For starters it's brewed in the town of Plzen over in the Czech Republic. We'll give you three guesses what they invented there. Because of it's water source, Pilsner Urquell has been used throughout Europe by many people to help dissolve kidney stones and gall stones. The water source comes from the nearby city of Marianske Lazne (visit their official web site), which is a spa town where people go to drink the local spring water for it's health benefits. Not just the plebians of the town, but world dignitaries, royalty from many countries and other famous people as well. The visits are actually doctor prescribed in many instances. The spa is actually the town's main industry. Now for the beer - they say one Pilsner Urquell a day will do it to realize the health benefits. Note the "one" qualification there - everything in moderation here people. No other beer has this claim because of the water source.

Now on to the review. For our test we used, naturally, a pilsner glass. We got an initial beer temperature of 44.2 F and our 12 oz bottle sports a 4.4% ABV. Our initial pour gave us an average 1 1/4" fizzy white head that left virtually no head lacing as it dissipated quickly. It's got a medium carbonation and the body is a clear sparkling yellow/golden color. It looks like a textbook pilsner.

For the aromas we picked up a light biscuit (almost a sweet biscuit smell), citrus, grass, bread dough and some ginger. It's quite a clean smell - very refreshing and crisp. Unfortunately the smell is the most intriguing part of the beer.

On the taste side we were able to note the light biscuit, grass and some light lemon. Not much complexity here - you pick up some hops and it's kind of like a Heineken on the finish - somewhat skunky and also slightly metallic. This results in a strange disconnect from the aromas to the flavor. The malts thin out significantly and the hop bitters edge on in. The finish is very sharp.

For our initial flavor notes we get a light sweet and a very light bitter. The finish notes evolve to a light acidic and moderate bitter. The finish is average in length and it's not a coating finish - one sip of water cleans it right out of your palate. The mouthfeel is watery and the tongue hit is right in the middle of your tongue. There's no body lacing to speak of and on our malt to hop scale it comes in about a click and a half to the right of balanced on the hoppy side.

For our bottom line notes we get a yes to drinkable, yes to repeatable and yes to balance. This means a no to harmony, memorable, wow factor and unfortunately a no to buy again.

It's a textbook session beer at 4.4% ABV and we feel like it should be done pretty cold to dull the taste out a bit. Maybe a thick walled cold, not frozen glass. It could be a good intro to a slightly hopped beer without a strong malt backbone for a craft beer newbie. We want to like it more because of the smell, but ultimately we're just not big fans.

Tonight's review is the Bell's Two Hearted Ale. Don't be fooled by this one - it may be from Bell's Brewery (which in fact was not invented by Alexander Graham Bell), but it's not a dark beer. Bell's has a bit of a reputation as a dark beer company, at least in our minds (see one of our all-time favorites - the Bell's Expedition Stout). This one is actually an IPA - an India Pale Ale. If you need a little background on what an IPA is check out our review of the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA where we go into the origins of the style. To show you what a great beer company Bell's is, this non dark Two Hearted Ale comes in at #79 on the RateBeer.com Top 100 Best Beers in the World. So, yeah, Bell's knows a thing or two about beer in general, not just the dark stuff.

For this review we used an English pint glass. We got an initial temperature of 54.3 F and the 12 oz bottle comes in at 7% ABV. The initial pour gave us a huge 3 inch foamy white head that left a good amount of lacing as it dissipated slowly. There's a lively carbonation to the clear, sparkling amber/orange body. A beautiful looking beer.

The first whiff gives us a good medley of aromas - straw, citrus (grapefruit, lemon and orange), floral, grass, mint, apple, pear and white wine. A nice complexity and a nice balance. The taste heavily echoes some of the hop aromas - citrus (mostly the grapefruit) and grass and also adds a note of resin. It also adds a light toasted malt flavor for some balance. An interesting taste that is completely and utterly dominated by hops. When we finished and took a look at the hop section of our review form it was slammed full - we had 8 hop notes circled in total for the aroma and taste.

