Rethinking Believer

Ninkasi's Believer Double Red Ale and I did not get off to a good start.

As I've indicated before, I'm not the biggest fan of their standard lineup and my previous experience with this beer in bottled form was unpleasant. There was a underlying metallic taste to a large portion of the sips, I found the bitterness to be wholly unworkable with the beer, and ended up transferring the last third of the bomber to the drain.

Sunday evening, my wife and I had an anniversary dinner at Caffe Mingo (our #1 seed for Favorite Portland Restaurant). Like any Italian-based eatery, their wine list is wholly dominant, but they always have about three local beers on tap. When advised that Believer was one of the three, I decided that a red would work well with my chosen meal and figured I'd give it another shot.

And, woo-hoo!, excellent call on my part. This was not the beer I remembered. This, instead, was pretty damn good. Massive head that stuck around and produced heavy lacing down the glass, an eye-catching dark ruby color, and a very nice blend of malt with the hops flexing their muscles on the back-end. I found nothing metallic this time around and the balance was very well done. As a fan of red ales in general (I lean toward Bitter vs. Sweet), this is a beer you can trust to fit the flavors of the style.

This experience basically confirmed my personal maxim that, "If you can find it on-tap, drink it on-tap." Additionally, as this is the third or fourth time that I've have had issues with a particular beer in a given format (bottle or draft), but pull a complete one-eighty on it when I have it the other way, I feel a need to reassess how I'm forming my opinions on things. I should revisit some of the "I wish this had been better . . . " beers in my personal history if I can find them in a format that differs from my first time. Then I can see if my opinion has either changed over time (due to the different method of deployment) or if I just snagged a bad bottle or had a bad keg. I don't think all of them will flip quite like this one did, but there might be a few that will surprise me.