Rye-a-Rama: Rye Hopper, Cane and Ebel, Bitter Woman in the Rye, Hop Rod Rye, and Red's Rye PA

Last year, you may recall, I tried Bell's Rye stout - the first and only rye beer I'd ever had. I wasn't amazed by that brew (I gave it a B), but it was intriguingly smooth and bready. Enough to make me curious as to what everyone else was doing with this stuff, barley's meaner cousin. Surely there had to be some interesting beers out there using it. And, as a result, I've spent the last couple of months gathering a few together for a comparison.

Without further ado, the beers are:

-the Rye Hopper from the French Broad Brewing Co. in Asheville,
-the Cane and Ebel from Two Brothers in Warrenville (about an hour west of Chicago),
-the Bitter Woman in the Rye from Tyranena in a mysterious location between Madison and Milwaukee,
-the Hop Rod Rye from Bear Republic in Cloverdale CA, and finally
-Red's Rye PA (that's not a typo) from Founders in Grand Rapids.

Most of these are basically IPAs with rye in them, although a few (particularly the Two Brothers entry) look like genuine oddballs. They range from obscure 5.9% lightweights (the Rye Hopper) to nationally distributed 8% monsters (the Bear Republic entry). I'm genuinely curious as to what these taste like, and which is best.

So, let's start with the underdog first: the Rye Hopper. French Broad is a tiny little brewery (I've been there!) nestled in on the south side of Asheville. I tried a couple of their beers while I was down there (their Wee Heavier, by the way, is quite good) and grabbed a bomber of this particular treat to go. The bottle design is, let's say, uninspired. This, to my mind, is no bad thing - it may just mean they've put the money they would've otherwise spent on a guy with a macbook into their beer. And, well, since this is my first rye beer after the Bell's I don't really know what to expect from it. But I've come to trust that these folks know what they're doing.

Well, it pours a lovely and rich amber color, with about a finger and a half's worth of off-white head. The aroma is initially more hoppy than anything else - good all-American citrus, IPA stuff. Actually, you'd be totally justified in taking this stuff as an IPA prima facie. But don't be fooled, because a little deeper in there's definitely something different: the malts are really bready, almost earthy, like a field on a dry day. That, presumably, would be the rye, then. There's a little bit of the usual caramel note from the malts in there too, but the stars here are definitely the good ol' California hops and that funky rye malt.

The taste, too, initially fooled me into thinking "India Pale." Initially there's that penetrating Christmas tree bitterness characteristic of American IPAs, but then it takes a hard left turn. Where I expect it to develop into caramel and more citrus, it suddenly becomes spicy and bready - mouth-coveringly so, although not in the cloying way that the Bell's sometimes flirted with. It's a pure, uncomplicated moment of rye, and I like it. The ending is more traditional - your usual IPA slap of sharp citrusy hops - but after the hops die away the aftertaste, again, is really dominated by the spicy bread notes. The stuff clings on like crazy, which really only makes me want to drink more.

This is a fine brew. The more I drink it the more I notice a lonely bit of caramel sweetness way way in the back trying to moderate things, but it doesn't really have a chance: this stuff is very dry and shamelessly bitter. It's like drinking a caraway and cascade smoothie (maybe a little less thick). The mouthfeel may be right smack dab in the middle, but it's still surprisingly full-bodied for a mere 5.9 percenter. I like this stuff a lot, and I'm liking it more and more as I near the bottom of the bottle. It's a sipper, to be sure - there's just way too much flavor here to drink it with any speed - but it's never overwhelming, and it never gets old. I'd even be tempted to call this a perfect dinner beer, if I could think of something to pair it with (lamb, maybe?).

But that's enough of the Rye Hopper for now, because we've got more beers to do. For our second rye offering, we move from the mountains of Asheville to the flatlands of Illinois. And if French Broad was going for an IPA with rye (a RyePA, as Founders would have it), a hoppy sipper of an ale with spicy bready notes, then the the Two Brothers folks seem to be up to something entirely different. Just look at how they describe this stuff on their website. Simcoe and summit hops? "Thai palm sugar"? Who do these guys think they are, Dogfish Head? Originality definitely seems to be number one here, so here too I don't know entirely what to expect.

The Cane and Ebel pours a very dark ruby-amber shade, much darker than the French Broad entry. This time there's only a one-finger head or so, and it quickly retreats - this is a seven-percenter to the previous 5.9, remember. And the aroma. Wow, that's different. It starts off hoppy - a oddly fruity kind of bite mixed with some of the usual citrus notes. There's some toffee in there too, from the malts. It's all very civil and normal, right up until the point where you give it a few swirls - and suddenly the nose goes insane. Mango? Vanilla? Cherries? Peaches? Cloves? It's an astonishing cloud of flavors, one of the most complex and elusive noses I've ever come across. The only thing missing, really, is the rye notes I was expecting. Maybe they've just been outdone here. In any case, it's a fabulous aroma and I'm nearly ready to recommend this stuff by smell alone. Unless it tastes like a sewer pipe, it's not getting lower than a B.

It doesn't taste like a sewer pipe. As a matter of fact, it's really, really nice. The taste certainly isn't as varied as the smell, but how could it be? And surprisingly - considering the crazy ingredients and the extra alcohol - it's actually easier to drink than the previous entry. Smoother than a newly-buffed bowling ball, this stuff. The front end's a caress of sweet and sour malt, plus a peck of bitter hops (not up there with a serious imperial IPA, but you definitely know they're there). Towards the middle it gets even sweeter, way sweeter than the Rye Hopper, and at the same time the familiar spicy-grainy rye flavors start to creep in. This is where the beer wins me over: the combination of bready rye and sweet malt and sugar is phenomenal. Then there's the hoppy bite followed by the bready aftertaste - but again, much sweeter this time out. Some might find the sugar slightly too much here, but I totally dig it. And this is an aftertaste that'll last awhile, too, if you let it - but you won't, because you're already taking another sip.

This is a fantastic beer; I've absolutely fallen in love. And I shouldn't have: normally I adore stouts and dopplebocks, heavy dark malty stuff, and not ridiculous hoppy sugary bready things. But just look at me, I'm sucking this bottle down like a fish. And when I'm done, I'll probably want another (which I don't have). In a strange way this actually reminds me of the Celebrator: there's that same sense of, "there's no way something this complex should be so drinkable." It's hard to find any flaws at all. Again, someone without my sweet tooth may find it too sugary, but that's literally the worst thing one can say. Other than that, this beer is pretty much perfect.

It's the mark of first drinking an A-level beer that the world is a little bit different afterwards. And here that's true in the usual sense - it's set a new standard, almost a new genre- but also in another one as well. Before, if you wanted to head to the store and buy a truly great beer made roundabouts the Chicago area, you had to choose between the Yankees-esque and rather boring Goose Island and the brilliant but cultish Three Floyds... and that was mostly it (maybe Half-Acre too, but you have to look around a bit for them). Now, however, there's a third way. Two Brothers are a little crazy, but affordable and available; they aren't totally ubiquitous nor the cheapest option, but neither are they going to only sell their most famous beer on one day a year. They've become, as it were, the Bill Clinton of Chicago brewing. If they can keep making beers like this, everyone else should be very worried.

But we must be moving on. I honestly didn't think the Two Brothers would be quite so good; I was expecting to wander through these first few rather unremarkably, letting the favorites clean up at the end. But now I may have hit the summit early. Whatever the case, I feel a bit of sympathy for the beer up next in line. And, oh lord, it happens to be Tyrenena's Bitter Woman in the Rye. There's an uphill battle in store for the folks from Wisconsin.

Now, I tried Tyrenena's normal Bitter Woman IPA sometime last year and I rather liked it. It's not particularly strong (like some American IPAs) in terms of alcoholic muscle, but it more than makes up for it by firing a great big grapeshot load of bitter fruity hoppiness directly into your mouth and sinuses. What they've done here, I suppose, is make pretty much the same beer and throw some rye into the recipe. No indication at all of how strong this is, but the original was in the high five range (5.75%) and I expect about the same here.

Well, it pours almost exactly like the Rye Hopper - beautifully amber-colored, with a quickly-receding one-finger head. I suppose I should expect that, given that both beers are more or less modified IPAs: this beer looks like one and smells like one. But it's quite a lot sweeter-smelling than I recall from the original Bitter Woman - the caramel malts are right up front, and the classic west coast hops come following behind. The hops actually come across as pretty subdued compared (once again) to the Rye Hopper. And, of course, there's the same bready notes from the rye. It's a nice aroma, and I think I actually prefer it over the French Broad offering - at the price of a little power there's a touch more depth, although nowhere near the variety of Cane and Ebel. (Compared to that masterpiece, this nose - as good as it is - loses out hard.)

When you sip it, BWitR comes across quite a lot less sweet than you'd think it would (although it's still moreso than the Rye Hopper). Sweet honey is first up, along with a nibble of hops. There's more sugar and bitterness throughout the middle, but it's only at the end that the grainy, spicy, bready rye taste peeks in. Unlike the last two beers, though, it never really takes over. Actually, this has by far the least rye flavor of anything here. The aftertaste is more caramel malt, hops, and more of what remains from the (rather half-hearted) rye infusion.

In essence, BWitR is what it says on the label: more than the Rye Hopper, this isn't so much a "rye beer" as an IPA with rye added. The results are pretty good, albeit outclassed in this company. What's most interesting about this experiment, though, is that they somehow ended up with something less exciting than what they started out with. In the end, this is a beer that can't quite decide what it wants to be: the addition of rye rounds out the aggressive hop edge, lessening its power as an IPA, but there's not enough extra character to carry it somewhere else. On the other hand, this rather muddled status makes it very appealing for a different role. To my taste, Bitter Woman with rye in it becomes something of a party beer - were it not so tough to find, I'd definitely think about substituting it in for a more typical (mild) IPA the next time I'm playing host. It's not something that'll give anyone a revelation, but you could very easily entertain a group for a few hours with a six-pack or three.

But once again, it's time to move on. At last, here it is: the daddy. The Hop Rod Rye.