The initial flavor comes in as a moderate sweet and a light to moderate bitter. The finish flavor evolves to a light to moderate sweet and a heavy bitter. The finish length is long - maybe the longest finish we've ever done. It's the finish that won't die - a sip of water didn't make the bitterness in the finish go away at all. The mouthfeel is oily, the tongue hit covers the whole tongue completely - front, middle and back. There is a fair amount of body lacing and on the patented malt to hop scale it comes in 3 clicks to the right of balanced on the hoppy side - one click away from the hoppiest mark we could put.

For our bottom line notes we marked a yes for drinkable, balance and memorable. We marked a no for repeatable (one was plenty for us), no for harmony, no for wow factor and no for buy again.

Now you might be saying - what is our major malfunction that we wouldn't want to buy it again? It's rated the 79th best beer in the world after all! Well, It goes way too far over to the hop side for us. We're not anti-IPA, but we much prefer the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA because it had a much better balance to it.

See, if you're going to slam a beer full of hops you need a lot of malts to balance it out. There's just not a lot of that in the Two Hearted Ale. Whatever malt sweetness there is in the beginning, the hops march in and just pound the sweet out of your mouth like all those drums in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in China. You definitely feel that hop burn on your tongue - it reminds us a bit of our fated Ipswich Original Ale review - where we noted a burnt taste that we thought may in fact be the hops killing our taste buds. So yeah, it would be our contention that the hop shock factor is high.

Now even with all that said we can appreciate this beer for what it is. The Bell's Two Hearted Ale makes a big statement. We love most of the Bell's beers and they don't half ass anything they do - this beer included. It's probably a good example of the IPA style, but this may frighten a craft beer newbie away from ever doing another IPA. It would probably be better with food (which might be the only thing that would kill the finish) and it would likely be a great beer for a hophead. Others may want to proceed with caution.

We strategically made Michelob Amber Bock our 100th beer rating because for both Father and Son Beer Love, and a large number of our Beer Love friends, this was our breakout beer. By breakout beer we mean the one that got us over the rank domestic hump and into the realm of beers that actually have taste. We feel like Amber Bock is the perfect beer to introduce to friends who are wanting to (or who you want to) break out into craft beers for several reasons:

• It's available everywhere.
• It doesn't feature the sticker shock of some of our beloved high end craft brews.
• It's dark - there's a stigma around dark beers for those not in the know, and a lot of the good craft beers are a bit darker than your normal American lagers.
• It's balanced - you can easily scare a newbie away with something too malty or too hoppy when their palate isn't yet "beer sophisticated."
• It works with and without food.
• Though it's dark, it's still a lager, which helps ease people over to "the dark side." Lagers don't tend to pack the punch of flavors that ales do, so we feel it bridges the gap well between light and refreshing lagers and rich and satisfying ales.

My first run in with Amber Bock came in the late 90s. I was living with my best friend Rusty at the time and one day I open the fridge to find Amber Bocks that he brought home. Several sessions of Mario Kart, Amber Bock and Chewy Chips Ahoy later it was official.

Fast forward to Son Beer Love's wedding over 4 years ago, where we had a full keg of Amber Bock (as well as a keg of some other light beer, though we couldn't tell you what it was). Best man Rusty never let the groom's glass get anywhere close to empty all night. I don't remember a lot from the latter part of the wedding, but I can tell you I woke up the next day and felt fantastic.

Little did I know that once I had left the reception the party continued. Father Beer Love and Father Beer Love In Law decided to fully enforce the "No Good Beer Left Behind" act of 2004 and decided that they had in fact prepared their whole lives for this moment - to float the keg of Amber Bock. Only the keg will know how many glasses they drank in an attempt to empty it (10? 15? 20?) because they sure don't remember. A very patient and loving Mother Beer Love and Mother Beer Love In Law let them back into their homes in some instances as soon as the next day.

Now on to the rating.

Michelob Amber Bock sports a 5.2% ABV and each 12 oz bottle has 155 calories. We poured ours into an American pint glass and got a temperature of 42.6 F. The pour gave us an average 1 1/4" fizzy off-white head that left virtually no lacing as it dissipated quickly. There was little carbonation and though the body is a deep amber, it is relatively clear and you can see through it.

