Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Shiner Bock’s a standby in the world of smaller beers gone big. A widely available, mass produced beer that leans into its local roots.
Like Sam Adams is decidedly Boston, Shiner is decidedly Texas. While the Massachusetts standby presses its status as a craft brewing pioneer, Shiner has always felt a little more universal. A little more attainable. A little less snobby.
Part of that was because the company’s flagship beer, Shiner Bock, was so dang easy to drink. It was basic malty goodness, a step up from macrobrewing’s golden lagers that you could find in most supermarket beer aisles or package stores for negligibly more than a Miller High Life or Coors Banquet beer.
There’s more to Shiner than just Bock. The question remains whether the rest of the company’s brews can live up to the standard of its simple, beloved headliner. The cold weather — well, relatively cold for Texas — has brought along a swell of new seasonals and offerings from the brewery. Let’s drink those and see what we’ve got.
Black Lager: B+/A-
The first sip backs that up. The roasted malt is more caramel than chocolate, but otherwise it tastes like it smells. Rich and smooth. Some pale hoppiness floats in toward the end, snapping things off with a little bitterness.
Inside that roasted malt is a little coffee as well, and though it’s not overly complex it’s a quality brew for something you’d find at most package stores for a reasonable six-pack price. It’s easy to drink and something I don’t think I’d get tired of after two or three. As the cold weather sinks in, this isn’t quite a warmer, but it’s not a bad beer to drink by a fire or, more likely, while perched on the couch cycling through a bowl game lineup.
TexHex Storm Caster Juicy IPA: B
It pours a plump golden yellow with about a half inch of lacy white foam. You get a little juicy citrus off the top — tangerine? pineapple? — and some light hops.
It’s thick with that fruit, but snaps off dry with that bitter hop flavor. It’s not overpowering, but it’s enough to remind you it’s a pale ale under that colorful pour and orange-y smell. That dry-ness is inviting, keeping the juice from overpowering the brew and creating the space to keep you coming back from more.
The flavor, however, is a bit muted compared to what I’d like to have seen. It’s good, not great. But again, for a beer I can find just about anywhere for $7 per sixer, that’s pretty solid.
Light Blonde: C
It’s a sub-100 calorie beer with a big, quickly dissipating head that suggests the carbonation is here to whisk a forgettable beer off your taste buds with efficiency. It smells pale and a little soapy, less so out of the can but in both cracked and poured circumstances.
The beer itself is a smooth, carbonated ride without a ton of flavor. There’s a little corn in there, some traditional light beer hallmarks, but for the most part it’s a forgettable 99 calorie drink. It’s … fine. Maybe better than a Miller or Coors light, but your mileage may vary.
Prickly Pear: C
Cracking the can unleashes a powerful, citrus sweetness with a little bit of floral undertones. It pours with a two-inch head that quickly dissipates. Everything points to this being a crushable hot weather beer.
The balance itself is a little off. Halfway to fructose sweetness and halfway to a lager, with nothing all-the-way satisfying from either side. It smells great and tastes like just a little less, as though an Abita Purple Haze gave up between brewing and bottling. It’ll go down smooth on a hot day, but there’s not much to it. It’s a false start in a can, which is frustrating but not undrinkable.
Shiner Bock: B
It pours like the rest of Shiner’s beers; with an impressive head that skitters away before you can complain about the foam. It smells malty with a touch of fruit. It tastes like cereal malts and carbonation, in the best possible way. It’s a crushable beer that tastes like beer, something that works wonders at a tailgate, a party or a dinner.
Shiner Bock is a chameleon, a cheap beer that tastes better than it is and looks fancier than something that came from southeastern Texas. It’s the perfect Target beer, less expensive than whatever overrated craft beers a mass retailer with little interest in beer has on the shelf and better than the rest of the macrobrews next to it. You can do better than Shiner Bock; that’s almost always been the case. But in terms of availability and price, the Spoetzl Brewery’s got your back.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?
Shiner exists on the same plane as Hamm’s for me. Inexpensive and utterly drinkable. I don’t quite hold it in the same reverence as Hamm’s — seriously, Hamm’s is great, dirt cheap beer — but I’ll never turn one down. Except maybe the Prickly Pear. That was a little disappointing.