This beer intimidates by what's on the bottle alone. The ugly flaming 1930s hot rod coupe (were they watching The California Kid for inspiration?) may initially seem goofy, but in geeky microbrewer vocabulary it screams "Don't fuck with me, I'm serious." The only way to do this better is to transpose a hop blossom onto a skull and crossbones. And then there's the text - the scary bits aren't so much the ones that say "made with 18% rye," but the ones that say "8% alcohol by volume" and "Sediment at bottom of bottle may be a result of the truckload of hops." And this is even before you notice that BeerAdvocate ranks this as the 71st best beer in the world, the only rye beer to make the top 100. So I'm fully expecting this to kick my ass.

Let's give her a pour, then.

Holy lord that's hoppy. The California explodes out of the bottle the moment I pop the cap, and it only gets more dense as I pour the stuff. The color is actually quite similar to the Two Brothers - a kind of very dark amber, perhaps a few shades bleaker than the previous entry. And as promised, there are indeed floaties, and lots of them. The head is cream flaked with orange, two fingers' worth, a foamy monster that sticks around despite the alcohol dragging it south. Holy mother is this going to be strong. The aroma dies down a bit after a moment, but a swirl or two brings it right back. Yup, all hops. There's not even a nod towards balancing here - no real malts in the aroma at all, not even the rye, just grapefruit and pine needles as far as the nose can smell. It doesn't have anywhere near the nuance of the Cane and Ebel, but then that's not the point. This is all about brute force, shock and awe, sheer scale. When Heidegger evoked the category of the "enormous," he was thinking about this beer.

The first moment you sip it, however, you suspect something's gone wrong. There's a tiny citrus bite on the tongue up front, but in the middle it's actually extremely well-behaved. Hell, there's even a nice baked toffee flavor in there and way more maltiness than one would have expected from the smell. It's nice, it's soothing. You might even begin to relax. And then you swallow, and all hell breaks loose.

There's nothing subtle about how this brew behaves at the back of your mouth; it's as if the skies simply open up and drop a sharp piney firestorm onto your pretty malt paradise. This moment right here, the split-second in which you swallow a mouthful of HRR, is the essence of California brewing. It's the Summa Hopologiae if you will. If you love such beer then you owe it to yourself to stop reading this right now and go pick up a bottle immediately. And strangely enough, it's the rye that first provides some relief to all this. It slowly, slowly cuts its way through the forest of christmas trees and grapefruits to supply its characteristic earthy-grainy taste. The rye totally dominates the aftertaste (which is, of course, very dry), sitting alongside a load of residual hops. And neither is going away for awhile - not until you take another sip (which you will).

Alcohol? Well, I can tell it's stronger than the other three, but not by a lot (I would have guessed in the low sevens). The mouthfeel is creamy but (inexplicably) pretty light for such a monster - like the others, I suspect this is down to the rye contents. Like the Rye Hopper and BWitR, this is a California IPA at heart with rye added for a bit of character. Unlike the Tyranena entry, the two are complimentary: there's no way I could enjoy a beer this hoppy without something special to provide relief, and the rye does that brilliantly.

This is the best of the rye IPAs so far. All three are all uncomplicated, wonderful slices of hoppy Americana. But while the Hopper is an Olds 442 - quirky and obscure, but still a brute - and the Woman in the Rye is a 'Stang - strangely civil in spite of itself - the Hop Rod Rye is a Hemi Barracuda. It's not pretty, neither is it subtle. It's got more power and probably more insanity than a third world dictator. It's one of the most distinctive beers I've ever had, But - dare I say? - in the end I believe I still prefer Two Brothers with their Ferrari Daytona.

There's one more beer to review here, but it's one I bought significantly later than the others (like, by a couple of weeks). It's the entry from Founders, Red's (so-called) Rye PA. Although the competition isn't exactly fresh in my mind, I couldn't post this comparo in good faith without trying this stuff, since - with the possible exception of the Bear Republic entry - it's by far the most common beer of this sort. So: how does it stack up?

Well, like the French Broad and Tyrenena beers, it pours a nice amber orange. It's a shade or two darker than the others, although not quite into Bear Republic territory. The head, too, gives itself about a finger before sinking back into the depths. And, unsurprisingly, this is quite hoppy - close to imperial IPA territory, in fact. Nothing like the sheer force of the previous entry, but in return there's a bit more nuance: along with the typical grapefruit smells there's a nice, freshly-mowed grass sort of aroma. It's not rye, not that I can tell anyways, but it's rather nice. And, with a bit of agitation, the malts come right out: I detect lots of caramel and toffee smells, but still no rye. Hmm.

The flavor profile is, well - it's rather like the Rye Hopper, really, only not as good. There's a bit of sharp piney bitterness up front, just like an IPA, and then the rye hits - only instead of being a kind of spicy sandwich, as the French Broad is, this one slaps you with a mouthful of wet construction paper. It's definitely rye, but it's all gone wrong somehow: it should make me want to drink more, not scrape my mouth out with a chisel. Fair enough, there are some sweeter malts in here fighting back, but it's pretty pointless: in its middle sections this beer is basically like drinking newspaper. The finish is a little bit better, if only because it goes back to an old-fashioned imperial IPA citrus bomb. But even that's not enough to save it, as the aftertaste is really not pleasant - again, the rye taste sticks around like my mouth's been coated with paper mache.

I don't like this beer at all. And it's actually pretty watery compared to the others. And I can taste the extra alcohol (6.6%), although it's not quite as strong as the HRR. Is there anything at all that's good about this beer? Well... I suppose it gets slightly easier to drink after awhile... but that's like saying you get used to being smothered with paper towels after it happens a few times. And it's still no excuse not to go for a regular imperial IPA. I suppose it's pretty smooth too, although the paper flavors rather ruin that too. So, yes, this is not at all to my taste. But some might like it, I suspect: if you like hoppy beers with long, raspy finishes, this could be your brew. I'll leave it to you; you can have it.

I dunno. This is the second Founders in a row which I've hated; maybe I'm just not getting it? Maybe I have an irrational dislike of the company? Maybe. But, to my judgment, this is easily the least-successful of the IPA-with-rye brews. Bear Republic rounded out a beer that would otherwise be too brutal; French Broad added an interesting middle section to a good ol' fashioned IPA; Tyranena rather unwittingly made a rather solid session beer. What, exactly, have Founders done? I can't really say they failed, because I have no idea what they were going for in the first place.

Red's Rye seems to me, at best, like a novelty. "Rye beer! Wow!" It's around, perhaps, so that folks can try it once and impress their friends. But if you must drink such a thing - and you should - take it from me: there are better examples out there. At least five, in fact, counting these and the Bell's.

French Broad Rye Hopper
Grade: B+
Summary: A delicious spicy grapefruit sandwich on rye. Okay, that doesn't sound remotely appealing, but trust me: it works.

Two Brothers Cane and Ebel
Grade: A
Summary: It tastes like hoppy grain candy, and it smells like a bunch of fruit having an orgy in a pâtisserie.

Tyrenena Bitter Woman in the Rye
Grade: B
Summary: It'd be perfect for your average grad school departmental party. Shame it's so hard to find.

Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
Grade: A
Summary: A bottle of flaming hop juice, otherwise nigh-undrinkable, is mediated and made into a tour de force by a big dollop of rye. I'd still take the C&E most days, though.

Founder's Red's Rye PA
Grade: C-
Summary: Dip the New York Times in a good IPA and then chew on it for awhile, and I think you'll get roughly the same effect.

Brown Ale Throwdown: Sprecher Pub Brown Ale, Goose Island Nut Brown Ale, and Big Boss Bad Penny Brown Ale

Yes, this is another one of those things where I pick three random representatives of a style and compare them. What can I say? I'm an academic, comparing approaches comes naturally. And heck, maybe more people will read the site if I can dig a minor niche for myself.

First up is the Pub Brown Ale from Sprecher, a very English-sounding beer that could not possibly look more German. It's a pub ale with a big fuckin' griffin on a shield on the (16oz) bottle design, which just seems wrong somehow. Don't be fooled, though, this thing comes from neither side of the channel. Instead, Sprecher hails from the decidedly less European Glendale, Wisconsin; there they make a number of beers and sodas. I've never tried the beers, but I've had a few of the sodas. I wasn't wowed by their orange soda or ginger ale, but their root beer is heavenly; it'll never top the one from Boylan, which is as complex and serious and magnificent as a psych rock show, but the Sprecher is its sweeter, easy-to-drink alternative whenever I'm feeling a little punk. It's this root beer, then, that encouraged me to hunt down one of their beers (once I found out that they made some).

Oh my, a twist-off cap. It's been a while since I've seen one of those.

Well, it pours rather lightly, with a nice coppery color (not quite brown, but who's complaining) and a one-finger cream head that quickly dies off. It looks like a dark ginger ale, really. The aroma is very promising indeed: not much in the way of hops, but there's plenty of pale malts cut through with caramel, sassafras, and a little bit of earthiness. It's not particularly complex, but it's pleasant enough.

Hm, the taste is in a solid B- territory. It's good stuff, it's the sort of thing I'd drink tons of during a night on the town - "pub ale" is exactly the right term. There's just no real sparkle, though. The front edge is a slightly pearlike sourness, which evolves into a nice soil-and-syrup sort of taste. It's basically your classic earthy/bready brown ale flavor profile. The hops, too, are pretty by-the-book, but they're way turned down even compared to the Bell's brown ale from a while back. Even the mouthfeel is light.

So, then: Sprecher went for simple and mild, and they achieved it. For what it is, then, this brew is pretty good, although I wish they'd been a bit more ambitious. It does strike me as a perfect beer for at least one thing, though: converting the people who've been drinking Pabst their whole lives. Think of this, then, as a beginner beer, not so much a rival to the masters as a (superior) substitute for Newcastle.

Onto the Goose Island Nut Brown, then, which I am on record as declaring not anywhere near as good as their Naughty Goose. It is cheaper and easier to come by, though, and that counts for something. Like all Goose Island brews (excepting the Christmas Ale), this is immaculately packaged in a lovely black-on-brown label. The boys with laptops deserve praise for this one. Also, I should note that I've been saving this bottle roughly since September, so it may be a bit old now.

