Review: Molson Golden Ale

I don't understand 90% of the new products that come from the big multinational breweries but a lot of them sell well - Something like Bud Light Strawberry Lemonade sounds disgusting but people like my mom absolutely love it.. but beers like this have a "But why?** vibe to it. Molson has brought out Molson Golden in fancy looking 625mL bottles with foil lined cap and a gold-coloured plastic label to give the beer a prestige kind of vibe to it.. but the thing is that there's nothing fancy about Molson Golden at all. Back when I wasn't a craft beer geek I would go down to North Dakota and buy beers I couldn't get back home - Molson Golden was one of them - it was easy to find there along with Molson Ice. I don't know why I'm doing an actual review for this instead of doing a Skunksworth's Barleyslime critique.. possibly because I enjoyed this beer back in the late 2000s? That and so that you don't have to try this if you don't want to.

Molson doesn't seem to promote this product at all so I'm not sure why they would come out with this product.. possibly they produced too much for the US market so they decided to make a special edition bottle just for it. I know people will be buying this just because the label design has city names from all over Canada, including Neepawa and Brandon in Manitoba. Every beer I've had in the past fifteen years that ever mentioned Brandon on the label was guaranteed to not even be made in Brandon.. we still don't have a brewery in the city of 50k!

I couldn't really find any information about the beer anywhere but I got this from the MLCC website: "This brilliantly bright blonde ale invites with complex hop aromas delivering notes of citrus and herbs that work with the strong, but not overpowering, malt presence to bring this beer into perfect balance. A perfect beer for any celebration."

Appearance: Pours a deep honey/golden straw body with a lot of carbonation in the body, typical for the style. The head is fairly light with a snow white hue to it. Light amount of lacing on the glass once the beer goes down gradually.

Aroma: When I've had this in the US in the past, it was more reminiscent to Moosehead as they used green bottles for that market, so notes of skunk. In this bottle, this reminds me much more of Molson Export - it's a light ale with a sweet malt to it, grainy, hint of creamed corn, hint of toastiness, honey and definitely has a bit of an aroma that reminds me a bit of Moosehead still.

Taste: Have you ever put a beer in a freezer, forgot about it, thawed it out and the beer tasted off because of it? That's what it tastes like to me. To me, it tastes like Molson Export meets Moosehead but put in the freezer for too long. There's a toasted malt profile to it that hits the palate a bit aggressively, as well as a bit of sweetness of honey, slight metallic taste, and a hint of corn to it. The hops definitely are present, giving off a slight bitterness to it, a bit of grassiness.. but not complex compared to the bajillion experimental hop IPAs out there right now. The aftertaste is a bit of bitterness from the hops and the toasted malt, the hops linger for a bit, more than your typical Molson beer.

Overall Thoughts: Meh, it's not a bad beer, really. It's not great but the "this has been in the freezer for too long" taste bugs me. The beer is very crisp, easy to drink and has a light yet present hop profile to it that's agreeable for me but will be a bit aggressive for someone who doesn't like bitter-forward hops. Will I buy this again? Meh, doubtful but you never know. I haven't even really bought Molson Export since it came out to Manitoba and that was a guilty pleasure of mine for a long time. The 625mL bottle is a weird size but part of me thinks that Molson ordered too many bottles for their 1908 Historic Pale Ale, which was surprisingly pretty darn good and disappeared pretty quickly after release.

**Edit: Re: "But Why?" This may have been a release meant for the Olympics this year, it would make sense with the gold theme now, Molson has released limited editions of their beer in the past for the Olympics, including Molson Canadian Victory Edition in 2016.