Happy New Year! I've never been very interested in celebrating on new year's eve. This is quite likely the result of my tendency to want to be in bed by 10:30 PM. My scrooge-like disinterest could also be attributed to what happened the one time I decided to attend a new year's eve party with Davis thrown by a bunch of Grinnell College alums in the middle of Harlem. Feeling extraordinarily awkward having not attended Grinnell, I proceeded to drink more beer, rum, and whiskey than a D.A.R.E. officer could ever smile upon. My excessive consumption came back to haunt me in two distinct ways in the following 12 hours as I struggled first to enjoy having met my now ex-girlfriend and then, the following morning, attempted to avoid suffocating my now ex-girlfriend as my intestines rebelled. No matter the reason, I'm staying home with the cat and dog this new years and watching The Expendables.
Keeping with the tradition of drinking to ring in the new year, I'll be reviewing a couple of beers I have stashed in the fridge this evening. First up is an unlikely candidate: Anderson Valley Brewing Company's High Rollers Wheat Beer. I just bought a six-pack of this summer ale at a discount grocer for $5, as compared to the normal $9 price tag. The thought of drinking a wheat beer in December seemed absurd, but the price was right and I have a soft spot for Anderson Valley Brewing.
Why do I like Anderson Valley, you ask? Well, they have a large solar array that powers their brewery for starters. The crusty tree-hugging environmentalist in me likes that. The brewery also produces the Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout, which I can credit for helping me avoid therapy my first year of graduate school. Another plus is that all of the Anderson Valley brews reflect an effort to preserve the local culture of the quirky California coastal region. Settlers in the late 1800s developed a unique local dialect called Bontling that peppers the labels and names of the brewery's offerings. From this bottle: "It's a slow lope'n a beson tree," which translates to, "It's mellow and easy going."
Despite my appreciation for Anderson Valley, I have little affection for wheat beers. I have long considered wheat beers the ale equivalent of the Milwaukee Brewers' utilityman Craig Counsell. On all objective measures, both Counsell and wheat beers aren't very good. So, why do they stick around? Well, they are versatile in their respective unoffensive existence. Rather, they aren't very good, but are they really all that bad? I guess they both represent some sort of nostalgic notion of purity, too. Counsell is the unlikely awkward local kid who scrapped his way into the majors instead of attending a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. Wheat beers are the iconic American summer brew that provide the background to barbecues, the Fourth of July, and, well, baseball (assuming we exclude the macro-brewed rice-based lagers).
Anderson Valley's High Rollers Wheat Beer lives up to my expectations. It's crisp and slightly lemony. There's a slight hint of sweet grain that makes itself about as known as Counsell's bat. Mostly, though, it tastes like Coors without the offensive metallic punch and a slightly higher 5.3% ABV. I can see the refreshing potential of High Rollers on a hot summer evening, but the price better be low... just like Craig Counsell.
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