Well, it pours quite a bit darker than the Sprecher; sort of an auburn, rather than a rust. The head's a tad bit less intense, somewhere just north of a half-finger - I'm chalking this up to the slightly stronger 5.3% ABV. The aroma is very sweet, even sweeter than the Sprecher, but also less detailed (if that's possible). I mainly get caramel, lots and lots of it, with a touch of English hops mixed in. When given some agitation it opens up a tad more, offering more of a coffee aroma; but really, if you're looking for complexity this isn't your beer.

With the taste, I'm feeling even more guilty for accusing the Sprecher of simplicity. This stuff is stupid simple. Most of the hops seem to come through in an initial bitter jab, after which there's nothing but thick milk chocolatey malts. The aftertaste is slightly more dry, but the rest of the time this stuff is shamelessly sugar-driven. And the texture is a bit heavier than the Sprecher as well, although by beer standards I'd still only call it medium-bodied.

I like this beer; it's sweet and kind of unassuming, like the shy kid in class. As a beer, on its own, I'd rank it above the Sprecher, but it also doesn't seem to me to be much of a brown ale. In a lot of ways this is much more comparable to a really mild porter or a sweet stout. Thus it runs into something like the same problem as the Flossmoor Pullman I reviewed last year: it's a good beer, but if I really wanted a brown ale I'd have to go elsewhere.

Last on my list is Bad Penny from Big Boss Brewing. This is another one I picked up from my trip east: these guys make their home in Raleigh, so good luck finding one of these suckers out in Chi-town. It's almost worth it entirely for the bottle alone, though, because it's fucking awesome. It's like they took a movie poster from 1972 featuring a sassy sister making eyes, and just drained all the colors out of it except brown. Yes, I know that doesn't sound appealing, but it works. It even has a bottled-on date: November '09. Well, then - the Goose Island was still okay, so hopefully the months of mellowing have done some good here as well.

It pours very easily indeed, with a moderate brown tone about halfway between the Sprecher and the Goose Island. The head is minimal - maybe a quarter finger tops. Even that's gone after a few seconds, leaving only an off-white floaty foam. The nose is actually quite similar to the other two as well. It's a lovely mix of caramel, nuttiness - well, hell, you've heard this before. I'd say it's right in between the other two, aroma wise, although closer to the Sprecher and perhaps a bit more subdued.

But then there's the taste. Wow, it's not what I expected at all. What strikes me first is that it's surprisingly watery - not that the other two were ultra-creamy, but this one doesn't cover the mouth at all. That's not to say it's bad, though, because the taste makes up for it. It's strikingly bitter, much moreso than the others. Espresso grinds hit right up front and hold on tight while some malty, dark chocolate sweetness slides in behind them. Coffee remains the dominant flavor right up until the end, where the hops deliver an earthy little nibble and let things slide off. The aftertaste is surprisingly long, despite the watery texture: once again it's mostly bitter coffee and chocolate, with (maybe) some almonds to provide relief.

For a night out with the boys I'd choose one of the other two; this is just a little too striking to work for that role. But it's got its own charms, and - in the end - I think I prefer it. Certainly I admire it more as a beer. Bad Penny is like the Bruce Lee of English browns: it packs the maximum amount of force into the minimal effort. It's not a heavy beer, yet features a flavor profile I've found lacking in brews going well into the 8% range. I'm not sure how much use the world has for a beer like this, and I'm not sure whether I myself will ever have it again. But I'm glad it exists.

So: we've got a much narrower spread than I expected here, and not a bad beer in the lot. The Sprecher is boring but also unassuming, the workman of the group, while the Goose Island is pleasant and sweet (but not really properly brownalelich) and the Big Boss is a pint-sized monster (which is a little too watery and not great for pub nights). So: which one should you buy?

Honestly? None of these. Well, try them once for shits and giggles, sure. But if you want a fantastic brown ale, buy the Samuel Smith or the Naughty Goose or Dogfish Head's India Brown. And if you want a relatively cheap, delicious, mild, easily available example of the style for poker nights, the correct decision is in fact Ellie's Brown from Avery. (You can't miss it, it's got an adorable lab on the label.) That's a beer I'll get around to reviewing it one of these days. As it is, though, these three - good as they are - can't beat the standard.

Sprecher Pub Brown Ale
Grade: B-
Summary: A beginner's brown - not bad, just not all that much going on. Your dad will love it.

Goose Island Nut Brown Ale
Grade: B
Summary: Think of this as more of a sweet stout with English-style hops than a real brown. Still good, though.

Big Boss Bad Penny Brown Ale
Grade: B
Summary: The most creative and assertive beer here. Bittersweet, emphasis on the bitter. The wateriness really bugs me, though.

The Doppel-Off: Ayinger Celebrator, Weihenstephaner Korbinian, and Birra Moretti La Rossa

Okay, stop me if you've heard this one before. Two Germans and an Italian walk into a bar...

...(the punchline is fascism).

Welcome back to my lonely blog. I've been away doing lots of work and being very sick, very often. Happily, I'm squared away for the moment and I finally have a chance to do a little comparison I've had in the works.

So here's the thing: I realized that I've yet to do any lager reviews. This should seem strange to the vast majority of Americans (according to Americans, the only beer drinkers who count), who are unaware that any other sorts of beer exist at all. Or that the word "lager" itself indicates something other than a guy who cuts down trees. It's a niche that my website should fill if it wants to be respectable, and so I'm gonna review some lagers. Oh boy am I gonna review some lagers. Thing is, what I've got in mind are indeed lagers. but they're also exactly the sorts of beers from which the typical American beer drinker would recoil in horror. Yup: today I'm doing doppelbocks.

Dopplebocks are the anti-Budweisers of the lager world. Save for a couple of oddities (double pilsners, eisbocks, and malt liquors being my favorites) no other style of lager matches them for sheer knockdown power. Instead of being pale, light, fizzy, and American, these things are dark, heavy, moody, and very - very - south German. It's like drinking Friedrich Schiller, and I absolutely love the things. They're my favorite style of lager by far, and - more importantly - their very existence shows just how good these humble bottom-fermenting brews can be when they're made with some TLC and not shot through with corn and rice.

To give the style a good showing, I'm writing up one of my old favorites (La Rossa) and two I've never had before (Celebrator and Korbinian). These by no means exhaust the style. I wanted to find several others that I enjoy, particularly some Americans (Capital's Autumnal Fire and whatever the heck the Victory one is called), so I went on a doppelhunt to various shops around Chi-town. Alas, no dice. That leaves the Germans, the Italian, and whatever their plans are for world domination.

If I was hoping for a range of variation, the bottles alone are encouraging. The Celebrator is probably my favorite, in that it is unabashedly pagan. The label features goats standing around a gigantic glass of beer, performing who-knows-what ritual. Actually, goats seem to be a running theme here, as each (expensive) bottle comes with its own little plastic goat figure on a string. It's rad; I plan to use mine as a Christmas ornament. All of this makes the Celebrator one of my favorite bottle designs ever; you just can't beat alcoholic goats for setting the mood. But if the Celebrator is shamelessly pagan, then the Korbinian is its Catholic counterpart. Right above the brewery name is a bishop of some sort, apparently offering the beer a benediction. There are also some flags I don't recognize and - of course - there's a bear. This is Germany we're talking about, after all. Overall, the Korbinian comes off as even more Bavarian than than the Celebrator - hell, it's more Bavarian than Benedict XVI. As compared with the theological leanings of its two more expensive Teutonic cousins, then, La Rossa has a mustachio'd guy in a suit and trilby drinking a pint. This comes across as delightfully secular. Like the other two, though, it wears its national identity on its sleeve - or are the red, green, and white borders not enough of a hint for you?

So, let's deal with the Ayinger contribution first. In terms of alcohol content, it's the weakest (6.7%); in terms of price, it's the most expensive ($3.29 for 11.2 oz.). On the other hand, it's among the top fifty beers in the world according to our friends at BeerAdvocate, and the only lager there that's available in any wide degree. So, let's give it a shot.

Aaand my doubts are put to rest the moment I pour it. Holy damn this one looks good. Celebrator pours a dark russet color, with a frisky one-finger tan head. There's a surprisingly complex aroma here, not the sort of thing you expect from a lager. I get a ton of thick yeasty malts first of all, but behind it there's actually some fruit as well - raisin, maybe, and some other stuff that's tougher to pin down. No real hints as to the hops here, but then this isn't really that kind of lager. And speaking of lagerness, it very surely is one: it's got that slight sourness to its nose that lets you know exactly what kind of beast it is.

The taste. Dear lord, it's good. Where has this beer been all my life.

It's a massive explosion of flavors, like biting into a really spicy sandwich. Along with the bready textures I get sweet molasses, ginger, some vanilla, even some nuttiness. Then, at the end, a bite from the hops comes out of nowhere and cuts things wide open. The aftertaste takes yet another turn, where it becomes almost minty - or at any rate, there's definitely some incredible herbal notes. There's more fruitiness here, as well (raisins? prunes, maybe?). And despite this incredible succession of flavors, the beer remains impossibly smooth.

Celebrator is eye-openingly, mouth-gapingly, hair-raisingly fantastic. There's no doubt in my mind that it's the best lager I've ever had up to this point, and now it's only a question as to whether one of the others is going to take that title away from it. It's absolute magic. Nothing so exciting, so varied, so anti-boring should be this drinkable, especially when it's a lager. It has a flavor profile that other beers can only dream of, and yet (if you didn't mind being broke) you could easily put away four of these in a sitting with no problem at all. Unbelievable. It gets an A+ - not because you couldn't ever do a lager better than this, but because I can't imagine what such a monster would be like.

Onto the Korbinian. How the hell do you follow something like that? I hope to hell the Weihenstephaners have something in these 500 milliliters of abbey brewery goodness that will match their neighbors; otherwise this isn't even going to deserve the name "comparison."

So. At 7.4% abv, the Korbinian is the strongest beer here. While it's not exactly cheap ($3.29 for a pint and change), it's still better than the Celebrator. And, most importantly, it's equally Bavarian. Let's give it a spin, then.

