbles. Everyone I have ever met and has drunk this beer, before I even say anything, will refer to it as the Fruity Pebble beer. It’s not for everyone and the flavor is strong at first but fades my the time you swallow it. It is not too overwhelming and it leads to a refreshing, enjoyable beer than can be drank in mass quantities. Yet, my gf still thinks it tastes like beer. Me: 0 Gf: 1

They also have beers called the Summer Shandy and Berry Weiss. The Summer Shandy is a summer release and it is the only shandy I have ever had. A shandy is a beer that is brewed with lemonade. The Summer Shandy, while tasting a lot of lemonade, is perfect for the summertime. This is a beer that you sit on the porch with some friends during the summer and drink all night. The crispness of the lemon make is very refreshing on those warm summer nights. THe Berry Weiss is a beer that tastes just like a berry soda. This one is very carbonated and a little heavy to drink more than a few. It is a good beer in its own right. This one is a little much for me, it borders on the line of too sweet and fruity for me to enjoy as a beer. Yet, both of these were strikeouts and taste too much like beer. Me: 0 Gf: 3

There are a few mainstream beers that have a fruity flavor to them. All those wheat beers with orange peel and coriander added to the brewery process usually come out with a fruity hint to them. Beers like Shock Top, Blue Moon or Widmer are like these. The first two hinting of orange, the later one hinting of lemon(it is brewed with lemon grass). Then there are the lime beers, no really just one. I mean there are beers with lime brewed in them. Beers like Landshark and Miller Chill would fall in here. Bud Light Lime is a lime beer. Just refer to an older post to understand where I am coming from here. The problem with all these beers though, according to the gf, is they taste too much like beer Me:0 Gf: 52

There are beers that are brewed with and taste of apricots. Pyramids Apricot Ale and Magic Hat’s #9 fall in this category. The both have strong apricot flavors and can be refreshing if that is the taste you truly are looking for. There are pumpkin beers in the fall. Almost all breweries these days are making a pumpkin beer to release to try to compete with the craft market. AB/ In Bev has Jack’s Pumpkin and Southern Tier has Pumking. Yet, these beers are not enough non beer taste for her. Me:0 Gf: 129

So, at this point I feel like I am totally fighting a losing battle. Just ready to throw in the proverbial towel, I thought of one more main style of beer that I would try. This is a Belgian style of beer called Lambic. First I want to say that there are different types of lambics. The one I am going to talk about here are the fruitier ones. Lambics are made my using spontaneous, open fermentation. In layman’s terms, they mix a batch of beer and let it just sit out in the open to ferment. The bacteria in the open air is used to ferment the yeast in the beer. Now once fermentation is finished the beer can be bottled that way and these are refered to as sours. They have a very sour/bitter flavor and are reminiscent of dry wines or ciders. Yet, after fermentation there are batches that get fruits and syrups added to them. These are the fruity lambics. There are four major flavors for this type: raspberry (framboise), peach (peche) , apple (pomme) and cherry (kreik). The one that I offered up to my gf to try was the framboise. She loved it! These taste of a smoothie more than a beer. It is a very heavy beer with a strong fruit taste. Definitely not for the everyman beer drinker. It is a way however to maybe get your picky woman to drink with you. Lindemans is the most popular brewery that puts these beers out. I had to argue that this actually is a beer. It is brewed with the same methods as beer is. The unsweetened versions of these are called Kreiks and Geuze. These types are classified as beer. It is the smoothie feel that makes people this is more of a wine or cider. Nope, this is a beer. That meant that I had finally found a beer she liked and would drink. Me: 1 Gf: 16,730

There are several others out there that have a fruity characteristic to them. Too many to write about in one sitting. I guess I have to write another one then. Still, I found one. Because of that I am a winner. You could be too.

Cheers!

[Omar Buhidma]

Just a suggestion, sir:

It sounds like the lady in question may find any hint of bitterness unappealing. You'll note that some of the beers you're thinking of as fruity also have an acidic quality that come across on many palates as merely bitter.

I say this, because there are a few beers I've had some luck sharing with folks whose taste profiles don't leave them tolerant of any flavor that might be interpreted as bitter. Brasserie Lefèbvre has a seasonal they call their "Barbãr Winter Bok" (Barbãr De Noël in some markets). This one's been pretty much an unmitigated success with all the sweet-tooths I've introduced to it.

A slightly more polarizing beer that seems to appeal to many of the same category of drinker is, much to my surprise, Duchesse De Bourgogne from Brouwerij Verhaeghe. I say I was surprised, because (if you haven't had it) the Duchesse's sweetness is matched by a strongly tart flavor. While I can enjoy it in small doses, I find any more than 150 mL or so overwhelming. I've about a 70% success rate trying this beer on folks with dominant sweet-tooths.

If you'd like to compare more detailed notes, I've a few others that are successful often enough to be worth trying; but don't have quite the numbers as the previous two. Let me know.

In the meantime, I congratulate your efforts. While sweetened lambics are almost cheating, it is ALMOST cheating - as you say, they are truly a beer. If that's all she ends up enjoying, there's no harm. After all, c'est son palais.