Brau Brothers / Cooler/ $6.99

by Mitch LeClair

Certain beers fit certain tongues. Some like their brews dark, oily, almost pungent with a strong aftertaste of alcohol. Yet others prefer a light, “drinkable” beverage, low in calories (and taste.) My own mouth muscle prefers a hoppy beer, one that is not too transparent but far from opaque, filled with flavor and lacking a knock-me-down thrust of too-strong punches overabundant in many common brands.

Since moving in with Mr. Palette, my roommate and beer judge extraordinaire Roose, I have become more and more interested in microbrews; that is, beers that don’t suck. While I can still enjoyably take down a respectable amount of Bud Heavies in a night if need be, I tend to search out smaller, much more specialized varieties of bottled, fermented drinks.
About a month ago, in my quaint South Dakota residential palace of Brookings, SoDak, I met the owners/founders/managers/marketers of Brau Brothers beer.

I first sucked their golden brown liquids through my lips at a little get-together called Beer Fest here in Brookings, and since that weekend, I’ve bought four different six-packs of their beers. Disregarding my contempt for the sole spirits store in our town, and how it got to be that way due to self-righteous municipality licenses, I’d say that my weekly trips to Brookings Liquor have been more enjoyable because of the kin hailing from Lucan, Minnesota – a town of barely 200, mind you.

My first exposure to Brau Brothers introduced a sample of their Strawberry Wheat brew to my system. It was a fresh sample, and a later tasting of a store-purchased pack has yielded far inferior results. True, I was half drunk at a beer festival the first time around, but after buying and drinking a sixer of the fruity brew struck me as far less novel and quite a bit more cheesy. A good attempt, but too close to a cheerleader Mike’s Hard for me.
However, my second time around paralleled a repeat encounter of the sexual kind: much more comfortable, much more pleasing. Maybe I had to get used to the hometown water Brau uses in their product, or maybe their Pale Ale was quite simply one heck of a good beer. I’m usually an easy target for pale ales, with their sweet, seductive first snap and lingering, begging-for-more aftertaste, but this beer tasted different. It struck me as a homebrew with balls – a year or two off from becoming a Midwest classic.

Their Scotch Ale is pretty good. That’s about all. It’s not great, but definitely worth the $6.99 I paid for a six-pack. I would say it’s worth $7.99 at the most. Of course, these are South Dakota prices, and the beer’s only traveled a few hours to be sold in our frosty coolers.

The other Brau Brothers beer I’ve tried is one from their single-batch series: Whirlybird Oatmeal Stout. I have two problems with this beer and one good thing to say about it. First, the bad. It tastes like an attempt, as in, “Let’s make a chocolaty, malty beer.” “Ok, but I don’t know if it will be that good…” Just do it Brothers; you seemed hesitant with this one. I’m not sure how else to describe the taste. It’s walking through the door, but the damn thing has it’s head down.

My other negative comment concerns the lack of specialized design work on the box. The entire single-batch series from Brau, which includes a pretty darn good Sheephead IPA I’ve been told, comes with the same package design and only unique stickers on the side. Basically the only reason this is a big deal is that it is boring, does nothing to attract customers (who should be attracted to this brewery, because their beers are excellent overall), and it can not be included in an attractive six-pack side beer wall in a domicile, as I have lived under for the past ten months.

My positive remark about the Whirlybird Oatmeal Stout: the whirlybird sucking the crow in for a logo – brilliant.

Brau Brothers still has a few stairs to go, but one look at their extremely impressive website, one taste of most of their beers, or one face-to-face meeting with their kind, welcoming staff proves that they they’re ascending the flight by twos and threes. I think they’ll be reaching the second floor soon enough.