The aromas are mostly malts - caramel, nutty, roasted malts - but there are traces of grass as well in the smell. The tastes echo the smells but add pine, brown sugar and a slight soy sauce to the fray. The initial flavor is a light sweet and light bitter. The finish flavor is a light to moderate bitter and a light saltiness. The finish is average in duration and the mouthfeel is dry. There's no body lacing to speak of and on the Dr Beer Love patented malt to hop scale it comes in just about perfectly balanced.

For our bottom line we say yes to drinkable, repeatable and balanced. We say no to harmony and memorable. But we do give an emphatic yes to buy again.

It's got more depth to it than other lagers, and we appreciate that. It is an Anheuser-Busch beer, but it's really pretty great for an American lager. It doesn't wow us like it first did so many years ago, but it's still good and of course it's a sentimental favorite. Mind you the beer hasn't changed, our palates have.

This is a perfect example of a session beer - that is a beer you can drink many of in one sitting. Don't let it get too warm while you're drinking it and don't store it too long before you drink it. Though it would be better as an ale, which could give it some more complexity and depth with maybe some dark fruits, it's a perfectly satisfying beer. If you're going to buy a 12 pack of something, this would have to be high on the list. It's great cold and though we're not big on frosty mugs, it might be well suited for this one. Smooth and drinkable, this will be an old friend you can call on at any time. Keep at least a 6 pack on hand for guests in an attempt to convert them into craft beer newbies. And then explain to them that though you had bought a 6 pack for them, you drank it. Then direct them to this web page and let them read why they should go buy their own 6 pack.

Happy 100 reviews beer lovers! Cheers and good beers to you and here's to 100 more!

100 beers. Arbitrary? Yes. But somehow it seems to have an air of legitimacy to it for some reason. Maybe it's the triple digits thing, who knows? We always said in 5 years the Beer Love family would be completely legitimate.

So about 100 - What could it be? Will it be special? Well, it will be very special to the Beer Love household. And it's one that's requested and searched for quite frequently on the site. It's one we've looked forward to posting for a long time. And it's got one of the best write-ups we think we've ever done - lots of back story to it.

Stay tuned because 100 is coming!

Before we jump into the meat of the review here are a few quick stats you need to know. Use these at your next party to make people think you're a beer guru. Shiner Bock accounts for 80% of the beer made at the Spoetzl Brewery and it's been brewed since 1913. It currently ships to 41 of the United States. Shiner Bock is the number one selling craft beer in Texas and is the number 6 selling craft beer in the US. To give you a feel for how a relatively large craft brewery runs, Spoetzl Brewery has about 50 to 60 employees and makes 5 beers years round along with 3 seasonals. Beer fact session over and out - on to the review.

We served up our Shiner Bock in an American pint glass and got a temperature of 41.9 F. The 12 ounce bottle comes in at a 4.4% ABV and we paid $7.79 for the six pack. The pour gave us an average 1 1/2" fizzy off-white head that dissipated quickly and left virtually no head lacing in the process. There is a soft carbonation to the clear amber colored beer.

Our initial aromas came in with caramel, hay, honey, toasted malts, grass, yeast and brown sugar. Our initial flavors came in with just a light caramel, honey and toasted malts. The initial flavor notes are a light to moderate sweet and the finish moves to a light sweet, light bitter and light tart. The finish is short in duration, the mouthfeel is dry and the tongue hit is at the front of the tongue. There's no body lacing to speak of and on our patented malt to hop scale it comes in about 1.5 clicks to the left of balanced on the malty side.

Bottom line notes give us 4 yeses and 3 nos - yes to drinkable, repeatable, balanced and buy again, no to harmony, memorable and wow factor.

Is it the greatest beer in the world? Not by a long shot. Is it a good middle of the pack beer? Yes. It's not heavy, it's got a nice amount of sweet to it (a little sweeter than an Amber Bock) and it's very much a textbook session beer - that is a beer you can drink many of in one sitting without fear of waking up with marker drawings on your face.

