Cali Squeeze is a wild departure for Firestone Walker. It works... if you like fruit beer
Cali Squeeze is a wild departure for Firestone Walker. It works... if you like fruit beer
Welcome back to FTW's Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
When I think of Firestone Walker, I think complex pale ales and big, bold and slightly weird heavy beers. Neither is all that great for casual summer cookout drinking.
Thus, Cali Squeeze -- a fruit-forward line of wheat ales designed to tone down the intensity of Firestone's other brews and provide an easy drinker. They come in a variety of coastal flavors, from passion fruit to peach pomegranate and promise something a step beyond Blue Moon with an orange wedge.
Firestone Walker is a circle of trust brewery. Let's see what happens when they tackle big fruity, juicy beers.
Blood Orange: B+
A pour straight down a nine-ounce mug unveils a foamy, quickly dissipating head. It simmers down to a minor ring at the top. The citrus is the headliner coming off the pour, with bright bursts of orange held back by the unmistakable Hefeweiz-ish tang of a wheat ale.
The opening sip is just as fruit forward. Since this is Firestone Walker I keep waiting for some big boozy flavors to roll in. A bitter hop or a malty sweetness. But instead you get some light wheat and a whole bunch of blood orange. Which, really, just tastes like orange to me.
It's a little sweet and acidic, which vibes since it's got orange juice in it. While I expected something like a lager equivalent of a juicy pale ale, this one skips the tempering element of the hops and pretty much just gives you citrus. It works with the carbonation and the minor wave of wheat that rolls in toward the end.
That makes it a solid summer beer. A great post-lawnmower swig. It's not as complex as the beers I've come to expect from Firestone Walker, but it's not supposed to be. This is supposed to be a step up from your airport pours of Blue Moon, no orange slice needed. In that regard, it's a winner.
Peach Pomegranate: A-
OK, interesting flavor combination here. I don't think I've ever had peach and pomegranate together. Like the blood orange it pours with a booming, fluffy white head. This one takes a bit longer to dissipate into something easy to drink.
Despite the promise of the label, the smell off the top is all gummy peach rings. Toward the end you get a little bit of that pomegranate tang -- though, admittedly, due to the effort involved in eating one I tend to eat one pomegranate per decade. It's possible I'm misreading this.
The peach and wheat work wonders together on your tongue. The juicy sweetness of the fruit takes the blank canvas of a wheat ale and brings it to life, adding enough flavor to make the blood orange seem heavier by comparison. I'm still not getting much pomegranate, but there is enough of a slight twist at the end that keeps this beer from getting cloying or driving home a sticky aftertaste.
The result is, again, a simple beer that's easy to finish. It's a proper hot day drink, something that can be plucked from an icy cooler and pounded before it gets the chance to warm up with minimal effort. It's sweet, light and juicy. Two of those adjectives aren't how I'd normally describe a beer, but hey, it works.
Tangerine Daze: B
It pours like the blood orange, just with a lighter hue. It smells, as expected, like sweet citrus with a light current of wheat beer running underneath.
The beer is a little more prevalent here than in the other two. But it's still sweet and a little creamy, which tempers those beer vibes. The result isn't quite creamsicle, but it's clearly headed in that direction. That makes it a little less crisp than the peach, but it's still a nice departure from your regular beer.
True to form, it's an easy to drink summer beer. The vanilla here makes things a bit more complex, though it's still fairly straightforward.
Passion Fruit: n/a
The smell off the top of this is powerful passion fruit. Which is great if you like passion fruit. I do not.
Like the rest of the Cali Squeeze cohort, it's a proper wheat ale base from which a fruit complex is built. If you like passion fruit, then hell yeah, this is your jam. To me, it tastes like stale rubber. I am not qualified to grade this one.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?
This a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I'm drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That's the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm's. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Firestone Walker's Cali Squeeze over a cold can of Hamm's?
That's all gonna come down to whether I'm feeling a fruit beer or not. The whole thing is a vibe. But Cali Squeeze captures it well with juicy flavors riding atop a current of quality wheat beer. It's a bit of a niche play, but Firestone Walker pulls it off exactly as you'd expect.
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