Cigar City "Theoretical Jam" Wheat Ale

Cigar City has been a little up and a little bit down. I'm not sure that I'm trying a wheat ale at the best time of year, as it's getting fairly cold as I write this. Nevertheless, I came across this beer, and I haven't tried it before. I'm not going to let the universe tell me when I can and can't drink beer. The universe can't do it, my wife can't do it, and that court order can't do it!

It pours a lot like every other wheat beer, and it doesn't leave much of a head, but it has a strong ring of tiny white bubbles around the outside. Really, the most interesting thing about the look of the straw yellow beer is the suspended bits that are all throughout the beverage. I'm not sure how you go from this kind of look to a hazy beer. Maybe I just don't know enough about the brewing process, and I should probably try to brew some of my own beer, but that would just muddy up this whole blog. Instead, I can tell you that this isn't hazy, but it has lots of floating bits. Maybe I'll ask Cammo what the deal is. Either way, the aroma is a little bit skunked. I check on the bottom of the can to see when it was canned, and it was 4 months ago. That's longer than I would like, but it shouldn't be enough for a beverage that hasn't been exposed to a bunch of light to get skunked.

First sip isn't great. The skunk aroma was not an anomaly. It is part of the taste of the beverage, and it isn't a good part. Aside from that, there's a malt that doesn't really seem to know what it's doing, and the wheat is not helping anything. Looking at the can, I see that this is supposed to have berry flavor that has been imparted by the hops, but I'm not tasting any of that. Maybe it's just the skunk that's chasing it away. Despite the fact that I don't think it's going to work, I'm gonna swig.

Tip in is skunk and wheat. I'm not going to go through the rest of this. I don't know what happened to this particular beer, but the skunk is bad, and there doesn't seem to be any explanation as to why it would be so bad. Four months shouldn't be enough to skunk a beer protected by a can.

Bottom Line: Something went wrong.

0.25/5