Bonus - if you have a Saltgrass Steak House near you they make a Shiner Bock Beer Bread that you've got to try. It's fantastic.

Don't over think this beer people, just know that it's a good beer to have during a football game (or any sporting event) and it's eminently better than any of the usual rank domestics your friends might try to push on you. It's good to go and it's worth a 6 pack. Bring this to the next party and help some of your friends start to transition to better beer.

There's your "I learned something new today" nugget. Enjoy! For our review we used an English pint glass, of course. We got a starting beer temperature of 55 F, which is just about perfect for these English beers. This one rocks an ABV of 4.8% and the bottle volume is 500 ml or 16.9 oz for those who can't or won't read metrics.

Our initial pour gave us a large 3" foamy light brown head that left a good amount of head lacing as it dissipated slowly. Not a lot of carbonation to speak of and the color was an opaque ruby brown. It looks black when you look at it but when you get it up to the light you can see a bit more clearly the true colour.

The aromas come in with chocolate, coffee, roasted malts and some light alcohol. Not too complex but those are some powerful malt aromas and you're probably not going to get a lot of other subtle notes coming through. They put 14 different malts in this bad boy! The taste is strong on the coffee - almost a burnt taste like a Starbucks bean gone too long (well, I guess that's a normal Starbucks bean). So that ramps up the taste to essentially an espresso along with some burnt, dark chocolate and a very light smoke. Again not overly complex, but all the flavors jive together really well for a pretty enjoyable taste that we put away surprisingly fast.

The initial flavor notes are a light to moderate sweet that evolves in the finish to a light sweet and light to moderate bitter. The finish is quite long and the mouthfeel is creamy and velvety smooth. The tongue hit is smack in the back of the tongue and there's a fair amount of body lacing as you drink it. On our malt to hop scale it comes in really malty - there's 14 malts after all - 3 clicks to the left of balanced on the malt side.

For our bottom line notes we get a yes to drinkable, yes to repeatable, yes to balance and a yes to buy again. We get a no to harmony, no to memorable and no to wow factor.

This is a really interesting beer. It's very smooth and it's not too dry and it's not too sweet - it's really our first session porter. While it's not overly complex it's very good - it's a malty celebration in a bottle. We think it may actually be a good transition beer for a craft beer newbie wanting an introduction to porters - it's the perfect size, has a pretty low ABV and really hums along. It's not a stunner of a beer, it's just a good drinking beer and we definitely recommend it.

It comes in a 500 ml (1 pint, 0.9 oz) bottle, and that's a perfect size for this 5.2% ABV beer. For this test we used an English pint glass and got a temperature of 50.9 F. Our initial pour gave us a large 2 1/2" foamy medium brown head that had a good amount of head lacing as it dissipated slowly. The color is a solid opaque black and we noted a little bit of carbonation.

The aromas come in as surprise - chocolate! Loads and loads of chocolate.There's also lots of sweet malts. It smells like a great chocolate milk (maybe even a Yoo-hoo). We also get some notes of vanilla, milk, cream and as it warms there's a hint of alcohol (interesting, considering the relatively average ABV). The taste gives you surprise - chocolate! Gobs and gobs of chocolate. We also get some notes of cream, milk and a touch of coffee. Not terribly complex, but what it does it does really well. The chocolate you get in the smell and taste isn't really dark chocolate - more like a semi-sweet chocolate.

The initial flavor notes are a moderate sweet that continues on to the finish, where we also get a light bitter. The finish length is short, the mouthfeel is halfway between watery and creamy, the tongue hit is right in the middle of the tongue and there's a good amount of body lacing. It's a very clean finish - almost the cleanest finish of any stout we've had. On our patented malt to hop scale it comes in about 3 clicks to the left of balanced on the malty side - very malty, but not as malty as it gets. Full Dr Beer Love disclosure: we love the malts. We're crazy about the malts.

