Beer Review: Belhaven’s Wee Heavy — is that an adjective or a verb?

  Have you ever tasted the syrup used in soda fountain machines, the stuff they mix with seltzer to make yer Mr. Pibb?  If you can recall that super-concentrated, thick flavor, you have a decent idea of Belhaven’s “Wee Heavy” beer — this stuff could be diluted 30-to-1 with hosewater and you’d still have more flavor than Budweiser.  This is a beer advertised as “milkshake-like” by the folks trying to sell the beer.  It’s so thick that it can’t even manage a decent bubbly head — even the bubbles rising to the top seem slow and weak, as if they were subjected to pressures greater than in seafloor trenches in the Pacific.  Animal life growing in this beer would soon evolve away their eyes, like the albino fish that live in caves.  In the universe of beers, this is the neutron star, with a density such that a thimbleful weighs more than a mountain.  Scientists are measuring the gravitational-lensing effect of light bending around bottles of this beer.  (Guess who watched the Discovery Channel while drinking beer?)

Despite all this, despite this being the absolute no-contest thickest beer I’ve ever had, it was actually really good.  The moment you first sip a mouthful, you cringe a bit, because other beers this intense are usually so packed with flavor that the top of your head caves in (see, for example,  Samischlaus).  But not this one — somehow they have balanced all the flavors just right to make this a nice bit o’ brew.  I could see myself drinking a few of these, though it probably has more calories than if I had drank a pint of ranch dressing.  It would likely be a nice beer for the holidays, the time of year we’d be quaffing billion-calorie syrupy drinks like eggnog anyway.  I heartily recommend this beer for those of you not afraid of a little richness in life — enjoy the very first of my reviewed brews that gets top score.