I Try It So You Don’t Have To: St. Ides Special Brew, Passion

I think this is the last of my alternative summer beverage columns, because I’m not sure I can take anymore. St. Ides was one of the original 40’s of Malt Liquor that I was aware of. It is on the Mount Rushmore of 40’s alongside: Olde English 800, Colt 45 and Steel Reserve. St. Ides had commercials featuring an impressive line up of Rappers over time.

Wu Tang Clan

Snoop Dogg and Tupac

and the Notorious BIG

I’m sure I can’t match that level of enthusiasm but I’m ready to give it a whirl.

Right off the bat the bright orangey-yellow color was an indicator of how artificial this stuff was likely to be. I popped the top, and that now-familiar smell of heavy flavoring and cheap beer reached up and hit me in the nose. The passion fruit scent was almost strong enough to overpower the skunky beer smell, but could not quite cover it up.

I poured it into a glass to let it open up so I could fully appreciate its delightful bouquet.

The smell didn’t get any better. And then it was time to taste.  The passion fruit flavoring is very powerful; it almost makes it. If you can imagine this: after you take a sip and start to enjoy the flavor, you begin to say “wow the passion-” and before you finish saying “-fruit covers things up,” Cthulhu himself rises from his eternal slumber to take a dump in your mouth. That is about how this stuff tastes.

The high of the initial flavor makes the awful finish just that much worse. The aftertaste is so bad you reach for another sip to try to cover it up, only to suffer the same fate again. It is like an endless loop of fruit and feces. I suppose if you guzzled the whole thing without taking a breath, you might pass out before the aftertaste got you. That might be the only way to try this stuff.

St. Ides Special Brew, Passion, gets a resounding “You Don’t Have To.”