Lost Coast Brewery Tangerine Wheat

One of the Brew Blog's favorite spring to summer beers has always been wheat beer. Light and refreshing, these brews are a great way to start a day of drinking, enjoy casually while at a baseball game or family get together, chilling in the backyard listening to music while the grill is burning, hell, I'll take a good Hefeweizen just about any time.

So when I came across a wheat beer that infused tangerines (one of my favorite fruits) in the brew, I was ecstatic. Wheat's and oranges have long been paired together, blue moon and shock top just to name a few, so the idea of pairing a wheat with the orange's sweeter better tasting cousin seemed right up my alley.

Unfortunately, Lost Coast Brewery failed to live up to the expectations I had for its Tangerine Wheat. From the very first sip I noticed two specifically different tastes. The first was that of a very flat wheat ale. Whatever carbonation this beer possessed apparently dissipated within seconds of opening the bottle.

The second was a very cheap water downed overly sugared children's orange drink. What's worse is that these two tastes could not have mixed together any worse. Drinking this Lost Coast brew was like drinking a Hoegaarden that had been left opened for three days, adding a healthy dose of Walmart brand tangerine syrup, and then shaking out whatever carbonation remains of this red-headed step child of a beer.

Even more damning was that Tangerine Wheat got considerably flatter by just the fourth drink. I will say one positive thing for this California native however, the tangerine head labeling was quite impressive; regrettably, it's taste was not.

Lost Coast Brewery Tangerine Wheat, 4 mugs out of 10.