First off, it pours a rather odd color - not an unpleasant one, just odd. Rather than brown, it's more like a very dark orange. There's also a finger or so of creme-colored head, which quickly dies down (a victim of the abv, one suspects). And the aroma is - well, wonderful really. Like the Celebrator, it's a surprisingly busy nose. A crisp chocolate milk smell from the malts is center stage; there's also some toffee, along with a fruitiness that's hard to identify. On my best guess, I'd say red grapes. More surprisingly, this beer is completely lacking in that sour lagery smell that I found in the Celebrator. If you didn't tell me different, I'd have taken this for an ale. Maybe they used a funky yeast of some sort.

Wow, that's good. It's not nearly as complex as the Ayinger - no, take it back, complexitywise it's not even in the same building as the Ayinger - but it has charms of its own. Korbinian is delicious maltiness all the way through, but more amazing is its much creamier texture. This is a mouth-filling beer of the best sort, with a flavor that coats everything and lingers forever. And it does so without even toeing the border on being too heavy (although it still comes across as the heaviest beer in this comparison). It's wonderful, lovely, fantastic. The maltiness, unlike with the Celebrator, is really all that's here, but it's a very multidimensional maltiness. There's milk chocolate and dates most of the way through, and things round themselves off in the aftertaste with a move towards a (slightly more sour and bitter) strawberry ice cream flavor. It's quite sweet, but I'm not complaining. And, just to make a point of it, I have no sense of the extra alcohol at all.

Amazingly, the Korbinian is almost as good as the Celebrator. They're extremely different beers, of course: one is spicy and insane, the other creamy and mellow. I love them both. I prefer the Celebrator, but some part of me senses that it's based more on personal preference than objective fact. I can easily imagine someone of good taste picking the Korbinian instead. Basically I prefer the Celebrator in the same way that I prefer Mercedes over Audis, or vanilla ice cream over chocolate. You can't really provide good reasons for these things.

Finally, there's humble La Rossa. Birra Moretti is nestled way up in the north of Italy in Bergamo - near the Austrians, in fact, who seem to have taught them a thing or two about brewing. It's now owned by Heineken, oddly enough, and that fact combined with Heineken's ownership of Murphy's and Affligem may accidentally make Heineken the producer of several beers that are actually good. No matter who makes it, though, La Rossa is (at $8 a sixer) by far the cheapest brew here, and easily one of the best bang-for-your-buck beers in Chicago. Heck, at 7.2% alcohol, it's almost as good for a cheap drunk as the Mendocino stuff. And, mind you, I'm not really expecting this working-class Italian to measure up to the Bavarian aristocrats. All the same, I'm curious to see how much good one can get at this price.

Like the Korbinian, La Rossa pours an odd orange-brown tone. Unlike the Korbinian, it's a much lighter color; also unlike the other two, there's tons of carbonation. You get a two-finger head for a start, one that's quite a lot more resilient than the others. It's got that same sweet malty aroma, but sadly there's nowhere near the complexity. The slightly sour lager smell I was missing from the Korbinian? It's back!! Aside from that, butterscotch is the main note, along with a touch of bready yeast. Miracle of miracles, I can also detect some hops in this: I can't place them, but they feature a nice kind of raisiny spice.

Well, in terms of taste, if you can think of the Korbinian as being akin to an English stout, then this is more like an Irish one. It's lighter and less sweet, with a much drier finish. There's a bitter sting on the tongue at first, and then the malts enter with a wave of caramel and smoky sweetness. Make that very smoky, in fact. The hops at the end are perfectly balanced against this - they come bearing a strange, almost sour yogurt note, though. The aftertaste is pleasantly dry and earthy.

I didn't expect this to be as good as the others, and it isn't. On the other hand, it's a fine beer by its own merits - maybe even more versatile in its own way (I wouldn't dare try eating anything alongside the other two, but this brew would go perfectly while munching on a swiss cheese sandwich or something). It's lighter than the Korbinian, but still has a really buttery, mouth-coating texture. And that's pretty nice now, in the midst of winter, but in August I think I'd find it cloying. It's not a perfect beer by any stretch, then, but for what it is I'd call it a solid success. And for the price, I'm hard-pressed to think of a better deal in Chicago if you're in the mood for a damn good lager.

To conclude, I really like all three of these beers. If I'd been able to find them, I'm sure I would have loved the Capital and Victory takes on the style as well. These are the lagers of lagers, giants wandering a sandbox filled with limp-wristed fizzy wimps. No God-fearing Bud drinker would ever touch any of these suckers, but for my money they represent the redeeming moment of half of the beer world. Friends, let us go out and drink us some lagers.

Ayinger Celebrator
Grade: A+
Summary: Complex. A rollercoaster of malts and hops and the sort of things witches keep in their cabinets. Despite all that, you could drink it every day.

Weihenstephaner Korbinian
Grade: A
Summary: Sweet and creamy, like drinking a bar of milk chocolate. If the chocolate had really amazing fruity notes, anyways.

Birra Moretti La Rossa
Grade: B+
Summary: Drier, simpler, and somewhat more ragged. Not really in the same league as the others, but a fine budget choice.

The Gran(d)-Off, Addendum: Grand Marnier vs. Gran Gala vs. Gran Torres vs. Harlequin vs. La Belle Orange vs. Tuaca

(This here is an addition to my comparison from a few months ago; I'm adding the text below to that post, as well as giving it its own fair shot at the front page. Enjoy!)

So it's now about two months after my initial Gran(d)-Off comparison of various brandy-based orange liqueurs. I concluded that Grand Marnier was the smoothest, Gran Gala was (by a nose) the best for mixing, and Torres was the most interesting for sipping and the best booze all-round. I was never fully satisfied with the results, though, for two reasons. First, those three bottles by no means exhausted the sheer mass of the liqueurs of this sort on the market. The main impetus to go back to this comparison and add some more shit was discovering two (2) new bottles - Harlequin and La Belle Orange - during my trip east for the holidays, and also buying a fifth of Tuaca in a moment of weakness. I now have six bottles of this stuff to work through (pity me); more importantly, it means I may have to reassess the standings from before. Second, I was less than satisfied with my choice of cocktail from the last time, namely, the margarita. I have since discovered, through some experimentation, that this is just not a good drink for investigating these liqueurs. A typical margarita needs something direct, highly orangey, and very sweet - it needs triple sec, in other words, not something that gives away brute strength for brandy subtlety. As far as classic cocktails go, sidecars tend to work much, much better with these liqueurs, so that's what I'm using this time around.

So, this addendum will do two things. First, I'd like to sip these three new bottles and see how they compare to the earlier ones. Second, I want to retest all the liquors' mixing potential in a simple bourbon sidecar. Everything gets a new grade at the end, and we come one step closer to knowing where we stand when it comes to orange-infused brandies.

If any one of these liquors is going to get you accused of being a horrible cheapskate, it's Harlequin. It screams "IMPORTED FROM FRANCE" just about everywhere, but looking at the label from a distance you'd think it was a $10 fifth of bottom-shelf whiskey. From the goofy jester design to the fake wax seal, it just looks kind of sad. No mention at all of who actually makes this stuff, but it's imported by something called "Premium Imports Ltd." Ringing any bells? No? How about the fact that PI is located in Bardstown, Kentucky?? You know about Bardstown, don't you? ...It's the place where certain a famous and rather huge distillery is housed?? Yup: the bunch selling Harlequin can be none other than our pals at Heaven Hill. They claim that it's "produced in France from a rich blend of the finest aged cognac and Mediterranean oranges renowned for their distinctive flavor" - and this is literally the only information I can find on the stuff. I can only presume it's sold to HH by the Illuminati or something.

La Belle Orange is also fairly obscure, albeit far less so than the Harlequin. This time it's imported by White Rock in Lewiston, Maine, which sells quite a lot of things I've never seen nor heard of. Still no telling who in France ultimately makes LBO, but at least the importers actually bothered to put up a section on their website for it this time. The bottle design itself is, overall, probably my favorite of all the liqueurs save the (much more expensive) Grand Marnier. LBO doesn't bother with a fake wax seal or a ribbon (unlike Gran Gala or Harlequin), but it's more appealing than the similarly humble Torres: just a big orange LB badge and a label on nice paper. On the other hand, it's the only thing here with a screw-off top, but I can't hold that against it too much. La Belle Orange claims to be a "marriage of sun ripened oranges and the finest cognac," and a "harmonious blend" of "rich fruity aromas and elegant cognac flavors." Hmm. Well, we shall see.

Tuaca is the odd duck here, especially among these two. Where they're more or less French attempts at a cheaper Grand Marnier, this (like the Gran Gala) is Italian. Second, at 35% ABV, it's significantly less strong than the other 80-proof bruisers I've got here. Third, and most importantly, it's not just orange we're dealing with this time. Rather, Tuaca is a brandy "artfully blended with hints of vanilla and orange flavors." The addition of vanilla already promises to make this more bizarre than my previous favorite, the Gran Torres, so I've got high hopes for this stuff. Also like the Torres, it claims to date back an absurd amount of time - like, 16th century absurd. Wikipedia, which is always right, claims that Lorenzo de Medici quaffed this stuff. That's pretty cool, and will (if nothing else) make a fine story for parties. Anyways, the bottle itself is classy but rather uneventful; it just looks like a generic brandy or something.

All right, enough cockteasing: I've now poured all three liqueurs into individual glasses for comparison, along with (smaller) samples of the original three liqueurs. First, there's the colors. Of the newcomers, Harlequin is definitely the lightest of the bunch, roughly on a par with Torres; both are a kind of gentle champagne color. The LBO is darker still, perhaps just a touch darker than the Grand Marnier. The real champion here, though, is the Tuaca, which is a thick rich gold even darker than the Gran Gala from last time.

