When I was a kid, my class took a field trip to the McCormick Spice plant in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. As we toured some laboratory area, the guide nonchalantly picked various nameless chemicals from among the racks and shelves of nameless chemicals and mixed them in a beaker he was carrying. All the while he spoke of R&D, how different products are created, etc., but never about what he was mixing in the beaker. When we got to the end of the laboratory tour, the guide poured his concoction into several dixie cups and handed them to us proclaiming, “Here, a vanilla milkshake!” And damned if it didn’t taste like a vanilla milkshake. Well, mostly.

I’d forgotten about that almost-tasting-like-a-vanilla-milkshake chemical mixture until I recently picked up a six pack of one of Anheuser-Busch’s forays into “craft brewing,” Winter’s Bourbon Cask Ale. I made this selection mostly by not reading the label closely enough. I was looking for something off the beaten path, and the description on the label (aged on bourbon barrel oak and vanilla beans) seemed to be exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Had I read just a little further, the Anheuser-Busch name would have surely sent me off in another direction. But I didn’t and so I went home with a macrobrew wearing a microbrew disguise.

I discovered my mistake when I popped open and poured my first (and so far only) beer at home. Expecting something strong on the nose–bourbon or vanilla maybe?–I was surprised when I got almost nothing. Definitely no bourbon, and hints of vanilla only when I stuck my nose way down in the glass. There was something oddly reminiscent about that vanilla. There was also an odd “alcohol” smell to it. Bourbon has a smell. Scotch has a smell. Tequila has a smell. But so does nondescript, uncategorized alcohol, and that is what was coming through here. Very disappointing and a bit disconcerting (and two or three other dis- words I can’t think of right now)

So, after the disappointing nose I wasn’t expecting much flavor to come through on the palate either. Boy was I wrong. (Too bad this doesn’t turn into a great comeback story at this point, eh?) The vanilla flavor (wait, not flavor, but flavoring) was almost overwhelming. How could there be so little vanilla on the nose, but so much on the palate? Suddenly my memories of that little dixie cup came back to me. There was something artificial about this flavor. Maybe this beer really is aged on bourbon oak and vanilla beans, but I suspect the majority of the flavor is mixed up in a beaker in a lab and then added. Apparently, they haven’t figured out how to mix up a decent bourbon flavor in the lab yet, because there was none of that action going on at all. Making matters worse, peeking out from behind these overt flaws is the standard A-B macrobrew beer as the foundation for this effort.

As craft beers go, this is a Tinker Toy effort at creating a complex brew. I’ve still got five bottles of this left, so if you’re passing through town just stop in and I’ll send a couple home with you.