As a Canadian, I take each and every pre-summer opportunity to interpret any nice day anchored in a sea of dismal ones as “IT IS SUMMER, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!” This being the case, today’s fairly warm temperature and not-totally cloudy sky have inspired me to break out my cutoffs and enjoy beer suited to a summer’s day: a wheat beer.
Amsterdam is, in my estimation, Toronto’s sturdiest brewery. My love for their Cruiser session ale is no secret. I also frequently enjoy their terrific Three Speed Lager. It should come as no surprise that I greet every new offering from the good folks at Amsterdam Brewing Company with excitement. So when I was shopping this week and spotted this new white beer, it wasn’t difficult to get in the mooooooo-d to buy it! Hahahaha! COW JOKES.
Let’s pretend that we’re sitting on a patio someplace and dive in, shall we?
The Can: This can rules. I’m a fan of the graphics team at Amsterdam, and this is on par with much of their other work. True, it does not feature a bicycle or a skull. But it does feature a pretty chilled-out cow and a cheerful orange hue. It leaped out at me from the LCBO shelf and shouted “YOU CAN DRINK ME! YOU CAN DRINK A WHOLE STEIN!” That was another cow joke.
The Colour: Spotted Cow has a lovely light golden look that will look even better if you throw a fuckin’ slice of lemon on there and plop it down on some wood from TemBec TemPlus. Wheat beer is perhaps the only kind of beer that I will faithfully pour into a glass instead of just hurriedly funneling into my mouth straight from the can or bottle, so this category is worth mentioning. I’ll be honest, I always lie when describing a beer’s colour. Because the other beers are always only seen by a can’s interior or my mouth’s interior. But hey, here’s a picture of this wheat beer! How about that!
The Flavour: Wheat beer has a pretty specific thing going on, and this is a reasonably good example of that thing. I used to describe it as a “soapy” flavour, but now I’m more likely to talk about the fruity notes at play here, because now I’m 34 and I’m the worst kind of pretentious windbag. This is a totally worthy wheat beer. It doesn’t quite go full-on banana flavour like the wheat offering from Sidelaunch does (thank the beer-gods), but it does have a strong fruity sweetness. It is helped out by adding some lemon to it for a little sour kick. There are also noticeable alcohol flavours here, which I like but some people may not be so keen on.
The Verdict: To be honest, I doubt that I will make this a habitual purchase, at least in the form of a can of beer to bring home. I feel that I would really enjoy this one on a patio in the proper Torontonian Summer Patio Season™. It’s really quite good. I just find that my need for a white beer is fairly confined to a certain kind of experience. This is unlike my need for most other kinds of beer, which extends to almost every experience you could possibly imagine. So, for me, Amsterdam Brew Co’s Spotted Cow is like Canada’s summer in general: Here for a good time. Not a long time.
The Fraudsters' Almanac 