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Sadly, not all beers are created equally.

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Modern economy functions, in part, on selling as much of your product at the cheapest price. Various implications follow, but one that is not always talked about is the idea of surplus, the idea of having more, and perpetual availability.

What comes with this is also difference, choices, always a different brand to choose from, always a different brewery to go to.

Additionally, is the same brewery brewing multiple beers to quench as many different patrons' thirsts, appealing to a wide variety of people.

What potentially happens with this setup and approach is that Beer becomes your core product, and not necessarily IPAs or Stouts.

Many craft breweries in South Africa has a long list of beers, always beginning with either a light lager, moving on to a more fruity blonde, then the standard pale ale, maybe a second pale ale, and then the IPA and stout. There is no core brew, only the ones that they know will sell their product.

And this is fine, play the game by the rules and such.

But this leads to sometimes really bad beers, which is sad because we always want to see smaller breweries do well, especially in a period where big conglomerate try to take all of the market share, stifling creativity and so on.

In the last two #BeerSaturday posts I made, I had a small Stout Standoff. (See the results from the first standoff and then the second standoff.) I drank two more stout beers (some late entries into my fridge, and not necessarily part of the initial stout standoff idea!).

But here we are, with two beers that disappointed me very much... But, and this is a big but, both these beers have some sediment on the bottom of the bottles, indicating unfiltered and potentially bottle-conditioned beers. I travelled with these beers, and the beers travelled some distance to get to the shops. So, in that process, something could have gone wrong. This is by no means me saying that the brewery brewed bad beers. These two particular bottles of beer were not as good as could have been.

With that out of the way, let me get to the actual review!

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The Ram Stout from Karoo Craft Breweries

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Stout | 6% ABV | 32 IBUs

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The pour was beautiful, yielding a rich and dark head. The first smell was yeasty and roasted malt coming through, and somewhere underneath all of that I picked up some chocolate as well.

But the dominant smell was roasted malt. If you have ever brewed your own beer, when you open the pack of malt, that is the smell I got.

The taste confirmed this.

Chocolate, toasted malt, roasted/black malt, deep coffee and chocolate flavours on my tongue.

In a sense, this was a complex beer for what it presented in this moment. And with all of the stouts, as soon as it warmed up a bit, more of these flavours were released.

But I could not get over how "subdued" all of the flavours were. I could taste and smell all of the above, but it was just not as powerful as I anticipated it; and this was probably the biggest mistake: I wanted the beer to taste better than it actually was. Or, I did not allow the beer to change me. (Or something philosophical like that.)

I really wanted to like this beer, but it was just "too safe". I am not going to talk about wineries trying to brew beer again...

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The Folk and Goode Stout

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Stout | 5% ABV | ?? IBUs

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After the first beer left me kind of disappointed, I probably wanted the second beer to taste good too much. This already set me up wrong, as when I poured the second stout and its head disappeared almost instantly (see photographs below), I was feeling even more disappointed.

Life is too short to drink bad beer, but life is too short not to experiment as well! Life is a constant lucky draw I guess.

As noted, as soon as I poured the beer, the head disappeared. This could have been caused by a myriad of factors. I did not buy the beer from the brewery, so transport from the brewery to the shop and from my car to the glass could have potentially messed it up at some point.

The first smell was not as intense and strong as the previous beer, probably due to the high carbonation.

The first sip was also very flat, and the carbonation was very noticeable. It was not as close to being full-bodied as one would expect from a stout.

I speculate that something during the bottle conditioning went wrong.

As the beer warmed up a bit, it tried to redeem itself. There was some hope. Some roasted and chocolate notes came through, where there was almost nothing earlier.

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Postscriptum, or Sometimes the Drinker is the Problem

Maybe I am too harsh on these beers. Usually, the problem is with the person drinking the beer rather than the beer. But in the end, we all want to experience a good beer, at least, what is good for us and our standards.

And these beers did not live up to their names as craft beer in the sense that I would have wanted them to.

This is probably not fair, but I was disappointed in these beers. Maybe they will redeem themselves in the future!

For now, happy #BeerSaturday, and enjoy a cold one!

All of the drunken opinions are my own - subjective and under the influence. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.