http://www.allagash.com/beer/draft/james…

Been done, and I'm sure better than Miller can come up with with.

How about, "Why bother with beer at all and just drink bourbon"?

If it spikes my diarrhea with a bourbon scent, I'm all for it.

As someone who dislikes bourbon, no.

I like bourbon-barrel beer. This will be fucking terrible.

Lots of breweries already make beer aged in bourbon barrels, Bourbon Barrel Abominable by Fremont Brewery and Allagash Curieux are a couple that come to mind. The aging usually leaves a very distinctive bourbon taste which, depending on the beer, is often quite delicious.

Another product launch from an out of touch beverage conglomerate, doomed to fail.

@5 Double Arrogant Bastard aged in bourbon barrels is fucking fantasitic. I bet that the flavoring for this bourbon will come from a chemical plant in New Jersey.

It'll taste about as much like "bourbon" as Baskin-Robbins rum raisin ice cream tastes like "rum."

>Relatively high alcohol content
>6.9% ABV

Wut? Even my ciders have higher alcohol content than that shit.

Miller is piss (sorry to insult piss). Seriously, why would anyone drink Miller beer?

Our local Spinnaker Bay Brewery had some excellent bourbon flavored beer. It was also over 8% alcohol. Buy and drink local!

Uh, hello Miller - ever hear of a boilermaker?

I like bourbon-barrel beer. This is a really shitty gimmick and all of your poll choices suck.

I am still trying to wrap my head around the concept of "special hops to give it a bourbon flavor." I know what hops taste like and I know what bourbon tastes like. I don't see how this could even work.

Plus, it's fucking Miller, so...

Fercrissakes, Paul. Craft brewers have been aging beers in bourbon, whiskey, rum, sherry, brandy and wine barrels for years. I'd add Deschutes The Abyss and Reuben's BB Imperial Stout to the list.

How far is it to Pine Box from your "office"? Half-a-mile maybe? Make the trip, you lazy SOB, because Journalism.

@10, maybe that's why you're bloated. Beer is ideally around 4-4.5%, so you can quaff it and taste the malt. At 6.5% you're only tasting raw alcohol. Same reason 15-16% wine is shit, no matter how many experts try to tell you it's "big". High-alcohol beer is for dullards.

Or, excuse me, "badasses", who read "Badass Digest", presumably while wearing a plaid trilby and a t-shirt that says "Cool Story Babe - Now Make Me A Sandwich".

I'm with Banna @2. If you want to drink bourbon, drink bourbon and skip the terrible beer.

@12 - I don't think it's _Miller_ who's never heard of a Boilermaker, it's the new generation of working class folk who are drinking Miller (god have mercy on their souls) who've never had their bartender make a boilermaker. Or perhaps is the newer bartenders "out there" in wherever-land who've never even heard of a boilermaker.

--

With increasing inequality, and the obviously successful campaign by the rich to loot the lower classes of their wealth (aka "the 2008 financial crisis"), this infinite division of product niches is a total distraction.

We're undergoing the greatest information upheaval since Gutenberg, and the greatest transfer of wealth since the Great Depression and all we can do is live out Queen Victoria's maxim: "Give my people plenty of beer, good beer and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them."

@8: Exactly. This isn't craft beer. This is their equivalent of the lime-a-rita.

http://widmerbrothers.com/beer/#ginger-b…

@13 & 15 - I like that stuff too. Big fan of some of the barrel-aged Scotch ales. Also, I wish I could remember what it's called, but there's a French beer that actually contains whiskey (I don't know if this is a gimmick, or an actual thing) I've had that I liked too.

"Flavored" beer... and from Miller?...ugh. Budweiser found a way to make lime taste like urinal cake, I can only imagine what these folks have done.

And now for the public service announcement part of my post: I once saw an acquittance get carted off to the ER after swallowing the broken shards of a shot glass from the bottom of his pint. Beer AND a shot great—great. Beer IN a shot—just say no. Plus, you're not in a frat anymore.

For the record, I don't have a problem with mass produced beers, I just find the idea of this Miller product repugnant.

Pacifico is actually the beer I drink most. Everything else is an occasional thing when the mood strikes.