On our bottom line notes we got a yes to drinkable (what's one step better than yes? An emphatic yes!), repeatable, balance, harmony, memorable and buy again. The only no we got was for wow factor - we've had a better chocolate beer (see Foothills Sexual Chocolate).

Overall this beer has something great that not a lot of chocolate beers have - repeatability. There have been several other chocolate stouts that by the time we got to the end of them we hated. Not the case with Young's Double Chocolate Stout. It's sweet, but not too sweet (which is what we hit with a lot of the other chocolate stouts that we start to loathe). It's definitely a great session beer.

This beer could be a great introduction to stouts for a beer newbie. It's got a relatively low gravity, it's not too dry and it's not hard and complex like a lot of stouts. Father Beer Love called it a "semi-stout" which is a really great descriptive phrase for it. The other great thing about the Young's Double Chocolate Stout is the drinkability. This is the quickest we've drunk any stout thus far. It would go great with vanilla ice cream, pound cake or strawberries (think lighter desserts than heavier). It's a damn joy to drink and we drank the crap out of it - it's a gulper! Pick up a few bottles of this next time you find it and you'll be glad you did.

As the lovely Mrs. Beer Love and I drove to the Mega Lo Mart past all the gas stations merrily raising their prices 11-20 cents a gallon we had our list of supplies in hand. As I bellied up to the store I headed for housewares for a hand can opener (where is the one I bought for Y2K?). Next an armload of batteries and then off of to grocery section where the real fun begins.

Bread - check, peanut butter - check, spam - check, tuna - check, potted meat food product (read the label) - put it back, viennas and soda crackers (a deer hunters lunch) - check, beenie weenies - check, pork and beans - check, chewy chips ahoy - check, granola - check, then I quickly slipped something into the cart that caught the lovely Mrs. Beer Love's eye. What's that? I replied, "2 lbs 3 oz of non-perishable protein and fiber" (cocktail peanuts, not those dry roasted ones) - uh okay. Now the chip aisle, pretzels - check, potato chips - check, corn chips - check, tortilla chips - check, pork rinds - check, cheese doodles (puffed and crunchy) - check and some kind of healthy something. All non-perishable. On to dairy where I grabbed a big vat of onion dip but had to put it back as it was refrigerated so I went back to the chip aisle for salsa, bean dip and queso dip - all in cans. I'm really beginning to like this now.

Now to the beer aisle. Come to papa. This presents a problem. What could I get that I could drink at room temperature if we did lose electricity? Fortunately I'm up to the task. Chimay - blue, red and white, Thomas Hardy's Ale, EKU 28, Kulmbacher Eisbock, Guinness, Beamish, Aventinus Doppelbock, Rolling Rock Green and the Natural by AB. Curious about the last two? That's easy to explain. Use the Natural to brush your teeth because it won't bother you to spit it out (did you know the toothbrush was invented in Arkansas? If it had been invented anywhere else it would be called a teethbrush) and the Rolling Rock Green I got to pour on my granola.

Last off to the pharmacy for a big fistful of cholesterol medicine.

The fun part of course is trying to figure out what movie your friend just quoted and returning another quote from the same movie, if possible, to subtly let them know you know what they know. You know?

Well I recently got involved in a Twitter exchange with some of our Atlanta beer peers (or the ATL as we call it in, um, Charlotte) over at Monday Night Brewery after they posted a link to one of the all time great beer names: I'll Have What the Gentleman on the Floor is Having Barley Wine (from the fine folks at McGuire's Irish Pub in Florida). Well, the lads over at Monday Night Brewery are actually starting a brewery, so after that post they noted that they're "tempted to rename all of our beer names ridiculously long sentences." With that, the fun began.

