Southern Tier Brewing Co. - "Goat Boy" imperial weizenbock

Many times, reviews appear on this blog due to serendipity. Many of the beers I review are ones that I come across randomly, and decide to try with little or no knowledge of what's contained within the bottle. Today's is one such find. I saw this beer, all alone, on the shelf at Whole Foods on P Street. It had no siblings to keep it company. So, rather than letting it wallow all by its lonesome, I grabbed it. But - my knowledge of Southern Tier told me it would likely be good. I've had lots of their stuff in the past, and was never really disappointed. At one point, I even sought out one of their plum dessert ales - hoping I would finally be able to disapprove of SOMETHING they made - but no such luck...the "Plum Noir" was pretty good.  So, with that in mind, I figured that whatever was in this bottle would be pretty good.

But, standing in the checkout line, two questions came to mind:

1) WTF is a "goat boy?"
2) What is an "imperial weizenbock?"

Despite having no apparent answers to these questions, I bought the beer. $7.

So I stuck it in the fridge for a week or so and finally got around to trying it. But before doing that, I had to figure out what it is exactly I was about to drink. A quick Google search shows that "Goat Boy" was a Jim Breuer sketch on SNL in the mid-90s. I never warmed up to Breuer (I was more of a Tim Meadows / Norm MacDonald fan) but I guess that segment was famous (and, apparently, funny.) On the other side of the coin - according to the German Beer Institute, an "imperial weizenbock" is an imperial-strength German white ale that's essentially the stronger version of a wiezenbier (white beer.) So think of this beer as a super, amped-up version of a hefeweisen. This particular example is 7.5% ABV, which is a bit low for something to be called "imperial."

OK, so far so good.

Indeed, the bottle as well has a lot of information on it, including some tasting notes and a quick rundown of the hops and malts they use. I cracked open the beer, poured it, and as I was letting it sit and aerate, I read the back of the bottle. They claim it has a "deep ruby" color with a "banana" aroma. However...

The color is actually a murky orange that quickly turns to chocolate brown. 

Held up to the light:

Nothing about what you see above is "ruby red," amirite?

So let's talk taste. This beer is good. It's not awesome, just good. It reminds me a lot of Chimay. It's got that same color, the same aroma of sweet malts, and the same overall taste as an unfiltered Belgian. But it's not a Belgian beer. There's no real feeling to the flavor, no yeasty sediments lurking in the bottom of the glass, and no strength to the spice. The finish was a bit sweet, with no real lingering flavors. 

Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed drinking this beer. The flavor was good and it had the right mix of spice to be enjoyable, and sessionable - but I'm a bit curious since what I drank didn't match up at all with the tasting notes on the side of the bottle. The tasting notes claim the beer is supposed to taste like "caramelized bananas" - another Maury paternity test moment - and so I'm wondering whether I got a bad bottle, or maybe it sat too long in the stockroom, or what. Sometimes you'll come across this, with craft beer - something goes wonky in the brewing process, or perhaps some errant stockboy left the bottle in the sun too long and the light screwed up the beer. Or it was left out and got too hot (think an unrefrigerated truck in summertime.) Any of those things could damage the beer, and wine is the same way. 

So in conclusion, I don't know what to think about this beer. It was tasty, but  because of the way it was described on the bottle (and in other reviews I checked online) something leads me to believe I didn't quite get the "Goat Boy" experience. But no matter - this wasn't a waste of $7 and I'll probably grab one again, just to see if the first experience was truly indicative of the beer or not.