Finnegan's Irish Amber

Firstly, let me apologize for the very poor quality photo to the right. For some reason I lose my camera like its my job; if I were to get paid to lose my camera, I would own my own brewery at this point and not be trying to get you to come back and read my thoughts on beers.

Anyhow, lets continue.

Finnegans is a beer brewed by the Summit Brewing Company based in Minnesota. Coincidentally, you can only find this beer in the Minnesota area. The cool thing about Finnegans is that all profits of the sale of this beer go towards charity. You can read ALL about it at the Finnegans Website. You can even donate to the organization without drinking the beer (which might be a good option).

Lets talk beer.

Finnegans is brewed with potatoes (on a side note, I can never remember whether an 'e' goes in that word or not so I google searched it and still don't have a definitive answer) and three varieties of malts. Reading the descriptions of the beer as provided by the manufacturer is quite misleading because saying that this beer has a "complex malt character" is simply a lie. I will go ahead and throw "flavorfully rich" into that same category.

Look - It poured an opaque copper/amber color. It had VERY little head to it which didn't stick around for the party very long anyways. Appears to have a perfect amount of carbonation bubbling up.

Smell - Couldn't really smell the potatoes at all. Very little malt smell to it and almost no hop aroma. I am not one of those people that will be able to smell a beer and tell you that it appears to contain berries from the lush mouth of the Rhine River in Holland. My nose just doesn't work that way. So there's not much else to say about the smell other than it smelled remarkably similar to most American lagers that I have had.

Taste - I think the nice thing to do is make what some people call, "a compliment sandwich." Start with a compliment, then all the negative things, then end with a compliment. (I won't go into how logistically wrong the term compliment sandwich is....or maybe I will. Last time I had a sandwich, I called it a turkey sandwich because that was what was inside my two pieces of bread. So REALLY, its a "negativity sandwich with two slices of compliments." Which reminds me that I should correct everyone on creating a "Nathan sandwich." If there are two Nathan's standing on either side of a person, that is NOT a Nathan sandwich, we are both just slices of bread cut from the same Nathan loaf. If you want a Nathan sandwich, he must be in the middle).

Anyhow..... the beer does have a decently sweet taste to start that fades rather quickly into a slightly hoppy aftertaste. Once again to say that the beer has a complex malt character is a lie. There is a faint, very faint malty taste but it is quickly eviscerated by the dryness of the beer. I kept feeling as though I wanted to drink a glass of water. As will be my usual MO, I tried the beer with a couple foods to get a feel for how well it went with certain things. I felt like this beer was very similar to adjunct American lagers, which was my last review, so I figured I would try it with chocolate as well, however it did not turn out so well. Something about the richness of the chocolate made the beer almost tasteless. I say almost because I still got the malts and ALL of the dryness, which did not help the taste of the beer. So I scoured my cabinets for something else to eat and found some Pringles. BBQ if you're wondering. I will make this suggestion: DO NOT DRINK THIS BEER WITH ANY FOOD THAT HAS A LOT OF FLAVOR. After having a few Pringles, I tasted the beer and wanted to pour the rest down the sink. This beer is not one to be enjoyed with foods.

Conclusions: It's an okay beer, but nothing special. I love the fact that the proceeds go to charity to help those in need, but feel that I could make a difference in other ways and drink good beer while I'm at it. If you do want to try it and you find yourself in MN, I would suggest simply drinking the beer by itself and not trying to have dinner with it (it's not a very good date anyways).

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Happy Drinking!