I started out with a recommendation for "The Road Less Traveled And That Made All The Difference Pale Ale" and quickly realized what it was lacking: movie quotes. So we started a fun exchange of ideas that traveled along the lines of:

• What About That Time I Found You Naked With That Bowl of Jell-O Lager (from Real Genius)
• I'm Kind of a Big Deal Stout (from Anchorman)
• Roads? Where We're Going We Don't Need Roads Tripel (from Back to the Future)
• We Can't Stop Here. This is Bat Country Hefeweizen (from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
• I Hope You Have a Big Trunk Because I'm Puttin' My Bike In It Doppelbock (from 40 Year Old Virgin)
• Warm Glass of Shut the Hell Up Barley Wine (from Happy Gilmore)

A great exchange of ideas, but were we done? Ha! After mentioning it to Father Beer Love our brains just kept on going and the fun was just getting started. We came up with a few other movie quotes:

• I'll Have the Cream of Sum Yung Guy Rice Lager (from Wayne's World)
• A Man's Got to Know His Limitations Quadrupel (from Magnum Force)
• The Strain Was More Than he Could Bear Triple Stout (from Tombstone)

And Father Beer Love came up with a nice non-movie quote:

• Madam, You Are Ugly. In the Morning, I Shall be Sober London Porter (from Winston Churchill)

So let's keep it going - let's come up with some more quotes, both movie quotes and non movie quotes, that have an appropriate beer tied to them. Here's a full list of beer styles (via Beer Advocate). Let's have your best quotes - just post a comment below. Also - the gang at MNB is actually asking for help in naming their Belgian wit beer - if you want a real exercise in naming. If you want a fake one post away below.

We poured our 11.2 oz bottle into a snifter and got an initial beer temperature of 55 F. ABV comes in at 9.2%, which you'd expect for an ice bock (and may be a little on the low end for an ice bock). We got a small 3/4" creamy light brown head on the pour that dissipated quickly and left virtually no head lacing in the process. We found a soft carbonation in the opaque, ruby brown body.

For our aromas we get lots of dark fruits and sweet malts - chocolate, roasted malts, alcohol, black currant, maple syrup, dark cherry, raisin, spices, vanilla and a nice dark rum. A great medley of nose candy. Our tastes were as scattered as the aromas - a touch of chocolate, moderate coffee, molasses, alcohol, dark cherry, raisin, oak, sherry, a hint of vanilla, dark rum and a slight resin and soy sauce to the finish. We almost wore out our sniffers and our taste buds trying to pull the complexity out of this one.

Our initial flavor notes were a heavy sweet and light bitter. The finish notes move to a more moderate sweet, moderate bitter and light saltiness. The finish length is about average, the mouthfeel is creamy, and the tongue hit is right in the middle of your tongue. There's a fair amount of body lacing as you drink it. On our patented malt to hop scale it comes in 2 clicks to the left of balanced on the malty side, which is mid range for malts.

Our bottom line notes - yes to drinkable, yes to balance, yes to memorable and yes to buy again. No on repeatable (only if you want to take a nap where you're standing), no on harmony and no on wow factor.

There's really a lot to like here. Raisin definitely dominates this beer and it's not bad at all. There's an oak hit in between the initial taste and the finish that brings a nice woodiness to it. It's not a Vay-ner-chuk style Oak Monster, but it's definitely oak nonetheless (though to be honest I did make the oak monster face). Think more of a wine barrel than an bourbon barrel for that oak - it's not the charred kind you get in bourbon.

This beer really hits its groove as it warms - that's when you get some nice notes - the fruits really come out a bit more and you get some slight notes of sherry. I think you'll want to treat it like a good port - sip it and enjoy it. It's different than the EKU 28, but just as good in many different ways. The ABV comes in a little less, but there's more complexity to it. This would be a great winter beer. Overall we highly recommend it.

Dr Beer Love's personal favorite? Check out the BelgianShop where you can get some great Trappist Belgian beers and the appropriate glassware to fully enjoy it like it was meant to be enjoyed. Their selection is mind blowing - you can even find the rare Westvleteren Abt 12, as well as stuff from Rochefort, St. Bernardus, Abbaye des Rocs, Hoegaardens you won't find in the US, Belgian cheeses and a lot more. They actually ship from Belgium though, so your shipping and handling may be a tiny bit more than a standard order from say, Amazon.com.

Check out the full story on the Top 10 online beer buying sites and don't come crying to us when you drop hundreds of dollars on your beer orders, because, well, we've done the same thing.