Then there's the aromas. The most notable thing about Harlequin's smell is that it's a dead ringer for Grand Marnier. If you really try you can detect some subtle differences - the Harlequin comes across as slightly rougher, slightly hotter - but if I didn't have these two side by side I'd be completely fooled. Harlequin pulls off the cognac orange juice aroma thing almost perfectly; think of it, then, as Grand Marnier in a dirty t-shirt. La Belle Orange, again, smells most like the Marnier. It's not quite as good a copy as the Harlequin, but I think I might actually prefer it over both. If anything, though, it comes off as even sweeter and smoother, and maybe even a little lighter; you can think of it, then, as Grand Marnier in a schoolgirl uniform. The Tuaca, as expected, is totally unlike all of these other liqueurs. The aroma is - I don't know if I love it or hate it, to be honest. It's unique, to say the least. The nose is extremely rum-like; there's no hints of brandy in here at all, just a lot of wood, cola, maybe some orange at the edges, and above all, vanilla. And, despite the (relatively) low proof, this actually comes across as hotter than the others as well, about on par with the Gran Gala's heat. It's odd.

Now, though, we get into the stuff that matters: the tasting. Down the hatch. (Again.)

The Harlequin, true to its aroma, once again comes off as a cheaper, rougher twin brother to the Marnier. There's some sweet-and-sourness right up front, which then evolves into a very sweet (but hot) orange flavor that, well, doesn't really change. I get another splash of heat at the swallow, but that's really the most interesting thing it does. Like the Marnier, it's slightly cloying. Actually, it's just like the Marnier in almost all things, just less well-sorted about it. If GM were an XO version of a brandy, I would take Harlequin to be the VS. It's rougher, and it's weaker. Now, it's not bad - especially at $18 - but a copy is all it is, and a copy that's slightly worse than the original at everything.

Wow. If I thought Grand Marnier was sweet, La Belle is off the fucking charts. This stuff is really sweet: it's as if they took the sweet n low taste of Marnier and turned it up to eleven. It's so sweet, in fact, that I find it genuinely difficult to drink neat; I feel like it's going to throw me into a seizure or something. Right up front there's a familiar clovey bite, which then evolves into what can only be described as Mega-Marnier. It's sweet orange squared. It gets a little sour at the swallow, but that's the only real relief one gets. Not only that, but it's smoother and there's even less of a burn. Everything I liked (and hated) about Marnier is here, severely amplified. Sipped neat it's like being tackled by a linebacker smothered in sugar. That isn't to say it's bad - it isn't. But next time it's getting a few drops of water.

The Tuaca tastes more conventional (in many ways) than I was expecting from its aroma. It has a very minimal, very toned back orange taste remotely reminiscent of the Gran Gala, but then over that there's a strong current of vanilla. From the initial moments all the way up until the conclusion of the flavor development, it really does come across as a spiced rum of some kind. Only at the end do the flavors separate themselves, so you can tell it's a Marnieresque liqueur with a lot of vanilla rather than some kind of especially vanilla-y Sailor Jerry's. There's a little bit of a burn going down, but nothing like what I got from the nose. Here's the weird thing, though: the vanilla flavor makes it pretty heavy, but Tuaca's actually pretty pleasant to sip on its own (moreso than the other two newbies, anyways). I can't down it with anywhere near the speed of Torres, say - it's more of a savor-a-half-ounce-over-twenty-minutes kind of drink - but it definitely has an appeal. I have absolutely no clue how this'll do in a sidecar, but it definitely strikes me as something that mixing geeks would enjoy playing with.

Speaking of sidecars, I guess it's time to see what's what in the mixing realm. To repeat, I'll be making bourbon sidecars. I'll be using a a bourbon to liqueur to lemon juice ratio of 2:2:1 - that should be leaning towards the sweet side for a sidecar, but frankly I want some sweetness to shine through here. For this test I'll be using my go-to budget bourbon, the lovely (if somewhat rowdy) Evan Williams 1783, which I've been using to make sours as of late. The newbies go first, starting with the Harlequin.

Despite the already-low amount of lemon juice, the Harlecar comes out on the sour side of things. So far as I can tell, the Harlequin just folds: aside from a rather dull sweetness, it doesn't assert itself at all here. The sugar is there for the beginning of the sip and most of the middle, but by the end it goes very sour indeed. No real orange flavors are detectable, either. I found this sidecar rather lame, though it's by no means something I would turn down. All the liqueur is doing is providing a sweetener, and there are other things that do that job much better.

The Bellecar is next, and I was expecting the LBO to just give me another toothache with its sweetness. Instead this sugar-happy little liqueur surprises me: it's sweeter than the Harlequin, yes, but along with the sweetness comes a much more pronounced orange flavor and an unexpected amount of nuance. There's a kind of lemon candy opening to it, and then the orange juice tang cuts in at the end to deliver a very novel, almost bitter (but still sweet) blood orange twist. It's extremely nice, and I prefer this Bellecar to the Harlecar by leagues. Some will probably find it too sweet for a sidecar - I'm tempted to add more lemon to this next time I make it, and there will be a next time - but even with this version I find it delicious and refreshing.

And third comes the Tuacar, which is the real dice roll. Will it work? Will it be horrible? Well, it smells pretty awful. There's just a confusion of all sorts of flavors: first there's the vanilla and a bit of oak from the bourbon, and then a lot of lemon. Lemon and vanilla, just to tell you, are not good pals aroma-wise. In terms of taste, it's much the same story. The relatively subtle flavors of the Tuaca are completely covered over here, leaving only a messy and nearly-unrelieved lemon rush. Only in the aftertaste, when I start to breathe out vanilla, do I recall that I've actually been drinking a fairly nifty liqueur. As a drink, then, the Tuacar is a failure. It's the clear loser among these three, although this is reall an unfair test - a sidecar is just not the right drink for this stuff. I have some ideas about what would be, but that lies outside the scope of this test. (Since it's very rumlike, for example, could one use it like a rum? How about mixing it with cola?)

Now then, on to mixing the three from the previous test. The Marnicar is a really pleasant surprise, considering Marnier's rather lackluster showing last time. The first thing I notice is a really lovely aroma which is rather difficult to describe. Brandy suspended in a cloud of orange pulp, maybe. In terms of sweetness, it fits nicely in-between the Bellecar and the Harlecar - maybe leaning a little more on the side of the latter's subtlety. Sweetened lemonade is the first impression, but as it moves back the orange pulp starts to poke itself through so that by the swallow it's totally dominating the other flavors. It doesn't quite have the sharp fruity jab at the end like the Bellecar, but in exchange it's a little more laid back and balanced. I think I slightly - slightly - prefer the Bellecar, but which one I would choose would really depend on my mood. In any case, the Marnicar is a fine damn drink. It's reserved without being boring, it does a fine job whetting the appetite without being overly tart - it's the perfect apéritif.

Oh crap, it's the Galacar. Honestly, the more I've quaffed the Gran Gala, the less I've liked the stuff. When I initially started doing the taste test way back in November, I actually preferred its sour firey Italian personality over the rather boring Marnier. But, like hanging with a really rowdy friend, the charm ran out after awhile. Truth be told, Gala's just too damn harsh to enjoy on its own. On the other hand, it does still shine as a mixer, and it makes a fine showing here. The sour-orange-on-fire aroma is here right from the start, right out front, and that's not something I much care for. What I do like, on the other hand, is the taste. The lemon might as well not even be here - it's totally overpowered by the Gala, which immediately pushes its way to the front with (happily subdued) tangy orange tastes. It's surprisingly sweet, too, almost up there with the Bellecar, but the Galacar's finish is much more sour than the Bellecar's bittersweet blood orange. Again, it's tough to say which is best: factor in the aroma and I'd give it to the Belle by a nose, but for pure taste I honestly think that Gala might produce the best drink here.

Finally there's the Torrecar. It is, as I was expecting, a letdown. The aroma is wonderful, of course - it's got all the deep orange zestiness that I love about the stuff - but the taste just doesn't bear it out. Torres, as a sippin' liqueur, is all about little nuances and subtleties. Forced to provide the sweetener role in a classic cocktail, though - well, it does the job, but it loses everything that makes it special. All I get up front, again, is sweet lemon, which blossoms out slightly as it moves back but doesn't really do much. In a lot of ways this comes across like a better smelling, slightly sweeter, slightly tastier version of the Harlequin, and that's not quite good enough in this company. I love Torres with a burning passion, but none of what I like about it is here in this drink. Frankly, the Torrecar is a waste of the stuff.

And that's it - six liqueurs, six cocktails, and we're done. So, which is the best?

Well, as before, I think it finally depends on what you're using it for. The Gran Gala, if you can ignore the force of its aroma, remains the best mixer, followed by La Belle Orange and (maybe) the Grand Marnier. The Torres may be a mediocre mixer, but for my money it destroys everything else for sheer sipping joy (the bizarre Tuaca comes in at a very distant second). LBO and the Marnier are probably the best all-rounders. And Tuaca, well, that's something for the cocktail scientists among us. And, while we may not have a clear winner, we at least have a clear loser in the Harlequin. Harlequin isn't horrible, it's just weak and comparatively rough, and there's very little it does that the others can't do better. Its only significant plus is that it mimics the classic Grand Marnier flavor and aroma better than anything else here. If you're a cheapskate, you could presumably use it to fake out your foodie friends.

And that leads the final point to be made: Grand Marnier is pretty good, but it's fuckin' expensive. Even the Harlequin, as weak as it is, is (I think) a better value for the money than Grand Marnier. And if that's the case even for the worst stuff here, it's doubly true for everything else. So, then, let the conclusions stand thusly: Harlequin is the clear loser, Grand Marnier is overpriced, and for everything else, go by your own needs and preferences.

Grand Marnier
Grade: A-
Summary: Smooth, sweet. It's good stuff, neither too strong nor too laid back, and it's relaxing to sip (if a little one-dimensional). And it works well in a drink, used properly. But at $32 a pop, it isn't really worth it.

Gran Gala
Grade: B+
Summary: Vile but interesting. The aroma's way too pungent and it's hard to sip neat, but it mixes like a champ.

Gran Torres
Grade: A
Summary: Smells and sips the best of anything here. Incredibly nuanced stuff on its own. But if it's a mixer you want, well, subtlety isn't really the way to go.

Harlequin
Grade: B-
Summary: It's a cheap knockoff of Grand Marnier. Period. Pour it into an old GM bottle and pretend not to be the shallow cheapskate that you are. I won't tell if you don't.

