The beer lady at the biergarten said this one was popular. It is easy to see why: it is musky, smoky, and tastes like the sesame oil or soy sauce used in your favorite Chinese food or green onions in your barbecue.
However, at the end of the day, this one has intense flavor, not balanced flavor or flavor related to beer itself. It is merely like munching on the roasted glands of a musk-ox in a smoke-filled sweat tent.
Technically, nothing seems wrong with it; the beer goes down smooth and has no side effects. Aesthetically, it offers a jagged take on the beer genre without much to recommend it except an intense flavor that is quickly forgotten.
Tags: arrogant bastard ale, beer, india pale ale, stone brewing
My go to for a quick and cheap buzz
Smells like the yellow snow tbh
not my go-to for a beer I plan on enjoying
ABA seems to be widely available. This is a bonus.
It shouldn’t be smoky or soy sauce flavored. If you got this on draft, don’t go to that place again, because they need to clean their lines since they’re contaminating their beers. If you got it in a can, then apparently there’s a skunked batch out there.
Either way, it’s not a particularly inspiring beer. It reminds me of the old Sierra Nevada Stout in that it’s an *average* of popular styles, designed to appeal to the middle of the market; hop-forward and bitter like an IPA, but then clashing with a darker toasted malt quality the prevents the bitterness from having the proper crispness. It’s too trendy to let itself be an honest malt-forward amber ale, and Stone doesn’t understand the IPA style, so it ends up being the beer equivalent to listening to Children of Bodom as it fruitlessly chases two unrelated directions.
Arrogant bastard is the beer you pick up at the corner store in between sets assuming the venue is not so gay as to prohibit ins and outs, and chug as fast as you can. Or Voodoo Ranger is a likely alternative, but Bastard lacks the fuzzy IPA buzz and bloating so it’s preferable. Of course none of this is good beer. If I want good beer I’ll go pick up some German import. Even Ayinger performs better than nearly anything domestic you’re likely to find.
It did not taste like skunked beer from the Freeway Kroger that seems to store most of its beer in a warm Amtrak before rolling it out to the shelves, but I will summon another one from somewhere to see if it sucks. Combat Kroger has the best beer supply but I like to hit D&Q for the variety.