Beer of the Week

The beer: Strange Beast

The brewery: Nepenthe Brewing Company, Baltimore, Maryland

Description (from Untappd): "Built on a subtle base of just 2-row and rice, then hopped gently with Sorachi Ace, Centennial, and Motueka. Suddenly bursting out of an otherwise calm Pacific on a cresting tsunami of Ginger Peach Green Tea from our pals at Wight Tea Company. Sweeping notes of juicy peach, fresh sun tea, crisp malt, a touch of herbal funk, and light, zesty ginger rampage across your palate. A pale straw in color and oh so drinkable. Do we know what lies in the deepest places?"

Would I buy it again? Now this was the beer I was really looking forward to when I came to Nepenthe. A beer that was described on the menu as a "ginger peach green tea rice lager." That's a lot of things for a beer to be, and I was certain this beer was either going to be really good or really bad. No in between. And I'm happy to report that it's actually very good. The peach was the key, I think, it added some fruity sweetness and blended all the various ingredients together well. Basically, this is an enhanced, fruitier version of Thick-N-Thin's Kaiju rice lager, which is entirely appropriate, as "kaiju" means strange beast. I'll definitely buy this again if I can ever find it locally.

Beer of the Week

The beer: Snallygaster Peach Mango Cream Ale

Brewed by: Berkeley Springs Brewing Company, Berkeley Springs, West Virginia

Description (from the can): "This fruit-infused cream ale has the juicy sweetness of a peach and the citric tartness of a mango ... watch out for Snally!"

Would I buy it again?: I'm not quite sure how I feel about this one. On the one hand, I actually think the peach-mango combo works pretty well. On the other, this beer was completely incapable of maintaining a head, and it doesn't quite feel fully carbonated. We're talking about a pretty small brewery here, and this does feel a bit amateurish. Decent, but I feel like a bigger, more established brewery could do better.