Alpine Beer Company Achtung

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 5 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 6

A good buddy of mine celebrated him and wive's 20th aniversary last night in grand fashion, including renting a private club atop one of the hotels in Downtown San Diego, having not one but two different live bands, and a host of different beers on-tap. Some homebrew, some commercial, but pretty much everything that was available I had sampled before -- except this one from the under-rated Alpine Beer Company.

I've only recently softened my anti-Bock stance, since Bock represents to me the antithesis of what I enjoy in a beer. I love dry, bitter ales, and Bocks are normally sweet, malty lagers. But as I've said, I don't put Bocks into the "hated with the fiery passion of a thousand suns" category anymore. But when it comes to beers like this Bock from Alpine, I'm not exactly a born-again convert to the style, either.

This is malty, with a malty front, malty middle, and a lot of malt in the finish, and quite chewy in the maltiness of the mouthfeel and drinkability. Oh, and did I mention that this is pretty malty, too?

Not nearly as balanced as I would like. They style calls for malt, but there still needs to be some sort of hop prescence to balance things out. As it stands now, the only thing I get from this is a sugary-sweet aftertaste, and an unwelcome amount of alcohol.

I really respect Pat and his offerings from Alpine, but this was one Bock-style beer that annoyed me more than anything else. I made it a point to drink nothing but Pure Hoppiness the rest of the evening!
//TB