And check out my pal Eli online as well at his Confessions of a Beer Geek site.

For the Kerberos we decided to use a tulip glass and this 12 ounce bottle conditioned puppy came in with a temperature of 50.5 F and an ABV of 8.5%. Our initial pour gave us a small 3/4" fizzy white head that dissipated so quickly we almost didn't have time to figure out how it looked (we maybe should have used a different glass). There wasn't any head lacing to speak of and the body clarity was a sparkling clear golden color, thanks to the lively carbonation. Towards the end when we got to the yeast we got a bit of haze on the pour.

The initial aromas came in with honey, straw, floral, grass, citrus (lemon mostly), alcohol, spices and some mild fruits - pear and a few other light ones we couldn't put our finger on. It's a really nice bouquet of smells - like a hefeweizen on steroids. The flavors come in with honey, straw, citrus (again mostly lemon), spices and pear, but also add a peach flavor to the fray. You get a slight alcohol in the taste as it warms up. You also get some nice fruit notes and a peach tartness is in the taste. They use some candy sugar in the brewing process from what we've read to give you some of the sweetness.

The initial flavor notes are a moderate sweet and a light bitter, which move in the finish to a light sweet, moderate bitter and a light saltiness. The finish is about average in duration and there's no body lacing as we drink it down. The mouthfeel is a bit hard to discern - a bit oily but a bit dry on the finish. The tongue hit is on the back of the tongue. On our malt to hop scale it comes in 2 clicks to the right of balanced on the hoppy side.

For our bottom line notes we get a yes for drinkable and repeatable, a so-so on the balance and a no to harmony, memorable, wow factor and buy again. It's really kind of light as trippels go. It's definitely not as good as some of the other trippels we've done (forget the obvious ones from Belgium which are great, it's not even as good as the New Belgium Trippel made in Fort Collins, Colorado). It's a little too hoppy for our taste (even though the IBUs rate in at 27) and just doesn't have the balance and harmony that we like in a trippel.

Our overall take - it's an American imitation of a good Belgian trippel ale. It's a bit off though and doesn't quite pull it off. There's better trippels on the market for both price and taste. Flying Dog puts out a lot of great beers, this one just misses the mark a bit. Maybe it's the extra "P" they left out of Trippel? Who knows?

All Duck Rabbit beers come to us from the Duck-Rabbit Brewery over in Farmville, NC, where Son Beer Love still says he's going to take a field trip one day. We served up the Milk Stout in a tulip glass and got an initial beer temperature of 52 F. The ABV is a little low on this one (compared to the Baltic Porter) at 5.7%, but that's okay.

Our initial pour gave us a generous 2" large foamy medium brown head that gave us a fair amount of head lacing as it dissipated slowly into the black opaque body below. It tends to foam up really well when you pour it. We noted a soft amount of carbonation around the head.

The aromas come in with chocolate, coffee, roasted malts, black licorice and a milky, lactose like smell. A very intriguing smell as neither Father nor Son Beer Love has ever had a Milk Stout before this one. The tastes are true to all the aromas and also add smoke and cream to to the mix. When you sip the beer through the head you get more cream than milk in the taste for a nice effect. The smokiness comes through in the finish.

Our initial flavor notes come in with a moderate sweet and light bitter. The finish flavor notes move to a light sweet and moderate bitter and add a light saltiness. The finish duration is about average and the mouthfeel is nice and creamy. The tongue hit is in the middle of the tongue and there is no body lacing to speak of as we drink it. On our patented malt to hop scale it comes in very malty - 3 clicks to the left of balanced on the malty side (which is right where we like 'em).

For our bottom line notes we got a yes for everything but wow factor. Yes to drinkable, repeatable, balance, harmony, memorable and we would definitely buy it again.

The fact is folks we love this beer. It reminds us a lot of a cafe au lait (French for "coffee with milk") and takes us back to our favorite place in the world - The Cafe Du Monde on Decatur Street in New Orleans. Tell me that a cafe au lait and a beignet (or 15) wouldn't hit the spot now. This beer takes us there.

