We are currently working on creating a base of guest writers for this site.  This will help bring diversity to our writing while helping to generate a regular stream of content.  It brings me great pleasure to introduce our first guest post, written by one of my closest friends, Brad Wiens.  Brad has a growing passion for beer and has an impressively straight forward  approach to beer – if it tastes good, it is good.   Brad will hopefully become a semi-regular contributor to Love Good Beer.  Without further ado, I present to you, Brad Wiens. – Erik

Since this is my first post and also my first beer review , I will give you a little bit of background about me and my beer history.   Sadly, when I was a young lad I did not enjoy beer, it tasted awful. I managed to drink a few pints to not seem like a wuss in front of my friends, but my stomach hated me for it. It wasn’t until my cousin ordered me a Rickard’s Red that I tasted the difference in beer.  Previously I had only tried beer such as Molson Canadian and Bud Light because when I was “younger” that was all that was available at parties (at least from my experience). Rickard’s Red was a whole different kind of beer to me, it had flavor and guts.  My taste buds and my stomach instantly said “more please”.

For a long time my beer of choice was Rickard’s Red, until my good friend Erik started to branch out from standard beer.  Over the past few years I have started to develop a friendship with beer, and now I am madly in love with it. Erik’s homebrew has frequented my fridge and I always look forward to his next creation, and helping out with the rather messy but fun homebrew process.  Well, enough about me and onto the beer review.

Winterbraun is a slightly richer, stronger version of Lost Coast Brewery’s Downtown Brown, classed as an English Brown Ale. At first glance while looking at the bottle, I thought Winterbraun would have been a tad darker than it was. I poured a small amount into a clear glass to get a good look at the color, it was reddish brown. It smelt warm and inviting, and tickled my nose  with a slight caramel smell. I poured the rest into my beer stein, which is what all my beer is drunk out of. The Winterbraun is quite mild, but it has a great taste to it. I thought of a Newcastle Brown Ale with more of a kick near the end. The first half was nice, slightly sharp but with as smooth lingering aftertaste. After about halfway through, the beer’s sharpness  went away and I could taste the full body of the beer. I think after warming up, the beer began to open up and taste better.

I tend to think of foods that go well with the beer that I drink. I thought for awhile about what I would like to eat while drinking Winterbraun. Surprisingly I could think of no food that would go extremely well and enhance the flavor. I thought this was rather odd at first, but later on realized that this was a beer that I could drink alone. No food, no snacks, nothing but a beer. Of course it would go with a nice BBQ, but I think this is a beer I would tend to drink by itself.

Overall I am quite pleased with the Winterbraun. It is a nice mild mannered beer that I will definitely be purchasing again. With a nice color and a surprisingly warm feel, I recommend this beer to anyone  looking to sit down on a couch and enjoy a beer, a beer that goes well with a second Winterbraun.

Brad