Stone and Jagermeister
Jagermeister and Arrogant Bastard Ale
8.5%
2019
I’ll preface this by saying I found this bottle having no idea it even existed. Reading up, it’s from the Stone installation in Germany, called Arrogant Consorita[sic](from their website). Pretty sure it’s Consortia but I am not a word doctor. It has aged (obviously) even though there was a big “DRINK FRESH, NUMBSKULL” on the side of it. However, the release date was Sep 2019 so it’s not SO far off and coming from Berlin it wouldn’t be super fresh to begin with. I think my apprehension was not wanting to 1) waste something exotic and 2) not destroy something beautiful. But here’s that Fight Club moment, so PROST!
I can’t keep typing out JAGERMEISTER AND ARROGANT BASTARD ALE so it will be known as JAB. The JAB, once uncorked, immediately had a very herbal smell like juniper punching me in the nose. Once poured, it didn’t go away. I get the licorice most people associate with Jager. It has a slightly higher ABV than the regular Bastard but I’m not sure I pick up any more booze. I have also prepared a cold shot of Jager, to intermittently sip. For research purposes.
Hops – 6.7 It is still Arrogant Bastard, but the initial hop bite/flavor/aroma really gets knocked out by JAB’s herbals. Some of the way into this glass and all I get at first is juniper, citrus, anise, licorice and then I’m left with the pungent bitterness of a stone IPA. It’s an odd transition from sweet to floral, to herbal and then a lingering bitter finish that really doesn’t showcase any of the flavors that they have separately. I would say it’s more resiny than hoppy.
Malts – Maybe. It’s sweet but that’s more from the addition of Jager and its ingredients. It would be tough to pick up any of the traditional caramel, roasted, wheat flavors you might find in a normal beer.
Carbonation – 5.5 It doesn’t pour flat, you can feel it in the mouth, but it’s not super lively. It’s a decent balance.
Character – 8.9 It’s tough to remain subjective when so many worlds collide. I like Jager. I like Arrogant Bastard. I like the flavors both of those things have. I like the flavors they have brought together, but it’s so weird. Like the guy that still drives a Pontiac Aztek but hasn’t even seen Breaking Bad, they just like it for the space and it was a graduation gift and that sort of makes sense on paper. There are so many things going on, and you get to taste all of them.
Palate – 4.1 This beer is exactly like when you’re cooking, and you under/overspice something and you keep adding stuff to it to balance it out until you’re left with a Katamari roll up ball of almost everything in your kitchen when you really just started out making a chicken parm. While the flavors are great separately, nothing here is cohesive. It’s a boozed up version of a 4 year-old’s story where you heard about one hundred details but none of them were pertinent.
Overall – 6.9 I figure they would like that number.
It’s the COOL LIQUOR PEOPLE coming together with the EXTREME BEER GUYS to make COOL EXTREME LIQUORBEER but that’s never been a niche. No one orders boilermakers outside of extras in movies, and this is like the worst parts of dropping a shot of Jager into an Arrogant Bastard. You can tell exactly what it is, but the one thing it wasn’t was necessary. I would say it was a neat marketing trick but I only found it a nice gas station that has all kinds of great beers. I’ve never seen it before or after, and hadn’t heard of it at all so it wasn’t marketing. If it was just an experiment, then now everyone knows. Not that it’s bad, it isn’t. But everything that makes Jager good and Arrogant Bastard good get lost in the mix here and you end up with a distorted version of both.