Beer Review: St. Peter’s Sorgham Beer. Yes, quite.

I recently tried St. Peter’s Sorgham Beer, mostly (I’m ashamed to admit) on the basis of the novelty:  a beer brewed with sorghum instead of wheat, and in a bottle that looks like either aftershave or a laboratory chemical, but definitely not a beer bottle.  What exactly is “sorgham”?   For me, it’s always been the go-to plant when you’re making a random joke about crops.  Kind of like “naugahyde”, which is an excellent out-of-left-field reference to drop when you’re making a joke regarding fabrics.  (Try it!)   Never thought I’d come across sorgham in real life.  Particularly not in a bottle that looks like Dr. Johnson’s Guaranteed Medical Salve and Snake Balm  from 1890.

And the result?  After all the build-up, the flavor is just as odd as you’d expect — and oddly, it’s the least flavorful beer I’ve ever had.  Of course any normal beer probably tastes oddly flavorless to me, after trying Budweiser’s Clamato — but even after correcting for my forever-damaged taste buds, this is a very subtle beer.  It’s almost refreshing, practically alcoholic mineral water, and would be a good beer to drink after a marathon, if for some reason you had to drink a beer instead of a sports drink.  (Try it!)  But after the subtle dignified label and the promise of exotic sorgham, I was ready for a complex spectrum of unusual and challenging flavors to process, for tastes and top notes and bouquets and aftertastes, but instead I had to consciously check midway through to see if it still tasted like beer at all.  In other words, this is a Radiohead album cover containing a compilation CD of soap opera background music.