Peels Peels Peels
You may recall the original mention of Anheuser-Busch’s new product Peels and my subsequent review of the Pear Lemon flavor. Well, the kind folks at Anheuser-Busch generously supplied me with the remaining flavors, so I decided to have a semi-serious review by some people who don’t have the bits and pieces that make me a man. Last night, I gathered together three lushes luscious women (that’s all I could find on short notice), lit some candles (they like that sort of thing, right?), and set them through a rigorous, unscientific, and unblind tasting.
Considering the lack of general criteria for tasting malt beverages (at least I think this is a malt beverage) and the fact that the packaging says “flavored beer”, I decided to base it on beer-tasting standards and created a form (PDF link) for my female guinea pigs to fill out. Acknowledgments go out to the printing on the side of a Harpoon tasting cup.
Also, two of them had had the Pear Lemon before and had found it uninspired. In a non-random sampling of one of them, it ranked last. (In other words, I turned my head and asked my girlfriend.) The scores below are out of 10 and are averages of all four scores, including mine.
Peels Blueberry Pomegranate: 6.5
This one was the clear favorite. In a way that a straight male could never describe it, the drink is “fuschia-purple” and “pretty” with a blueberry yogurt smell. The pomegranate is basically nonexistent. Plus, don’t expect it to taste anything like POM. The drink is slightly fizzy and light-medium with a sweet (but not overly sweet) taste. It is mostly described as crisp without much of an aftertaste. The drink is slightly fizzy, but everyone agreed that there’s too little carbonation, which holds true for all of the Peels drinks we sampled.
Peels Cranberry Peach: 4.0
Cranberry Peach pours out reddish, which is definitely reminiscent of the hibiscus in the drink, and it smells very artificial “like candy”. It even conjured up memories of cough syrup. It has a medium mouth feel and suffers from the same lack of carbonation. It’s a very sugary cranberry flavor, and no one seemed to notice the peach. The finish was short and sweet. The consensus was this was the worst of the three, though it likely would’ve ranked higher than the Pear Lemon had that been included.
Peels Strawberry Passion Fruit: 5.6
Likely the most effeminate of the flavors, Strawberry Passion Fruit pours out “prickly pear pink” and is “almost offputtingly girly”. My personal remark was, “I could drink this again…in private.” It’s fruity and reminds us of Starburst, bubble gum, or flowers. It’s not too sweet and is fairly light. Surprisingly, it was also described as “bitter”, which one reviewer found pleasant for cutting into the sweetness but which another found to be too much. It has a lingering, sweet aftertaste.
Peels Pear Lemon
Check out the original review.
Overall Impressions
Overall, it seems that Peels wasn’t as much of a hit as AB might hope, at least with these ladies. If you’re running out to buy a fruity alcoholic drink, though, Blueberry Pomegranate might be a good choice. Personally, I’d drink that one again. Also, this might prove to be a good mixer. I think vodka would definitely help cut into the sweetness much like the case with Midori. The Peels website has a number of cocktail suggestions that I may try with the leftover drinks. The one warning would be to watch the alcohol content, though, as just one or two of some of these cocktails could leave you hugging the nearest toilet.
The one major bonus to the drinks is the screwtop. “I like being able to screw the top back onto my drink,” says one reviewer. I bet the drink would also last a while, considering the overall lack of carbonation. Plus, the bottles are in exceptionally cute packaging. It’s almost a shame that they have to sit next to big ugly beer cans in the liquor aisle.
Next step: does Peels Blueberry Pomegranate come out of white sheets? So far, I’ve found that it comes out of felt, though the felt did shrink after hand washing in cold water. Stay tuned. Sigh.
