Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co., Bananas Foster, or When I Learned Not To Trust

If you order bananas foster, you have certain expectations regarding what you are about to taste.  If you buy a beer called "Bananas Foster" you have similar expectations: bananas, rum, brown sugar, vanilla, and maybe a bit of cinnamon.  What you wouldn't expect is a glass of dark, bitter, acrid, shit.  Or, at least, I didn't expect that.

Bananas Foster, from Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co. in Houston, Texas.  1 pint 6 oz, 8.6% ABV, brown-butter dark, no head to speak of, and complete horse piss.

The name is pure temptation, the bottle, large and inviting, the label, pleasant and fun, the waxed cap, a sign of care.  All of these things just claw at you to choose this bottle from the shelf, take it with you, and give it a good home in your belly.  But this beer is a changeling, a turd wrapped in gold foil.  Don't be fooled.  Don't repeat my mistake.

Here is what happened when I took my first sip: I smelled the dark, vinegar-ish odor, tasted the cold malt richness on the tip of my tongue, then the zip of copper to the sides, the bitter pucker at the back, and the air of rancid salad that settles over the whole experience like a gross rain on an already humid day.  It's nasty.  I gave some to Omar and he threw a brick at my head.  I think he did the right thing.

It is a horrible crime to toy with my (and to a lesser extent, "our") expectations.  To say to me ("us" again to a way lesser extent), "Here, have a bananas foster beer!  Remember how good the banana bread beer was? Well, this is bananas foster, so it should be equally good, and taste like bananas foster." and then to give me 1 pint 6 oz of young balsamic vinegar, malt, and disappointment.

I hate you, Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co.  I hate you for making me hope, giving me cause to feel excitement, dangling beauty in front of my face, and the ripping it all away.  I will have my revenge.  I will rage and thunder, I will burn the skies, I will pull a face and blow raspberries at you behind your back, but, rest assured, I will have my revenge.  You suck.