La Belle Orange
Grade: A-
Summary: Grand Marnier Xtreme. Even smoother and sweeter, and that can be good or bad depending on taste. It does cost about 40% less, though, and that's a lot.

Tuaca
Grade: B
Summary: Odd, vanilla-y orange liqueur. Nice enough for sipping neat (slowly), but I suspect its real brilliance lies in finding the right cocktails for it.

The Gran(d)-Off: Grand Marnier vs. Gran Gala vs. Gran Torres vs. Harlequin vs. La Belle Orange vs. Tuaca

I love knock-offs. As a member of the Napster generation I find in myself no real passion for intellectual property rights, and this carries through in my long-time love of cynical copies of established products. I cannot in good conscience spend money on licensed cereal when Frosted Mini-Spooners are to be found just down the aisle; I'm convinced that, if my dystopian future-city is being destroyed by crime, Robert Cop 3 will do just fine in protecting it (and on a budget, at that); and, if I were to ever direct a B-rate action movie, I'd immediately cast Treat Motherfucking Williams. It's just a weird aesthetic thing I have.

Then again, the reason why most people ever buy knock-offs is because it's cheaper. This is a reasonable point: after all, those of us in the Napster generation will also be paying off college debt well into our sixties, so we have to cut corners somewhere.

And yet, for some reason, for the most part we don't buy knock-offs. We ignore generic Acetaminophen (usually with an appealingly bland name, like Nice Value) and buy Tylenol. We snub the Hyundai Genesis and buy a Lexus GS or an E-class. We skip the Naxos recording of the Mahler 8 and buy the one off Sony Classical. Why?

Surely not because the original is better. Sometimes it is, of course, but not enough to explain the tendency.

Nor do I think it's about conspicuous consumption. To be sure, there's something inescapably petit-bourgeois - or worse, cultish - about buying something entirely for the prestige of the brand, and those who'll shell out for German cars or for whatever happens to have "Apple" stamped on it should be called on their shit. But while this explanation makes sense for cars and clothes and accessories (and to a certain extent a laptop or a mp3 player is an accessory), it doesn't make much sense for (say) root beer. We buy A&W, not Shasta, and not because we want to impress our friends.

In the end, I think we tend to buy "originals" because we often don't know any better - or, more to the point, we think we don't. Stuck in a store, trying to decide between two sorts of instant pancake mix, I buy the one I've heard of. Why? Because, while the other one may work just fine, I can't be sure about it. And so I will go on kicking an extra dollar or so to the bigger brand each time, not because it's necessarily better but because I don't want to take a chance on something that I don't consider under my ken. This state of affairs will continue until something changes.

So what changes? How does the change happen? A friend who's tried the cheaper pancake mix talks to me about it; I see it reviewed with approval online, or in a consumer magazine; in investigating, I find that both mixes share a supplier and are substantially the same thing. Let us call this kind of thing an doxic event. A doxic event is an equalization of my knowledge, or (more importantly) an equalization of the perception of my knowledge. I may (strictly speaking) have still had no real experience of the thing, but I gain a sense of familiarity with it regardess. I feel safe buying it. In any case, with both boxes of mix operating on more or less the same level, I am far freer to choose for the other option. And the internet, it seems to me, has a very special power to produce doxic events - it does so, for example, through reviews like this one.

But that's enough philosophy for one review. Assuming a kind of doxic equality among brands and excepting special circumstances and my own bizarre aesthetics, I would say this. When the real thing is substantially better, then it's worth buying. On the other hand, if a cheaper copy works just as well - and especially if it's better - well, why wouldn't you buy the knock off and pocket the extra green? Put it towards those student loans, why don't you.

And that leads me nicely to the topic of brandy-based orange liqueurs and the Gran(d)s.

Grand Marnier's been one of the granddaddies of orangey booze goodness for a long damn time. If you ever make yourself, for example, a high-class margarita, the liqueur that goes into it is probably either Marnier or Cointreau. Cointreau is something like curacao on meth (I like it a lot, but it's not really comparable to anything in this test). Grand Marnier, in contrast, is XO cognac infused with "the essence of wild tropical oranges," dialing back its rival's zest and brimstone assault in favor of something a little more sippable. The standard opinion on these two seems to go: you buy Cointreau to have a saber of firey orange and sugar to cut through your drinks, but you buy Marnier if you also regularly like to sip your liqueurs unmixed. For the latter's style, in general, is the perfect exclamation point to a fine night - many have been warmed for their walks home with a shot of Marnier over rocks.

Now, that sounds great, and it is. But here's the problem: Grand Marnier is a Brand, and that means a bottle will run you well over three Hamiltons. At that price point you're deep into single malt scotch territory, which is not a good place for a liqueur to be. And not just that: $33 is two bottles of Sailor Jerry's, three bottles of Sobieski, four six-packs of a good oktoberfest. All of which is a hell of an opportunity cost. People will continue to buy it, of course - it's a Brand, after all. But the price raises the question, Is it worth it?

Enter today's knock-offs, Grans Gala and Torres. Both these guys cost about $20, and you've probably seen them lurking on the shelf just below Marnier - the Carolans to its Bailey's, the Kamoras to its Kahlua. Heck, maybe you've even been tempted to buy one. Probably, though, you didn't, on the grounds that Marnier was a known quantity and the interlopers looked sketchy. Nevertheless, there they remain, waiting for the adventures of someone curious or poor enough.

So what are Gran Gala and Gran Torres, anyways? Well, they're not French, for one thing: Gala is Italian and made by Stock (yes, the vermouth guys), while Torres is Spanish and made by a company with possibly the most broken website in the entire world. Gran Gala's bottle is a shameless rip-off of Marnier's ribbon-and-seal look, while that of the Gran Torres (or just "Torres" here) is much more generic - just a green glass bottle with ORANGE in huge cursive letters on the front. Gala makes no claims to being anything but "Italy's answer to Grand Marnier," "a blend of VSOP brandy infused with the choicest oranges from around the world" (I particularly like the word "choicest" there). I like Gran Gala's attitude: it knows it's a knock-off, and doesn't pretend to a long proud tradition behind it. Torres, in contrast... well... "In Spain, in the 19th century, Jaime Torres recovered a secret recipe for an ancestral liqueur that had reached the Antilles islands during Columbus' travels." C-O-L-U-M-B-U-S!!! Now THAT is a tradition. Nya nya, Grand Marnier, we were making our orange booze while you guys were still under the Ancien Régime. Anyways, it also claims a whole hodgepodge of ingredients that's too long to list here, but which sound absolutely delicious.

I've now poured my rocks glasses with the three liqueurs. Gran Torres is the lightest of the three in color, a very gentle gold, while the Marnier is a few shades down the line. The Gran Gala is WAY darker, bordering on a rusty red. If you handed it to me and said it was whiskey I'd probably believe you, if it weren't for the smell. And good LORD, the smells of these things. Taking a closer whiff, Grand Marnier smells like - well, like orange juice cognac, really. There's a slight edge from the alcohol, of course, but overall it scents the smoothest of the three. Gran Gala smells like a tangerine on fire. It's harsher than a birthday breakup, although it's not necessarily unpleasant. The Torres, in contrast to the other two, doesn't smell like pulp so much as zest, mixed with some indeterminite other scents. Is that cinnamon back there, maybe some mint? Whatever it is, it's very nice indeed, despite being nearly as firey as the Gala.

Okay, down the hatch.

First, the Marnier. Sweet, and more sweet. It's more complex than its scent would let on, but not by much. After a touch of cognac cloves on the front end, it's just sugary orange for a long, long time. Way too much sweetness for my taste (and I'm a sweet tooth if there ever was one), although I can't quite call it cloying. It's as if someone dropped a packet of sweet n low in my bottle before they shipped the thing. At the very end I get a hint of a burn, followed by just a touch of orange acid. Generally though, Marnier is not the bottle for people who dig some sour in their orange liqueur: this stuff is comfort food, it's candy. It strikes me as the sort of thing that most of the 20-something office girls I have known would absolutely swear by. It's quite smooth for an 80-proof quasi-cognac too - something I chalk up to the age of the stuff - but in my case even this works against it. The age of the cognac base keeps the stuff from being too hot, but as a result it ends up something much worse: it's boring. Sweet, smooth, easy to drink, and probably pretty good in the right cocktail, but there's just no sparkle.

Next, the Gran Gala. Wow, today's show is brought to you by the letter HEAT and the number FIRE. It's not exactly Wild Turkey 101, but as a child of bourbon I feel very much at home here. There's definitely more going on in the Gala than in the Marnier, for better or worse. It's still quite sweet, but a lot of it's been dialed back in favor of an almost lemony sourness. Towards the end a strange, almost chemical astringency pops in - I'm not sure what it is or whether I like it, but it's interesting. This demonic citrus taste holds on for awhile, is momentarily overcome by the alcohol explosion, reasserts itself, then fades off into a very pleasant sweet and sour orange aftertaste. Well, this is exactly the kind of orange liqueur I would have expected from the country that brought us the Lamborghini Countach. My office girl friends, I'm afraid, are not going to like this one. No, they're going to run for the hills the moment they see it coming 'round the corner, its gigantic mediterranian testes swinging about in the wind. Their loss. For drinking neat I think I slightly prefer this over the Marnier, but I could see a reasonable person going the other direction: it's a question of sugary elegance versus stomping-mad passion, Faure versus Verdi.

Finally, the Gran Torres. Holy lord, I love this stuff. There's way more initial spice on the front end than the other two (which don't give you much of anything before the sweetness bites). It tingles all the way down, in fact, which I'm chalking up to its mad ingredients list. The star player here is orange zest, as the smell suggested, but unlike the other two's close focus on sweet or sour orange pulp there's a heck of a lot more going on here. Cinnamon again, cardamom, black pepper, mint leaves... I could go on. There's just a flurry of flavors in this thing. The sugar's even more subdued than in the Gala, which (for me) makes it easier to take. At the end there's a lot of heat, almost as much as the Gala, while the rest of the flavors and the general tingliness hang on until the next sip. Man, what a hyperactive drink. As far as drinking neat goes, the Gran Torres beats the other two hands down. It's like rereading a really great novel: I'm finding new things with every mouthful, whereas the Marnier and the Gala are out of ideas around sip two or three. On the other hand, with the flavors this diffuse I worry about how it'd come out in a cocktail. The Torres' mystery and subtlety, as well as it plays in a snifter, might simply be muffled if all one needs is a cosmopolitan for a cute date.

