I Tried Oskar Blues’ French’s Mustard Beer & You’ll Relish the Chance, Too

The pandemic has upset the apple cart of daily lifetime, impacting school, weddings, dining places, sporting activities, and even beer. Of course, beer! It is no more time achievable to spend lazy afternoons lounging at taprooms, sipping flights of extravagant liquids. Men and women are stocking up and heading household, cold cans furnishing comfort and ease in a earth gone mad.

Only my beer choices are reassuringly standard. In addition to supporting my area breweries, I have crammed my fridge with pilsners, pale ales, and IPAs from Bitburger, Sierra Nevada, and Firestone Walker—certified tickets to pleasure, not disappointment.

In the Before Times, I would’ve gladly glugged each individual offbeat ferment. Glitter beer? Blessed Charms–inspired IPA? Spaghetti sauce–inspired sour ale? Bring it on. American brewing’s hallmark is boundary-free of charge experimentation. If brewers can aspiration it, they can in all probability brew it.

It is also a good advertising move. Breweries can briefly rise earlier mentioned a crowded sector with gimmick beers, novel baubles to sprinkle all-around social media. Bull testicles in beer! I can’t feel it! What will those people wacky brewers aspiration up up coming?

These beers injected levity into present day living, playful stunts and interruptions from the 9-to-5 drudgery. But do we really want interruptions right now? In other terms, is this the right minute for a mustard-impressed beer?

Late past thirty day period, Oskar Blues Brewery unveiled French’s Mustard Beer to celebrate Countrywide Mustard Day, 1 of those people designed-up culinary vacations intended to get you to invest in a distinct food stuff or beverage. (Countrywide Mustard Day is the very first Saturday in August, must you treatment to include the date to your digital calendar.)

I reacted to the beer’s announcement with a major shrug. The common French’s mustard has never been my most loved, nothing at all but puréed sleek, shiny-yellow zip. I choose to paint my hot pet dogs with condiments of fantastic character: gritty brown, sinus-clearing spicy Dijon, or horseradish-infused mustards. (No ketchup, be sure to. Which is for kids.)

Also, brewing beer with mustard appeared jarring. How do you integrate and enhance that twangy observe? Oskar Blues crafted a beer dependent all-around a sleek wheat ale, then seasoned it with lemon, tangerine, crucial lime, lemon, and judicious squirts of French’s mustard. The recipe go through like a Hawaiian vacation wherever you’re only fed ballpark hot pet dogs, but you can’t choose a beer on label on your own.

With expectations reduce than a reservoir during a drought, I crammed my glass with glowing yellow liquid capped by a great foam crown—that’s the wheat speaking. I took a sniff, bracing myself for nostril-stinging vinegar tang, but the citrus sung loud and shiny. The sleek beer drank flippantly tart, the mustard’s spicy zing balanced by that bowlful of tropical fruit.

Reader, I eaten the full beer. I did not crack a different. As an experiment, the beer was a blazing achievements. It was not as bad I feared, but not excellent sufficient to crush by the 6-pack. (The beer is very manager with a hot dog, on the other hand.) This is a typical quandary for gimmick beers crafted all-around advertising strategies. The messaging and storytelling are more enticing than the liquid by itself. Oskar Blues did a bang-up career, but the greatest achievements of French’s Mustard Beer is that we’re speaking about it during dire times.

Mustard beer is evidence that we’ll relish any prospect for tasty distraction.

Want to brew the beer? Here’s the recipe.

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