@16 And you apparently have no idea what you're talking about. Higher alcohol beer and cider has their own class of tastes (be it that they're aged in a barrel or otherwise) and subtleties.

For example, Sea Cider's Rumrunner, BECAUSE its fermented with champagne yeast and aged in rum barrels, has a distinct brown sugar taste that you wouldn't get with a regular cider.

Then there's Bourbon Abominable Winter Ale at the Fremont Brewing Company. That has a distinct vanilla and malt feel to it that, again, you don't get in most beers.

Perhaps you just buy shit high alcohol beer? Or, as I can guess, you probably don't drink hard liquor. Because, as we all know, you can never get hints of different flavors in whiskeys, bourbons, or rums! So your alcohol argument and inability to taste through it is entirely the fault of your own.

Lastly, regular beer causes me to bloat. I can't drink it. I just end up gassy as all fuck.

"special hops" Why is it that people who clearly know nothing about beer are allowed to write articles informing us about beer? the tip-off is that these articles always refer to beer as "suds"

@16 this is the craziest claim I've ever seen you make. Did Will in Seattle hack your account or something?

Just to list a few outstanding beers that are 6.5% alcohol or higher:

1. Russian River "Pliny the Elder"

2. Russian River "Sanctification" (and in fact most of their sour beers are over 6.5%)

3. Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout (aged in bourbon barrels, incidentally)

4. Goose Island Bourbon County Stout (likewise)

5. Petrus Aged Pale Ale

6. Troegs Nugget Nectar

7. Westvleteren 12

And there are a ton of good ones between 6% and 6.5%, including Rodenbach Grand Cru and Orval. Don't get me wrong, I love low-alcohol beers, but if I had to choose between only drinking beers that are above 6.5% and only drinking beers that are below 6.5% , it would be a very hard choice - there are just a ton of great beers over 6.5%. It is just insane to say something like, "At 6.5% you're only tasting raw alcohol." Are people really drinking Pliny the Elder (much less Pliny the Younger) for the raw alcohol flavor?

@22: you should google fnarf and rum or fnarf and whisky if you think he doesn't drink the harder stuff. You're in for a surprise. That's the problem with being the new kid on the block...sometimes you shoot yourself in the foot right out of the gate.

This thread reminds me of a pet peeve of mine that requires venting: the fancy little beer glass.

I get that I probably wouldn't want a full pour of some hopped-up 10% number, and fancy beer bars sometimes list the adv. which could be a giveaway, but goddamn on the rare occasion I try some exotic beer and they hand it to me in a faberge egg with a Dutch word on the side... sigh. Can we put an asterisk on the sign or something? I'm here to hang out with my friends, not get faceblasted by 6oz of hops of ipecac.

Or I could learn to control myself and stick to what I know, but then I wouldn't get to rant.

@25

No, I was simply making the point that he's missing the OBVIOUS nuance of higher alcohol beers. His premise, that the alcohol takes away from the taste, is entirely wrong and that's proven by hard liquor and the beer/cider listed by myself and @24.

As for me being new, I've been reading SLOG for years. I know what fnarf has said and knew that a jab against their taste in alcohol would be an insult.

Firestone Walker, Velvet Merkin: This is what bourbon-flavored beer is supposed to be.

Schooner Exact's "hoppy the woodsman" (a limited run IPA during the holiday season aged in bourbon barrels) deserves mention. It was great IMHO. Fuck Miller

As a person who makes a living in specialty/craft beer, I want to commend all of you commenting here. As we speak, Miller is brewing an abomination, one that will fail spectacularly with any luck. You've all made the world seem a bit brighter.

...except for Fnarf. You, sir, need to spend some time in the Phantom Zone.

I hope you got the IP addresses on those 20 people who "love" Miller. They are obviously underaged high-school students who don't know any better. Please report them to the SPD.

I don't understand how someone could sip cask-strength whisky and complain that you personally "can't taste" anything in non-crazy ABV craft beers.

I enjoy myself a nice lawnmowing beer now and then, but perhaps Fnarf's idea of the ideal beer is simply a subjective difference from mine?

Does he water the whisky down to ~5% ABV as well? Mysteries?!