Speaking of mixing, I suppose I should probably try these things out in some drinks; they may be relatively high class, but they're liqueurs after all. Time for me to break out the lemons and tequila, then.

Now, he margaritas I'll be mixing are going to be stronger on the liqueur than I typically make them. Normally I use about a 8:3:2 ratio of tequila to orange liqueur and lemon juce, but here I'm using 3:2:1 (i.e. about 33% liqueur); the hope is that this will allow the stuff to come to the forefront a bit more. I'll be drinking the 'ritas in the same order as before: Marnier, Gala, and finally Torres. For the record, I'm expecting that first two will be very different but about equally good, and that the Torres will fall a bit flat.

And here we go.

With the Margamarnier I was looking forward to a fairly sweet drink, with the Marnier's sugar being balanced off against the lemon. It ended up being unlike anything I was expecting. Most of the Marnier's presence is in the smell, which remains dominated by the sugary tropical oranges I scented before. When mixed, though, the sweetness of the stuff just doesn't come through as I was expecting; there's a little bit of sweet orange right up front and starting to move back, but the rest of the taste is dominated by the lemon juice (and at 1/6 of the mix, there's not even that much lemon in this!). I wasn't looking for the assertiveness of a Cointreau here, but I was expecting the Grand Marnier to show its character far more than this. Disappointing.

After the Margamarnier I was ready for anything, but the Margalarita is pretty much exactly how you'd expect it to be - with the exception of the smell. The tangerines I'd scented out before have completely disappeared, in favor of a kind of bland margarita odor. Actually drinking the stuff, though, things improve by a lot. Unlike with the Margamarnier, the Gala is very present in this. It's very, very sweet, for one thing. This really comes off as the sweetest of the three drinks by a decent margin, and I suspect it'd be worryingly easy to down about a dozen of these in a sitting. Even better, now that it's in a drink that strange astringency I tasted before starts to make sense. It breaks out of the general sugar-and-lemon taste like a clarion call, and adds a nice little extra thrill to the mix. On the whole, this is a damn good (not spectacular) margarita. If only I could do something about that smell...

Finally, there's the Margatorres. The smell is - well, it's basically Gran Torres and margarita. Which isn't the greatest scent in the world, but it still comes off better than the Margalarita. Drinking it, my first impression is how well the orange peel taste harmonizes with the lemon. The varieties of sourness are the stars of the show here. This thing isn't quite as sweet as the Margalarita, but drinkability-wise it'd still be very easy to make a night of it. On the downside: though the orange peel taste is great, the liqueur loses quite a bit of its style in its move to a mixer - just as I feared. None of the really subtle stuff that I was picking up before shows up in the Margatorres, and that's a damn shame. Overall, there's way less to separate these three in a mix than in the sipping contest. I think the Gran Gala produces the best margarita of the bunch, despite its sucky nose, but to be honest I'm not bowled over with the performance of any of these guys.

So, this concludes the drinking I'll be doing tonight. Let me first repeat the question from before. Grand Marnier - is it worth it? Answer: well, no, not really. For those who prefer their liqueurs smoother and sweeter, with price being no object, it's surely the way to go. But me, I just couldn't force myself to get excited about it: both in a rocks glass and in a margarita, it's underwhelming. On the other hand, in the nights that I've had these three when I've downed a beer or two and I've just wanted an ounce of something pleasant to cash me out for the night, I've found myself going for the Marnier almost as often as the Torres. It's simply better at that palatte-cleansing task than the Gran Gala. And though the bourbonhead in me doesn't want to admit it, in the end this makes it a better sipper than the Italian stallion. And heck, I'll give it this as well: it has by far the best bottle design.

So the original isn't demonstrably superior, and that means the cheaper knock-offs win it. They are, happily, just as good or better. The Gran Gala wins the mixing contest by a nose, while the Gran Torres is by far the most exciting to sip neat. So, how do you choose between the knock-offs, then? Well, if you're only going to be mating this stuff with tequila, then... actually, you should just buy some Cointreau, really. But Gran Gala is the best of the choices here, if that's your thing. Otherwise, for God's sake buy the Gran Torres. It's not bad in a mix, and it'll take me years to sort through all the favors of the stuff.

And with that I wrap up. The conquistador is the surprise winner here, and not by a small margin. If only all knock-offs were this good, we'd have no need for originals.

Grand Marnier
Grade: B+
Summary: A sweet, very smooth, but overpriced and ultimately somewhat dull brandy-based orange liqueur.

Gran Gala
Grade: B+
Summary: More sour and much more firey than the Marnier, this liqueur is the (relative) best of the three for mixing.

Gran Torres
Grade: A
Summary: Also a good mixer, but far more interesting sipped neat. Holds more secrets than J. Edgar Hoover.

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ADDENDUM, Jan. 18 2010:

So it's now about two months after my initial Gran(d)-Off comparison of various brandy-based orange liqueurs. I concluded that Grand Marnier was the smoothest, Gran Gala was (by a nose) the best for mixing, and Torres was the most interesting for sipping and the best booze all-round. I was never fully satisfied with the results, though, for two reasons. First, those three bottles by no means exhausted the sheer mass of the liqueurs of this sort on the market. The main impetus to go back to this comparison and add some more shit was discovering two (2) new bottles - Harlequin and La Belle Orange - during my trip east for the holidays, and also buying a fifth of Tuaca in a moment of weakness. I now have six bottles of this stuff to work through (pity me); more importantly, it means I may have to reassess the standings from before. Second, I was less than satisfied with my choice of cocktail from the last time, namely, the margarita. I have since discovered, through some experimentation, that this is just not a good drink for investigating these liqueurs. A typical margarita needs something direct, highly orangey, and very sweet - it needs triple sec, in other words, not something that gives away brute strength for brandy subtlety. As far as classic cocktails go, sidecars tend to work much, much better with these liqueurs, so that's what I'm using this time around.

So, this addendum will do two things. First, I'd like to sip these three new bottles and see how they compare to the earlier ones. Second, I want to retest all the liquors' mixing potential in a simple bourbon sidecar. Everything gets a new grade at the end, and we come one step closer to knowing where we stand when it comes to orange-infused brandies.

If any one of these liquors is going to get you accused of being a horrible cheapskate, it's Harlequin. It screams "IMPORTED FROM FRANCE" just about everywhere, but looking at the label from a distance you'd think it was a $10 fifth of bottom-shelf whiskey. From the goofy jester design to the fake wax seal, it just looks kind of sad. No mention at all of who actually makes this stuff, but it's imported by something called "Premium Imports Ltd." Ringing any bells? No? How about the fact that PI is located in Bardstown, Kentucky?? You know about Bardstown, don't you? ...It's the place where certain a famous and rather huge distillery is housed?? Yup: the bunch selling Harlequin can be none other than our pals at Heaven Hill. They claim that it's "produced in France from a rich blend of the finest aged cognac and Mediterranean oranges renowned for their distinctive flavor" - and this is literally the only information I can find on the stuff. I can only presume it's sold to HH by the Illuminati or something.

La Belle Orange is also fairly obscure, albeit far less so than the Harlequin. This time it's imported by White Rock in Lewiston, Maine, which sells quite a lot of things I've never seen nor heard of. Still no telling who in France ultimately makes LBO, but at least the importers actually bothered to put up a section on their website for it this time. The bottle design itself is, overall, probably my favorite of all the liqueurs save the (much more expensive) Grand Marnier. LBO doesn't bother with a fake wax seal or a ribbon (unlike Gran Gala or Harlequin), but it's more appealing than the similarly humble Torres: just a big orange LB badge and a label on nice paper. On the other hand, it's the only thing here with a screw-off top, but I can't hold that against it too much. La Belle Orange claims to be a "marriage of sun ripened oranges and the finest cognac," and a "harmonious blend" of "rich fruity aromas and elegant cognac flavors." Hmm. Well, we shall see.

Tuaca is the odd duck here, especially among these two. Where they're more or less French attempts at a cheaper Grand Marnier, this (like the Gran Gala) is Italian. Second, at 35% ABV, it's significantly less strong than the other 80-proof bruisers I've got here. Third, and most importantly, it's not just orange we're dealing with this time. Rather, Tuaca is a brandy "artfully blended with hints of vanilla and orange flavors." The addition of vanilla already promises to make this more bizarre than my previous favorite, the Gran Torres, so I've got high hopes for this stuff. Also like the Torres, it claims to date back an absurd amount of time - like, 16th century absurd. Wikipedia, which is always right, claims that Lorenzo de Medici quaffed this stuff. That's pretty cool, and will (if nothing else) make a fine story for parties. Anyways, the bottle itself is classy but rather uneventful; it just looks like a generic brandy or something.

All right, enough cockteasing: I've now poured all three liqueurs into individual glasses for comparison, along with (smaller) samples of the original three liqueurs. First, there's the colors. Of the newcomers, Harlequin is definitely the lightest of the bunch, roughly on a par with Torres; both are a kind of gentle champagne color. The LBO is darker still, perhaps just a touch darker than the Grand Marnier. The real champion here, though, is the Tuaca, which is a thick rich gold even darker than the Gran Gala from last time.

Then there's the aromas. The most notable thing about Harlequin's smell is that it's a dead ringer for Grand Marnier. If you really try you can detect some subtle differences - the Harlequin comes across as slightly rougher, slightly hotter - but if I didn't have these two side by side I'd be completely fooled. Harlequin pulls off the cognac orange juice aroma thing almost perfectly; think of it, then, as Grand Marnier in a dirty t-shirt. La Belle Orange, again, smells most like the Marnier. It's not quite as good a copy as the Harlequin, but I think I might actually prefer it over both. If anything, though, it comes off as even sweeter and smoother, and maybe even a little lighter; you can think of it, then, as Grand Marnier in a schoolgirl uniform. The Tuaca, as expected, is totally unlike all of these other liqueurs. The aroma is - I don't know if I love it or hate it, to be honest. It's unique, to say the least. The nose is extremely rum-like; there's no hints of brandy in here at all, just a lot of wood, cola, maybe some orange at the edges, and above all, vanilla. And, despite the (relatively) low proof, this actually comes across as hotter than the others as well, about on par with the Gran Gala's heat. It's odd.

