The Beer Garden

Taste: 4
After Taste: 4
Label: 4
Buzz Factor: 3

Notes: A good, but not great beer. It has a nice dark color and a pleasing aroma. The taste is mellow and a bit sweet with the aftertaste fading almost instantly. While I like this beer and will definitely drink it again, the taste is simply not memorable.

Bert’s Review
Taste: 4
After Taste: 4
Label: 4
Buzz Factor: 3

Notes: I dig this beer. It’s rich & flavorful and would have gone great with a good meaty dinner… which is what I thought as I enjoyed mine with a stack of ritz crackers. Which, by the way, it is also a great accompaniment to. This beer could seriously make Ramen noodles gourmet. Then they would be Ramén noodles or something.

Now, on to the label… I love the illustration. It’s subtle and unexpected and beautiful. I did give it a point off however because I kind of thought maybe it was a warning to lay off the hooch or this is how you’ll end up! Those kind of things go on the back where nobody bothers to look. The label is actually a more neutral color, but apparently there was a white-balance issue. Shawn - were you or were you not just bragging that you read Deke McClelland’s Photoshop Bible? Did he forget to mention color-correcting? That’s neither here nor there though. The label is cool. But, god, I just want to take my pen tool to that logo!

Taste: 3
After Taste: 3
Label: 2
Buzz Factor: 4

Notes: I don’t have anything negative to say about the flavor except that i feel a little let down. Oatmeal & Imperial Stouts are a couple of my favorites, I assumed combing the two would be golden. The label on the other hand sucks! I would have rated it a 1 but I love dogs, so it gets a reprieve. The clipping paths are poor the Copperplate font should not have been outlined the way it was. And the mixture of a photographic dog, line art of oats, and the high contrast duotone of the brewery just don’t jive! Please rip this label off of the bottle before consumption!

Notes: I agree with my drinking buddy, Shawn. When it comes to the beer description, he’s dead on. It’s… ok. But if being average is all this beer wants to be, that’s cool… C’s get degrees. But, I guess if Fat Dog wants to flop whoppers the rest of his life, that’s awesome. Extra pickles for me please and please, for the love of god spread the condiment around some instead of just squirting a gob of it in the middle. But, I guess that is the slacker way.

Here’s my thought on improving the label. First, make it white, all white. Now, as large as you can type the word “BEER.” in the boldest, blackest version of Helvetica you have. Don’t bother using the condensed version… just squish it to oh, about 70%. That oughta do it.

Taste: 5
After Taste: 5
Label: 5
Buzz Factor: 3

Notes: This is good beer! It smells like a mocha, has a nice dark color and has a supa smoov flava! This shit is so good, I just might use it in my cherios tomorrow morning! The label highlights would be the nice use of their logo in the cow’s spots and the fact that they are die cut.

Taste: 5
Aftertaste: 5
Label: 4
Buzz Factor: 4

What? A beer with milk in the name? This beer is actually one of my favorite beverages that I’ve tried for this site. It has a wonderfully warm, rich dark chocolate/coffee flavow that really sticks with you for a while. Ever wanted to make beer ice cream? Check out the Left Hand site’s section on this beer for a recipe for Milk Stout Chocolate Ice Cream. After a few attempts, your’s truly made a batch and have been enjoying it ever since. It tastes pretty much like chocolate ice cream, but does have a subtle underlying beer flavor. Very nice, indeed.

Taste: 5
Aftertaste: 5
Label: 4
Buzz Factor: 3

OOOH… this beer is so good! And so smooth. If this beer approached me in a bar… he’d say something like “do you believe in love at first site, or should I walk past again or…even better… can I buy you another Left Hand Milk Stout?” Oh yeah, that’s some smoothness. Smooth like a marble floor that’s been polished with K-Y jelly.

I gave the label design a 4 just based on the hand print spots on the cow. It’s reminds me of the saying “Does chocolate milk come from brown cows?” Well, I may be a city girl, but I can tell you that my favorite lactic beverage comes from the cow with the left hand print spots.