My first beverage from Iowa, and it winds up being something as patently stupid as a pickle shot. It's not even a pickleback (which I once read is a thing that is made with pickle brine and, typically, Irish whiskey) and I'm not sure you should bottle a pickleback. Realistically a pickleback is supposed to be a shot followed by a shot. I wonder if this is akin to a bottled black and tan where the two beers are incontrovertibly and sacrilegiously interwoven.
The beverage is suitably green, but the floating things that good brine has in it are absent. I'm not sure you would want to see spices and stuff floating in the drink, if it's supposed to be a shot, so I applaud their filtering. The aroma is a strangely sweet pickle. I prefer a dill pickle (honestly, I don't want to give Mark Wahlberg money, but those Walburger pickles are very good).First sip is burning pickles. Here's the thing: this says it's a shot, so I probably shouldn't have sipped, anyway, but this is a not very good brine that has the burning of alcohol, and then they went ahead and added capsaicin to up the burning. I like a spicy pickle, but the brine it's using seems like they are spicing it to avoid me actually tasting the pickle flavor. I'm downing the rest as a shot.
Ooo. It's bad. But... it's also not bad. I don't like it, and I don't like the feelings it is stirring in me. Wait - let me start over. This is gross in the way that slime is gross. Yes, I don't want it near me, but the undeniable attraction is still there. Even after it's gone from my mouth - minutes later - the spice and strangely alluring pickle essence is there.
Bottom Line: So bad it's not that bad.
2.25/5