Now, though, we get into the stuff that matters: the tasting. Down the hatch. (Again.)

The Harlequin, true to its aroma, once again comes off as a cheaper, rougher twin brother to the Marnier. There's some sweet-and-sourness right up front, which then evolves into a very sweet (but hot) orange flavor that, well, doesn't really change. I get another splash of heat at the swallow, but that's really the most interesting thing it does. Like the Marnier, it's slightly cloying. Actually, it's just like the Marnier in almost all things, just less well-sorted about it. If GM were an XO version of a brandy, I would take Harlequin to be the VS. It's rougher, and it's weaker. Now, it's not bad - especially at $18 - but a copy is all it is, and a copy that's slightly worse than the original at everything.

Wow. If I thought Grand Marnier was sweet, La Belle is off the fucking charts. This stuff is really sweet: it's as if they took the sweet n low taste of Marnier and turned it up to eleven. It's so sweet, in fact, that I find it genuinely difficult to drink neat; I feel like it's going to throw me into a seizure or something. Right up front there's a familiar clovey bite, which then evolves into what can only be described as Mega-Marnier. It's sweet orange squared. It gets a little sour at the swallow, but that's the only real relief one gets. Not only that, but it's smoother and there's even less of a burn. Everything I liked (and hated) about Marnier is here, severely amplified. Sipped neat it's like being tackled by a linebacker smothered in sugar. That isn't to say it's bad - it isn't. But next time it's getting a few drops of water.

The Tuaca tastes more conventional (in many ways) than I was expecting from its aroma. It has a very minimal, very toned back orange taste remotely reminiscent of the Gran Gala, but then over that there's a strong current of vanilla. From the initial moments all the way up until the conclusion of the flavor development, it really does come across as a spiced rum of some kind. Only at the end do the flavors separate themselves, so you can tell it's a Marnieresque liqueur with a lot of vanilla rather than some kind of especially vanilla-y Sailor Jerry's. There's a little bit of a burn going down, but nothing like what I got from the nose. Here's the weird thing, though: the vanilla flavor makes it pretty heavy, but Tuaca's actually pretty pleasant to sip on its own (moreso than the other two newbies, anyways). I can't down it with anywhere near the speed of Torres, say - it's more of a savor-a-half-ounce-over-twenty-minutes kind of drink - but it definitely has an appeal. I have absolutely no clue how this'll do in a sidecar, but it definitely strikes me as something that mixing geeks would enjoy playing with.

Speaking of sidecars, I guess it's time to see what's what in the mixing realm. To repeat, I'll be making bourbon sidecars. I'll be using a a bourbon to liqueur to lemon juice ratio of 2:2:1 - that should be leaning towards the sweet side for a sidecar, but frankly I want some sweetness to shine through here. For this test I'll be using my go-to budget bourbon, the lovely (if somewhat rowdy) Evan Williams 1783, which I've been using to make sours as of late. The newbies go first, starting with the Harlequin.

Despite the already-low amount of lemon juice, the Harlecar comes out on the sour side of things. So far as I can tell, the Harlequin just folds: aside from a rather dull sweetness, it doesn't assert itself at all here. The sugar is there for the beginning of the sip and most of the middle, but by the end it goes very sour indeed. No real orange flavors are detectable, either. I found this sidecar rather lame, though it's by no means something I would turn down. All the liqueur is doing is providing a sweetener, and there are other things that do that job much better.

The Bellecar is next, and I was expecting the LBO to just give me another toothache with its sweetness. Instead this sugar-happy little liqueur surprises me: it's sweeter than the Harlequin, yes, but along with the sweetness comes a much more pronounced orange flavor and an unexpected amount of nuance. There's a kind of lemon candy opening to it, and then the orange juice tang cuts in at the end to deliver a very novel, almost bitter (but still sweet) blood orange twist. It's extremely nice, and I prefer this Bellecar to the Harlecar by leagues. Some will probably find it too sweet for a sidecar - I'm tempted to add more lemon to this next time I make it, and there will be a next time - but even with this version I find it delicious and refreshing.

And third comes the Tuacar, which is the real dice roll. Will it work? Will it be horrible? Well, it smells pretty awful. There's just a confusion of all sorts of flavors: first there's the vanilla and a bit of oak from the bourbon, and then a lot of lemon. Lemon and vanilla, just to tell you, are not good pals aroma-wise. In terms of taste, it's much the same story. The relatively subtle flavors of the Tuaca are completely covered over here, leaving only a messy and nearly-unrelieved lemon rush. Only in the aftertaste, when I start to breathe out vanilla, do I recall that I've actually been drinking a fairly nifty liqueur. As a drink, then, the Tuacar is a failure. It's the clear loser among these three, although this is reall an unfair test - a sidecar is just not the right drink for this stuff. I have some ideas about what would be, but that lies outside the scope of this test. (Since it's very rumlike, for example, could one use it like a rum? How about mixing it with cola?)

Now then, on to mixing the three from the previous test. The Marnicar is a really pleasant surprise, considering Marnier's rather lackluster showing last time. The first thing I notice is a really lovely aroma which is rather difficult to describe. Brandy suspended in a cloud of orange pulp, maybe. In terms of sweetness, it fits nicely in-between the Bellecar and the Harlecar - maybe leaning a little more on the side of the latter's subtlety. Sweetened lemonade is the first impression, but as it moves back the orange pulp starts to poke itself through so that by the swallow it's totally dominating the other flavors. It doesn't quite have the sharp fruity jab at the end like the Bellecar, but in exchange it's a little more laid back and balanced. I think I slightly - slightly - prefer the Bellecar, but which one I would choose would really depend on my mood. In any case, the Marnicar is a fine damn drink. It's reserved without being boring, it does a fine job whetting the appetite without being overly tart - it's the perfect apéritif.

Oh crap, it's the Galacar. Honestly, the more I've quaffed the Gran Gala, the less I've liked the stuff. When I initially started doing the taste test way back in November, I actually preferred its sour firey Italian personality over the rather boring Marnier. But, like hanging with a really rowdy friend, the charm ran out after awhile. Truth be told, Gala's just too damn harsh to enjoy on its own. On the other hand, it does still shine as a mixer, and it makes a fine showing here. The sour-orange-on-fire aroma is here right from the start, right out front, and that's not something I much care for. What I do like, on the other hand, is the taste. The lemon might as well not even be here - it's totally overpowered by the Gala, which immediately pushes its way to the front with (happily subdued) tangy orange tastes. It's surprisingly sweet, too, almost up there with the Bellecar, but the Galacar's finish is much more sour than the Bellecar's bittersweet blood orange. Again, it's tough to say which is best: factor in the aroma and I'd give it to the Belle by a nose, but for pure taste I honestly think that Gala might produce the best drink here.

Finally there's the Torrecar. It is, as I was expecting, a letdown. The aroma is wonderful, of course - it's got all the deep orange zestiness that I love about the stuff - but the taste just doesn't bear it out. Torres, as a sippin' liqueur, is all about little nuances and subtleties. Forced to provide the sweetener role in a classic cocktail, though - well, it does the job, but it loses everything that makes it special. All I get up front, again, is sweet lemon, which blossoms out slightly as it moves back but doesn't really do much. In a lot of ways this comes across like a better smelling, slightly sweeter, slightly tastier version of the Harlequin, and that's not quite good enough in this company. I love Torres with a burning passion, but none of what I like about it is here in this drink. Frankly, the Torrecar is a waste of the stuff.

And that's it - six liqueurs, six cocktails, and we're done. So, which is the best?

Well, as before, I think it finally depends on what you're using it for. The Gran Gala, if you can ignore the force of its aroma, remains the best mixer, followed by La Belle Orange and (maybe) the Grand Marnier. The Torres may be a mediocre mixer, but for my money it destroys everything else for sheer sipping joy (the bizarre Tuaca comes in at a very distant second). LBO and the Marnier are probably the best all-rounders. And Tuaca, well, that's something for the cocktail scientists among us. And, while we may not have a clear winner, we at least have a clear loser in the Harlequin. Harlequin isn't horrible, it's just weak and comparatively rough, and there's very little it does that the others can't do better. Its only significant plus is that it mimics the classic Grand Marnier flavor and aroma better than anything else here. If you're a cheapskate, you could presumably use it to fake out your foodie friends.

And that leads the final point to be made: Grand Marnier is pretty good, but it's fuckin' expensive. Even the Harlequin, as weak as it is, is (I think) a better value for the money than Grand Marnier. And if that's the case even for the worst stuff here, it's doubly true for everything else. So, then, let the conclusions stand thusly: Harlequin is the clear loser, Grand Marnier is overpriced, and for everything else, go by your own needs and preferences.

Grand Marnier
Grade: A-
Summary: Smooth, sweet. It's good stuff, neither too strong nor too laid back, and it's relaxing to sip (if a little one-dimensional). And it works well in a drink, used properly. But at $32 a pop, it isn't really worth it.

Gran Gala
Grade: B+
Summary: Vile but interesting. The aroma's way too pungent and it's hard to sip neat, but it mixes like a champ.

Gran Torres
Grade: A
Summary: Smells and sips the best of anything here. Incredibly nuanced stuff on its own. But if it's a mixer you want, well, subtlety isn't really the way to go.

Harlequin
Grade: B-
Summary: It's a cheap knockoff of Grand Marnier. Period. Pour it into an old GM bottle and pretend not to be the shallow cheapskate that you are. I won't tell if you don't.

La Belle Orange
Grade: A-
Summary: Grand Marnier Xtreme. Even smoother and sweeter, and that can be good or bad depending on taste. It does cost about 40% less, though, and that's a lot.

Tuaca
Grade: B
Summary: Odd, vanilla-y orange liqueur. Nice enough for sipping neat (slowly), but I suspect its real brilliance lies in finding the right cocktails for it.