We might enjoy this beer really warm, say room temperature. Heck, we might even enjoy this beer hot. This is Son Beer Love's third Duck Rabbit Milk Stout and he still loves it. Like we said folks, this is our first experience with any milk stout, so we're not saying Duck Rabbit makes the best milk stout in the world - they may in fact all be this good. What we are telling you is that we'll be buying milk stouts as quickly as we can find them in the near term future to put this to the test. If you can find the Duck Rabbit try it and let us know what you think about it compared to the other ones. And if you know of some good other ones (we've heard the Lancaster Milk Stout and the Left Hand Milk Stout are also great) please let us know. We're not lactose intolerant and we'll gladly try them on, you know, for science.

• People are entitled to their own opinions about beer - This one is very true and so easy to forget. Don't force a beer on someone - what's good to you may not be good to the next guy.
• Never order "a beer," - order by style, by variety, or by specific name - I can honestly say I haven't been guilty of this in a long time. Might be a good idea if you see a friend order a "beer" to offer up some friendly advice.
• If you get a frosted mug or glass, politely ask your server if they have any non-frosted glassware - I'm bad about not making waves, but I've got to remember that I'm paying $5 or so for a beer here and I want to enjoy it correctly. I'm going to do better with this!
• Be grateful for the variety of beer that is out there... you are living in the best beer time in history. - Amen. We really are in a great time. You don't have to go back very far - within our generation - and you wouldn't find a lot of variety in the beer selection, especially at restaurants. It's a good time to be into beer.

Thanks David! For those who don't keep up with him regularly, you're missing out - check out his site at Musings Over a Pint.

We picked up the Dogfish Head Aprihop at World Market for $1.89 a bottle. Dad and I used an American pint glass for the review and registered a temperature of 57 F, which may have been a little too warm (more on that below). This one weighs in at 7% ABV.

On our initial pour we got a large 2 1/2" foamy off-white head that dissipated quickly and laced fairly well in the process. The carbonation is about medium on this one and the body is a clear sparkling amber/orange color.

The first whiff gives you a lot of fruits, malts and hops. For the aromas we got a mild caramel, some generic citrus, floral, a slight resin, peach, sherry and of course loads of apricots. This is an apricot beer after all. The taste is also big on apricots and hops. The flavors don't stray too far from the aromas, continuing with the mild caramel, some orange on the initial taste, mild grapefruit, a dry sherry and again with the apricots, which remain the biggest part of the flavor.

The initial flavor notes are a moderate sweet and a light to moderate bitter that slides in the finish to a light sweet, moderate to heavy bitter, light saltiness and light tart. There's a lot going on here in your mouth with this one. There's not really much body lacing as you drink it. The finish is average to long in length, the mouthfeel is oily, the tongue hit is on the back of the tongue and on our patented malt to hop scale it comes in - guess what - somewhat hoppy. We marked it two clicks to the right of balanced on the hoppy side. You'd expect nothing less from an IPA after all.

For our bottom line notes - we say yes to drinkable and repeatable, yes to memorable and yes to buy again. We mark a no for balance (needs a few more malts to balance out the hop tastes), a no for harmony and a no for wow factor (that undefinable thing that makes us say "Hot Damn!").

As with any fruited beers there's always a fear it's going to taste like a wine cooler, but fear not, this tastes like a beer. It's good, it's refreshing, it smells great and we think it's a terrific summer beer. This is not a bad IPA at all. Our advice is to not treat this like a regular IPA though and do it a little bit cooler - somewhere in the mid to upper 40s would probably be a pretty good starting point and as it warms you can determine where you like it best.

It's a great outdoor beer - I had one with dinner outside one night and it absolutely hits the spot with food. Of course I tend to prefer my hoppier beers with food to help tame some of that bitter finish (not being much of a hophead personally). The 7% ABV is a really good mark and should let you easily have two. If you are a hophead, you'll love the twist on this. Is it worth a 6 pack? If you've got some hot summer days ahead of you we'd say go for it.