Recently, I went over to Beer Guy LA headquarters. Jeff had received the two flavors of OnTap Beer “Enhancers” and he had a ‘fridge full of the surprisingly high 5.9% abv Natural Ice (Coors Light, Bud Light, PBR and King Cobra Malt Liquor also joined the fray later) to use as a flavorless beer to “enhance”.
The dispensing of the liquid “enhancer” was not easy. You either got too little or way too much. It probably didn’t matter since either option tasted as foul as it smelled. The American Ale (I’m guessing amber-ish in style) smelled like soy sauce at first and then mostly Nestle Quik. It certainly did change the color to amber but that may have been due to my excessive second squirt of the malodorous stuff. But the foam was left with a weird brown color on it. I certainly could not barista a pretty design like leaves with this stuff. The pale ale was less “stain” looking but, to me, somehow smelled worse. Like a cross of skittles and sour patch kids. And the dispersion of the bright orange stuff through a clear beer was like watching an IV drip at work.
The American tasted better because it was like adding chocolate to a beer which is something that my brain could reconcile. And since the Natty Ice was a decent base in comparison to the corn accented and practically water colored Coors and Bud Light, it was something you could grimace your way through. The Pale (with a dog on the label that suspiciously looked like the Lagunitas Dogtown Pale ale version) though was just bad from start to finish. If it was supposed to convey hops, it failed and failed badly. It was candy flavored and the sugar was overpowering. I tried a couple of different beers with it and none could cut through that high fructose corn syrup.
Braver souls than I attempted to drink a combination of both of the “enhancers”. The painful grimaces on their faces and the subsequent drain pours told the story of that experiment. Thank God that actual craft beer was also on hand, otherwise my tastebuds would have been very angry with me.
With Dave Willis and Craig Berry also on hand, the dismantling of this “enhancer” was too easy. What we all kept coming back to was, how could this have escaped the lab as an actual sellable product? How could the creators have possibly been satisfied with what they had? At best, enhancing a crappy product is not the way to go. No one adds Hook’s Cheddar to a McDonald’s Big Mac. To strain the analogy, OnTap is not even government cheese.